Wii: Taiko No Tatsujin Preview

Taiko no Tatsujin is a popular franchise from Namco Bandai in Japan and marks it’s first installment on the Wii. The game, just released in Japan, comes with an interesting new Drum peripheral which plugs into the bottom of the Wii Remote and brings with it a load of new songs with familiar faces in the game. Though relatively unknown elsewhere, the Taiko series is popular in Japan with games on PS2, DS and PSP and made it’s debut in the US on the PS2 as Taiko Drum Master though it only released one game. The game has players tapping to a drum following notes which scroll across the screen seen in similar rhythm games such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. The game play though simplistic is varied by where you tap on the drum, as you tap on the drum surface for red notes and on the side for blue notes. Rhythm game fans looking to import the game without spending a large amount on the drum will be pleased to know that the game can be played without the peripheral and that it supports both Wii Remote and Classic Controller Configurations assigning the drum hits to buttons instead.

The game also supports up to 2 players for simultaneous play and with a large number of different options for multiplayer . You can play versus with a friend or battle it out with items or just play together on a song. Mii Support is also included with appearances in certain songs but that’s as far as it goes. From what we’ve played, the game has enough to satisfy fans of the series with an additional challenge mode but doesn’t come with the Drum customisations seen in the DS version nor the minigames on the PSP. There is also no information on any additional downloadable songs like the PSP version from what we’ve seen so far. As said, the game is currently out in Japan and fans of Rhythm based games should surely pick this one up.