Taiko drums have had a long history in Japanese culture as they are used in festivals, parades, and even during times of war.  You’ve probably seen a Taiko drum before and not even known it.  They look like a big barrel tipped on its side.  Lately, Taiko drums have appeared in a series of popular music/rhythm video games from Namco.  First in the arcade, Taiko no Tatsujin (Taiko Drum Master) has since been on home consoles, with the latest one being a sequel on the Nintendo DS.  That’s the name of it up there in the title, but since it’s such a mouthful, from here on out we’re just going to call it Taiko DS 2.

 

The Taiko drum games are insanely popular in Japan, but haven’t had as much success over here in the US.  Nintendo tried to ‘Americanize’ the Taiko games with Donkey Konga on the GameCube with the bongo drum controllers, but that didn’t work out as well (even though Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat is one of the most creative 2-D platformers I’ve played in some time).  Namco also tried to localize the Taiko games for the US PS2 with Taiko Drum Master with the Taiko drum controllers, but that was a flop, too.  It’s a shame because that was even better than Donkey Konga.  So most of the Taiko games remain in Japan.  I like the Taiko games a lot, so I try and import them whenever I can.  I think it would be fun to try and play a REAL Taiko drum, or at least play the arcade version of the game.  But since that probably won’t ever happen where I live in good ol’ Dallas, TX, I’ll have to settle for importing the Taiko games.  A couple of weeks ago, the sequel to the first Taiko game on the DS came out, so I imported it.  Here’s an overview:

 

The gameplay in all Taiko games, including the DS sequel, remains the same.  Think of it like the drum game in Rock Band, except less complicated and more cutesey (and more fun, if you ask me).  All you need to know is when a red circle scrolls by, hit the middle of the drum as it crosses the marker.  And when a blue circle comes by, hit the drum on the side of the rim.  Aside from a few variations, that’s all you need to know.  Since you can’t use a drum on the DS, you just tap the touch screen with the stylus.  There’s a picture of the drum on the bottom screen and you can tap in the middle or on the side and it’ll register as a hit.  Just don’t tap too hard! 

 

Just like the first Taiko DS game, the sequel comes with two styluseses so you can alternate drumming with one in each hand like a ‘real’ drum.  You can also use the buttons, but that’s not near as fun.  Most of the songs are easy enough that you can use one stylus if you’re quick enough, though.  You can also buy a special stand to put your DS on while you have your hands full with both styluseses, but I didn’t import that because I didn’t know if it would work on my old DS Phat.  No, I don’t have a DS Lite yet, my old one works just fine so I don’t need a new one.

 

Taiko DS 2 also comes with stickers and a full color instruction booklet.  That’s one cool thing about Japanese video games is that sometimes they come with extra stuff like that.  Most US game instruction booklets are in black and white, have very small or hard to read text (uses less pages), or they’re very poorly written.  Even the best games in the US succumb to one or more of these faults.  For instance, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, one of my favorite games this year so far, has a very poorly written instruction book.  Well I’ll get off my soapbox now and talk about the features of Taiko DS 2.

 

Just like in all the other games, you can pick from a list of songs to play on Easy, Normal, Hard, or Oni mode (Oni is like an evil devil in Japan, so that means this mode is super hard).  You can also go to your house and do various things in the game.  During the course of play you can unlock outfits and accessories for your drum character (player one is Don and player two is Katsu).  You can choose to paint your drum any color you want and dress it up with outfits you unlock. 

 

You can also pick various sounds for your Taiko drum if you tire of the tradtional drumming sound as you play.  Most are different percussion sounds, but others are more creative.  And for the first time, they also show a picture of whatever you’re tapping, so there’s bubble wrap on the bottom screen for popping sounds. And for the farting noises, yes, there is a butt you tap on the bottom screen.  No Namco arcade sounds like in past Taiko games (some had Pac-Man and Druaga sounds).

 

In your house you can also check your e-mail (characters from the game will e-mail you from time to time and sometimes attach unlockable gifts like new songs, outfits, or drum sounds).  The Daily Dojo also returns from the first game where you try and pass a song each day to improve your rank.  Ever since Brain Age, it seems every DS game has to have some kind of daily excerise mode.  You can view cutscenes and tutorials in your house, too.  You can also play wireless with up to four other drummers but I don’t know how that works exactly because of the language barrier.  No matter, as I don’t know anyone with another copy of Taiko DS 2 anyway.

