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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - youhei - KOUYOU

Welcome to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, we watch the leaves fall.

youhei is Youhei Shimizu. He has worked for the BEMANI series since pop’n music 1. Along with making Quick Master, he was credited as the sound tool programmer for the early pop’n and IIDX games. Eventually, he went to the 5key beatmania series, where he would make a few songs. KOUYOU was the first, made for beatmania CORE REMIX.

Kouyou is a slow-paced song, using guitar, flute, and piano. Kouyou is Japanese for “fall foliage”, and the music video in the original beatmania shows this. While exclusive to the final stage in the original game, it’s a very easy song, with a very soothing feel.

youhei left Konami in 2001, and went to Polyphony Digital, where he would do sound tool programming for Gran Turismo. Despite this, Konami doesn’t seem to mind working with his songs, as seen with this and mnemoniq. The song would cross over into pop’n music 12 Iroha. An extended version of the song was just recently put in Nostalgia FORTE.

On the most recent Bemani livestream, the song’s jacket was shown with the artist’s name removed. It still shows the artist in-game, but they felt the need to get rid of every artist on the jackets on the livestream. Even FLOWER’s jacket had to have “DJ YOSHITAKA” airbrushed out. This wasn’t done before, and it rose a few eyebrows. Is there trouble between the composers and Konami HQ? Is the Space Pope Reptilian?

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - Delaware feat. Jeff Coote - Turning the motor over

Welcome to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, we can smell the gasoline.

Delaware is an alias of good-cool, which was only used for the songs he made for beatmania Complete Mix 2. The genre is Latin Ska, and it sounds a bit like Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Loca.

This song is still playable in the latest versions of pop’n music, and it made an appearance, among other 5key songs, in the home release of beatmania IIDX 14 GOLD. Unfortunately, it had essentially the same chart it had in 5key in both games, most likely due to missing master tracks.

A year after GOLD CS, a long slightly-rearranged version, heard in the video above, was made for good-cool’s “good-cool crazy operation” album. This long version also appears to have a different vocalist, the identity of which is unknown.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - 亜熱帯マジ-SKA爆弾 feat.MAKI - HOTな夜の㊙ドリンク

This week, I’m feeling a bit under the weather, though I feel a bit better as I edit this, so here’s a song with a character with an IV.

This song is under Hideyuki Ono’s Anettai Maji-SKA Bakudan alias, first used with Cassandra in GuitarFreaks 5thMIX & drummania 4thMIX. A lot of that alias’s songs were sung by MAKI, a singer who was a frequent contributor to both pop’n and GF/DM, especially with the aforementioned alias.

This song’s genre in pop’n is MAMBO-KAYO, joining a few other songs in pop’n with Kayo in the genre name. This would be the last song in the Kayo series done by Anettai Maji-SKA Bakudan, though MAKI would return for a Kayo-styled remix of Pop music ron self-remixed by Jun Wakita.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week may be late this week.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - カタオカツグミ (Kataokatsugumi) - 24時間のヒーロー (24 Jikan No Hero)

Welcome to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, enter your character’s name.

According to Tsugumi Kataoka, this song was made for the character, usually the other way around for pop’n songs. His name is Yushaaaaa. Yusha means hero, and AAAA is a name a hero would get if the player just mashed the A button at the “name your character” screen. Therefore, Yushaaaaa. As the genre name suggests, Yushaaaaa an RPG hero that happens to be a convenience store worker, burning what appears to be slimes with his fire magic and serving it to customers.

The song has a long version on TSUG and the PICKLES' 宇宙コンビニエンス (Uchuu Convenience) album. There’s also a “TV Size version” made for a Butapunch EP, which is the length of an anime theme song. There’s no anime, of course, but we can imagine people pronouncing Yushaaaaa’s name.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - DKC Crew - Taj He Spitz

Got caught up with other things this week, so here’s a short look at a song from DDR X.

