Play Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan Online

Summary

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan is a rhythm game on Nintendo DS that lets you rally a manga‑styled cheer squad with the stylus. Players tap numbered circles, trace slides, and spin spinners in time with upbeat J‑pop tracks, building combo flames that rise across the lower screen. A life bar representing the squad’s fighting spirit drains with each miss and refills when you nail beats, ending the stage if it empties.

The title packs fifteen missions across seven acts, each paired with covers of hits from artists like Asian Kung‑Fu Generation, The Blue Hearts and L'Arc‑en‑Ciel. Difficulty ramps from Easy to Expert, adding faster, smaller markers and tougher health‑meter management. A grading system from D up to S rewards flawless play—S requires a near‑perfect 300‑point chain on virtually every note.

Though never officially released outside Japan, the game became a beloved import, inspiring the Western‑friendly spin‑off Elite Beat Agents and a direct sequel, Ouendan 2. At GDC 2007, iNiS co‑founder Keiichi Yano revealed that the concept sparked from his first DS experience and showed an early prototype stage that featured a puppy in danger—a scenario later cut because the pup would die on failure.

Storyline

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (often just called Ouendan) follows a quirky all‑male cheer squad – and an all‑female cheerleader counterpart – that appears whenever ordinary people cry out for help. Dressed in stylized black school‑uniform‑inspired outfits with red armbands (cheergirls wear blue long‑sleeved kits), the squad cheers the protagonists through music, turning desperate moments into rhythmic challenges.

The game’s stages borrow from modern Japanese life and manga tropes. One level shows a high‑schooler distracted from his college entrance exams by his family, while another follows a pottery master who has lost his creative spark. Most stories play out with light‑hearted absurd twists, punctuated by whistles and shouty cheers.

A notable exception is a love story set to Hitomi Yaida’s “Over the Distance,” which adopts a softer tone, replaces the whistle with gentle chimes, and drops the usual loud countdown.

In the final stage all previously featured characters reappear as the Ouendan leads a world‑wide cheer to prevent an asteroid from destroying Earth.