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        フラチナハート / ナスカ
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Furachi na Heart / Nazca
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If you've played Pop'n, you may recognise Nazca for the songs "Neo Folk Rock" (Second Stage) and "Neo Folk Rock 2" (Hikari) in the PS2 versions of Pop'n 10 and 11. At the time the band appears to have been signed onto Konami's label, under which they released two singles which I bought because Nazca is awesome. This song is the B-side from their second single, "Beethoven". Or is it C-side? I'm not sure.

At the time, Nazca consisted of Daishi Satoh (vocals, guitar), Mariko Yamauchi (keyboard, chorus), Makoto Akatsuka (bass, chorus) and Satoru Takahashi (guitar). No drummer of their own, but their music is quite good regardless, I think. It seems that since their Konami days, Makoto Akatsuka left and the remaining trio is now signed onto the Universal Music label. They have a site here, although there's not much to see yet:

http://www.universal-music.co.jp/nazca/

I haven't gotten around to picking up their new single yet but maybe one of these days. Kinda hoping that they'll eventually get around to releasing an actual album, you know?

This is by far the fastest song they've done yet (although it otherwise sounds pretty similar to their other works) and it also felt to me like the most steppable one. Before I began, I had a specific idea of how the steps should end up which I ended up ignoring entirely :) With one of my accompanying preview files filling the "streamy 170ish BPM 8" role well enough by itself I thought I could try something a bit more interesting with this.

Heavy is a 7 and pretty much an exercise in me doing things I don't normally do. I try to vary the actual step devices used (jumps, freezes, 8th gallops, etc) to avoid it getting too repetitive. In the end, I like how this turned out.

Standard is a hard 4 but it has a lot of stepping on the same arrow and most of it just feels like a light chart with offbeats. It's alright. A bit boring maybe, but probably welcome if you're at this level. Uses jumps better than heavy does, probably because it actually has more than a couple. Actually thinking back these steps are pretty weird in places.

Light is a 1 (sup sanchny) and it's not very good because half the freaking song is on offbeats and without following those there are parts where you really can't follow anything. But if you're at the point where you're still interested in playing 1s then you probably don't care. Well, whatever.

The graphics use this image:
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/703202
Nothing to do with the song whatsoever but I was a little short on inspiration for how to represent a song called Insolent Heart as a background. Just relax and enjoy the pretty photo without thinking about the lyrics instead :) Actually I have no idea what the lyrics even are, really. These graphics are some of the most generic I've ever made ("wow you mean you SWITCHED THE COLOURS FOR THE ARTIST TEXT?!?! amazing") but they serve their purpose I guess. Again, whatever. Just go play heavy already I think the steps for that are pretty cool.

...You can tell it's 3 in the morning as I write this, can't you?

--Xythar
Email/MSN - gmmazz@hotmail.com   AIM - Xythar2