This song features and stars Northern California rapper Taj He Spitz. It also features Binghi Ghost, who sings the intro and an additional verse, and Kirin Ahstar, who did the drums. It was arranged by Drew K. Campbell, who did many songs in DDR under the DKC Crew name. A remix of the song, Taj He Spitz (Tommie Sunshine's Brooklyn Fire Re-Touch), also appears in DDR X.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - 3rd Coast - Bye Bye Love

I actually just got DJMAX Respect, so I have to do a DJMAX song this week.

3rd Coast is a Korean K-Pop/R&B/House band, consisting of three members: Kwon Sung Min, female vocalist So fly, and rapper JC. JC also acts as DJMAX’s announcer; this song’s rapper is the same guy who tells you that you need more practice, and never give it up. 3rd Coast did a lot of songs for DJMAX, making music for the series since the beginning. This song in particular has the genre “Latin House”, and focuses on light guitar.

Bye Bye Love’s long version, heard in the video, is on the DJMAX Portable 2 soundtrack. It would get a Nu Jazz Mix in DJMAX Trilogy.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - JJ COMPANY - celebrate

A last minute Rhythm Game Song of the Week. Fittingly for me this week, a song you can unlock by failing!

This song made its first appearance in the first beatmania IIDX, and is one of two songs by JJ COMPANY, the other being be in your paradise. Outside of being called “where 2” in the soundtrack’s booklet, JJ COMPANY’s identity has never been confirmed. It has been theorized that it’s Larry Dunn of Earth, Wind & Fire. Larry Dunn did two songs for beatmania 4th Mix: Take Control and Take A Ride, and 4th Mix was released only a few months after IIDX. This isn’t the only reason.

If this song sounds really familiar, it’s because it shares similarities with Earth Wind & Fire’s Boogie Wonderland. In fact, be in your paradise sounds a lot like After The Love Has Gone, also by Earth Wind & Fire. This is a trait shared with the aforementioned two beatmania songs as well, Take Control taking inspiration from Shining Star and Take A Ride taking inspiration from Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) by US3, which is another clue that it could be Larry Dunn. At least, the former.

Neither JJ Company song lasted long in IIDX, each of them appearing in the first two and a half IIDX styles and one more style. Being in substream, it was featured in DDR Club Version, and would be revived in DDR Extreme to last two more games before being removed. In DDRMAX US, it can be unlocked by failing a song, the information even saying one should “celebrate” their failure with it.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - Crash - Dignity

(Seizure warning for the video.)

Welcome, everyone, to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. I’m cheating a little by doing a license this week, but this segment was getting a little too Bemani-centric.

Crash is a South Korean metal band that formed in 1989. This song originated in Crash’s 2003 album The Massive Crush. This song would be licensed for Pump It Up Exceed.

The song certainly became notable in Pump It Up due to its high difficulty. This is especially true for its Crazy chart, which is now known as the Single 20, seen above. Running at 195 BPM, the song has relentless 8th runs with lots of very small bursts that go with the guitar, quite a few triples, and, during the solo, there’s a really fast M run. It was considered the pinnacle of difficulty at the time.

There’s also the video. Right away, we have a screaming man as the title card. Floating eyeballs, flying sheep, and some uncanny valley smiles that turn into skulls. While I don’t understand Korean, it seems to fit the song well.

Crash also did a cover of Shin Hae Chul’s What Do You Really Want, which also appeared in Pump It Up Exceed. Years later, Fiesta EX would feature Crashday, a song from their 2010 album. Sadly, Dignity is no longer playable in the latest versions of Pump, being removed in Pump It Up Prime.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - nora2r - B.B.K.K.B.K.K.

nora2r is a Japanese UK Hardcore artist, “UK Hardcore” being the genre, known for his work in the BMS community. BMS is short for Be-Music Source, and refer to files that can be played in “simulators” such as Lunatic Rave 2 and beatoraja. This song in particular was made for BMS of Fighters 2013, and was the highest rated song of that contest.

This song would make an official appearance in three different commercial rhythm games: Konami’s Sound Voltex III Gravity Wars, Sega’s maimai ORANGE, and Sega’s CHUNITHM, seen above. The chart shown here is the “World’s End” chart; the rest of the charts in that game aren’t nearly as gimmicky.

