pop'n music [title pending] (AC)

welcome back, Welcome To Wonderland

in all seriousness, i'm so fucking happy to see what they're bringing to the table here. feels like it's been forever since we've gotten a real shake-up. not that the games have been bad (far from it) but they were feeling homogenous after a while. i desperately wish one of these would come my way up here to CNY.

---

Hooray!!!


NOOOOOO. Literally one of the most fun games Bemani has ever developed and they abandoned it despite it having a strong fanbase

---

Dance ArounD was such a waste of time and resources considering how nice the cabinet looked. The younger audience they wanted to grab with it didn't play it enough and the fans of Dance Evolution didn't come back to enjoy it, so it was all around a failure, not sad to see it go. And DanceRush had so much potential I loved the concept, but Konami didn't care about it enough and popularity waned due to not enough frequent content updates, no new versions to keep it from getting outdated looking, and a no call no show at future KAC's which meant it's demise was all but guaranteed. So sad to see it go.

ANYWAY back on topic! I'm really hype for the new Pop'n music, it's a very refreshing change, and knowing this is gonna crop up in the US at Round 1's and other arcades has me even more excited, and I'm really glad Konami is having a change of heart allowing arcades outside Round 1 to buy a select few Bemani games. The future looks good for Bemani!

The fact that Dancerush didn’t get a random crossover for April Fools 2025 was very telling.

---

I would argue that the lack of a SPARK FESTIVAL last summer was much more telling than the lack of an AFD joke crossover.

But I digress, this is a thread about pop'n, not Dancerush :v

imo i think BGs & genres should be back but unlikely

---

Genres are confirmed back. All the new songs except BOW AND ARROW (license) have one.

I wonder if they'll add them retroactively for the songs from the Lapistoria - J&F era... probably not, though.

konami is eating, okay.,.,.,

---

The giant popkuns look like they would be satisfying to hit.

There used to be an edit someone in the community made of the pop'n music logo that said "big colorful buttons" and I think that describes my feelings perfectly. I wish I could find it.

---

Looking at the new originals for this game, am I not the only person who thinks TAN1CHU is likely an alias of KE!JU?

---

KE!JU wouldn't have two original songs in one location test.

---

Oh.

Either way, if this game does come to Round 1 Southcenter, I can finally have a chance to play modern pop'n music again.

---

according to whomst? maybe he really fux with the current theme

---

Here’s more information too
• They’re using a new animation method. It looks kind of like inbetweening (mostly called tweening)
• The portraits are animated as well
• The animations are no longer rectangles, now they don’t even have a frame
• Now, every character who gets a new original song also gets a new design and new animations (which they haven’t done since Usaneko)

This is really cool. I think the new animations are kinda bland, but it’s only the early stages, and it could very well change for the better

---

https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2025/08/06/155819.html
https://www.famitsu.com/article/202508/48806

new interviews with Des-ROW (producer) and wac (director)

I tried to get into Pop'n when I first started going to my local arcades two years ago, but found it way too hard to manage the nine lanes and handswitching required as just a mid-level Project DIVA player. That, and when I learned about all the technical issues—the low polling rate, the lack of timing offset, the general state of neglect it existed in relative to IIDX despite having IIDX's skeletal structure—I asked myself why I wasn't just playing IIDX instead (and I ended up losing interest there too because I found it hard to maintain the proper hand positioning.)

But now, after two years of having played SDVX and learning how to handswitch from that game, when I got to play Pop'n again at my local anime con last month, it clicked. My handswitching muscle memory translated and I immediately rocketed from Student to Detective class, and I'm still gaining about 1.00 rating per play. It's crazy progress to be making—I guess I just needed more experience with other rhythm games so I could develop my earth power enough to tackle Pop'n. I find myself enjoying it way more than IIDX, as it combines IIDX's tight timing and keysounding with the chaotic hand-switching sauce that SDVX has, and my wrists also don't complain when I play it the way they do when I play IIDX. Oh, and the characters are super cute (Nia/Toa gang where you at!!!)

I've been lucky so far to have a single Pop'n cab running UniLab at my local, but for the longest time I found it unpalatable due to the lack of headphone jack and the ops cranking the volume so hard that the tweeters would distort to the point of shrillness. Recently the cabinet got headphone modded though, and with that my main complaint with the cab has vanished and I'm happy as a lark with it.

...Buuuuuuuut if any of the independent arcades around here ever took Konami's offer to go official, and they were to buy one of these new Pop'n cabs, I think Pop'n might just permanently displace Chuni as my secondary rhythm game—this cab is just that goated. I've also heard that they've finally added offset, and if they're messing with the refresh rate of the screen I'm willing to bet they're gonna fix the polling rate too—all of my hangups with the game are gonna disappear, just like that.

I still can't believe this cabinet and version actually exist. It really feels like a dream.

according to some flyers spotted in Japan, the new Pop'n music launches in January!

I'm confused by the IIDX flyer beside it. Are they...announcing an updated lightning model too?

Yep that's also what's being said. I don't know what they could possibly update the Lightning cab with, the cab itself is pretty damn good as it is. We will see what's going on in January when both launch.

EDIT: The flyer with the Lightning cab just means that location the flyer is up is getting one, not an update to the cab.