Top 10 Hatsune Miku Collabs in Gaming, Ranked

Hatsune Miku's popularity cannot be overstated. Ever since her creation in 2007, this virtual idol has been growing more and more popular with each passing year. As more songs are made with her software and new musical artists are born, Miku gets respect as a musical artist despite being fictional. She's even had appearances at huge events like Coachella, cementing her as being truly respected in the music scene.

With this huge popularity, it was only inevitable that Miku would appear in many video games. Not only does she have her own long-running series with Project Diva and Project Sekai: Colorful Stage, but she has also had many appearances in other people's games as a guest character! Despite the idol's popularity, there is very little documentation on all the collaborations she has featured in. If you're curious about how far Miku's popularity has carried her in the gaming space, compiled below is a list of some of the most interesting Hatsune Miku collaborations in gaming!

10 Yakuza 5

Becoming a True Idol

Rounding off the list is the fifth game in Sega's Like a Dragon franchise: Like a Dragon 5: Fulfiller of Dreams (Known in the West as Yakuza 5). When walking around the city of Tsukimino in Yakuza 5, the last thing players would expect is to run into the popular internet idol Hatsune Miku, but in what is always a shock to see, this city features a snow sculpture of her in the northern section of the city! Some substory characters even acknowledge its existence in dialogue.

Yakuza 5 featured not only a sculpture of 2012's Ice Miku (a yearly tradition where Miku is given a winter look for festivals), it also allowed gamers to run around in the post-game as Haruka wearing Miku's iconic outfit (wig and all!). Running around as Miku Haruka and playing various minigames as her can be fun, but it is sadly held back slightly by how Haruka is capable of doing much less than the other playable characters in the game.

While this collaboration may seem small compared to every future entry on this list, this was one of the very first appearances of Miku in a video game and deserves appreciation for paving the way for what would come in the following decade.

9 Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session!

Drumming Up Success

Yakuza 5 being the Like a Dragon game to prominently feature Miku feels prophetic in a way, as one of the few arcade games featured in this title was Bandai Namco's famous Taiko no Tatsujin, which would also have a Miku collaboration later on! In 2017's Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session, four songs sung by Hatsune Miku appear in the game. These songs are Ghost Rules, Alien Alien, Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu -Gekijouban-, and the famous Senbonzakura! Drumming along to these songs can be as pleasant as it is difficult.

Like all Taiko no Tatsujin songs, scoring high and receiving a large combo will cause several characters to appear on screen to dance to your drumming. Scoring high on the Miku tracks in this title will naturally cause Miku and her friends to appear on the screen and cheer you on as you struggle to get that perfect score and inevitably miss one of the final notes. Having Miku cheer you on in a rhythm game may not be as satisfying as playing her, but seeing her cameo in one of gaming's longest-running music-centric series is more than worth it.

8 Monster Hunter Frontier G

Hunting with Style

The last place one would expect a famous internet idol to appear is in a game set in a fantasy world all about fighting gigantic creatures, but shockingly, Hatsune Miku has shown up once before in the Monster Hunter series! Appearing in the Japanese-exclusive Monster Hunter Frontier G, players were able to obtain Hatsune Miku-styled outfits and weapons to wear while slaying the game's various monsters.

While the very idea of Hatsune Miku appearing in a Monster Hunter game is ridiculous at face value, one cannot deny the joy they feel seeing this cute idol slice apart dragons with a keytar-shaped greatsword or a microphone-shaped hammer. It's a shame this title, and thus the collaboration was forever Japanese exclusive. Perhaps in the future a similar collab will appear in a game like Monster Hunter: Wilds, so Miku can once again go on the hunt with a group of players.

7 Blue Archive

Bluer Than Her Hair

It shouldn't be too surprising that one of the hottest gacha games of the early 2020s got its own Hatsune Miku collaboration. In fact, Miku was one of the first collaborations that Blue Archive ever received and thus feels extremely unique among the other girls featured in that game. Seeing Miku portrayed in the Blue Archive art style also makes this one of the cutest entries on this list.

As a playable unit, Miku plays a support role in Blue Archive. Her skills are all based around recovering HP and increasing the critical hit rate of allies in her party. She may be wielding a t-shirt firing a rocket launcher, but this girl is all about making sure her fans are happy and healthy! While appearing in gacha game collaborations can feel quite cheap, it’s always nice to see an entirely new audience being introduced to Hatsune Miku.

6 Fall Guys

Falling in Love With Miku

In September of 2022, the internet was taken by complete surprise as Fall Guys announced it would be having a collaboration with Vocaloid, featuring a bean-ified version of Hatsune Miku! The best part of Fall Guys collaborations is always seeing how the designers translate your favorite characters into bean form, and seeing one of these beans with Miku's iconic long, blue, twin tails is absolutely adorable.

