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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Namco Taiko Blog (12 July 2012) - We missed stuff (...again)

 

On the release day for Taiko 3DS (which also happened to be a Thursday), a blog entry from the Taiko Team was published with the Taiko staff talking about the new game. We missed the posting last week because of all the excitement surrounding the various unlockable songs and new charts in the game. Now that the dust has settled, let's see this late post.

[Gameplay and Charts]
 
For Kuboken (くぼけん), the guy who arranges the note patterns for most songs, Taiko 3DS is business as usual as he, Etou and 5 others join together to form the '7 Chart Rangers' once again for the new game. He hopes players find the charts fun, especially the hard ones!

Huh? You can't clear -that- 10* Oni chart? If you're going to blame anyone, the culprit is Etou! Take a deep breath and keep working on it!

[Visual Design]

Taiko 3DS's visual team put more focus on the renewal of the in-game characters, most notably Don-chan, who gets a bouncy new sprite, a large upgrade from the DS Taiko games. Also, watch out for their other creations; everyone in the story mode of Don-chan and Raruko. A special surprise at the ending too....you'll have to see it for yourself!

[Sound]

One of the hardest aspects of making a rhythm game for portable consoles is to keep the song's quality as good as their arcade and home console counterparts. This version was particularly taxing on the sound team because it's a completely new console. Everyone was breathing heavily and panting to finish the game (man, all the Suuhaa 2000 references in this post). Obviously, Taiko 3DS has a much higher audio quality than any of the DS Taiko games in the final product, and everyone in the team is proud of it!

[Programming]

Namco's programming team is happy and proud to envelope 3DS's technical capabilities with their game, especially for the 3D gyroscopic effects during the boss battles, by making them more immersive than in the past. Also the return of the 4 player mode; up to four 3DSes can be connected for wireless play with just one Taiko 3DS cartridge.

[General]
At the end, Taiko 3Ds's director Kijima (キジマ) pops up for a brief talk about Taiko 3DS's main features: Story mode, the Achievement system and the songlist itself.
Next week's blog post (=this week's) will be about the incoming Taiko no Tatsujin massive arcade upgrade.

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