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Custom Mix In typical Sega tradition, Project Diva requires the player to unlock almost all of the game's content, which is done mostly by clearing songs in Free Play mode. Now when one first sees it, the game already indicates that 17% of the content here is already available. The reason for that is because Sega literally color-coded the songs, with the first song of each color being available to play. If the player is able to complete the song without failing, the game will unlock the next song on that colored list. Do well enough or play a certain song enough times and the game will unlock the Hard difficulty for the song (which uses all of the PSP's face buttons instead of just X and Circle), extra costumes for Miku, items for her room, or extra pictures. Now outside of the completionists who want to have everything unlocked just to say that they did it, there is another big reason why one should go back to Free Play after completing all of the songs and going through them over and over again: they won't be able to use these locked items if they want to create custom songs with them (but they can play custom songs that have items they haven't unlocked yet). So if you were wondering why the other vocaloids are in this game, yet when they're chosen to sing for Free Play Miku's voice still comes out instead, you now know why: they exist in this game solely for the reason that someone might want to create a custom song using them instead of Miku. Now I really won't go into how to manipulate the Rhythm Game Edit system since there's already other places on the internet that have explained it in English anyway, so I'll just talk about what I've seen after using it for a while instead. Project Diva's editor is not unlike that of Warcraft II or Starcraft's map editors when it comes to the tool's limitations. For example, people can only choose from a list of prerecorded movement animations provided by Sega and can't create their own. Although some of the Free Play music videos consist of nothing more than an image slideshow, the end user can't dump their own original illustrations onto the memory stick for the PSP to use (!), which is blasphemous since some Vocaloid songs uploaded onto Nicovideo have nothing more than a SINGLE still illustration in the background. The end user also can't create their own stage environments and can only choose what Sega's given to them, but I don't even think they're allowed to select the Little Big Planet-esque stage that was used for Fukigen Waltz, let alone implement any of its props the way Sega was able to for that music video, so forget about trying to execute special effects like those used in Love List Koushinchuu? (Still in China?), letting Miku hold something like a microphone in the secret garden, or even displaying the name of the song while the music video is playing, as the editor doesn't have these features. What's even more insulting is that the creator can't place Chance Time segments in their custom songs either. The Rhythm Game Edit interface itself also feels very clunky primarily because it's stuck with using the PSP controls to manipulate everything. You can easily see this for yourself when you want to manually place a set of notes on the screen, which you'll probably end up doing because the preset ones are very limited (though these preset templates ironically can't be exactly replicated if they're placed manually), and ends up becoming more time-consuming than it should be. This also extends to the rest of the editor as well, except it's played out a little bit differently; modifying the stage, camera angles, and model movements for the song first requires me to move my cursor to a specific tab before selecting it, which then opens up another menu that takes up the entire screen, then I go to another tab on this menu to select something, which opens up another menu, then I need to do whatever I need to do in that submenu which will then kick me out (and sometimes this has to be repeated several times just within ONE bar), then move my cursor to the exit button in order to go back to the music graph thing so I can either access another part of the editor or test play the song to see if whatever changes made were what I wanted, which the music might not synchronize properly on the first run if I'm testing the note timing, so I need to repeat it again. It also doesn't help that editor still plays out the sounds from the game menu while navigating through all of this since they get REAL ANNOYING after awhile. Now just because I'm really negative about the Rhythm Game Edit system doesn't mean that it's complete rubbish and can't be used to make some fun music videos with it, because it can if the person's clever enough. But I know that this editor could be better implemented, and you know why? Take a look at Miku Miku Dance or the Korg DS-10 Synthesizer. One is free for Windows platforms, while the other is on an "inferior" handheld system. Yeah, way to look high-tech, Sega. Stereo Mix The total number of playable songs in Free Play mode for Project Diva is 36. However, 2 of them are sung individually by Rin and Len Kagamine, meaning that there's only a total 32 unique songs in this mode. If Sega perhaps devoted of their efforts to creating more songs instead of including Rhythm Game Edit tools, we'd probably have another 14 unique songs to play, as that's how many more songs were added but left unused. Now out of all of these 46 songs, only 10 of them were created exclusively for the release of Project Diva, which essentially means that Sega compiled some of the best tracks produced by artists who made a name for themselves using Miku as the vocals for their compositions, although several of these were shortened from their original length (which also partially explains why 14 songs weren't part of Free Play mode). So not only was Project Diva designed to be a fun game, it was also intended to take a historical snapshot of the Vocaloid phenomenon. So let's take a look at some of the most influential people inside the Vocaloid scene, shall we? Otomania Sometime in 2006, someone on the internet released a flash animation of Orhime from Bleach twirling around a leek while music from a popular Finnish song called levan Polkka played in the background. In less than one month after Miku was released in Japan, Otomania programmed Miku to sing his remixed version of this song, and the video that accompanied it was nothing more than a a super-deformed version of Miku waving a leek in tune to the beat of the music and made different facial expressions during various parts of it. The most memorable expression it was known for was this. And the music video was viewed several times. Like, in the millions. Otomania's version of levan Polkka also demonstrated a few things: - The end users were encouraged to show their creative interpretations of the Vocaloids because if they're good enough, Crypton just might come knocking on their door and pay them money as a way to acknowledge it as an official mascot. In this case, it meant merchandising the creation like there's no tomorrow. The nendoroid figure that Good Smile Company makes of her has a demand as bad as the Wii during its first years which still keeps selling out DURING RESTOCK PREORDERS. Levan Polkka is the only song from Otomania found in Project Diva, though one really can't deny it was an important