Taiko no Tatsujin Portable

"Muscular Dogs in Bonnets"

So, what do you know? A drum game without the drums!

I remember reading about a Dance Dance Revolution port on some handheld before, and thinking "well isn't that the dumbest idea ever?" Dancing with your thumbs? Haha, don't make me laugh! Even if you already did kinda!!

Now, when I read about Taiko no Tatsujin Portable, I didn't get cynical like before. I went "OOO!! A NEW-ISH GAME FOR THE PSP!!!" Because, well, there hasn't been many. And I paid $250 dollars for this thing, so I might as well pay another large amount of money for a possibly good game.

Skeptical as I was, I forked over the millions of dollars for the import and had it shipped to my ugly blue house. Lo and behold! It's actually quite fun!

The way to play the game is quite easy and maybe a tad simple. The face buttons/d-pad are the red circles, and the L and R triggers are the blue circles. When there's a big red circle, you press both the face buttons and the directional pad. When there's a big blue circle, you press both L and R triggers at the same time.

Also, you'll see a yellow bell once in awhile: just move the analog nub and rotate it how many times it tells you to. Fun!

Part of the allure of Taiko no Tatsujin Portable is the number of quality songs. Yes, there are those slow ballads that don't translate (no pun intended) well into finger-tappin' territory, but they're still listenable if you're into that Japanese type stuff. And I guess I am, as I was always swooning over the lyrics about tears and flowers and raindrops (actually I'm just making that up).

A good number of songs are upbeat and peppy, and there's even Queen's "We Will Rock You," which might seem like an obvious choice. But it's somewhat nice to hear a contemporary western rock song amidst all of the peppy (but great) J-Pop.

Another thing that will draw you in is the beautiful artwork. Childish? Maybe. Stupid? Uh huh. But fun?? YES!! YES INDEED!! Seeing little drums with faces and muscular dogs in bonnets strutting their stuff is very amusing. And funny.

Most of the songs on the easiest difficulty are sometimes too easy. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap -- OMG you got a hundred percent! But things start getting fairly tricky and challenging when you choose higher difficulty positions. You'll be surprised how a fairly simple control system can get incredibly complicated. Work those fingers!

The quality of the music is beautiful, CD-esque stuff. But what did you expect? Duh!

There are quite a few modes, too:

Single song mode: Choose one song and the difficulty of it, and try to beat it! Or something! Y'know what I'm talking about! Also, if you press start while on the selection screen, the second option to the left enables you to have two people sit uncomfortably close to each other and play on one PSP system! Good for couples, I suppose.

Mini games: Tiny little weird games that are somewhat fun and also somewhat annoying. However, the sumo wrestling one has the option to have two people on one PSP play along.

Arcade: Aha! On the left, you put however many minutes you're going to play. On the right, the game itself calculates how many songs. From the amount I've played, I think they start you off with those easy, slow, ballad-y songs and then work you up to the more less-possible-stuff like the Ridge Racer theme. That song gets DIFFICULT!

Also, you can have one copy of the game (hey, importing isn't cheap) and up to three other people playing along via game sharing! Finally, a multiplayer game that's worthy of being played.. um.. with other people.. without having to buy more than one copy!

So no matter what position you're in, you'll always be able to play multiplayer on this game. If you have no friends, you can turn on the 2 players-on-one system thingy and act like your right hand is your best friend or something.

Is it import friendly? Well, it won't be at first. What you'll need to do is go into the forums here and look at the "Menu Translation" topic. Everything will be absolutely freakin' crystal clear for you then. Yay!

And, besides -- it's not like the game has a story or anything. You pick a song and you go.

That in particular is why the song format fits the portable so well. On your lunch break? Put in how many minutes you're going to play in the Arcade mode and have a fun time! Oh, you only have five minutes you say? Well, why not use Single Song mode?

Best of all, those beautiful people at Namco (?) will supply us with downloadable tracks later on. 38 tracks plus more?! Sign me up, please!

An odd idea turned into something great, Taiko no Tatsujin Portable might not be for everyone. The lack of real drums might turn off a few peeps. And understandably so -- but try playing some of these great songs on a higher difficulty level. Isn't it fun?

GRAPHICS: 8/10
2D, yes, but it's very colorful and appealing to the eye(s). Great sense of style, or something.

SOUND: 10/10
38 CD-quality tracks (since, you know, the UMD is basically a tiny CD) plus more later on. Oh, and did I already mention a thousand times that the songs are, for the most part, grrrrreat?

CONTROL: 10/10
Very precise and easy to master.

IMPORT VALUE: 8/10
I have a feeling this won't come stateside. Just a tiny little feeling. Perhaps it's too weird for the good ol' American public. And if it does come, the song list will probably be COMPLETELY different. Not to mention that it's only $50, the price of an EA game. And those are usually crappy! This one isn't!

IMPORT FRIENDLINESS: 6/10
It isn't, but it's not like you're playing a freakin' RPG. Use a couple of those helpful translation guides and you're set.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10
Very fun rhythm game. No drums? No problem!

TOTAL: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/23/05