Due to the commencement of another in-game raffle for New Year’s, which I expect not to do very well in again, I have spent the last few hours binging the smartphone rhythm game The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage. For those unaware, this is a spin-off game in the long-running Japanese media franchise, co-developed by CyGames and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
One of the more recent significant additions to the rhythm game is GRAND live performances. While every song in the game usually requires players to select five characters to perform on-stage regardless of how many vocalists sing – although they don’t always appear in the MV – GRAND ups the anti and features performances with between 6-15 characters featured.
Joker, performed by the in-game group Ember Last, is one such song receiving a GRAND version in Starlight Stage. This involves nine characters total, who can be switched in-and-out. I didn’t have all the characters to make up the original unit (Ryo Matsunaga, Aki Yamato, Yuka Nakano, Yuki Himekawa, and Miku Maekawa w/ Nene Kurihara, Rumi Wakui, Ema Senzaki, and Midori Mizuno). Therefore, I decided to focus on some of the game’s cuter characters, quite unfittingly with the shy and absent-minded Kozue Yusa as lead performer.
I would like to mention that The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage is a “Gacha Game”. Therefore, if you are known to have issues with gambling or spending well over your limit on a whim, then I would strongly advise you to bypass this game and look for a console or PC game which has a flat-fee single-player and/or online mode. In particular, ones which require no “surprise mechanics”, “chance-based downloadable content”, or other industry terms for gacha in them.
Take That (In-Game) Snap Daily Photo is an off-shoot of the Take That (In-Game) Snap article series, in which the first article focusing on Final Fantasy XIV was recently published. This looks at, celebrates and critiques how video game developers have implemented professional photography-like systems into their games. It will cover how the systems handle, just how accessible they are and, where applicable, how a modding community might be making these tools even better. With this Daily Photo spin-off series, I will be sharing individual photos from the games either covered or soon-to-be-covered in the series.
