by Jon Colverson ([email protected])
pop'n music is Konami's light-hearted music game. It's a similar game to Beatmania but with bright colors, bouncy music and cool cartoon characters. The arcade and console versions have a nine buttoned controller. The Game Boy version uses a simplified five button control system. The game is obviously aimed at younger players but it's by no means simple and like all of Konami's music games the great thing is that it's as difficult as you make it.
On the mode select screen there are 7 different choices, here I'll give a run-down of each and explain any other options.
Arcade - This mode lets you play songs from the arcade versions of pop'n music. You choose from a selection of songs before each round (see the song progression section of this FAQ for the possible choices). There are four sub-modes in arcade mode, these are:
Beginner - this mode starts with the instruction song and then you get a choice between two songs. This mode only has one round.
Normal - This mode has three rounds with a varying number of songs per round.
Excite - Excite mode is like normal mode but with an added feature. Several times per song the game goes into "excite mode" where the falling blocks move around the screen to vary the songs each time you play.
Survival - Survival mode is like Expert mode on Beatmania. In this mode the rhythm level bar at the bottom of the screen works differently. In survival you start out with a full bar. When you make a mistake you lose part of the bar, same as in the other modes. The difference is that in survival you cannot restore the bar. The bar doesn't reset between songs either so the one bar has to last you five songs which makes this mode quite tricky. In this mode there are five stages with a set sequence of songs. Survival mode also features the excite mode.
Original - Original features new songs which are not from the arcade versions of pop'n music. In Original mode there is a set sequence of songs. There are two sub-modes in Original mode. Normal mode is like the Arcade Normal mode and Another mode is like the Arcade Survival mode, it features excite mode and the expert rhythm level bar (except that in this mode the bar resets to full after each song).
Free - Free mode lets you play any songs from the game. When you select it there is an option screen. The first option turns on or off excite mode and the second option switches between manual and auto. When you select auto the game plays itself without you needing to press the buttons. This is helpful for learning how a song should sound when played correctly.
Versus - This is the two-player mode. I haven't played this mode yet, please let me know if you have and could explain how it works.
Option - The options screen lets you choose the difficulty of the game, the control system and the number of buttons to play with. In this game the difficulty setting controls the rate at which the rhythm level bar increases and decreases. On HARD it increases more slowly and decreases quicker when you miss notes. On EASY it increases faster and decreases more slowly.
Password - The password screen lets you enter a password to unlock the hidden songs in free mode. See the password section of this FAQ for a full list of possible passwords.
This is a list of all songs including secret songs. The songs are listed in the order that they appear in free mode when they are all unlocked. The difficulty is the number of bars on the song select screen. The character, genre and title are capitalized as they appear in the game. Songs with Japanese names are noted as (Japanese), if someone could give rough translations and/or the romaji representations of the titles that would be nice. Exceptions are Anzu's song which has Japanese and English in the title and Ling Ling's song which I think might have a Chinese title (if someone could confirm this either way that'd be cool too).
| # | Character | Dif | Genre | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | RIE-chan | 4 | POPS | I REALLY WANT TO HURT YOU |
| 02 | DON MOMMY | 7 | LATIN | El Pais del sol |
| 03 | SHOLL KEE | 6 | J-TEKNO | Quick Master |
| 04 | Dino | 5 | FANTASY | monde des songe |
| 05 | PRETTY | 6 | J-POP | Life |
| 06 | KoKo | 14 | EURO QUEEN | what i want (EURO MIX) |
| 07 | FLOWER | 12 | NEW FOLK | (Japanese) |
| 08 | BOY | 13 | FUNNY | PULSE |
| 09 | Kelly | 11 | J-GARAGE POP | Miracle Moon |
| 10 | Anzu | 4 | CUTE | (Japanese) Again. My Lovely Day |
| 11 | tourmaline | 9 | J-R&B2 | (Japanese) |
| 12 | Ling Ling | 19 | KANGTONG | (Japanese or Chinese?) |
| 13 | Charly | 20 | JAZZY | Get on that train |
| 14 | Pepper | 22 | GROOVE ROCK | (Japanese) |
| 15 | Jennifer | 15 | ROCKABILLY | (Japanese) |
| 16 | SANAE-chan | 6 | Winter POP | White Lovers |
| 17 | KING | 7 | WESTERN | (Japanese) |
| 18 | KRAFT | 11 | RUSSIA | Troika Dance |
| 19 | MARY | 13 | motor 5 | (Japanese) |
| 20 | KID | 12 | GANG | (Japanese) |
| 21 | MIMI-chan | 19 | folksong | dandelion |
| 22 | NYAMI-chan | 15 | SURFY | Sea Side City |
| 23 | JUDY | 9 | NUDY | No more I love you |
| 24 | BEAR TANK | 12 | RAKUGAKIDS | HOLIDAY |
| 25 | Candy | 7 | Romanesque | (Japanese) |
For each stage in each of pop'n music GB's modes there are set songs. In some modes you have a choice of up to four songs and in some of the modes there is no choice. These charts list all the songs in each mode. The songs are listed by the character associated with them. When there is more than one row for a column that means there is a choice of songs for that stage.
