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"The Tatacon rests on a chair after yet another brutal beat-down session."
"Tatacon" is actually the Japanese name for the drumming controller that Namco made for their "Taiko no Tatsujin" series of drumming games, but the North American one, which comes bundled with "Taiko Drum Master" (see entry 930), is just called "Taiko controller," and that's stupid.
The Tatacon, then, is a biggish plastic drum, whose head is about the size of a large tambourine. You snap a sloped plastic stand together onto the back of the drum head part, so that when the stand rests flat on the ground, the drum is set before you with its face angled up about 45 degrees.
It comes with two heavy plastic drumsticks, shaped kinda like giant cigars, and with these you beat the drum good. The drum head registers four hit areas: left front, right front, left rim, right rim.
Now, maybe I am just clumsy, but I can't seem to hit these spots consistently in the drumming game unless I hit with both drumsticks at once--that is, I can try hitting with just one stick, but sometimes it doesn't register as a hit. Bluh. Really, if I wanted to "do well" at the drumming games, I would have to use a regular DualShock pad for the input--but that wouldn't be as fun as banging on a drum. I have to restrain myself from ever using a pad, though, 'cause then I'd blow away my drum scores and I could never approach a high score again with the drum. And then I would be sad.
The drum, while plastic (the head is some kind of soft plastic rubbery stuff), feels like it can take a lot of punishment--like most of Namco's hardware that I've tried, in fact (see entry 469, entry 898). So, I feel no qualms about risking breaking it as a smash away at it.
I do feel qualmish, though, about the noise that hitting the drum makes--rather a lot. I wish that they had come up with a drum head that muffled the impact sound a bit more, since the games themselves are perfectly capable of making a well-modulated hitting sound effect that won't wake the neighbors.
I'm fine! No, really! I'm just beating my Tata! |
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