Around the same time last year, I've read a random Japanese tweet standing for a position I've been sharing for quite a while: April Fools for your average rhythm game player is effectively a second Christmas day where the fanciest things happen for everyone, albeit for a really short time window.
Is it any different for this year, in the grand scheme of things? The answer is a click away...
It's crazy to think we've effectively got an April Fools joke whose buildup was upheld for almost a couple of years' worth of teasing, but as we know the otoge competition isn't one to stay idle around the same... each with their own unique take on it!
At last, the time has come to peek at the neighbouring jokesters of this year...
While Taiko no Tatsujin is having its jolly ole fun spoofing high school romancing games (and possibly that soul-drenching pop'n music Lapistoria), the general music gaming scenario has been more active than last year on their shenanigans assets, be it for returning or brand-new April Fools-a-holic aficionados everywhere.
Yesterday was quite the day for neighbouring rhythm gaming, seeing how it was observed both the rise and the fall of some choice titles, both sharing bonds with Taiko in some fashion or another.
Let the emotional rebound between happiness and sadness begin!
Losing out songs on the arcade front is becoming a monthly habit for the ongoing Taiko arcade line, but this time around we're backing up the dreary mood with what happens right around the corner in the general music gaming scenario.
If you think missing out on tunes is bad, how about the termination of whole music games? ...
Less than two days are left between us and the unveiling of the latest Taiko no Tatsujin song contest, via the upcoming livestream session starring Etou and Kimizu!
Right before that, however, we're holding one brief talk about something related to the song-making scenario, similar to what we've done around the last edition's closure. Because yes, apparently there might be something else behind a losing song's entry leaving the submission form...
For once, the Sonority Scout brand is out of April Fools territory like in the past and onto current Taiko-related fresh music gaming news! Following up the crossover with Ongeki, last week it was the turn of CHUNITHM to take a hold of REDALiCE's 8OROCHI, as also announced via official Twitter notice.
If you think that goroawase shenanigans were only a Namco-pursued habit, just take a gander at that max note count (in the Miss corner, given the video) to spot aquabluu/pikaby's patented 'handsome number', in reference to the song's name!!
One more fresh Taiko-related finding for the ending week, however, has to be searched away from Sega properties, with the latest DLC pack for the Groove Coaster series' Switch installment. Sure, the big talk of the day was the unheard-of collaboration notice with The World Ends With You, but longtime BanNam fans had fun not only with returning Taiko-playable medleys, but also with the debut of the iconic KAGEKIYO to boot, custom storyboard BG and all!
It's also nice how the hardest difficulty setting's note count (not the Max Chain, mind you) directly references the Nam-Combo value that is also shared by its Oni mode on Taiko, isn't it?
This was a year where for Donders everywhere, the April Fools joke was completely on them... but what about other parties? Although less voices have risen in 2022 with unique spins, there surely have been some to parade about. Take a bow, 'cause it's time for a big bounce!
This year might have been surprising for us to see a Taiko-flavored April Fools that doesn't involve the infamous 2000 series for a change, but what is not a surprise anymore is that there's not a prankster alone among music gaming once again!
Venture with us to see what shenanigans are happening in 2021 right next door...
While Taiko no Tatsujin is enjoying its first music game collaboration in what feels like a forever ago since the Tenkaichi Otogesai's tourney series closure, on further pastures we find Taito having a generous serving of collaborations on that front... and twice in a month at that!
The latter of those is definitely something that Taiko fans may be tangentially interested into, as Tenkaichi Otogesai shared darlings FUJIN Rumble and ouroboros -twin stroke of the end- have found yet another playable home in PeroPeroGames' mobile/PC/Switch music game Muse Dash. Be very wary, both tourney-contenders boss songs come with a top-billing Hidden difficulty mode in this colorful running game!
It's time for us to quote that one BlizzCon dude for some more "out-of-season April Fools Joke" shenanigans, this time being dictated by what has been the worldwide-spread phenomenon that has forced Sega to halt their silly shenanigans.
As also reported in one of our last Sonority Scouts features, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it so that all arcade-toting music game series had to either downplay the day-exclusive jokes on the offline front or downright skip them for the year. Sega was part of the former camp with their Twitter/website-related jokes staying up while their joke-y content not being playable on the actual games, but now that the pandemic's grasp is slightly less impactful than it was back in April, their planned stunts make their triumphant (and time-limited) debut between this ending month and the next one!
Dear Commanders,
In the upcoming collaboration event, there will be some stages with a rhythm minigame! Will you be able to ace these songs and get a perfect score?#GirlsFrontlinepic.twitter.com/TlxwfBvEDl
— Girls' Frontline-EN Official (@GirlsFrontlineE) April 28, 2020
The Taiko series has been more than often involved in mobile gaming collaborations of all sorts, from gacha games like Puzzle & Dragons/Chain Chronicle to even other mobile music games, both in-house and from other publishers. While the series isn't particularly active with such four-hands efforts as of late, another music game is parading with one paricular collaboration once again, and for the first time involving Western mobile players...
Mica-Team's strategic mobile game Girls Frontline has had a one-time collaboration event with Neowiz MUCA's DJMax franchise about one year ago, and now such event is open for the mobile game's Western-player server to enjoy! Not only characters and elements from both series will intertwine in a special story scenario, but it'll also be possible to recruit characters from the Korean music game as powerful allies for your own combat echelons. Hell, deploying one partucular character in your team while facing certain boss threats in the event stages will actually trigger a DJMax-affine music gaming experence, with a selection of some of the series' most popular picks!
