To tide the way to upcoming Taiko news talk, here's a little something that eager Donders may have already caught up by browsing the many Donderful/Rhythm Festival "Release-Day Announcement" official video variants that have scattered across the Web, something that also leaves us a little bit of public insight on the development team's behind-the-scene workouts...
Additional screenshots courtesy of users jC and mariochua from the Taiko no Tatsujin Discord server.
It's kind of expected for us not to get news while the yearly-recurring Golden Week holiday is kicking strong in Japan, so we'll tide the way by highlighting one tidbit concerning the latest music-recruitment contest of last year, something that might also effect the music entries for the one that ended last month as well.
While every approved-entry track has been posted and judged properly, it has occurred that some of the tracks might be missing from the contest website's listing a few months after its conclusion if you search for either the song's name or the one of its author/s. We can only speculate the reason behind such sudden removals without notice, but our best guess is to let its authors to repost their creations elsewhere for use without contractual restraints of sorts, which is likely to be the case for composer Silentroom posting his contest entry 9876734123 on his own YouTube account.
Thus, seeing how this situation might be occurring abong the latest competition's tunes as well, we kindly advice you to go listening through all entries before the final results are announced, so that you've had a taste of everything its contestants have to offer before some of their picks might disappear from this digital listing, even if it might be a temporary situation to let their creators to share their craft elsewhere in the aftermath. See you tomorrow!
While the Tenkaichi Otogesai tourney series is (sadly) discontinued and no stand-alone arcade Taiko tournaments are on sight, there are at least two competitions out there that, while not aiming to add new spicy content to the game with a tourney background, are still aiming to test the skills of Japan's most proficient donders.
The first of the two, the Taiko no Tatsujin Nintendo Switch Version! Elementary-School Students Donkatsu Fight King! (太鼓の達人 Nintendo Switchば～じょん！小学生ドンカツ王決定戦！) contest, is focused on the Nintendo Switch game and, as the title says, is aimed at a younger playerbase, with District Qualifier rounds being scheduled from this month's end to this year's end in 12 different venues and their Finals being slated to March next year.
The latter tourney is more reminiscent to the Otogesai arcade shenanigans, in that an assembly of arcade game rooms (in this case, affiliated to Taito) is holding separate tournaments for a number of still-operative gaming series, open to all ages! The Toushinsai 2020 ～World Championship of ARCADE～ (闘神祭2020～World Championship of ARCADE～) is the name of said tourney series, allotting a space for rhythm games for the first time with the 2020 edition; not only Taiko no Tatsujin line will be eligible for tournament means, but also SOUND VOLTEX and jubeat as well!
Since June of last year, Corocoro Magazine has been hosting a comedic Yonkoma (lit. '4 Panels') for a younger audience, falling under the title of Taiko no Tatsujin 4koma-saii de Dodon ga Don! (太鼓の達人 4コマ祭でドドンがドン！).
Starting on August 28th, this series will start getting a separate serialization of its strips, with the release of the series' first tankobon! Under this new guise, the series will also receive a slight title change, in Taiko no Tatsujin 4koma-saii de Dodon ga Don! Don-chan Sawagi-hen (太鼓の達人 4コマ祭でドドンがドン！ どんちゃんさわぎ編).
While most run-of-the-mill gaming press talks about how a game retailer in Spain is accepting preorders for a "Taiko no Tatsujin Drum 'n' Fun Collector's Edition" (which we think is just the drum bundle?), we are going to tell you something different.
Did you know, for instance, that the latest new song Ai want U by Kaneko Chiharu apparently takes its words from another composition "I Want You", by P*Light under the doujin music label HARDCORE TANO*C? We didn't either, so thanks to Deadwantsha from the Taiko Discord for mentioning it in passing a few days back. Embedded above is the MV from the label's official YouTube channel for you to check.
That label name should have been familiar to you, when we already have works from 5 of its members in Taiko no Tatsujin before - t+pazolite, aran, Massive New Krew, REDALiCE and DJ Myosuke. If you play other rhythm games you should also have witnessed the work of the other members as well.
And there, just us wanting to tell you this funner tidbit instead of having to fiercely ride the coattails on something that is in no way pressing.