The long version of B.B.K.K.B.K.K. appears on a compilation named YATSUZAKI HARDCORE VOLUME 4. There’s also two different remixes that appear on the 3rd and 4th nora2r albums, remixed by hurce and Alex Prospect, respectively. nora2r’s fourth album would also have a sequel to this song, called ULTRA B+K, which also made an appearance on the Japanese versions of jubeat plus and Reflec Beat plus.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - 8bit Moonside - Cosmic Cat

Welcome, everyone, to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, a short look at a neat song from IIDX. This song made its first appearance in beatmania IIDX PENDUAL as a part of its Qpronicle Chord unlocking system. Its genre is Future Bass, a genre featuring strong basslines with detuned synthesizers.

There doesn’t seem to be any cosmic cats in the video. Instead, it’s a corrupted version of Sumomo, a character first shown in 8bit Princess, a seiya-murai feat. ALT song. This did cause some confusion on whether or not Seiya Murai wrote this song, but it’s actually by Dirty Androids. One of his songs made outside of Bemani, Dolphin Surfing, bears a strong resemblance to this song.

Cosmic Cat has a long version, featured on the beatmania IIDX 22 PENDUAL Original Soundtrack Vol.2 album. Just recently, it got a Level 12 †LEGGENDARIA chart, unlockable by playing the DA course in Sinobuz.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - tiger YAMATO - R3

Welcome, everybody, to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, a song that got a lot of plays back in the DDR Extreme days.

R3 was composed by tiger YAMATO, an alias of Reo Nagumo, one of the three musicians who worked on the original beatmania. R3 would make its debut in the very first beatmania IIDX. R3 would begin a series of songs under Reo Nagumo’s RAVE series, each of them having the genre RAVE and usually having a name of a letter and a number. Along with R3, there was R5, R壱萬 (aka R10k), Y31, 2002, V35, and R2.

It also crossed over to DDR thanks to DDR Club Version. This allowed DDR 2nd Mix and beatmania IIDX substream to link together. The DJ would select and play the songs, and the dancers would dance to them, each sharing one lifebar. It’s actually pretty interesting to see in action, though it never caught on. Thankfully, they did make two home versions with all but one of the songs, and some of the songs would make it into DDR Extreme, including this one.

In the comments for his last song in IIDX, tiger yamato, he said he was going to retire because someone left him a sushi restaurant in America. In actuality, he left Konami to form his own company, Yudo Ltd., which made a few rhythm games for iOS. He would also make songs for a now defunct Flash game named ぱんぱんミュージック  (Pan Pan Music), one of which actually followed the letter-number theme of the RAVE series: R30. He would later put it in Aero Synth and retitle it OBAMA. Really.

Unfortunately, songs by ex-Kons tend to be pretty expendable in Bemani, and, as seen with 20, November’s removal, even notable people like Reo Nagumo are no exception. R3 got lucky, as it’s still playable in the latest version of IIDX alongside R5. In fact, R3 is playable in every arcade version of IIDX alongside Gradiusic Cyber and 5.1.1. However, it couldn’t stay in DDR, being removed in DDR X.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - ウッチーズ - Don't let it go

Going to take a slight break, but here’s a cool song in the meantime.

ウッチーズ, or Ucchies, is the combination of brothers Tomoyuki and Hiroyuki Uchida. The former is known in Bemani as Mr.T, not to be confused with the actor and non-jibberjabber-taker. They also have an alias they’ve used outside of Bemani, Dream Line Out. This song is actually a remix of a song done under that alias; the original can be found on their album “gentle melodies”.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - RE-VENGE - AFRONOVA

Welcome everyone, to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, feel the vibe!

Afronova’s Maniac/Expert chart was considered a very difficult chart back in the day. It had the fastest BPM of any song at the time, and has some difficult patterns throughout. One of the most famous is a sideways crossover pattern near the beginning, first seen in SP-Trip Machine ~Jungle Mix~, but made popular with Afronova. It’s one of the most recognizable patterns in DDR, to the point where G4 had an ad that featured two DDR players stepping to this chart with no music, and people could tell what song it was.

