Pop'n music 5 (Arcade)

pop'n music 5 (Arcade) In terms of features, pop'n music 5 was many things. It was the first game to introduce EX charts, a difficulty above Hyper which, at the time, was reserved for very few songs and only playable at the also new EXtra Stage, the first mainline arcade game to feature 5-Lane (later 5-Button) charts, and the last game to follow the art direction used since the first installment of the series.

Unused Graphics#

Location Test Leftover#

Among the graphics present in TITLE.GCZ is a sprite from... take a wild guess.

Placeholder Graphics#

Each song is marked with a specific ID, in which 58, 68-69, and 76-79 are not used. Despite this, placeholder background, splash screen, character portrait and genre graphics for these IDs can be found.

SE\SEGEN[ID].GCZ

CHIL\CHILA0[ID].GCZ, CHILA1[ID].GCZ

BG\BG_0[ID].GCZ

HA\HATI[ID].GCZ

Mahou no tobira EX#

HA\HATI72.GCZ is a splash screen graphic for an EX chart for the song Mahou no tobira (SPACE MACO no theme), indicating that the song was planned to have one in this game. However, it would not gain an EX chart until pop'n music portable 2, eleven years later, with it being transplanted to arcades in pop'n music 20 fantasia. When inspecting the DVD data, which contains the game's audio and charts, it is revealed that no proper EX chart for the song exists, with it being a duplicate of the Normal chart.

Early Ending Screen#

An early graphic for the game's ending screen (if playing as Mimi [5]) can be found in END\SEND000.GCZ. The differences between it and the final variant will be noted below:

Unused	Final

• The text in the credits is much bolder in the early variant.
• The "Here's pop'n music 5 staffs" and "PRESENTED BY KONAMI" text lines are centered in the final release.
• Mimi and Nyami's positions in the start of the credits were readjusted.
• The position of the squares and of the text in the panel containing the designer credits was readjusted.
• The "DAY & NIGHT" background text in the programmer panel was slightly changed to "NIGHT & DAY".
• The font in "GREATEST" in the end of the credits was changed.
• In the older graphic, the console team was still referred to as Konami Computer Entertainment Yokohama, indicating that the graphic was created before the merge between the Yokohama and Sapporo studios had happened.
• Mimi's position was slightly changed.

Development Text#

Several of the game's security strings, which are present in gea04-ja_gca04-ja_gca04-jb.bin and in offset 0xA58B4 of a decompressed FIREBEAT.EXE form the following message:

THANX2REVERSeNG.THS_warn

Also present in FIREBEAT.EXE at offset 0xA590C is another set of strings which contain a programmer credit:

MoDe:MaNuFaC/-normal?- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:SeRViCe/-service- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:EVeNT  /--event-- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:OVeRSea/--------- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY01/-no-hard- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY02/--------- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY03/--------- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY04/--debug-- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)

References#