Sadly, this Fall Guys collaboration must lose some points as the Fall Guys website infamously referred to Miku as an AI-generated artist, which is not only non-factual but also makes her look bad to those unfamiliar with how her software actually works. Fall Guys wouldn't be the final Epic Games-owned property to feature Hatsune Miku, as this collaboration merely opened the floodgates for her to appear in another one of their games in 2024.

5 Love Nikki-Dress UP Queen

Dress-Up with the Idol

Having an extremely iconic outfit that most people can recognize at even a single glance, it was inevitable that Hatsune Miku would one day appear in a dress-up game. That's where Paper Studio's Love Nikki comes in, as in 2019 it had a collaboration with Vocaloid which featured several of Hatsune Miku's wonderful outfits. This collaboration is also one of few on this list to incorporate Miku into a story as a character who the player interacts with.

This collaboration features three different Magical Mirai Miku outfits from 2016-2018 as well as costumes based on Rin and Len. While the 2D images of Love Nikki are a lot simpler than other dress-up games, the ability to fully customize your appearance and add some Hatsune Miku flair to it must be appreciated. One can only hope that the newest Nikki game, Infinity Nikki, also has a Hatsune Miku collab in the future and brings her iconic clothing to its world.

4 Ninjala

The Silent Musician

While Ninjala doesn't receive much love compared to games that target a similar audience, like Splatoon, this game has been chugging along for years now and even has a few collaborations with well-known properties under its belt, such as its 2021 collaboration with Vocaloid, which not only featured Hatsune Miku but also the twins Rin and Len as well as her friend Meiko. Seeing other non-Miku Vocaloids appear in collaborations is much rarer than just seeing the idol herself, so their inclusion in this game is much appreciated.

For a collaboration with a game that isn't centered around music, Ninjala surprisingly went all out with the amount of Miku accessories, emotes, and other memorabilia available in the game during this event. The game even lets players set the iconic Miku song Senbonzakura as background music during gameplay! This Miku collaboration must have been well received as in 2023 Ninjala received a second Miku collaboration! Perhaps another will happen in the future if they keep this up.

3 Revue Starlight ReLIVE

Join the Club

Revue Starlight ReLIVE was a gacha game that was taken from the world far too soon. The characters and music of this title were fantastic and should be appreciated. Being centered around music, it was inevitable that the game would receive a Hatsune Miku collaboration like many other gacha games. Unlike many of these games though, Miku actually appears as a character in this event with her own story.

In many ways, Miku's appearance in Revue Starlight feels quite natural. Before it was shut down, the girls of Revue Starlight would frequently cross over with characters from other franchises focused on music, like Sega's Sakura Wars. So seeing this famous internet idol appear before the class to help them just feels right. For Miku herself, many mobile games simply use her songs instead of allowing the idol herself to appear, so seeing her in the style of Revue Starlight as an actual character more than earns it a slot on this list.

2 Persona 4 Dancing All Night

The Expected Collaboration

When Sega and Atlus first announced Persona 4: Dancing All Night, it seemed like a ridiculous idea. Even for a Persona Spinoff, taking the world of Persona 4 and applying a gameplay style similar to Sega's Project Diva franchise didn't seem like it would work.

Luckily, the game was plenty of fun and would earn the Persona Dancing subseries two more entries. Because the gameplay of Dancing All Night was based on the gameplay of Project Diva, it should come as no surprise that the main character of the Project Diva games, Miku herself, would be added to Dancing All Night as a DLC character!

Seeing Miku in Shigenori Soejima's Persona art style with a totally unique outfit is a sight to behold. Like future Persona Dancing DLC characters, Hatsune Miku is only available to play as for a single song in Dancing All Night. Perhaps what's most shocking about this collaboration is that Miku didn't sing one of the main themes of Persona 4 but rather Heaven, a late-game dungeon theme. Despite this odd song choice, the Miku cover of this song is incredibly good and makes this collaboration more than worth experiencing.

1 Fortnite

The World is Hers

After much anticipation and begging from fans, Epic Games finally made Hatsune Miku the spotlight star in a full season of Fortnite Festival. This collaboration was hyped up by Miku fans for months, and it did not disappoint. Not only does Miku have three fantastic Fortnite skins, but she also has two great emotes, four catchy songs, and several other goodies for players willing to get both her bundle and the Fortnite Festival pass!

Being able to play as Miku in Fortnite was the dream of many people as it fully cemented that anyone can appear in this game. Her Festival outfit's color scheme of pink, white, and blue just further pushed a large section of Miku fans to hop on Fortnite and get her pass. With the huge publicity boost Miku gave to even a game as big as Fortnite, one cannot help but wonder what other games will feature her in the future. One thing's for sure though, Miku will continue to appear in more and more games as she continues to hold her title as the internet’s biggest virtual idol.