| ARCADE (beginner) | RIE-chan Dino | ||||||
| ARCADE (normal) | RIE-chan PRETTY | DON MOMMY SHOLL KEE Dino BOY* | KoKo FLOWER CHARLY PEPPER* | ||||
| ARCADE (excite) | RIE-chan PRETTY | DON MOMMY SHOLL KEE tourmaline | KoKo Ling Ling Jennifer | ||||
| ARCADE (survival) | FLOWER | KoKo | Jennifer | CHARLY | Ling Ling | ||
| ORIGINAL (normal) | SANAE-chan | BEAR TANK | JUDY | KRAFT | MARY | MIMI-chan | |
| ORIGINAL (another) | SANAE-chan | BEAR TANK | JUDY | KRAFT | NYAMI-chan | KING | Candy |
* BOY is only available on stage two of normal mode if you score 85000 or more on stage one or if you've used a password enabling it. PEPPER is only available on stage three if you score 85000 or more on stage two or if you've used a password.
There are a total of 64 passwords in pop'n music GB which unlock combinations of the six hidden songs. The following table lists all the passwords on the left and which songs they unlock along the top (see above table to link numbers to the song names/characters). An (x) means that that code unlocks that song, a gap means it doesn't.
| PASSWORD | 8 | 9 | 10 | 14 | 20 | 25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GIG | x | |||||
| GROOVE | x | |||||
| TRACK | x | x | ||||
| VOLUME | x | |||||
| SONG | x | x | ||||
| MARCH | x | x | ||||
| HORN | x | x | x | |||
| LIVE | x | |||||
| SESSION | x | x | ||||
| OMNIBUS | x | x | ||||
| FEATURE | x | x | x | |||
| AUDIO | x | x | ||||
| STEP | x | x | x | |||
| RHAPSODY | x | x | x | |||
| VOICE | x | x | x | x | ||
| SOPRANO | x | |||||
| FORTISSIMO | x | x | ||||
| TUNING | x | x | ||||
| TEMPO | x | x | x | |||
| JIVE | x | x | ||||
| SPEAKER | x | x | x | |||
| MIXING | x | x | x | |||
| DUET | x | x | x | x | ||
| HARMONY | x | x | ||||
| RECITAL | x | x | x | |||
| CASTANETS | x | x | x | |||
| CONCERTS | x | x | x | x | ||
| SOULFULL | x | x | x | |||
| TONE | x | x | x | x | ||
| JINGLE | x | x | x | x | ||
| HOWLING | x | x | x | x | x | |
| MUTE | x | |||||
| SWING | x | x | ||||
| VIOLIN | x | x | ||||
| JOINT | x | x | x | |||
| QUARTET | x | x | ||||
| HUMMING | x | x | x | |||
| TRUMPET | x | x | x | |||
| LOUDNESS | x | x | x | x | ||
| TIMPANI | x | x | ||||
| BREATH | x | x | x | |||
| SCAT | x | x | x | |||
| REQUEST | x | x | x | x | ||
| PICK | x | x | x | |||
| TROMBONE | x | x | x | x | ||
| BOLERO | x | x | x | x | ||
| VIBRATO | x | x | x | x | x | |
| CELLO | x | x | ||||
| ORGAN | x | x | x | |||
| HARP | x | x | x | |||
| CYMBAL | x | x | x | x | ||
| PIZZICATO | x | x | x | |||
| ORCHESTRA | x | x | x | x | ||
| STOMP | x | x | x | x | ||
| TAMBOURINE | x | x | x | x | x | |
| MARACAS | x | x | x | |||
| SCRATCH | x | x | x | x | ||
| UNISON | x | x | x | x | ||
| FUGUE | x | x | x | x | x | |
| MANDOLIN | x | x | x | x | ||
| LULLABY | x | x | x | x | x | |
| CLARINET | x | x | x | x | x | |
| PERCUSSION | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| MAX | x | x | x | x | x | x |
There are also a number of codes which don't unlock any new songs but instead give you the "instructions" animation/song when you go to free mode. This seems more or less pointless. Some of these codes were also codes on the first Beatmania game on GB so maybe these codes were put in this game to fool anyone who tried to use the old codes. Anyway, these codes are:
The main text version of this FAQ can be obtained at Game FAQs (http://www.gamefaqs.com/). Other versions (eg UNIX text, HTML coming soon) can be obtained from my web site (http://www.geocities.com/jon_colverson/pop/).
pop'n music GB is a Konami game. pop'n music is trademarked/copyrighted by Konami. The Japanese Konami web site for pop'n music GB is at (http://www.konami.co.jp/kcek/commod/GB/popun/index.html). This FAQ is copyright © 2000 Jon Colverson. Any part of this FAQ may be freely redistributed but credit must be given to the author.