The Idolmaster: Starlit Season’s mics grow larger with every retry, due to a bug

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-10-27 18:05 (JST)
Translated by. Matthew Parker

In Bandai Namco Entertainment’s newest game, The Idolmaster: Starlit Season, a bug in which the mics of the idols become giant under specific circumstances has been discovered and has gone viral.

The game features female idols from across four different agencies in the Idolmaster series. They form a supergroup named “Project Luminous” and the game depicts the growth of the idols through their various activities and challenges. However, the idols aren’t the only things experiencing a growth.

It is believed that by retrying a performance over and over, the size of the mic that appears during a Climax Appeal slowly gets bigger. In order to replicate this, start a performance with a group which has the Climax Appeal “Over the Top” selected. Liven up the performance as usual, but choose to retry after having activated “Over the Top.”

After restarting the performance and using “Over the Top” again, some of the sizes of the mics that appear here will have enlarged compared to before. The change in the size of the microphone accumulates every time “Over the Top” is activated and the performance is retried, so repetition of this can create a huge microphone.

This bug became well-known after the “Artist/DJ/Streamer” viva_h tweeted about it. We tested and confirmed it works while playing the PS4 version on a PS5. According to what viva_h reported, he was playing a 15-man medley festival and used “Over the Top” with Tsubasa Ibuki, Mami Futami, Kaho Komiya, Kaori Sakuramori and Mika Jougasaki (from left to right) when the bug occurred.

We changed it up in our test by making a unit comprised of Ranko Kanzaki, Tsumugi Shiraishi, Kohaku Okuzora, Takane Shijou and Rinze Morino in a regular festival.

In our test, we retried the performance numerous times using the aforementioned method and confirmed that the mics did indeed enlarge. A visible change in size wasn’t noticeable during the first few retries, but around the 10th retry and beyond, there was a clear effect on Takane Shijou’s mic.

Through retrying over and over, the mic went from normal to fusing with her hand, to getting stuck in her face, to protruding through the back of her head and finally taking up half of the screen. While this had no negative effect on the gameplay, seeing Takane swing around a huge tree-sized mic was truly surreal.

While it may be hard to notice due to the gigantic mic drawing in all of the attention, other changes started to happen after 50 or so retries. In addition to Takane, Tsumugi Shiraishi’s mic also started to get bigger, while Kohaku Okuzora’s mic surprisingly began to slightly shrink.

Despite a change in size being the common factor, it’s curious that Takane’s mic would become so large, and yet Kohaku’s would conversely get smaller. Putting the evidence together with what happened to viva_h, the four girls whose mics became larger are all above 160cm tall and Takane stands the tallest at 169cm.

On the other hand, Kohaku Okuzora is on the shorter side compared to those four girls at 157cm and her mic got smaller. While the true cause remains unknown, it seemed like the height of the idol has some effect on the change in size of the mic.

In order to prove this hypothesis, we conducted a further test. This time we selected Kirari Moroboshi, Sakuya Shirase, Kaho Komiya, Kohaku Okuzora and Takane Shijou (left to right). We added two girls who are taller than Takane to see if anything changed with Kirari (186cm) and Sakuya (175cm). While the performance and song were different from our first test, Kirari and Sakuya’s mics did indeed get larger the more times retried.

What we can surmise from these results is that the mics of the tallest idols continue to grow in size by repeatedly retrying the performance after activating the Climax Appeal “Over the Top.” It must be restated that this bug caused no negative effects gameplay-wise. It’s overall just a harmless, yet odd bug that only occurs under very specific circumstances.

The Idolmaster: Starlit Season is currently available on PS4 and PC via Steam.