Music of Ouendan 2

As Pink Godzilla has been counting down, Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 is now shipping. As I wait for my copy to arrive (I didn't spring for speedy shipping, oops), I recalled that one of the best things I did for Ouendan was listen the hell out of the real songs. In that spirit, why not check out what's available on the iTunes Store?

I have personal qualms with buying music from the iTunes Store (the DRM situation, which they're improving), but I don't know anywhere else to get Japanese music a la carte. There was an excellent article in Slate about the iTunes Store in Japan called "jTunes: The insanely great songs Apple won't let you hear." Paul Collins discusses some of the great music that doesn't make it to my side of the Pacific, but notes that with a little work you can fake around Apple's country restriction:

While iTunes Japan pegs foreign undesirables from their credit card numbers, it can't screen fake Japanese addresses provided by prepaid iTunes Card users. There's a small but ardent underground economy among Americans in dummy addresses and e-mailed scans of Japanese iTunes Cards, picked up by friends in Tokyo convenience stores or openly sold online.

One of those open sellers is J-List, whom I first heard of way back in the day when I was first hearing about things like anime and Pocky. I bought a ¥3000 card and, following their directions, set up an iTunes Store account.

One result is this iMix, comprising all the songs in the iTunes Store I could find from Wikipedia's track list. (That was before several additional tracks were added to the list, but I can't find those tracks in the iTunes Store anyway.)

Sadly it's only six songs, so at ¥1200 it'll almost use half of a ¥3000 iTunes card. Several of the songs are listed on the iTunes Store, but are really "orgel" versions. I doubt these will help your game performance, so I didn't include them. Personally I prefer my covers bluegrass, anyway.

If you have any suggestions or corrections for this iMix, let me know.