Erratum (2018/07/11): And as Padoo and many from the Discord has correctly quizzed me over this, but this situation is likely just the two artists using the same royalty-free sample packs. I admit I have not been as literate on other music games and current music trends as I should, and I apologize.
Slightly random on our part, but if you are looking for more Taiko no Tatsujin on your Nintendo Switch other than Nintendo Switch Version/Drum 'n' Fun, maybe consider Family Stadium Evolution (プロ野球 ファミスタ エボリューション)? Purchasing the game from Bandai Namco's own entertainment commerce site Asobi Store (アソビストア) will get your the shop-exclusive bonus of having Tatsudon (立つドン) as a playable unit. You can also choose the Asobi Store Limited Version (アソビストア限定版) for an additional uniform design T-shirt. I don't know what those stats would entail but two bats are leagues better than two bachi sticks, that's for sure.
...or if you don't want Tatsudon but still want the game, you can purchase at other locations for other notable characters from Namco IPs.
Back when Splatoon 2 just came out, we talked about its rhythm minigame Squid Beatz 2 (イカラジオ2, Ika Radio 2) and how it has a little homage section for the already-out Calamari Inkantation Oni notechart on Taiko no Tatsujin.
Now that Splatoon 2 Medley has been out on Taiko no Tatsujin (Blue ver., and soon on Nintendo Switch Version too), let's venture onwards to the second episode of this saga.
In random news hinted by the wikihouse comment section, some people have found that the domain http://switch.taiko-ch.net/ is now something hidden behind authentication locks, instead of a dead or non-existent link. You know what that stands for, right?
Be that as it may, there is no actual concrete information as of the writing of this post (for example, that rating-pending slot for the Switch title we have seen last year is still pending). The only waypoint we are confortable to provide is the Nintendo Direct livestream on March 9 2018 at 07:00.
Taito's arcade branch of the Groove Coaster series is going to have a new shoot-em-up event for the reminder of September, and Taiko gaming is invited once again!... sorta.
What we mean by that is the coming of another song medley from Namco gaming that was created for the long-running drumming series! After the Dragon Spirit Medley, the Burning Force Medley is set to have its premiere in this series later this month, on September 22nd.
Continuing from the first game, the brand new Splatoon 2 again comes with the rhythm-action minigame of Squid Beatz 2 (イカラジオ2, Ika Radio 2).
In case you don't know, you can unlock the original Squid Beatz via completing additional amiibo challanges in Splatoon 1. Though being mostly just a music player, you can call upon the rhythm-game part to have notes flow from right to left along a line.
The original was more of just "something to do in this music player", but the new installment has powered-up the gaming aspects including actual hit judgement and scoring, plus gold and silver squid trophies for completing each notechart.
In short, the pink notes (sounds like dons) have you press the direction or A/B/X/Y buttons, the green notes (sounds like kats) takes the shoulder L/R buttons, and the bordered notes needs to be hit on both sides. What is different from Taiko no Tatsujin, in addition to the pink and green notes split into two rows instead of one, there are also places that you have to press pink and green notes at the same time.
The actual difficulty level though is familiar if you play Taiko no Tatsujin well enough. Most HARD notecharts tops at or under Oni ★9 with your typical 16th and 24th clusters and streams.
...wait hold on, that phrase sounds so similar back there...
Yup, we did not forget about this among all the PS4-1 antics.
Search for 太鼓の達人 on the official Bandai Namco Entertainment site, and in addition to PS4-1 already taking two slots within the merchandise listing, you can also find this blank slate of an entry for a "Taiko no Tatsujin Series" Nintendo Switch game. But with no image, no CERO rating and no release dates (even vague ones like "Year 2017" from next door), it is next to impossible to talk anything beyond this. Enjoy the reassurance... I guess?
It happened 2 months ago and it's happening again: yet another NAMCO SOUNDS-related artist has been spotted on foreign grounds, as one of the Irorimidori (イロドリミドリ) tracks' composer.
This time around, the CHUNITHM series' in-house idol unit has employed the talent of the nick-named Jesahm (自営山) for the latest solo-idol song: Spicy Swingy Style, which is coming to stateside arcades tomorrow. The scoop comes from this tweet, which also includes a Youtube link for the full in-game version of the song.
Here in Taiko, Jesahm is better known as the composer of old-time Namco Original classics like Taiko Session ～Live Version～ as well as a few choice Classic arrangements (most notably Nocturne Op. 9-2).
