Penda Beats rant

One of the realizations about Taito's Tetote Connect is that it didn't replicate the ballroom dancing like they planned it to as it's essentially a rhythm game where on-screen notes were interacted with touchscreen controls and most of the songs don't seem suited for ballroom dance whatsoever. Also, what kind of gamer would want to play that ever since it was announced and this question is going to be the same for the upcoming Penda Beats from Bandai Namco of all game companies? There was even a clone of Tetote Connect on mobile that's compatible with VRoid but the presentation during gameplay is unspeakably lame as it doesn't look like the avatar is dancing on screen at all.

Penda Beats from Bandai Namco is about the fan glow stick dance from the Japanese idol culture. Maybe there should be a warning from the arcade center or the game against anyone making obnoxious call & response during the song. The thing is, the dance can be done without it throughout the song. The song list is assumed to consist of the songs the nerds know of, including the modern J-Pop songs for instance.

Or so I assumed/thought when I saw a location test video from some tweet from Bean93449015. What were they thinking when making a brand new rhythm game for arcades like that? The VR concert simulation games including the Idolmaster one replicated the live concert experience correctly. The Kinect and VR dance games are still the craze when it comes to full body tracking. Nowadays, there are games that use webcam and AI-powered body tracking technology in addition to VR dance games since the Kinect line of devices was discontinued years ago. A glow stick dance game on VR would have been a better idea since the idea of replicating that dance was done wrongly for Penda Beats in many areas. The cabinet uses the sensors and some area where you tap with glow stick controller and that seems lame in multiple levels. It's like the game's trying to be an unhinged answer to Future Tom Tom where you have to raise up and wave at times during the song or maybe some other Sega rhythm games like Ongeki & Chunithm.

Dance Around from Konami happens to be another dance arcade game similar to Dance Evolution but with different technology that does full body tracking. When it came out in the arcades, the presentation and gameplay impressed the players with motion controls comparable to the ones in Kinect dance games. There's also Starri which uses webcam and AI-powered body tracking so that VR is not needed. Other games on Nex Playground, the family-friendly system Starri is also released on besides PC and mobile have some games you may be familiar with like the Fruit Ninja game for instance which is played a lot like Fruit Ninja Kinect. If there's going to be a proper glow stick dance game for arcades, they could have utilized the webcam and AI-powered full body tracking tool.

So, who is Penda Beats for after you see some location test video circulating on the net? Oh, about the location test video from some tweet, I hate to show links to whatever tweet I mentioned here after the amount of damage done to Twitter that I'll rather show links to posts from other social media sites with proper reputation. I guess that this is some arcade rhythm game you should steer clear once it comes out.

Pac-Man World Re-Pac - Updated Credits

A few months after the game's release, Bandai Namco and Now Production had made a patch that improved many aspects of the game such as credits, soundtrack and other stuffs that were changed. The credits part is the most important part of the update with the original team who made the game credited with True Accurate Information. Under the Sounds and Music part, it is Todd Dennis and Joey Kuras who worked on the music and sound part for the original version of the game under Tallarico Studios at the time. With this updated credit list, it can be proven that Tommy wasn't the one who composed the music for the game at all. Also, it is the first step in undoing the damage Tommy had caused in the past. The other games Tallarico Studios was involved in still have inaccurate credit information for the composer as if many websites still state that Tommy is the only composer due to him passing off others' compositions as his.

Besides the patch, there are two DLCs for the game and the Jukebox feature allows you to listen to the high quality versions of the songs in the Sound Test. The soundtrack in Re-Pac is said to be updated with high quality and uncompressed versions for free but the Jukebox remains a paid DLC.

Indeed, compliment is what I have for Bandai Namco and Now Production for a truly accurate credit information for the original team under Special Thanks category. However, this update should come with a new responsibility to keep those credits for the original team accurate and protected. The sites that wrongly claimed that Tommy Tallarico was the composer for this game should have corrected the credits in the game page once the update was out. I don't know for sure if there's some jerk-face out there who tries to make a malicious request to those sites to revert said changes or not but I think that the Special Thanks portion of the updated credits list should remain in the accurate form.

Aside from the Intellivision Amico controversies, there were other backlashes Tommy had done in the past such as giving Super Smash Bros games a low score in the most ignorant and offensive ways, and passing off other stuffs like sound effects he didn't make as his creations for instance but you can look up those stories yourself as they're beyond the scope of this blog article. His actions were not cool back then and the on-going controversies surrounding the Amico had already tarnished the Intellivision brand and his reputation further.

Pac-Man World Re-Pac Credits Controversy?

The Rangok Skies controversy was a real definition of controversy over stolen assets that the credits list remains questionable to this day because of the stolen sound effects. That is something the developers have no intention to do something about despite having made some improvements and other changes prior to the game's release. At least, Mojang put in the a fully detailed credits list for sound effects taken from freesound.org that are used for Minecraft and that's appreciated.

In the case of Pac-Man World Re-Pac's credits list, the original developers of the original Pac-Man World aren't credited in the remake and that's a shame and disappointment. I don't know if this qualifies as a gaming controversy or not as there's a chance the developers of the remake will be requested to fix the credits list, just like how the developers of the 8th-gen console ports of S**** Colors added the credits related to Godot game engine in a patch. Believe it or not, for every game made with Godot game engine, the game engine has to be credited no matter what despite it being a free and open-source game engine. At times, there are games that show the Made With Unity logo upon starting up. This lets people know that that game is made with Unity game engine.

Some interesting story prior to the remake's release included the fact that Tommy already sold the rights of the soundtrack to Bandai Namco and the composer is actually Todd Dennis, not Tommy himself. The credits information for the composer circulated on the net has been mostly incorrect and to find a correct one is a challenge to this day.

There are multiple reasons why people were interested in taking a look at Pac-Man World Re-Pac:

1. It's a remake of the original that came out on Playstation 1 in the late 90s.
   
2. Tommy and others under Tallarico Studios were involved in the sound and music department for the game.

The controversies surrounding the Tommy and Intellivision Amico were severe enough that the Amico console will never see a release because of his poor leadership and disrespectful attitude but the latest concern regarding the fact that the original developers of Pac-Man World aren't credited in the remake has attracted the attention of the content creators, fans of the franchise and some original developers. I don't know for sure if even Tommy would be disappointed for this but if it looks like he doesn't care for this controversy-to-be because the remake was released recently on Switch, Sony and Microsoft consoles, maybe his disrespectful attitude is still intact even if the Amico console was pretty much dead at this point that even a family would buy a Switch and play together or something.