 

Story Mode

For the first time in a Taiko game, there’s a Story Mode that you can guide your drum through.  At first I was afraid to try Story Mode because of the language barrier.  But you shouldn’t be afraid of it, just jump right in!  The Story Mode is where most of the unlockables are anyway. 

 

In Story Mode you go around different island maps, kind of like the overworld maps in Super Mario Bros. 3.  At each stop you meet up with a Taiko character and play a song.  Each song has a seperate challenge you must complete, too, like never going below a certain percentage, getting a certain score, or getting a high enough combo, etc.  In some of the challenges, you have to compete with four other computer drums.  This is nice because it let me see what the four player mode is like since I don’t know anyone else around who owns Taiko DS 2. 

 

Even with the language barrier, the only part of Story Mode that really stumped me at first was that there were some places that wouldn’t let me do a song until after I dressed up the drum as something beforehand.  After you know this, it’s pretty easy to figure out what to dress as because it’s usually an outfit that you just unlocked.  For instance, in the water world, you have to dress up as a fish at one point.

 

At the end of each island you have to fight a boss.  Just play the song as normal, but don’t tap the bombs.  Each time you miss a beat or tap a bomb, you lose some energy, and each time you make a hit, the boss loses some energy.  Whoever has more energy at the end of the song, wins.  The bosses will try to distract you from time to time with objects that block your view of the scrolling circles.  Just don’t get distracted and concentrate and keep playing. 

 

The villians in Story Mode are a geisha woman with purple hair and her kabuki ninja cat.  I’m not exactly sure what makes them evil, but they do have a hulking robot mech that looks like a trap drum set, and it can poop out vampire Taiko drums, and that’s NEVER good.  I don’t care who you are.

 

Song List

In every music game, the most important question is ‘What songs are on it?’  So here’s most of the songs on Taiko DS 2:

 

Classical

Most of the classical songs you’ll know by name, but other ones it’s easier to know them by where you hear them from and what they sound like.  So if some of the names of these songs don’t sound familiar to you, you’ll probably know ’em once you hear ’em.

There’s Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which is the song they play in the city scene of Fantasia 2000.  Carmen is also in the US Taiko game, and La Campanella was also in the intro tutorial level of Beautiful Katamari.  There’s the Nutcracker march and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (you know, the ‘dum-dum-dum duuummmm’ song also on US Taiko).  The Entertainer is also in the movie The Sting and is also played on the ice cream truck that runs by my house.  There’s a Beethoven rock medley and March of the Wooden Soldiers, which they always play when the Rockettes dress up as toy soldiers and fall down like dominoes after the cannon goes off.  Every…single…time.  Stupid Rockettes.  And finally, there’s the New World Symphony and some Japanese girl singing words to some classical song that I don’t know.

 

Traditional

These are two familiar songs, probably more so to Americans as one is an instrumental version of Yankee Doodle.  The other one is the ABC song, and no I don’t mean the Michael Jackson song.  Instead it’s the “now I know my ABC’s” song.  Not since Donkey Konga’s “Itsy Bitsy Spider” have I felt more embarrassed playing a music game.  Definitely one to use headphones on.  I wonder if Japanese kids have songs they sing to help them learn language skills.

 

Video Game Songs

Always a favorite of mine, as most Namco game songs are fun to drum to.  There are two songs from the IDOLM@STER series of games.  It’s very popular in Japan but I doubt they’ll ever come over here.  And probably for good reason.  It’s a game where you’re a talent agent and you must manage a group of anime styled teen pop idol girls.  But of course, since I’m a Namco fan and elements of IDOLM@STER have been appearing in my Ace Combat and Katamari games, I can’t help but be a little curious about the gameplay.  What do you DO in IDOLM@STER?  Most Web sites just talk about the girls in the game, and I don’t care about that (except for the ones with blue hair, ha ha, just kidding).  Is the game a music game?  Or some kind of simulation?  Or is it one of those dreaded (gulp) dating games?  We may never know.

