GuitarFreaks 9thMIX & drummania 8thMIX

GuitarFreaks 9thMIX & drummania 8thMIX
Also known as: PercussionFreaks 8thMIX (drummania, AS) Developer: Konami AMD Publisher: Konami Platform: Arcade (Konami System 573) Released in JP: April 2, 2003 Released in AS: 2003 (PercussionFreaks 8thMIX) This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds.

This game/console's online features are no longer supported. While this game/console's online features were once accessible, they are (as of November 30, 2003) no longer officially supported and online-exclusive features may be documented as now-unseen content.

GuitarFreaks 9thMIX & drummania 8thMIX continued the previous game's novelty of adding transplanted songs from other series, not only from the pop'n music series but also from Dance Maniax, the origin game of the game's regular Encore Stage song, MAD BLAST. Visually, it's a dark cyber recolor of the previous game.

Unused Graphics

Note: All of these take in consideration folder DATA6, which contain the game's graphical assets.

Song Titles

Many of the "BG" files, in which are stored the background animation sprites for the songs, have a graphic file displaying the song's title, in the horrid color combination of blue background and red text. They are leftovers from GuitarFreaks 7thMIX & drummania 6thMIX.

File	Image
BGM0015.FCN
BGM0019.FCN
BGM0021.FCN
BGM0101.FCN
BGM0105.FCN
BGM0108.FCN
BGM0110.FCN
BGM0209.FCN
BGM0229.FCN
BGM0307.FCN
BGM0403.FCN
BGM0404.FCN
BGM0413.FCN
BGM0434.FCN
BGM0504.FCN
BGM0513.FCN
BGM0514.FCN
BGM0517.FCN
BGM0527.FCN
BGM0603.FCN
BGM0604.FCN
BGM0609.FCN
BGM0610.FCN
BGM0617.FCN
BGM0618.FCN
BGM0619.FCN
BGM0620.FCN
BGM0622.FCN
BGM0626.FCN
BGM0627.FCN
BGM0629.FCN
BGM0630.FCN

Unused Background Animation Sprites

Happy man - BG0005.FCN

From the original GuitarFreaks to GuitarFreaks 3rdMix, during a scene in the video of the song Happy man, a rocker character is displayed, strumming either a guitar or a broom. In later releases, only his head is displayed, albeit the graphics for his other body parts can still be found.

JET WORLD - BGM0021.FCN

Text and graphics from the song's original background animations, featured in the original GuitarFreaks 2ndMix.

P.P.R. - BGM0111.FCN

Unused graphics for a blast animation.

SAY WHAT YOU MEAN - BGM0129.FCN

GuitarFreaks 3rdMix's credits still exist within the song's background animation files.

Songlist Item

This graphic, found as the 58th and 89th images of M_IMAGE.FCN, is a songlist item for the How To Play song, which is not selectable under normal circumstances.

Results Screen

These placeholder graphics are leftovers from GuitarFreaks 8thMIX & drummania 7thMIX, and can be found in RESULT.FCN. They come in seven variants. Additionally, the first two are seen in other files as well, such as SELECT.FCN.

Unlock Card

The lottery card unlock screen has these two placeholder images:

Other

The dead fish from the GuitarFreaks 8thMIX & drummania 7thMIX data also returned, albeit a little smaller in size.

Unused Music

Folder DATA0 contains the game's system music assets. However, two tunes, which are only present in the drummania 8thMIX data, are not heard:

GF5dm4 Opening

File OPENING.DAT in DYNAMIC is the opening theme for GuitarFreaks 5thMIX & drummania 4thMIX, which can be found unused since GuitarFreaks 6thMIX & drummania 5thMIX.

Game Over

File OVER.DAT in STATIC is a short tune likely meant to be used on a Game Over sequence of sorts. This file can be found unused since drummania 4thMIX.

Unused Audio

Many announcer lines, leftovers from GuitarFreaks 8thMIX & drummania 7thMIX, can be found in GAME.DAT.

Audio	Transcription	Description
	"First Stage"	Sounds that supposedly were to be played before the song started. However, only the Extra and Encore stages are announced.
	"Second Stage"
	"Third Stage"
	"Fourth Stage"
	"Fifth Stage"
	"Game Over"	Because the Game Over screen was removed in GuitarFreaks 8thMix Power-Up Version, this line goes unused.
	"Nyuumon"	In this release, the "Nyuumon" mode was renamed back to "Beginner", using the old announcer line[!], leaving this unused.

Build Date

drummania 8thMIX's build date can be found in the title of the game's uncompressed ISO file:

drummania 8thMIX	PercussionFreaks 8thMIX
VOL_20030308012310	VOL_20030311091828

(Special thanks: SakamotoNeko)