After the popularity of "I Like to Pump It!", what would you like Konami to do next?

due to what american arcades are like and how konami wants to do home releases nowadays, the only real way i think that pop'n music could be successful here is if they branched out into other types of media.

like an anime. i don't understand how this series doesn't have an anime yet lol.

That's the thing we are aware of too. We know that one of the primary factors of Pop'n Music's failures is poor distribution and advertisement of Konami's arcade games in general, as well as a general poor understanding of the international side of the situation. We are discussing on 5ch about the American situation and how to make the next game. There is currently a lot of demand for the game to release again in the comment section of the YouTube video. I think there is a chance, if Japan is willing to work for it. Perhaps there will have to be more Round 1 locations in America, or Japan will have to make new buildings by expanding more of its game center enterprises internationally. I think through this situation now about Pop'n Music, Konami can see that it was really their poor choices that led to Pop'n Music failing overseas, but if they did things differently it can be a success. So there is a very important chance now to have the company change its views and the way it releases its products.

I think that creating an anime would be a poor decision right now. The anime would overshadow the actual main product itself, which is the rhythm game, and the characters are made to just represent groups of songs and is not supposed to be a deep world. It would make it even more difficult for Konami to enter the market this way. It would be much better, in my opinion, to make the game itself more animation-focused. I am currently working on animations that will try to transition people from the popular YouTube video to focus on the game. My first video will be combininig aspects of the "I Like to Pump It"/Pop'n Music Portable commercial with fake gameplay. So Mimi and Nyami will dance in a similar way to the video, the gameplay will be center, buttons will be on the bottom as if it were a recording of actual gameplay but with Mimi/Nyami's hands, and a mix of characters from the video and the series itself will pop up on the sides of the animation. I will then make more animations with either songs that are popular in the animation meme/edit community, or songs I think foreigners will like. They'll be like music videos in a way.

even though i'm rarely able to go to round1, i do wish to see the game get actually supported there. the few times i've been there, most of the people who played pop'n music were young girls and they usually played battle mode. it could be a great beginner arcade rhythm game if it had an english translation and more accommodations for new players. the removal of 5-button mode was a huge blow to this and many songs still do not have easy charts.

since americans who go to arcades tend to value prizes over gameplay, it could also benefit from awarding tickets or even trading cards (similar to what it used to have before card connect). in fact, there are american games that do this (minecraft dungeons, injustice, and some coin pusher games if you want to count those too). i actually at first only played sound voltex because of the cards.

about an anime, yeah it would overshadow the game overseas. but that's not a problem in japan where the game is already easily accessible and could even help it gain more popularity. there are a lot of fans who want this to happen and it doesn't have to have a super deep story or anything. yeah these characters are just meant to represent songs but especially as the games went on we've learned a lot about these characters' personalities and lore through mostly their animations.

Now, speaking of Konami's current consumer products, it is currently a subscription service for PCs, not game consoles, via Konami Station (Konaste), and the controllers are limited production items, but there are official products, including for PCs, and there are also several third-party controllers. If you are thinking of making your own, button switches are a little expensive, but it is not that hard to get hold of. However, if you are thinking of letting children play this at home, I think the button size of Φ100 is a little too large, so it might be better to go down one size to Φ60.

In other words, the button size is too large for the target market of children.

Anyway, the commercial using the Space Dog song is a MV-like PV for Korea, and it was not broadcast in Japan because the game was already well known in Japan at the time or because it may have been difficult to make such a commercial format, but in that sense, it is not impossible to make something like that in English-speaking countries, but I think it is necessary to explain the specifications of the arcade game machine. There are appropriate settings for the characters from the past.

However, when you think about why characters exist, creating animations using only characters does not necessarily lead to good recognition. After all, unless something is done about the location of arcade games in English-speaking countries, it will not lead to increased awareness of the original arcade games.

The hardware itself differs depending on the time period, but 25 years have passed since the original configuration, and the original cabinets are still in operation, and there are some compatibility issues between the current and old models, but in particular, monitor standards have changed from analog to digital over the past 25 years, and delays have increased due to hardware limitations, but even if measures are taken on the software side to deal with such configurations, there are some things that cannot be done due to the original delays.

