This month’s update is going to focus on the tournament I participated on the 25th of October.
ChuniMaiDori Festival 2025
ChuniMaiDori Festival 2025 was the second arcade rhythm game tournament that I joined. The first one was a maimai tournament held in a mall near my place to celebrate the release of maimai DX, and I joined just to get the black gloves from SEGA. This time, I joined for several reasons:
- My friends (see above picture) are also participating in the tournament
- Off tangent, but is it weird to have a friend group with a wide age gap? The youngest is in senior high school, while I am the unc in that group
- The guest stars (see this post’s cover image) are people who I respect & want to meet in person if possible
- Call it delusional but I had misplaced confidence that I could win the tournament (the Chunithm division, at least)
As the tournament name suggests, the tournament is divided into two games (Chunithm and maimai), with each game’s tournament being divided into more groups based on their skill level.
In Indonesia, maimai is the more popular game because it is released way earlier than Chunithm. The first version of Chunithm that I saw in Indonesia is Luminous Plus, where it was playable on the first Cow Play Cow Moo in Indonesia (coincidentally, the arcade is located inside of this competition’s mall). Timezone (the most popular arcade in Indonesia) has recently started adding Chunithm cabinets to their arcades though, so we might see more and more people playing Chunithm. Anyway, the reason I am showing you the statistics of this competition is to explain why maimai has an online qualifier. Imagine if 200 people need to qualify on-site, the schedule would be messed up.
I joined both maimai and Chunithm competitions, but for maimai I was not good enough to qualify for the on-site competition. In a cruel twist of fate, my friend pushed me out of the top 32 (I am the 33th place in the picture above). I forced him to accompany me in order to improve both of our scores, but in the end I couldn’t improve my score in order to qualify. Maybe this is a sign for me to stop playing maimai. The burnout is already there, but this might just be the final straw.
For the Chunithm competition, there was no online qualifier. The onsite qualifier was a single song played (the committee chose 3 songs, and selected 1 in random), and the 16 highest scorers proceed to the next round. I got 7th, but honestly I was really scared I didn’t make it because I thought I need to get at least 1008000 to feel safe.
As for the top 16 -> top 8, we played 2 songs. The committee decided on 4 songs beforehand, and randomized 2 songs out of the 4 for us to play. The top 8 based on cumulative score then proceeds to the next round. I somehow got 1st highest cumulative score.
The top 8 -> top 4 system is as follows:
- 8 people are divided into 2 groups based on their top 8 cumulative scores
- 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th makes group A, and the remainder makes group B
- 7 songs are randomized (the random songs will be in a specific level range)
- Each player in the group bans 1 song from the 7 random choice
- Top 2 cumulative score proceeds to top 4
Because the song is randomized during the competition, I couldn’t prepare beforehand (that would require me to play/know ALL LEVEL 12+ songs). As a result, 2 out of the 3 songs I played are sightread (never seen the chart, never even heard of the song). My cumulative score wasn’t high enough, so I was officially eliminated in 5-8th place. This stings, because if I just make top 4, I would get enough prize money to recoup the registration fee.
I got to take a picture with the guest stars & get their signature on the official competition art, so I think it’s still worth it due to the valuable memories (yes this is cope). I have my grievances with SOME of the committee members, but at least I want to respect their effort in putting together this tournament.
Will I join any future tournaments? Unlikely, unless my friend group joins as well, or if the guest star is someone who I want to meet
Goi (語彙) progress
I divided my project into 3 main phases:
- Initial DB population using node.js
- Backend using Java Spring Boot
- Frontend using either vanilla React or Vue
I recently managed to finish the first phase, so I can finally move on to coding in Java. I’m in kind of a dilemma, because making a Spring Boot project is more convenient in IntelliJ, but my preferred editor is VSCode (especially due to my workplace providing GitHub Copilot)
Future plans
- I’m probably gonna quit maimai until they release the final boss song (a 4 minute banger), then I would come back for a while to play it, then quit again for the foreseeable future
- Chunithm is my new arcade rhythm game addiction
- I have IIDX and SDVX controllers at home, although the IIDX controller is not true to arcade size
- My main focus is on the upcoming PoE1 (Path of Exile 1) league that is releasing around the end of this month
- For one week (27 October 2025 - 2 November 2025) I plan on taking it easy. I felt burnt out due to the 5K training plan for my first race, or maybe just an empty void due to not having a concrete plan (I want to run 10K next, I don’t knwo when. I just know I want to do it next year)
- After a week, I’m going to start training for a 10K, but nothing too ambitious
- I bought some N2 prep books, but if I were to take the N2 exam, it would probably be on December 2026?