There was, alas, no iM@S Anime Season 2 announcement out of todays iDOLM@STER 7th Anniversary live event, but they did show the first promotional video for the upcoming Shiny Festa game for PSP – and promptly uploaded it to the interwebs.

For anyone curious as to how they’re pulling those graphics out of the PSP in comparison to similar genre games like Project Diva or the K-On game, well, they’re doing it by cheating – they’re using pre-rendered videos for the “music video” part of the proceedings, with the gameplay interface layered on top of that. It seems like a weird way for them to go in a sense – by using pre-rendered video, it prevents them from nickel-and-diming the more rabid parts of the fanbase with costume DLC (which is, you know, iM@S tradition at this point), as you can’t really expect them to render every costume combination in advance. Suppose they’ll just have to milk it via DLC songs instead.

Otherwise, yeah, it’s a pretty simple looking rhythm game. There’s only actually two inputs to it – there’s left and right (and I gather that the d-Pad, shoulder buttons or certain face buttons are acceptable for each), either as single presses or as having to be held for short periods of time. I gather the complication is going to be on the “track” side of things, where they’ll be distorting it into fashions other than the straight lines seen for most of the PV. Those who’ve played iM@S2 will probably know how much of a headache those looping tracks in the vocal lessons can be when you’re trying to rush through them, so I suppose it may end up slightly more interesting than it looks.

Anyway, ’tis out the 25th October.

Also, I still can’t accept Yayoi as being a drummer. Just saying.