milestone in the Vocaloid phenomenon. I mean, they're even using this thing for the game's opening movie. ika Like Otomania, this person was also known for only one song: Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru (I'll give you Miku Miku) and like levan Polkka, is also one of the most iconic songs on Nicovideo. How iconic is it, you ask? During her debut for the 2009 Animelo Summer Live Concert (the biggest anime-based music concert held in Japan), THIS was the first song she sang, and the video used was Sega's motion-captured animations which are the exact ones found within Project Diva. The reason why this was chosen is because the lyrics say that Miku's all fired up to get this show on the road and if you don't install her right away on your PC and give her a song to sing, she'll transform you into a Miku. ...What? I'm not making this up. livetune livetune was formed by two people: kz and kajuki-P, although the latter isn't part of the group anymore. The group's name essentially comes from kz's favorite mixing software, Albeton Live, which means that most of their music consists of electronic pop dance music, so if you don't like this genre you're probably not going to like kz much. What makes livetune stand out from the rest is that kz is a master in reverberating Miku's voice, which sounds pretty close to how Valve did it for GlaDOS' voice in Portal. And we all liked Still Alive, right? RIGHT? In other words, kz puts the "Diva" in "Project Diva," as he's one of the few people out there who can put strong emotion into both his music and Miku's voice despite it sounding mostly robotic. Out of all of the Vocaloid artists out there, livetune is one of my personal favorites because his music expresses Miku's mythos in a way that feels almost magical. livetune originally began as a doujin circle which released its first album entitled Re: packaged at the winter comiket of 2007 (or comiket 73 if you want to be techincal). Shortly afterwards, Victor Entertainment would pick up the rights to sell this album commercially near the end of August for the following year, which makes it the first Vocaloid album to accomplish this and also raised a lot of eyebrows within the music industry because several people were buying it. kz would then create far away and Star Story exclusively for Project Diva, which are both up to par with the rest of his stuff (meaning that they're excellent). Three of his previous songs would also be included in the game as well. They'd also be one of the nicer-looking music videos in the game too. ryo ryo's rise to fame came from his first release entitled Melt near the end of 2007, which exceeded over 4 million views on Nicovideo. There was one snag, however; he used an image from someone called 119 without their permission, so a misunderstanding took place, which was quickly resolved after both agreed to work together. And this was how the group supercell was formed. In the following year, ryo would upload three more songs, with each of them easily getting over 1 million views. Like livetune, ryo sold the group's first album (which was called supercell) during the summer comiket of that year. Sony, being Sony when it comes to publishing music, noticed that ryo was going to be a lucrative investment, so they decided to publish that album in March 2009, which was also a smash hit. ryo having a record contract with Sony is also probably why the first five songs in Free Play mode in Project Diva are all his, but none of them were made exclusively for this game. Personally though, I don't like most of his music because almost every song I hear from him sounds like his priorities are more along the lines of producing good music (and I admit that this part of his songs are very good as well as the video that usually goes along with it) while leaving the vocals to a real person that already knows how to sing instead of wasting time on trying to program an artificial one to sing well to it, as it really does feel like he just programs Miku's voice enough so it doesn't sound like she's dropping syllables unintentionally for most of his songs. What makes me say this? He composed an ending song to an anime called Bakemonogatari (Monster Story) which aired during the summer of 2009. Just listen to it, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Hopefully. Anyway, if you go and take a look at that Animelo concert I linked to earlier, the second song playing is the shortened version of Black Rock Shooter, which is one of ryo's more popular songs and already has an anime adaption that'll come out during the fall of 2009, and the trailer can be seen right after the song ends. Pretty neat, huh? OSTER Project Like with livetune and Otomomania, OSTER Project was one of the first people who appeared within a month after Crypton released Miku and made a name for themselves using her within this time frame. To date, OSTER Project's first uploaded song, Koisuru VOC@LOID (Fall in Love to a Vocaloid), has exceeded one million views on Nicovideo. As you can see from that Youtube link, the person's produced a TON of songs ranging from various genres. Go ahead and watch all of them if you want, since you can't really go wrong with the person's music. OSTER Project is the well-rounded Vocaloid producer when compared to ryo and livetune. Okay, well-rounded isn't the word I should be using here, but the person's willingness to make off-kilter songs like these is part of the artist's appeal and is also perhaps one of the very few out there who can manipulate Miku's voice to not sound as painful when she's speaking. The people who make the videos that accompany the artist's songs also show the same amount of enthusiasm which generally have the same appeal as Otomania's levan Polkka. Because of the wide range of music contributed to the Vocaloid scene, Sega obviously wanted OSTER Project on board for Project Diva, who created two songs for the game but... uh, uploaded their own music videos for these same songs on Nicovideo before Project Diva's release date. Four other songs from the artist were also included in the game, with one of them already mentioned in the first paragraph of this artist's profile. absorb absorb is an acoustic band whose vocalist decided one day to use Miku to sing Sakura no Ame (The Rain of Cherry Blossoms) and was uploaded sometime in Februrary 2008, whose lyrics talked about the memories of high school after graduation, and had over one million views in a span of eight months. KEI, the character designer and illustrator for Crypton's Vocaloid products, would then create a chapter for his unofficial Vocaloid manga that was dedicated to this song two months later. Its initial popularity on Nicovideo allowed absorb the opportunity to release the song on CD in November during that same year. However, the greatest thing that ever happened was that after the band performed this song live at one high school graduation the following year, it quickly became the graduation song of choice for over 80 high schools. Because if its impact on the Japanese educational system, this song was added to Project Diva. No, not the six-minute version.
- It set an unofficial rule stating that there must be an item associated with each new Vocaloid released that should generate a response similar to when one sees Miku Hachune holding a leek with that kind of facial expression.
Miku Hachune
so-da
Project Diva (PSP)
Project Diva (PSP)