Furthermore, when it comes to marketing the device, I think it is also a problem that the web-related aspects of the IC cards are not fully compatible with other languages.

Never been to Round 1 in America, but it doesn't surprise me they would do something like just importing the Japanese arcade machine directly... Konami first of all needs more English skills in general. What happened in the Konami Arcade Championship is their lack of being able to understand foreigners from their perspective about why they were unable to enter the DDR championship in Japan legit, and maybe they aren't even aware that Round 1 is connecting to Osaka servers...? So yeah, I absolutely agree, 5 buttons needs to come back, and there needs to be better translation and song variety for the foreign market. I think it's fine that young girls are playing it, that was Pop'n Music's target demographic in the first place. I estimate from studying the comment section of the YouTube video that most people who will be interested are either young women or black people.

So, the situation in Japan is that animation in general is not something general people watch. If you turn on a TV in Japan, it is rare to see any anime at all. There is no "anime channel" like an all-day Toonami or something in Japan. It is mostly "talento" on TV, basically a bunch of variety shows where people have a reaction cam to the side nodding their head and looking shocked and saying "sugoi" to things. TV is very localized in Japan spanning a few prefectures at a time, like a radio station. People who use satelite or cable are rare, and even if you did have the subscription for one of those, there aren't more than 30 TV channels anyway. People may watch anime using the Abema app, but really the general public of Japan has only been introduced to Netflix after the coronavirus. Most Japanese people already are aware of Pop'n Music, going to the arcade is a regular thing. The decreasing playerbase is a problem about game centers in Japan themselves, not Pop'n Music. And I'd argue Konami would be losing money making an anime, because companies do not make much profit putting their shows up on Crunchyroll or Netflix, people will either watch it on some grey website like 9anime or people on TikTok will reupload it, and it may close-in the possible foreign target audience to only anime fans. In the first place, to make an anime in Japan, you need a sponsor, and you might need to get approval from NHK. It's difficult to make anime in Japan in the past 7 years.

Friday Night Funkin' is my biggest inspiration for my animation project I'm making. People who really admire animation love the game, and even if they do not play it, they can watch gameplay on YouTube. That game does not need an anime to be popular. People who love animation make mods of the game, and a lot of them are inspired by other animations on YouTube. And I think some of that feeling can be put into Pop'n Music. If Mimi and Nyami can do Caramelldansen, it would be cute. I think with the animation tools available with vectors now, it may be possible to create 2d rigs and have multiple characters do the similar animation. I think Pop'n Music has a good niche it can fill that FNF can't, especially with its use of regular music and how a lot of BEMANI music is popular online.

maybe i'm just misled since the way animation is treated here is different than in japan.

but yeah i do feel like people who like fnf are also likely to be interested in pop'n. one of my little cousins likes to play a bootleg mobile version of it and i have introduced him to pop'n before. i don't think he's that big into it but we did have a lot of fun that one time we played it together at my house.

Yeah, it's very different. It's something I had to learn when I moved over here to Japan a few years ago. People outside Japan want to tell Japan what anime they want Japan to make by making fan animations and art, things that American companies would easily see. But Japanese people can't read English sadly (the English education is too poor and the nuances of the language are extremely different sometimes if you get too deep into learning it). So they wouldn't know how to find demand for other media like the largest example Warrior Cats, and I am sure HarperCollins even tried their best to contact Japanese companies to make an anime. American companies do not need to sway investors why they should make it, they just do what they feel will make money (they still play it extremely safe a lot of the time). As much as I do want to push for Japanese companies to know about foreign demand for certain anime, this is one of those times that I'd have to say to at minimum hold off until a possible foreign arcade machine releases.

I think a large example would be Gainax/Trigger. What happened at the end of the original Evangelion is they ran out of money and time. American companies make at least half a season before it airs, but in Japan they develop the episode right before airdate and the time to make it is so much shorter. So the last episode ended in storyboards partially because of that. The company was always struggling with sponsors. Panty and Stocking always actually had a plan for season 2, but the show was a lot more popular overseas, and it was difficult to air it on TV in Japan. Then Gainax split apart into multiple other companies due to management disagreements, and there was a fight for who owns PSG. So that's why it is only now that PSG season 2 gets into development. I'd recommend watching this video to get an idea about Gainax's sponsorship problems.