In its original appearance in DDR 3rd Mix and its Japanese home version, it had a different background. The leopard skinned people in the background are actually a modified photo of actress Reese Witherspoon. Someone eventually noticed that this could lead to trouble early on, and from 3rd Mix Plus to today, we have different people doing a not-too-similar pose.

This song has two different remixes. In DanceManiaX, Naoki remixed the song as AFRONOVA PRIMEVAL, which not only appeared in DDR 5th Mix, but also appeared in both beatmania 7th Mix and pop’n music 9. The second was AFRONOVA (FROM NONSTOP MEGAMIX) by Japanese remix group and frequent Dancemania contributor B4 Za Beat, which, as the title suggests, was made for the DDR 3rd Mix soundtrack’s nonstop megamix. It was one of the Challenge-only songs in DDRMAX2.

Naoki’s RE-VENGE alias would continue on, focusing on world-based music. Even after Naoki left Konami, it would appear in Cross X Beats, with KOTOBUKI and İstanbul.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - Des-ROW feat.SHIGE - Funky sonic World

Welcome to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, a short look at a very fast song about a funky world.

This song was composed by frequent GF/DM contributor Osamu Migitera and features SHIGE on vocals. Shigeki Morimoto was the vocalist of the Japanese pop punk band CHOKE SLEEPER. SHIGE would sing one more song for GF/DM, Endless cruising, and two of his band’s songs would be licensed for GF/DM as well.

Long before DDR made it a standard for boss songs, Funky sonic World runs at 400 BPM. Unlike those DDR songs, Funky sonic World’s BPM is constant. It is the third fastest song in the entire Bemani franchise that does not change tempo, only beaten by the Sound Voltex series’ KiLLeR MeRMaiD (440 BPM) and 侍Annihilate!! (500 BPM).

pop’n music 11 features a very different Christmas-inspired arrangement of the song, retitled MY GIFTS and credited to Des-ROW’s D-Crew alias. It has new English lyrics centering around gifts and love, and is represented in pop’n with a red-nosed man with a reindeer-horned Union Jack Santa hat. Funky sonic World itself appeared in Reflec Beat groovin’!! Upper as another BEMANI MUSIC FOCUS unlock, and appeared just recently in pop’n music うさぎと猫と少年の夢.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - 純白P - Akari

Welcome, everyone, to another Rhythm Game Song of the Week. This week, a little break from Bemani this week, as we take a short look at a another Vocaloid song that appeared in VOEZ.

ChunBaiP is a Chinese Vocaloid producer, who is a part of the sodatune circle of artists. The original version of the song is in Chinese, sung by Chinese Vocaloid Xin Hua. The version featured in VOEZ is a Japanese version, sung by Hatsune Miku.

The “P” in the artist name, once used as a title by Vocaloid producers, means Producer. The P also appears in all of the VOEZ charts as a series of white notes shaped like a P. One can see it in 0:44 in the video.

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Rhythm Game Song of the Week - EeL - 777

This week, as it’s 7/7/2017, it’s time to get lucky.

This song has lyrics and vocals by commissioned artist EeL. EeL had quite a few songs credited to her in Bemani from 2002 to 2004. All but one of them was composed by Tomosuke, the exception being Lucy from IIDX 10th Style. 777 was her debut, making its first appearance in pop’n music 8.

The lyrics can be a bit peculiar. It seems to reference The Little Mermaid, and from what it looks like, it takes more inspiration from the Hans Christen Anderson original.

I got love, I'm happy. I wanna be a little mermaid. And the last, sadly sadly I become a something else, so... I got love, so the end. I wanna be a bubble of sea. ta tara tata … It's OK!

Well, at least she’s OK.

The song was crossed over into GuitarFreaks and DrumMania in a different form, to fit more with the guitar and drum-based gameplay. It has more of a punk feel, lacking the “hardcore rave” ending of the original and adding more guitar courtesy of frequent contributor Mutsuhiko Izumi. This version was crossed over to DDR Universe 3 and the first REFLEC BEAT.

The original pop’n version was crossed over into a somewhat interesting version of DDR that was only released in Europe. It was based on Winx Club, and features songs from Winx Club and a bunch of pop’n crossovers! It certainly made it slightly more interesting for non-fans, though the charts left a lot to be desired.