days. We get it, Rock Band and its ilk are kinda over, despite enjoying a seriously awesome

run however many years ago. But at least you could use your drums and guitars for other

things, like Rock of the Dead... or, if you were truly strange, try playing Marvel Vs.

Capcom 3 with it. Can't really do that with a Pop'n Music controller. This thing has one

purpose and one purpose only: Deal with strange, falling lozenge-looking things, which when

smacked in the correct order squeak out The Bells of St. Marys, or any of a number of

other strange Bemani songs. And for whatever reason, I crave a Straub...

As you can see, it's a rhythm-slash-music title, kinda like Beatmania but cuter and

friendlier, and slower, and more abstract. You've got a strange dancing character, as

does your kinda arbitrary opponent figure, but these are only there to distract you from

the meat and potatoes of the game: Hit buttons in time. Unfortunately, as you can tell by

the strange reactions on the screen, sometimes the buttons on this Dreamcast-sized controller

get stuck. Konami's record for providing decent home-console versions of their ambitious arcade

hardware setups is notoriously hit-or-miss, ranging from the admittedly awesome US Beatmania

turntables to... this thing. Each button has maybe half a millimeter of vertical travel,

and how it can get jammed in that short space is beyond me, but it happens more often than

not. If you've ever seen Lost in Translation, or in fact any decently-skilled player bashing

around on a full-sized arcade version, you know that while the compact size might make

hitting several buttons at once less of a hand-stretching task, you're missing out on

the full-body sense of rhythm that you really need to get into a game like this. What comfort

level you do manage to develop is then lost because you put the game on "Excite" or "Party"

mode and now all the notes are moving around like you're trippin' on something.

Awright, enough griping about the controller and about the intense lag on this recording

rig. In terms of features, Konami more than make up for their shortcomings. The tracklist

is extensive, even if it does restrict certain songs to the second or third stages of a set

(ugh) and declines to show the artist or song title, in favor of giving you the genre and...

well, that's it. Just the genre. It's up to you to figure out what the hell they mean

by "Neo Aco" or "Candy Pop." On the one hand, Pop'n is kinda famous for exactly that quirk.

On the other, it's not really a good quirk to be famous for. There are survival courses

and a marathon mode, several hidden songs, and other options to unlock... and most of

these are time-released depending on in-game time played. That's kinda annoying, especially

since the other unlock methods can be as arcane as "clear a song where the first digit of

your great, good, and bad counts are either all 3s, 5s, or 7s." That's a little obscene.

Still, if you can get it to work for you (or you pony up the big bucks for a decent arcade-sized

rig), there's plenty to do with what's here. Oh, hey, what's this "Disc Change" thing for?