While we managed to catch an admirable amount of April Fools pranks in one of our most recent Sonority Scouts features, it may happen that some of those tricky expedients may fall off our radars, mainly due to either poor visual/video documentation or us being unaware of the joke itself (or both).
For this year, one of these misreported pranks comes from Synchronica, which got a full digression in a dedicated blog entry of the Synchronica Lab.
As we started this week on random notes, we're also ending it on a tangent of randomness, thanks to a Taiko-related tweet made by independent composer sasakure.UK that has managed to achieve an overwhelming amount of positive attention... yes, even higher than Etou trying to sing conflict!
Basically, the artist wondered how big can a Don note get after the 'regular' normal and big variants, resulting in the doodling process of a muscle-powered creature that goes by the name of Must Don (マストドン). How would such a creature get along with the rest of the Wada family or even the Tatsu brothers? The world may never know...
It doesn't happen very often to see songs from NAMCO SOUNDS composers branching out to external music game series... let alone brand new tracks, for that matter! This, however, is the scenario that is bound to happen later this month for Sega's Chunithm series.
We've seen for a while how the not-Vocaloid-related music game franchises have started to feature a proprietary idol unit in the past that goes by the name of Irorimidori (イロドリミドリ), and after some iDOLM@ster songs getting ported to the earliest maimai builds it's now the turn of one Namco musician to contribute for this cause! More specifically, Hiroshi Okubo (大久保博) has been in charge of the arrangement direction of the latest Irorimidori track (Tic Tac DREAMIN'), which is about to be publicly released later this week.
For those who are curious enough for a song preview, head over to this tweet!
Thanks to a heads-up by chatbox user Faiz Danyal, we've been made aware of a skilled Taiko player's recorded performance on the Dojo Ranking's hardest trial yet, scoring an impressive Tatsujin Gold clear (=all Great hits, no misses) in the dreadful Souryuu no Ran/≠MM/Yuugen no Ran trial. Congratulations!
(now, if only I can keep up the pace with 200+ BPM songs...)
After our last Taiko no Tatsujin cameo spotted in recent Japanese animation series, we have been made aware by a comment from Kapi Kypjin about another recent show getting Taiko cameos of sorts. And sure enough,... here it is!
The picture above comes from the 5th episode of the (still running) Anime series Himouto! Umaru-chan, once again starring some of the main characters having some fun in the arcades with really brief Taiko action. As a modern take on the geek/otaku culture, many other games are represented in the series in some way or another as well, even featuring bits of other music game series like pop'n music and DanceDanceRevolution!
I wonder how much will take for some Taiko-themed series, after all these winks and cameos...
Donkama 2000 is already known to be king of the gimmick charts, and many have resorted to memorizing the song in order to clear it. But what happens if you turn on the random notes modifier? Surely it is impossible to clear, let alone full combo, a series of randomized notes at randomized speeds?
Well, someone has done the impossible, on the Wii U Tokumori version! ...although, the method isn't quite as fair as you'd imagine. By repeatedly pausing the game, it is possible to hit each note one by one at your own leisure, though such a feat can't be easy, as it would still be very possible to miss a note or two. Also, keep in mind, this method involves pausing over 700 times! You'd had to have really good patience to do something like this.
Well, as I say, the only way to beat a cheating song is to cheat yourself!
After spotting Level-5's latest succesful franchise on Taiko games several times in form of both the Anime-related track and the many Jibanyan cameos in Taiko (with the latest one being a recruitable party member for Taiko 3DS 2's Story mode), it makes sense to feature some Taiko love in the latest Yokai Watch game as well!
The spirit of Taiko games' drumming mascot can be spotted and fought in the franchise's second entry, as the video above shows. It's also being rendered in 3D!
http://www.mochigames.com/games/jingle-hero-christmas/ Addendum (2018/04/21): We have been informed that the above domain has since been replaced by something else which might be possibly malicious, and the said game do not exist there anymore. Hence we are removing the hyperlink with this warning for the sake of safety.
A sort-of attempt to spoof a completely different rhythm game, Guitar Hero, as a free Flash game. But really, the only thing this has in common with Guitar Hero are a few sound effects and the name 'hero' in it. This is actually a Taiko no Tatsujin clone.
