Pop'n music

pop'n music is the first pop'n music installment, released in arcades on September 28th, 1998. It later received home console ports for the PlayStation and Dreamcast on February 25th, 1999.

Gameplay
There are three game modes to choose from:
 * BEGINNER (ビギナー)
 * NORMAL (ノーマル)
 * HARD (ハード)

BEGINNER MODE consists of 2 stages. It starts off with a short tutorial on how to play the game, then the player chooses the next 2 stages. No OJAMA are active for any of the songs and none of the Stage 3 songs are playable in the mode with the exception of TECHNO POP, which has been moved to a Stage 2 song. Nyami is the default character for this mode.

NORMAL MODE consists of 3 stages and is the default mode. Each stage has a harder selection of songs than the last. In this mode rival characters will use OJAMA - various effects that obscure the play area. Mary is the default character for this mode.

HARD MODE consists of 3 stages and plays similar to NORMAL MODE, with the only difference being that EXCITE Pop-kun are added along with the OJAMA. They can change shape, color, and shift lanes during the song. The King is the default character for this mode.

Hidden Songs
There are two hidden songs that can be unlocked for Stage 3 under certain conditions:
 * For BONUS TRACK, the last digits of the GREAT/GOOD/BAD totals in either Stage 1 or Stage 2 must end in an order of 5, 7, 3/3, 5, 7, or end in repeating digits ranging from 0-9.
 * For RAVE, play J-TEKNO for Stage 1 and DANCE for Stage 2. The amount of GREATs must be 85% or more for each song.

If both conditions are met, Stage 3 will also include all Stage 1 and Stage 2 songs that weren't chosen before.

Song List
Obtained from RemyWiki pop'n music songs are rated on a scale of Easy (カンタン) to Hard (ムズイ), shown on the gauge that appears below the genre while selecting a song. There are 23 bars in this gauge, separated by color.

Regional Differences
pop'n music was also released in Asia and Korea. The main difference is that the game has been fully translated to English, and existing English was cleaned up for these releases as well (such as TONIGHT STAT becoming TONIGHT'S STATS). While most things were simply translated or given a more common English equivalent, many characters were given completely new names.

The Asian version is identical the original, only removing or translating any Japanese text/names. The Korean version however also removed any songs sung in Japanese: POPS, ANIME HERO, and BONUS TRACK. Because of this, Stage 1 and Stage 3 only have three songs each, and RAVE is the only hidden song.

Below is a list of names used in these releases:

Trivia

 * While OJAMA are enabled by default for NORMAL Mode, there is a shop setting to disable them.
 * Due to RAVE and BONUS TRACK being last stage random unlocks, neither Rave Girl or Sanae-chan are available as playable characters.
 * Even if RAVE and BONUS TRACK are made available by default with the shop settings, Rave Girl and Sanae-chan still won't be playable.
 * The attract loop plays YOUNG DREAM, with Mary as the player character.
 * pop'n music is one of the few arcade releases with no visible timers. A countdown will begin for the last 10 seconds instead. The approximate times for each action are 45s for mode select and 40s for song select and name entry.
 * SUGI & REO was misspelled as SGI & REO. This wasn't corrected until pop'n music 2.
 * All of the characters were designed by MUKAI. The MZD Design logo that appears on the title screen is an alias of his.
 * Very early concept art shows the cab was originally going to have 11 buttons, colored Orange, Teal, Purple, Lime, Blue, Red, Pink, Magenta, Yellow, Green, and Black. It also showed a full two player mode, with scores on each side of the screen. A BATTLE MODE similar to the illustration was finally implemented in pop'n music 6.
 * pop'n music was the only release to use the original italicized Konami logo, though the international releases use the bold logo that was new around the time.

Official Sites
pop'n1&2 music & characters (Archived) inhabitants of pop'n world (Archived) popn1 ぼつキャラのみなさん (Unused Characters) (Archived)