Pop'n music (Arcade)

pop'n music (Arcade) YEAH
LET'S GET MOVIN
YEAH
LET ME FEEL THE GROUND SHAKE
US REPRESENT NEW THE SUPER POP'N MUSIC BY KONAMI
IS THE SOUND OF THE BEST GAME SURE KIDS
SO GET READY AND ENJOY

The very first installment of pop'n music, the cheerful third entry of what would later become Konami's "Bemani" rhythm game series, following beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution, and running on the same hardware as the former. Rather than replicating an instrument or a dance, however, the goal is to simply hit notes (Pop-kuns) by pressing the nine big colorful buttons on the board.

Hidden Level Select#

A hidden debug feature allows the player to freely select a song by holding down the Test button and pressing a combination of keys at the same time in the song selection screen. These don't work if Event Mode is turned on. Note that combinations 2+4+8, 2+8 and 8 don't work in the Korean release (see Regional Differences).

Unused Keysound#

The song Baby, I'm yours has an unused keysound, associated with the ID 0x19. It consists of a vocal sample ("Trippin it with rasta"), taken from Midi Mark Productions' Vocal Bytes library, and it was likely meant to be played in the brief interlude section in the middle of the song, as is the case with other two other vocal samples. In the home releases of pop'n music and pop'n music 2, this sound can be heard in the sound test, labeled as 22.

Build Dates#

At the beginning of the game's HDD data, a string containing version and build dates for the game can be found. Note that the string was slightly updated for the Asian and Korean releases of the game. By merging the first and second ROMs of each region, it's also possible to find these strings at the following offsets:

• Japan: 0x2471E
• Asia/Taiwan: 0x23880
• Korea: 0x236E2

 GQ803  pop'n music ver1.00  1998/09/04 (C) KONAMI

 GQ803AA  pop'n music ver1.01  1998/10/14 (C) KONAMI

Regional Differences#

Four releases of the game are known to exist:

• JA - The original Japanese version, labeled as popn1j in MAME; known internally as v1.00
• AA - The Asian version, labeled as popn1a in MAME; known internally as v1.01 but uses the same HDD as JA
• TA - The Taiwanese version, labeled as popn1 in MAME
• KA - The South Korean version, labeled as popn1k in MAME

Both the Taiwanese and South Korean versions are based on the Asian one, though the former doesn't seem to have any noticeable differences at first glance.

KONAMI logo#

The original Japanese release displays the 1986-1998 KONAMI logo during the Attract sequence. The Asian/Korean releases changed it to the 1998-2003 logo.

Japan	Asia/Taiwan/Korea

Songlist#

Song Info#

Several genre/title/artist names were changed in the Asian/Korean releases. Changes are highlighted in bold.

Missing Songs#

The Korean release, which is based on the Asian localization, lacks three songs: I REALLY WANT TO HURT YOU, The theme from GAMBLER Z and Love passes by. Their characters are still playable, however.

Electronic Fill#

The background of the song Electronic Fill was replaced in the Korean release of the game, now being a palette swap of the background originally belonging to the song Quick Master.

JA/AA/TA	KR

Mode Select Screen#

Along with a redesign of the text design above the mode selections, the "CHECK!" text in the bottom was removed. The explanatory text for the blue buttons was also made more detailed (this change was also done in several other screens).

Japan	Asia/Taiwan/Korea

Result Screen#

Several wording changes were made in the Asian/Korean releases, which include a fix in "Tonight/Tonight's Stats", and a simplification in the judgement counters. The colon in the stage counter was also removed, which was also done in several other screens (see below).

Japan	Asia/Taiwan/Korea

Stage:Number#

Some more examples of the colon removing, now in the song splash and gameplay screens.

Japan	Asia/Taiwan/Korea

Name Entry Screen#

Along with wording fixes in "Entry/Enter your name." and "Rank In/Ranking", the "It's All Good!" text in the left side of the screen was removed.

Japan	Asia/Taiwan/Korea

Total Result Screen#

Again, more wording/typo fixes, this time in "Congratulation/Congratulations" and "All Stage/All Stages Cleared". The latter text was also slightly moved, and, yet again, the colon in the stage counter was removed.

Japan	Asia/Taiwan/Korea

Characters#

Mary/Rave girl#

The text in the Miss/Lose animations for the characters Mary and Rave girl was changed to many symbols in the Asian/Korean releases.

Mary
JA	AA/TA/KA

TORU KAMIKAZE#

The text and hearts in the first section of TORU KAMIKAZE's Fever/Jam animation were removed from the Asian/Korean releases.

JA	AA/TA/KA

Character Names#

Several of the character names were changed as well.

JA	AA/TA/KA

Song Differences (HDD)#

Two of the game's songs have differences between the v1.00 HDD (used by the Japanese and Asian releases) and the v1.01 HDD (used by the Taiwanese and Korean releases):

INSTRUCTIONS#

This song, which plays when starting up Beginner Mode, has some of its BG change and background keysound parameters positioned differently, likely to accommodate the new English graphics.

YOUNG DREAM#

The v1.00 HDD erroneously assigns two 9 (rightmost white) notes to a blank keysound (ID 0x30); the faulty parameters are placed at positions 3162 and 3668, and affect the 9 notes on measures 25 and 29 (about 0:55 and 1:03 after the notes start scrolling, respectively). This was changed in v1.01, where these parameters load the keysound 0x22 (a cymbal) instead, which also applies to all subsequent pop'n music games.

References#