Beatmap Spotlights: January 2018

Mapping is off to a strong start in 2018, and here we come again with our selection of maps the previous month! Swing by and check out the Beatmap Spotlights for January!

The beatmap charts for the January Spotlights can be found here Their respective packs are available at the Beatmap Pack Listing for easier access. The January 2018 Spotlights rankings will end on 15th March 2018.

Past Spotlights results

First of all, congratulations to the winners of the December 2017 Spotlights. They receive one month of supporter status for their efforts!

• osu!: Toy
• osu!taiko: n1doking
• osu!catch: Guillotine
• osu!mania: [MY]Idiot

January 2018 Spotlights

osu!

A track both known and feared by osu! veterans, Muya starts us off in 2018 with a remastered set of JOINT STRUGGLE. Playing to the mapper's strengths and serving as a tribute to DJPop's version, the highest difficulty taxes player stamina with continuous sets of irregular rhythms. For those looking for a pure rhythm challenge at any difficulty level, this set will not disappoint!

Vell brings us "MALFORMED BOX / INSIDE BEAST" by the Japanese band "the GazettE". The mapper manages to organise his patterns in a unique yet fitting way and represents the song's intensity by great utilisation of Slider Velocity changes.

Combined with an outstanding storyboard by Darky1 reminiscent of the GazettE's stage performances, this is an experience you should not miss out on this month.

If you're looking for more unconventional beatmaps, wowaka - Unknown Mother-Goose presented by tutuhaha is definitely one mapset that you shouldn't miss out on! With the song split into a fast and a slow section, tutuhaha has clearly done a wonderful job in presenting both sections by using distinctive slidershapes, coupled with a good mix of linear and circular flow that is further complemented with irregular patterns.

This map also features a guest difficulty from Habiholic which is worth playing as well!

Debuting this month with their first ever ranked map, Opsi - a mentee of both ProfessionalBox and Sing - shows that he can live up to high expectations with his rendition of Camellia - Light It Up. This map contains everything you know and love in a modern electronic map with its use of complex rhythms, high paced slider velocities, and challenging streams. Definitely a sign of great things to come from this mapper.

One of the most highly anticipated maps of 20..18? Although falling short of a 2017 rank, rrtyui's latest collab with Sing still managed to make rounds through the osu! community. Reality Distortion brings you modern mapping of the highest echelon with explosive slider velocity usage and fancy streams left and right.

An absolute treat of a map to play, and to watch as well! The storyboard, also designed by rrtyui, features breathtakingly complex visualisations that accompany the map and song flawlessly. Even if it is out of your skill level, give the replays a watch or two with the storyboard on!

YUC'e - Sengoku HOP, brought to us by Nathan, Gamu and appleeaterx, clearly shows how cuteness and glitch hop music is done, with their breathtakingly wonderful works! This map features rather gimmicky and technical patterns, including stacks and high-speed sliders. Try it out if you want to challenge your reading skills and all other abilities!

osu!taiko

It doesn't require much knowledge or time to figure out that hikikochan's mapset of the song "Come And Get It" by Krewella follows an older osu!taiko mapping meta, a time when dubstep portions of a song were mapped without the usage of 1/8 doublets as is the common case today.

This Inner Oni is outstanding by being simple, but straightforward in its patterns, as more often than not the used colour (red/blue) only changes after two notes, except in rare occasions to highlight important sounds in the song.

Additionally, the difference between calm and intense sections has been very well done, by having very densely mapped kiais and easier patterns outside of the kiais. Overall a great map set, with nice lower difficulties as well. A great addition to this month's Spotlights!

Fans of Demetori will know just how intense their songs can get with insanely fast and heavy drum beats accompanied by brutal guitar riffs that will incite even the most docile of people to start headbanging to the beat.

Demetori - Fuujin Shoujo evokes that exact feeling, showcasing Surono's unparalleled skills in pattern construction with non-stop high density streams and constant finger-twisting patterns that complements the music's powerful beats all too well.

With a length of over 5 minutes and a terrifying speed that clocks in at 200BPM, challenging this map will not be an easy feat as it's sure to leave many players drained by the end of it. Proceed with caution!

The complexity of gmtn.'s songs always demands well-crafted maps to match, and Rhytoly's rendition of squartatrice vs. disperagioia achieves just that!

This mashup of two complementary songs offers a range of musical paces and meters, one which Rhytoly clearly emulates through his overall map design. Although this map is his ranked debut, it is indicative of solid mapping intuition and more great works to come.

As the music sweeps through contrasting sections, the patterning appropriately switches focus, whether it's on the pounding bass beat or the clear piano melody or the syncopated synth rhythm. Playing through it all is certainly an immersive experience, one worth featuring this month!

A well known song by the osu! playerbase, Remus offers his interpretation of Ascension to Heaven by xi with quite a unique way.

This map's specificity is the usage of doublets and quadruplets in a very improvising style, bringing quite an interesting way of playing this high BPM song. Lots of complex streams are also used throughout, increasing the challenge this beatmap brings even more.

