the cutting room mirror

Pop'n music 4

pop'n music 4 pop'n music 4 is more or less the series' first "completeMIX", as it includes nearly every song from the first three installments. It also introduced remixes.

Note: All of the content found in FIREBEAT.EXE take in consideration a decompressed version of the file.

ENDLESS SUMMER NUDE#

As stated in the introduction, pop'n music 4 had nearly every song from previous installments. The only exception was the licensed song ENDLESS SUMMER NUDE, which only appeared in pop'n music 3 and was cut since then, not even appearing in pop'n music 3 APPEND DISC. However, graphical and text data for this song exists in the game's files, as well as in the game's main executable. No chart nor music data exist.

GG01.GCZ
pnm4-ESN-gg01-1.png pnm4-ESN-gg01-2.png

KSCOM.GCZ
pnm4-ESN-kscom.png

KSGEN.GCZ
pnm4-ESN-ksgen.png

RAGENRE.GCZ
pnm4-ESN-ragenre-1.png pnm4-ESN-ragenre-2.png

HA/MT/HATI40.GCZ

SE/GEN/SEGEN40.GCZ
pnm4-ESN-SE-GEN-segen40.png

FIREBEAT.EXE - offset 0x32F80

SUMMER

(Source: tikal.)

Other Unused Graphics#

Placeholder Character Portrait#

This edited portrait of character Timer with the word "TEST" written in the left and right corners is used as a placeholder in many of the slots of folder CHSEL.

Placeholder Song Title Sprites#

Files HATI217.GCZ and HATI218.GCZ in folder HA/MT are placeholder images found in the directory of the song title splash sprites.

pnm4-HA-MT-hati217.png pnm4-HA-MT-hati218.png

Unused Character Name Tags/Icons#

Despite that the only characters first introduced in home releases which are available in this game are PRETTY [CS1], and the 3P/4P palettes for OLIVIA [1] and SHOLLKEE [1] (introduced in CS2), name tags for all characters introduced in the home releases of pop'n music and pop'n music 2 can be found unused among the file NAMEICON.GCZ. Icons also exist, but they are inverted variants of the icons of character Mary [2] (the only exception is POPPERS [CS2], whose icon is present).

pnm4-CS1-1.pngpnm4-CS1-2.pngpnm4-CS1-3.pngpnm4-CS1-4.pngpnm4-CS2-1.pngpnm4-CS2-2.pngpnm4-CS2-3.png
pnm4-CS2-4.pngpnm4-CS2-5.pngpnm4-CS2-6.pngpnm4-CS2-7.pngpnm4-CS2-8.pngpnm4-CS2-9.pngpnm4-CS2-9i.pngpnm4-phICON.png

(Source: tikal.)

Unused/Development Text#

Security Strings#

Several of the game's security strings, which are present in gq986_gq986.bin and in offset 0x94E84 of FIREBEAT.EXE form the following message:

thanx2reversEng.ths_WARN

Also present in FIREBEAT.EXE at offset 0x94EDC is another set of strings which contain a programmer credit:

MoDe:MaNuFaC/-normal?- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)
MoDe:SeRViCe/-service- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)
MoDe:EVeNT  /--event-- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)
MoDe:OVeRSea/--------- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)
MoDe:DuMMY01/-no-hard- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)
MoDe:DuMMY02/--------- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)
MoDe:DuMMY03/--------- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)
MoDe:DuMMY04/--debug-- BY Atsushi Fukuda (03998)

Masterlist Indexes#

Starting from offset 0x32CDC is a masterlist of some sorts. What is also interesting is that four songs from pop'n music 3 APPEND DISC absent from this release are also listed, located right after the new songs.

Offset

Text

Song

0x32DA0

jazzy?

Get on that train
Q-Mex

0x32DA8

dreamy?

penguin
NAKATEK

0x32DB0

superpop?

Bokutachi no keikaku
SUPER SLUMP

0x32DBC

rockabily?

Shabada! de Jitterbug!
Chako

(Source: tikal.)

References#


  1. pop'n music all HISTORY - pop'n music スーパーコレクション↩︎