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Welcome to my guide on Pop'n Music!! You may or may not be aware of this game series by now, either way, thanks for checking this guide out! I've made this fan group and guide in inspiration from the recent trend that happened a month prior to the time of this post.
A mysterious cat and bunny twin duo dancing to some strange song!! ヽ( ꒪ ᗜ ꒪ )ﾉ
Even though this rhythm game series is very popular in Japan, it was basically almost unknown overseas except for those who are extremely obsessed with the genre. This video became an instant hit, getting 100,000 views in just 3 days after upload, and is now standing at over 1.5 million views.
The comment section is full of questions like, "Who are they? What anime are they from? Are they characters from Animal Crossing or Parappa the Rapper? How can I find out more about them?"
I will do my best to answer all those questions and more in this guide, and hope to help expand this new fandom into something great in the future.
< What is Pop'n Music??
Ever heard of "Beatmania"? It's also known as "Hip Hop Mania" overseas. "Pop'n Music" is considered to be the younger sister of Beatmania. They are both the 1st and 2nd rhythm games in Konami's BEMANI series, and they both run on the same engine. Both games were targetting a different demographic. While Beatmania was aimed at an older male audience who was more serious about music, Pop'n Music was aimed at younger people and women.
You may be able to already tell, the feeling is different.... While Beatmania focused more on its cool atmosphere with its visuals, song selection, and gameplay elements, Pop'n Music was a much more casual game that welcomes anyone to try playing it. Pop'n Music has many different songs from all genres, and has a larger focus on character animations and co-op play.
( ꒪ A ꒪,, ) < Hey wait a minute, this looks kinda like Guitar Hero! That one controller even looks like DJ Hero!! )
You're right! Guitar Hero is actually a clone of another BEMANI game, GuitarFreaks. And there's also DrumMania as well. They also run on the same engine. And don't forget, DDR is also part of the same series too! But let's steer our focus back to Pop'n Music!
The Pop'n Music series is full of lots of characters. Each character either is made to represent a certain specific subgenre of music, a specific band, or just fit a specific theme of a few songs that Konami has selected for the character. When you select the song, you will see the mascot of the song dance to the right side of the screen. Guess which ones these characters represent!
They also do collabs with other popular media, and those characters show up in the games! Some of them are even playable! You might be able to recognize some of these characters yourself. Guess what songs are in Pop'n Music!!
< What's the gameplay like???
The general gameplay, as you have probably noticed, uses 9 buttons. This may overwhelm beginners as there seems to be a lot to keep track of already! Not to worry, Pop'n Music is a very flexible game! In addition to changing the difficulty and speed settings, you can limit the number of buttons to 5, and VS mode uses 3 buttons.
But the most important thing to know about Pop'n Music is... you're meant to play with friends cooperatively!!
I bet you wonder about those two mascot characters. You may know now that the bunny is Mimi and the cat is Nyami. They were made in part to advertise a gimmick. The buttons are big, so it's easy for someone else to hit them with you! Bring your friends to the arcade and attack all the songs together!!
←Think of it like Plusle and Minun from Pokemon RSE. They were designed to advertise the new Double Battle and 2P vs 2P battle system via 4-way GBA link cables.
There's also a version of Pop'n Music that was Konami's final attempt at marketing the game to the overseas market, "Hello Pop'n Music", also known as "Pop'n Rhythm" in Europe or simply as "Pop'n Music" in America. This is a machine that separated the buttons so it was clear that you were meant to play with multiple people. Konami knew they had to tweak the game a bit and try to communicate to people outside Japan what the game series is like, but it was obvious they didn't have a clear understanding on what to do.
((Honestly, if Konami was more knowledgable about their western audience, I think they could've made a similar game to Friday Night Funkin' many years beforehand...))
< Wait, what?! "Last overseas?" How do I play?!
Unfortunately, that ain't gonna be easy if you are outside of Japan. If you have a Konami eAmuse account, it may be possible to get a subscription to Pop'n Music Lively or Unilab, but it may only be limited to accounts that are set to the Japanese region. And there are a lot of issues with the eAmuse account in general. If you really want to play a previous version, you're gonna have to do some digging. I am making a list here of all the games and what systems they were for below so you can do your best to find one.
