Namco Taiko Blog (8 January 2014) - Taiko Tournaments in Early 2015

In line with the last few years, to have some slow news features upon a new year's beginning is a surely-expected trend for gaming by this time, and Taiko games are no exception. Today, for example, Etou's Taiko Blog entry is about the two 'minor' Winter tournaments for Taiko arcades: the Huis Ten Bosch Cup and the elementary school-oriented World Hobby Fair '15 tourney.

Since we already mentioned the former before in our blog, now we're having a quick look to the latter's pre-finals schedule. As stated in the past, there will be five mini-tourneys in four local fairs for the youngest Taiko players, in order to pick the contenders for the Grand Champion prize at the WHF later this February. The tourneys are set in Nagoya (Jan. 18th), Tokyo (Jan. 24th/25th), Fukuoka (Feb. 1st) and Osaka (Feb. 8th) under the Bandai Namco stand, where either Etou or Takemoto will be the main host for the event. Stop by and say hello to these Taiko Team personalities if you happen to visit these stands in the next weeks!

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Made By You: DRAGON KILLER and more

After a long hiatus, the Made By You segment makes its grand return! Made By You will now be coming at you every two weeks, every Wednesday. This week, we'll be looking at another 3 maps.



From Sayaka-, previously known as dialgadu77, we have a hard rock song from bemani game REFLEC BEAT limelight. 96 and Mutsuhiko Izumi, two of the most prominent guitar artists from bemani's in-house stable of artists, team up to give this difficult rock song.

The chart's no slouch, making full use of the frantic percussion to give a nice 10* rock drum chart.



crystalsuicune provides another nice traditional-esque bemani song, with a chart reminiscent of the Kikyoku series. This song originates from beatmania IIDX, and has a chart comprising of simple clusters and makes for a good chart to practice.



A unique chart, as it's 10 minutes long! This song is a remix of the song 'goldenslaughterer' from visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, and provides for a long marathon chart. Will your endurance hold up for the whole song?

Random: Super-Blind Play

You've probably seen a Taiko blindfold play before, where a player puts on a blindfold and attempts to play Taiko using only the music as cues. A test of memorization. But this particular blind play will blow your mind.

In here, the player isn't wearing any blindfold; the SCREEN OF THE ARCADE CABINET IS BROKEN. Everything else, including Banapass network services, work as intended, and the players in the video work out menu navigation through the speaker at the center (hence why the player is seen to be leaning to the center most of the time). Thank god for Don-chan's helpful vocal cues!

Three songs were played. Kita Saitama 2000, Hurtling Boys and Music Revolver (Ura). The last song was an FC. Super skills!

Thanks to Jia Yi from Taiko no Tatsujin Malaysia for the find!

The Almost Transient Mysteries: Rumors of the God of War

**Note: Rumors abound**

Nope, we are not getting Kratos. We are talking about the rumor that a title "God of War" (戦神, Ikusagami) might exist in Taiko no Tatsujin Kimidori, possibly added just last update. It was not clear how to exactly obtain it as of now though.

The question was also brought to the Taiko Team Twitter last year-end, and Etou was reluctant to answer to just one person instead of officially releasing the info to the public openly.

@metalhawk1997 こんばんは！特定の一人向けに回答してしまうと、噂として改変されたり・・・など恐れがあるので申し訳ございませんが、回答控えさせていただきます＞＜ あまり発見されないようであれば、別途検討していきますね＞＜！
— 太鼓チーム (@taiko_team) December 22, 2014

Currently wikihouse's list of titles puts a placeholder for this under "Sharera Master" (シャレラの達人) and before "He who Hunted the Double Dragon" (双竜を討ちし者, FC Souryuu no Ran Oni). This is recalling of the fact that "God of War" was a runner-up nomination in the livestream vote that "Sharera Master" emerged, for Full Combo-ing Xa Ura Oni.

Yuugen no Ran -Album New Mix-

The players have voted, and thus Yuugen no Ran was included in Tatsh Music Circle's latest album, FRONTIER! We've known this since mid-December, but what does the Album New Mix sound like?

...Pretty much the same as the in-game Yuugen no Ran, except with the addition of faint Taiko no Tatsujin don and kat SFX in the background, corresponding to Yuugen's sadistic Oni chart. You can almost hear the screams of players as they try to keep up with the impossible 300 BPM streams!

At least it's of a really high quality; Yuugen has never been released on any soundtrack prior to this. Enjoy!

Song of the Week! 3 January 2015

A new year is upon us, and with that is the perspective of many song additions for both arcade and console games. For the latter, we are getting a peculiar DLC pack for Taiko 3DS 2 near the end of this month, featuring all songs that are somewhat related to Matsuri (祭),the Japanese word for 'festival'.

While the theme chosen is fine, the songs in the pack may sound quite stagnant to some people, as you can find all of them (with a few exceptions of course) in at least 3 or 4 Taiko console games in the past 5 years! Why don't choose something Matsuri-related that doesn't come around very often? Something like...

Feature: 2014 - The year in hindsight

A new year is upon us! A time to look forward to future events, and recollect our memories of the past 12 months.

And what an awesome 12 months it was; so much happened for our beloved Taiko no Tatsujin, it rivals even the cherished 10th Anniversary events! So many new releases, events and collaborations have occurred on both arcade and console that it's hard to keep track of them all! Let's look at 2014 month by month, shall we?