 

Back on topic, there’s also a new song from Mojipittan, a popular Japanese word puzzle game that’ll also never come out over here, though I hear it’s a lot like Scrabble.  One song I don’t recognize, but the wikipedia list says it’s from “Mizuro Blood” which I don’t know either.  In the last Taiko DS game, you could play a Namco Famicom medley and the theme from NES Super Mario Bros.  In the sequel, you can play a medley from another NES game, this time from…Spelunker?  Of all the games to pick, why did they choose that one?  Spelunker was a Donkey Kong like platformer game except it sucked and a drop of two pixels would kill you.  Finally there are three game songs that were also on the US Taiko game: Ridge Racer, Soul Calibur 2, and Dragon Spirit.

 

Namco Originals

These are a series of songs made specifically for the game.  Some are specific to the story mode, like the boss themes, while others are traditional Japanese sounding songs that go good with a Taiko drum beat.

 

Anime Songs

There are quite a lot of anime songs in Taiko DS 2.  And some songs even have the anime characters dancing on the bottom half of the screen instead of the regular Taiko characters.  I wonder if since Namco is now merged with Bandai, it was easier for them to get the rights for some of the anime songs and likenesses since Bandai has ties with anime, too.

 

Before I start this list, I want to let everyone know that I’m not much of an anime fan and I don’t know much about popular anime.  But it’ll seem like I know more than what I really do, because I actually did a little research on the anime songs in this game because I wanted to sound like I know what I’m talking about for once.  After next week, I’ll probably forget everything I looked up to write this.

 

I do like some anime, but I’m very selective in my tastes.  I like some kiddy anime like Astro Boy and Dragon Ball (not Z, the original), and I like all of Miyazaki’s stuff.  And there’s some others that I like, but I can’t remember the names to.  I wish my friends were here right now to help me remember. 

 

But even though there’s a lot of anime I don’t like, there are a couple of elements found in most anime that I do like.  One is the ways they use storytelling elements to move the plots along.  For instance, most anime won’t make an episode just to introduce a new character, they’ll let the writing in the ongoing story do it for them.  The other thing I like about most anime is a little more shallow.  But it just cracks me up when an anime character has blue or pink or purple hair.  i guess I’m just easily amused.  I’d probably look like a Lemming if I had green hair!

 

Man I’m going off topic.  Here’s the anime songs on Taiko DS 2.  One song is from Anpanman, an anime for young children about a superhero with a head made out of a pastry.  You can see the intro on YouTube, it’s pretty weird.  But if you think about it, we have some weird stuff here in the US, too.  I mean, remember the old school McDonaldland characters?  On Taiko DS 2, this is a different Anpanman song that the one on the first game, so I’m thinking it’s from an Anpanman movie or something.  I know it’s from Anpanman, though, because the first thing the lady singing belts out with is AN-PAN-MAAAAAANNNN!!! 

 

There’s also a new Doraemon song, too.  Probably also from a new movie since the TV show theme was on the last Taiko DS game.  Doraemon is also a super popular kids show in Japan about a blue robot cat from the future who helps out a Japanese grade school boy from the present, and they both get into a lot of trouble.  I’ve seen some Doraemon cartoons on YouTube and I can see why they’re popular in Japan.  Despite the awful English subs, you can tell the Doraemon cartoon had heart.  I can tell this is a Doraemon song on Taiko DS 2 because there’s Doraemon characters dancing on the screen and the lady sings Doraemon at one point.  Anpanman and Doraemon are such popular characters that you’ve probably seen them and not even known it.

 

There’s also a song called Oshiri Kajiri Mushi, which means bottom biting bugs.  Just do a search on YouTube if you want to see it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.  It’s supposed to be either an anime or song about a bug who bites people in the butt to help them be less shy and more social to others.  Another one is called Engine Sentai Go-onger.  Sentai shows in Japan end up coming to the US as Power Rangers, and this song has them dancing on the bottom screen with a race car backdrop.

 

Another song is from Pretty Cure, which is another one of those magical girl shows (think Sailor Moon).  Another anime song with dancing characters on the bottom is from GeGeGe no Kitaro, which is an anime about Japanese legends about ghosts.  The characters look kind of like the ones in that old Namco game Yokai Douchuuki, which makes sense, since it’s all the same kind of stuff.  I couldn’t find much info about the next song, but the characters on the bottom look like Hello Kitty except they’re bats, and the song was both erie and cute at the same time.  Wikipedia said the song was from Fukou Mon, but I couldn’t find much info on that name.