- Pop'n Music 1: Arcade, PS1, Dreamcast
- Pop'n Music 2: Arcade, PS1, Dreamcast
- Pop'n Music 3: Arcade, PS1, Dreamcast
- Pop'n Music GB: Gameboy
- Pop'n Music Animelo: Arcade, PS1
- Pop'n Music GB Animelo: Gameboy
- Pop'n Music Disney Tunes: Arcade
- Pop'n Music Mickey Tunes: PS1
- Pop'n Music 4: Arcade, PS1, Dreamcast
- Pop'n Music 5: Arcade, PS1
- Pop'n Music Animelo 2: Arcade
- Pop'n Music 6: Arcade, PS1
- Pop'n Music 7: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music 8: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music 9: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music Best Hits: PS2
- Pop'n Music 10: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music 11: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music Iroha: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music Carnival: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music Fever: Arcade, PS2
- Pop'n Music Adventure: Arcade
- Pop'n Music Party: Arcade, PC
- Pop'n Music Be-Mouse: PC
- Pop'n Music Mobile: Old Mobile Phones
- Pop'n Music Mobile 2: Old Mobile Phones
- Pop'n Music Wii: Wii
- Pop'n Music The Movie: Arcade, PC
- Pop'n Music Sengoku Retsuden: Arcade
- Pop'n Music Portable: PSP
- Pop'n Music Tune Street: Arcade
- Hello Pop'n Music: Arcade
- Pop'n Music M: Modern Phones (but not on the app store anymore...)
- Pop'n Music Portable 2: PSP
- Pop'n Music Fantasia: Arcade
- Pop'n Music Sunny Park: Arcade
- Pop'n Rhythmin: Modern Phones (but not on the app store anymore...)
- Pop'n Music Lapistoria: Arcade
- Pop'n Music Éclale: Arcade
- Pop'n Music Usagi to Neko to Shounen no Yume: Arcade
- Pop'n Music Peace: Arcade, PC
- Pop'n Music Lively: PC
- Pop'n Music Unilab: Arcade, PC
In addition, there are 3rd party clones you can play, which have maps for both Pop'n Music and Beatmania. It seems most people recommend playing on Beatoraja. Use this English guide to get you started. I think most people are using the Mocha Repository to download charts, and you can search by number of buttons you want to play. Note that this clone community is not like the ones such as Clone Hero or Osu, they will only have listings of songs that they have legal permission to map in part because Konami's legal team is much more restrictive.
But I know, you probably really want Pop'n Music to be more easily available again. I do too. So, I want to say...
We need your help!!!
I, as well as takuohm83, have been contacting Konami and the Japanese Pop'n Music community about the situation. You know how the comment section of that "I Like to Pump It" video was wondering about if Pop'n Music is lost content? There is a lot of media about Pop'n Music that is lost, and there are rumors that Pop'n Music might be dying!! Reading about the development of the machine, there are some hardware limitations that need to be addressed in order to continue the franchise. This article is in Japanese, but if you are interested, please read this.
.I am an American living in Japan, and takuohm83 is Japanese. If we didn't notice this trend was happening, Japan probably wouldn't at all unfortunately... there is a large cultural barrier between Japan and the world. But they are now willing to listen to the international community better. And, there may be a chance to fix other games. We are hoping that some of the discussion of Pop'n Music will also leak over to other games like DDR, especially with the recent bad reception of DDR World. We may be able to fix the eAmuse pass, and what has happened in the previous Konami Arcade Championship may no longer happen if we are successful.
So please, if you can, email or call Konami about what you want to see for Pop'n Music! If you can't, leave a comment here, and we will send as much as we can to them! Personally, especially since the animation meme community seems to really love the characters so far, I want there to be a larger focus on animation and reference all the cute dances people have made over the years. A lot of the songs that are popular online are already in BEMANI's catalog, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. Konami also owns 4kids by the way, so it would be funny if some of those anime songs were to be in the game, as well as if they can have official Japanese translations. I also would like some more story elements for each song, and have the songs play out more like a music video. Please let us know what characters you like and what songs you want to see if Pop'n Music goes international again!!
< Can I read more?
If you'd like to read more about Pop'n Music, here are a few websites you can look at.
Pop'n Music Neocities Database
BONUS!!
Thanks so much for checking out this guide! I hope it helped you to get more interested in Pop'n Music! I'll be posting a lot in this group, so if you're interested, become a member! I'll be posting opinions on the characters, fanart, my own animations, and other things real soon!!
I cut out these gifs of Mimi and Nyami from Pop'n Music 8 specifically for this guide. Because of this, I was able to make versions of them in each other's shirts!! Feel free to use! And thanks again! :DD
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