For one music game (like ours) that isn't that much keen on music gaming collaborations on a frequent ratio, there's another which definitely loves jumping between series boundaries every now and then! Taito's Groove Coaster, in their latest collaborative effort, joined forces with Marvelous's WACCA arcade kmusic gaming by exchanging four different songs to the other series each, with one oh-so-familiar pick from the Space Invaders house' series of Tenkaichi Otogesai times...
While we're finalizing the latest Taiko arcade game's song list page, have a gander at COSIO's FUJIN Rumble getting ported into WACCA. It's like happy festival fireworks.. BOOM!
It's been another 360-ish days since our last April the first, so here we are again with our yearly spotlight about how much wacky can the other competitors in the music gaming ring get! ...For this year in particular, however, it's important to underline before we start how not everything is running its own course in the world as usual, with the pandemic waves of early 2020's coronavirus batch paralyzing many nations around the globe.
While joining the masses in telling that the 'There's no place like home' literary saying can be a lifesaver for ourselves in such a time, be warned in advance that some of the following campaigns have been either slightly modified or downright canceled, like with Taito (link). For the former case, we'll also pinpoint all the affected variations, so you can avoid focusing on the ongoing issues in order to enjoy the funny goodies on a future and safer frame of time.
We've had a dire start, but let's see if the remaining otoge rivals can bring some laughter!
Talking about April Fools' day in music gaming has been a yearly tradition for us, one which we've renewed our attention to even in the now-ended 2019. However, it appears we missed out on a couple of jokey-jokey scenarios in our past post about them, so we'll be bridging the gap with this post.
Indeed, to quote some guy in a gaming convention's Q&A inquiries, you can say that -given the date- what we're offering to you today are a bunch of "out-of-season April's Fool jokes"!
First up, we have Bit192's Tone Sphere, a mobile music game which greeted its fans last year with a joke difficulty for Conway's Child, one of the game's latest (at the time) boss songs.
Its supposed 'Spherical' difficulty setting will change the song's title to 'Conway's Tomatomania', in relation to other Tomato-labeled joke difficulties for older tracks. As for the former songs' prak enhancements, have fun figuring out how to read and play its chart!
◇DOGEのハッキングによって、現在3rd Avenueが「強引に」解禁されております。期間はどうやら4月6日までのようですが、心配は無用! 今後またチャンスがやって来るかもしれませんよ?
◇DOGE의 해킹으로 인해, 네트워크가 강제로 오픈되었습니다. 기간 걱정은 하지 마세요! 나중에도 기회는 올 겁니다! pic.twitter.com/Btke83Uxaf
Sega's Ongeki wasn't the only one last year to fake a management hijack from someone else, as a similar prank was done for the mobile music game OverRapid as well.
It appears that getting a meme revival renaissance in early 2019 wasn't enough for good ole' Doge, so he decided to hack a music game in order to release a new song by Sound Souler "way ahead of its intended time", with title and artist credit mentions being masked to its likeness! Such challenge, much tap.
The song's extra mode was only made available for a week, but who knows! It may pop up some time later.
The next 1-day Reitaisai convention is upon us and, alongside Bandai Namco's Taiko franchise, other music games are joining the fray with their own share of event-limited features and goodies to be fetched. This post, as usual, is all about them!
Here's a mini feature to slot in the vacant time before the big update day later in the week. In a recent weekly song addition rally in Sound Voltex (Vividwave), composer Cranky prepared an entry to reveal on July 18 that has a title that you may recognize:
With etymological roots of "readership" in the title, LECTORIA follows similar compositional themes already seen in HISTORIA in Crossbeats and VICTORIA in Taiko no Tatsujin. The above tweet has Cranky confirming that the three are related and collectively named TORIA Series (TORIAシリーズ).
In addition to just referencing its own title in the vocals though, LECTORIA also called out to its sisters in the middle, and has one phrase highly resembling from VICTORIA towards the end. This is confirmed by lyricist and vocalist Pico:
Not even 5 months since the Arcaea collaboration and Taito's Groove Coaster series is back at it again with the Tenkaichi-friendly song exporting action! This time around, the beneficiary is the latest home console game in Neowiz MUCA's DjMax series, DJMAX RESPECT.
Alongside Got more raves and Ouroboros -twin stroke of the end-, eight more songs were ported to the game as a result, with some DJMAX crossovers heading to Taito's music series and a GC-inspired skin, which can be seen in action from this official DLC video trailer.
Three powerful Challenge Songs from the popular arcade rhythm game CHUNITHM will be playable in Arcaea from May 23. Will you overcome their challenge, or succumb to their relentless assault?
While this year's Hakurei Shrine Reitasai has seen mosty of the usual music game parties relatively dormant (for the most part), Sega and lowiro are here to state how the Spring season is perfect for some random music game collaboration! Starting today, in fact, is a crossover event with the arcade CHUNITHM series and the mobile Arcaea app, each sharing three of their songs to the other party, alongside a number of cosmetic flairs that are linked to both titles.
As you can see, two of the Sega tracks being shared are old Tenkaichi Otogesai-shared acquaintances to the Taiko series, so here they are once again, playable as some of the hardest picks for the game yet. Expect the related SotW features to be updated soon enough!
(Yes, we know that GDP is a maimai song. And yes, we too do not have a clue on why it's featured on this collab either)
Well, we sure got something new for Taiko this year around, alright... heh, what do you mean "I can't read a thing on that other post"? It was straight to the point!
I'll look after it in a while, but while you wait for it, why don't you take a seat to our yearly appointment of April Fools stunts from other music games series?