 

Another song I didn’t find much info on was “Genesis of Aquarion.”  But the next song I did know, as it’s the main theme from Neon Genesis Evangelion.  I don’t know much about anime, but even I know what the Evangelion song sounds like.  And speaking about anime with giant robots with plots too depressing and complicated for their own good, another anime song on here is supposedly from Gundam.  The song has the English title “Daybreakers Bell” if that means anything to anyone.  And finally, there’s the Japanese theme song to Dragon Ball Z.

 

J-Pop

Unlike the anime section, I didn’t do to much research on the J-Pop songs as I find them annoying.  But I find most American pop songs annoying, too, so it’s not like I’m singling anyone out or anything.  But like some of the dorky songs in Elite Beat Agents, I wouldn’t have them on a playlist, but they are kind of amusing to drum to.  I’m only going to list the J-Pop songs with English titles, you’re on your own for the other ones.

 

There’s a song called “Peach” (too bad it’s not Momo, I like that word for peach, it’s fun to say).  And others called Lifetime Respect and Love So Sweet.  Finally is a song that I think is called “Linda” or Linda Linda, or Linda Linda Linda, or Linda x17 as that’s all they sing over and over in the main chorus.

 

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about Taiko DS 2.

 

Cary’s Newbie Tips for Importing Games

By now some of you may be wondering how I import games like Taiko DS 2, so I’m going to conclude with a small list of tips for importing that work for me.  There are other tips and advice than what I can give, but these are what has worked for me, personally.

 

1. Importing games is only recommended if you’re more of a hardcore gamer.  There are plenty of very good games that come to the US if you’re only a causal gamer that you don’t really need to bother with importing.  Me, personally, I hate being labeled a hardcore gamer, but if the shoe fits…

 

2. Stick with Region Free consoles when importing games.  Region Free means a game from any country will work on your system.  All the handhelds are region free, so I only import games for the GBA, DS, and PSP.   You can import games for the Wii, PS2, PS3, and 360, but you have to modify your consoles to get the import games to work.  And that can void your warranty and takes time, money, and elbow grease, all of which I don’t have enough of.

 

3. Make sure it’s a game that you REALLY want, because import prices are expensive.  Since I really like Taiko games, Stafy, and Klonoa games, I make sure to import those.  There are lots of other Japanese games that I’d like to try, but I’m not willing to pay that much money for.  For instance, I like Namco’s Family Stadium baseball games, but I’m not going to pay 50 bucks for the new DS Famista game.  Same goes for Game Center, a game about a Japanese TV show where a guy plays a bunch of hard classic games.  Not worth 50 bucks for me.  Plus I usually pay more for good shipping, too, because I’m afraid my stuff might get lost in the mail (happened to me once).

 

4. Pick simple games to import so the language barrier won’t hamper your enjoyment.  Music games like Taiko are good, or simple kiddy platformers like Stafy.  Or familiar arcade games like shooters such as the PSP Parodius collection (also a highly recommended import).  I see a lot of people wanting to import text heavy RPGs, which I never understand because in order to play those, you have to stumble around or follow a FAQ while playing.  And that doesn’t sound that much fun to me.

 

5. I recommend importing from a trustworthy Web site.  I usually import from Play Asia (www.play-asia.com) or National Console Support (www.ncsx.com).  Some places have import stores you can buy from, but I don’t know of any where I live.  Fry’s used to carry some import games, but the ones near where I live stopped doing that recently, which is a shame.  Finally, the Wii’s virtual console might be a good way to get import games in the future, as previously Japan only games like Sin and Punishment and DoReMi Milon’s Fantasy Adventure are now available in the US.  I highly recommend the Milon game, as it’s a fun and colorful 16-bit 2-D platformer and a sequel to one of my favorite NES games: Milon’s Secret Castle.

 

And that’s all I have to say about that.  If you have any holes to fill about anime or insights on the Taiko game I may have missed, or want to share some of your own importing tips, feel free to in the comments section.

Tags: Game Reviews