beatmania IIDX 21 SPADA (AC) (Japan)

Agreed. I'm still upset that this song never made its way onto IIDX.

Oh my god! Ever since Totto was introduced in Reflec Beat I was hoping for him to do songs in IIDX...looks like my wish was answered!

Glad to see TOTTO in IIDX.

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Since I usually play DDR at Leisure Land 2, I watched the location test for a while. The only results screen I saw was what looked like a bastard sword stuck in a rock against a very dark background.

I really like the theme for this mix, it's one of the most elaborate they've done. The title screen starts with sword strikes carving out the word SPADA then the rest of the logo materializes against a darkened background while embers from a fire below float upward. The fanfare music sounds very much like a Legend of Zelda game. A lot of RPG vibes with this one.

Interesting to know how the opening looks. After how nice the Tricoro opening screen looked, I'm looking forward to see how this looks like.

And Legend of Zelda-esque Nekomata Master opening BGM? YES PLEASE.

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So i guess IIDX has turned into a music/rhythm simulation RPG game.

Damn, that's a really nice title screen. I really can't wait to see this in person at some point.

A friend of mine was at the location test on Saturday and relayed some info to me, mostly about gameplay, the UI, and a couple things about songs.

On the song select screen, if you have two players, you can now change each player's difficulty by simply pressing 3 on the numpad for the respective side. The font for song titles is the same as tricoro's, except it's now purple instead of yellow for new songs.

During gameplay, you can now see the song level next to the difficulty. (i.e., Hyper Lv.8 or Another Lv.12)

There's lots of charge notes in this version, at least for the handful of new songs at the loctest.

He told me the UI looks "gothic" and "embellished", and described it as if "the Castlevania team got to do the design".

The result screen now tells you your fast/slow count by default, and if you failed a song partway though, it'll tell you which measure you failed in. If you press the VEFX button on the result screen, you'll add the song you just played to a "FAVORITES" folder.

As for the music, I've been told the general style is dark, with some hardcore DnB stuff. He said it was "reminiscent of DJ Troopers". He also said Rainbow Guitar Weeps is basically Rainbow Flyer Part 2.

To add a bit, continuing with the whole "RPG" style, on the mode select, each mode has a subtitle (standard mode being "冒険の問" or the door to adventure, while Free Mode was another "door" whose kanji I couldn't read ).
I completely agree with the whole "Castelvania team got to do the design", for example your rank on the result screen being stylized in a font "gothic" (and also, it changes color depending on your rank. A is green, AA is silver, AAA is gold)

Also I got to hear Totto's new song once. It's mainly piano streams but because of the whole noise around I couldn't catch the melody as well as I would have liked. Though if I had to compare it to something that would be Almagest (the chart being similar too, somewhere between Almagest Hyper and Another. Charge notes with stairs, though the CN are shorter).
Yay for more CN/BSS (at least 6/19 songs have some from what I remember, maybe more since not everything is on the wiki yet)

These sound interesting. And I really like DJ Troopers (it gave us Do it!! Do it!!, after all ), so it'll be interesting to hear what the songs sound like--though saying it's mostly hardcore/dnb worries me in the sense that the variety might suffer. A dozen Prim songs, anyone? Look what become of Tricoro.

(on a side note, Rainbow Flyer, Part 2? yes please)

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Oh I like this a lot.

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I like the favorites thing because I'll be able to mark anything I come close on and use it for that. I'm going to *try* to not use it to actually hold my favorite songs, because I'm basically in the point where I need to play more varied stuff instead of my favorite stuff all the time.

I'm really excited that Fast/Slow is now a default thing, and having the # measure I failed in on the result screen is extremely helpful.

Slake and Yamaoka songs being cut are generally unsurprising, but still a bummer.

IIDX 21 has some of the coolest songs yet. Surprised to see DJ TOTTO in this.

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Some game-center just showed that Spada should move in during late october!
It's of course not confirmed, and it does seem slightly fast imo, but the possibility is there (though, are they seriously going to finish Tricoro with the uber-disappointing "Road to Spada" event? That will leave a really bad taste in the mouth)

Tricoro's endgame could've been handled so much better, but I'm definitely excited to see what a brand new version will bring. Extra stage systems, new songs, new UI, and a lot more.

For the record, here's the tweet methaniel was (probably) talking about:
https://twitter.com/theindoorgame/status/384932273767710720

There was also this tweet, showing it written on a poster
https://twitter.com/ishihiro1403/status/384922913813438464
It's even confirmed by the tenants of that Game Center as written in the answers to this tweet

Also, as I read here and there some reactions, some points were raised
- The Weekly Ranking that is now doing the Limit Burst songs would stop before Timepiece Phase (though, since this last one was a bitt of an oddball within the Limit Burst, I could understand)
- The Tricoro OST Part 2 still not even announced (was there OST of games sold after the game itself ended?)

Anyway I would still gladly welcome this new version ^^

On the point about OSTs, REFLEC BEAT limelight's OST was split, and while the first part came out during Limelight, the second part (limelight EXTRA) came out with the colette vol. 1 OST.

A tweet from a Japanese arcade puts SPADA's release date as October 25th.

Wait, what's this?

New cabinet on the 18th (tomorrow) apparently. HYPE!

SO EXCITED. This means if arcades open (and SPADA is up) at 10:00 AM JST, then information should start to roll in around 6:00 PM PDT, 7:00 PM MDT, 8:00 PM CDT, and 9:00 PM EDT. That'd be 1:00 AM GMT.