MURDOCH

MURDOCH began life as a prize-winning entry in The 3rd PIU Creation Contest, the series' community creation contest. It debuted in Pump It Up M, the mobile edition, where it landed ahead of the arcade lineup. When the mobile service was discontinued, the song was brought over to Pump It Up PHOENIX in the 1.02.0 update. Its direct sequel, Murdoch vs Otada, came out of a later contest and was confirmed for PHOENIX in the 2.02.0 update; as the title implies, that track mashes together MURDOCH, Caprice of Otada, and DJ Otada.

The BGA follows a wizard named Jack P. Murdoch as he lays waste to a city with his magic. The visuals were reworked for PHOENIX: illustrator YSJ took over the artwork that Khaos Legion had handled during the mobile era, partly reusing the original assets, while FuseBox designed the character himself. The wizard turns up again in the BGAs for Halloween Party ~Multiverse~ and Murdoch vs Otada; the closing shot of his animation shows him marked as wanted, foreshadowing his clash with DJ Otada and company in the sequel.

The standard charts were stepped by NIMGO: Single at levels S11, S18, S20, and S22, and Double at D14, D20, D22, and D24. Because the higher Single charts had been poorly received in the mobile version, they were comprehensively reworked for this release. A fun quirk is that the last two digits of each chart's total note count match that chart's own level.