Always knew I would love this but importing the drum was intimidating.

Finally bit the bullet and ordered the thing, and have spent the last two weeks since absolutely obsessed with Taiko no Tatsujin; As of now, I have cleared every song on Hard, started working through the Extreme difficulty. I even made it into the top 500 players in the Hard difficulty online ranked league.

I missed having a good plastic instrument game, and this offers a great tactile percussion feel while taking up significantly less space than a Rock Band drumset or even a Guitar Hero controller.

This is a rabbit hole I see myself falling down for a good while. Already looking at sensitivity mods for the Hori drum kit.

Syncing the drum controller with the Nintendo Switch was one of the worst experiences I've had with a piece of hardware, but once the dust settled, Drum 'n' Fun was, well, a ton of fun!

There's an alright selection of songs, including some strong originals and several picks successfully mining that seemingly endless sense of nostalgia for after school cartoons, and the game's simple "red" and "blue" note structure made for a system that was easy to grasp and enjoyable to master.

The visual flare for this adaptation of Taiko no Tatsujin is colorful and fantastic, as it always seems to be. I'm not sure where this game would be without it, honestly; Taiko no Tatsujin is so conceptually straightforward, it'd be easy to otherwise produce a competent competitor. (Having the keys to the Bandai Namco soundtrack vault sure doesn't hurt, though.)

I don't know if the Switch adaptation needed to so aggressively plug Nintendo by sneaking Kirby and an Inkling into the avatar slot, and by adding a few soundtrack medleys, but I'm always happy to see some Splatoon representation, I suppose.

Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga, I know you can’t control yourself any longer. Feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger, don’t you fight it ‘til you tried it, do that conga beat! Yeah.

Taiko’s been a long-running series that used to be loved by /v/, so how it ended up in this category is a mystery to me, but regardless, the latest entry is probably the most-refined yet, with its casual appeal, but its batshit insane skill ceiling on the highest difficulty.

With the intended arcade playstyle as well, the Switch’s control scheme actually works the gimmick in its favor, a rarity amongst Nintendo’s systems. With a mixed track list of video game music, classic, and pop songs, the music we got after localizing certainly beats the shit we got back on the PS2. With any luck, this one will find some success, and inspire a few more obscure rhythm games to come stateside as well.

Easily one of my favorite game franchises.

Knocking off one star simply because I wish the Switch version had some of the Vita game features like practice mode and built-in quests. Would have been great if the Adventure pack (which I love, don’t get me wrong) had been incorporated as DLC rather than released as a separate game, because switching between all three titles is a pain. But that’s pretty minor, and was probably a licensing issue, so oh well. Still….. no practice mode…….. alas…..

But yeah, other than that, it’s pretty much straight unadulterated serotonin.

Addictive arcade rhythm game which, while simple on the surface, demands speed and precision once you move from easy/normal difficulties to hard/oni. The standalone package is solid at 74 songs available + a decent online mode + a bunch of rhythm heaven-style multiplayer minigames, but there's about $200 worth of DLC with all manner of songs, from anime music, to remixed classical pieces, to touhou music, to songs from the taiko series' past on offer, and many more (although be aware there's a number of songs only available in the Japanese version).

"ARITTAKENO YUME OOOOOO KAKIATSUMEEEEEE"
"BE THE ONE, BE THE ONE, ALRIGHT"
"ZAAAANKOKU NO TENSHI NO TEEKE"
"KIMI NO SENSENSENZE"

Sí, bueno, como que me lo pasé guay.