osu!weekly #51

The osu!taiko World Cup 2016 rosters have been released! With yet another international tournament looming once again, the osu!news team is here to help you close in on the action. Want to know more about drum beating and other events happening around the community? Read on!

Spring couldn't have come sooner for those of us who are fed up with clearing out the driveway every morning. Spring is often associated with the idea of new life, and our new monthly poll reflects on that! We want to know which of the contests we have ran before you'd like to see make a return and happen more. Don't worry if you can't pick, because you can chime in for all of them if you want! Select as many options as you'd like, and we'll take your responses into consideration when we decide how we handle the priority of each contest.

For the first time ever, Flyte gave us a perfectly visible preview of a part of the new design for the new website! Rather than leaning very close into the monitor with a camera to get a shot of the screen, leaving much to be desired, this time Flyte has given us an actual screenshot. Go check it out if you want to see the grand return of SibehCircles and TapaoKing!

Flyte really wanted to make it a point that his desk is a lot more decked out than Nanaya's

There's a new beatmapping contest! Despite how long it took for this one to materialize, we hope it was worth the wait. This time, we have a new artist featured as the centerpiece of the competition! IAHN's Candy Luv is the newest track to be added in the list of to-be-bundled songs in the game. If the track seems too long for you, there's also an alternate shorter version you can map. Both versions are accepted in this contest! The deadline is April 4th, so be sure to get those submissions in as soon as possible.

-KousakaHonoka- has went around and gathered some notable plays from the community for me! I guess this is as good a time as ever to announce as well that he will be joining me regularly going forward. While the amount of exciting achievements per week vary from time to time, it's okay to assume that this will be a regular block in the osu!weekly from now on!

• Xilver really went all out on the Demetori maps this week, achieving unbelievable HR scores on both GoldenWolf's Counter-Attack of the Weak and jonathanlfj's Counter-Clock World.
• inteliser (osu!mania) achieved an absolutely insane SS rank on _underjoy's Kakuzetsu Thanatos.

A wave of new standard Beatmap Nominators have been added! This was the first time new BNs had to undergo a test in order to be accepted into the team. Their ability, having been able to pass the trial, is definitely nothing to scoff at! A big welcome to Nozhomi, Sonnyc, Regraz, Bonsai, Kibbleru, Squirrel, and Avishay to the team!

We're starting coverage of the osu!taiko World Cup 2016 a little early this time! Hopefully, this preview content will be able to help those of you who are unfamiliar with the players become more understanding of the situation a lot of these players face. I will be joined by Tasha, a long standing member of the Taiko community, in order to bring a more experienced voice into these reports.

Needless to say, Team Japan is a strong favorite for this tournament. With players like tasuke912, shinchikuhome, and asuasu_yura, ranked globally 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively, it is no surprise that a large amount of people expect this exceedingly powerful team to win. Japan has dominated the scoreboards of Taiko for a very long time now, where the arcade game remains one of the most successful namco titles to date.

The competition for the runner-ups are quite fierce, however. Taiwan is a strong contender in terms of overall ranking, while teams Hong Kong, France, the United States, and Canada are all nearly equally matched in terms of weighted skill. With the actual ranking of these players so close to each other, the ability to perform in a tournament environment will really be the deciding factor for who ends up on the podium when all is said and done!

Both Ekoro and Flanks are competing in this year's tournament! Ekoro and Flanks are some of the highest ranked non-Japanese taiko players in the world, and are both monsters in the game. Additionally, our very own Tasha is competing in the tournament representing team Canada! Tasha and MikuWRS are both unconventional DDKK players, where they play with dons on one hand and kats on another. Naturally, this is a playstyle that is only possible on a keyboard!

Without further ado, here's the list of the currently confirmed teams:

That just about wraps up everything we have for you going into the osu!taiko World Cup 2016, as well as this edition of the osu!weekly! If you need any further information, be sure to check out the wiki page as that is being constantly updated by our tournament manager Loctav. If you have any news you would like to share with us to put into future issues, I beg you to please shoot us an email at news@ppy.sh. If you have any feedback for this post, be sure to drop a disqus comment or post in the r/osugame thread. See you next week!

—Nyquill