Not a lot of news this week… I’m taking a small break from big stuff because my current two translation projects are really, really long!

Old NOSTALGIA news is old

On December 19th, the piano-based arcade game by KONAMI added another ARM (IOSYS) x Paprika original track: Koakuma no Etude Op.1 “Tarantella” (小悪魔のエチュードOp.1「タランテラ」). This track is unlockable through the Story mode in the game, more specifically the 3rd chapter. I completely missed this news mostly because the NOSTALGIA Twitter didn’t tweet about the specific songs (just “new songs will be added to the story!” and I didn’t pay attention to the jacket images), but also because I didn’t really expect another unreleased Paprika track to be added in the game, especially since we already got Barberia Tango back in November.

Yaaa Eurobeaaaat

On February 5, a new Touhou album was released through the MUSIC PLAYER feature of beatmania IIDX ULTIMATE MOBILE. It has newly made arrangements of every main Windows extra boss theme (from Flandre to Saki) including a new Pristine Beat arrangement by Eurobeat Union with Ranko on vocals.

The title is BEAT MAGIC, and you can listen to a preview here (timestamped Youtube vid). The album’s official website features comments from each involved artist, so here is a translation of Ranko and DJ Command’s ones!

Yooooo!!!
I’m DJ Command, leader of the Eurobeat production team Eurobeat Union!

This song is “Pristine Beat”, Raiko’s cool theme, so…
I collaborated with the cool Ranko to create this aggressive, massive and shimmying Eurobeat piece!
I couldn’t follow the MIDI notes with my eyes because of the fast BPM and super continuous synth riff part, which was so overwhelming.

When it comes to Eurobeat production, leave it to our team.
We’ll make sure you get the best quality Eurobeat music out there!

DJ Command (Eurobeat Union)

It’s a type of song that I don’t usually sing, and I sang it with many different visions in mind.
I hope you can feel the deep melody and energy of the original theme.

Ranko

The songs in this album will probably become playable in various BEMANIs in the future… (I don’t expect this one to be on Nostalgia or Gitadora tho)

beatmania IIDX ULTIMATE MOBILE is available for free on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, but accessing the MUSIC PLAYER requires a monthly subscription.

Aaaand that’s all for this week!