This is a quite unique map in the ranked section and will ask a lot of different skillsets to have a Full Combo than your usual beatmap!

Being the only nominated taiko mapset with no X-rated difficulty, it stands out from the rest through its appropriate use of various mapping techniques. yuzu__rinrin is flexible on his style - while showing the consistent drum-based logic when the music gets more vibrant, he is also open to pitch-oriented hitsounding as a balance during calmer parts. Such style is accompanied by the proper density and SV changes which act as both great presentation to players and nice interpretation of the music.

Despite the short song length, it is a well-made mapset that shows his expertise in taiko mapping, as well as understanding of musical emotion. Definitely worth mentioning in this month's Spotlights!

osu!catch

Let's welcome Spectator once again, to bring his masterpiece to the top of our osu!catch monthly Spotlights! The map Function Phantom - Algebra gives us an excellent interpretation of how an inspiring technical map can be.

Featured as a map in CWC 2017 Semifinals NoMod mappool, the Overdose, collaborated by Spectator and Minato Yukina, impresses us with its creative flow for the magic on strong Hyperdashes toward standstill buzz sliders.

Besides, alienflybot and Sinnoh also provide us with nice answers of how to combine convenience and innovation together into a map neatly. Good job!

Deif is mapping again! Similar to his previous work, Memme - Force of Ra screams of his own personal mapping style: irregular patterns, gimmicky direction change with powerful Hyperdashes and strong consistency across the board.

Moreover, the Overdose stands out for its genius use of Hyperdashes in kiai time. There are also many interesting patterns in Rain, Platter, and easier difficulties, rounding the whole mapset in a super balanced spread. Be sure to check this out, especially if you're a fan of Deif style maps.

Spectator's fine art for Deemo lovers! Collaborating with Ascendance and Sinnoh, Spectator brings us Marigold by M2U feat. Guriri, an appealing song with a top quality map. Despite the relatively low BPM, the intensity of the song is well expressed with wiggling and bursts used right to the point. On top of the map itself, it contains a splendid storyboard adding to its excellence. Be sure to check out this masterpiece!

You've had to have lived under a rock (underneath another rock) to not heard of this one - it's Uta mapped by Kyuare! With over 150 favorites over the course of two years, this map is quite the hyped map.

With twisting and turning patterns of streams combined with engaging patterns on even the calmest of parts, this map just keeps you on your toes for its entirety. It also uses quite the unconventional style, using mostly circles instead of sliders on larger part of the map, and with movement not commonly seen in most osu!catch maps. Excellent job by Kyuare for his rendition of this highly-popular song!

osu!mania

Topping the osu!mania Spotlights this month we have Couil making his debut in the ranked section with fuego! An amazing set overall with very aggressive SV usage on both of the hardest difficulties and likely one of the best implementations of such a gimmick that osu!mania has ever seen. No one should be surprised with this chart taking the cake as the HD difficulty was a very popular pick back in the MWC 4K 2017 Round of 16.

You think that is not enough of a challenge? Check out the hardest difficulty if you think you are strong enough to keep up with instant teleports and tricky snap changes that will ruin your accuracy! Congratulations Couil. The whole osu!mania community is really looking forward for more stuff from you!

Finally entering the Ranked section with a set of their own, Shoegazer once again demonstrates their mapping prowess to a genre that we see very little of in Crow's Ghost by Twenty Knives.

Making the most of the interesting percussion structures throughout the song, here we see 5 tightly-structured difficulties suited to players of every caliber. The lower difficulties utilise a concept akin to pitch relevancy, which produces some interesting results: you'll find plenty of tricky patterns which work perfectly with the song. Easy to read, but just as easy to trip up and this map is primed to punish you for those small errors.

If you're looking for a true challenge, look no further than the Observer difficulty. Here the idea of "comfortable" is completely shattered with intricate patterns galore that you'll see nowhere else in the Ranked section; this difficulty will certainly test the limits of your technical abilities as well as a sense of exhilaration that's hard to come by elsewhere. Keep your eyes peeled: here's a name to keep looking out for in the future!

Another debut in both Ranked and Spotlights we have TheToaphster with his map of perthed again. Once again another SV fest during the whole map with a heavy and characteristic stutter usage that will make reading close to impossible, forcing you to rely on your ears and aural capabilities to get a strong performance on it.

As it looks to be a trend, SV sets seem to have very amazing lower difficulties too and this one is no exception, with the Advanced difficulty shining particularly as a very friendly and fun challenge for those who aren't quite ready to try the heavy inverse LN stutters in the hardest difficulties.

Taking my time to congratulate you too Toaph and I am personally looking forward to more stuff from you!

We hope you enjoy our selection for this month and look forward to what we will bring to you in the near future. Until then, happy clicking, drumming, catching, and hitting the piano notes! Do not forget to have a rest occasionally!

—Kurokami, Mao