pop'n music 5 (Arcade)

pop'n music 5
Developer: Konami AMD Publisher: Konami Platform: Arcade (Konami FireBeat) Released in JP: November 17, 2000 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics.

pop'n music 5 was the last one to have a weird fascination for naked women in the ranking screens. It was not the last one to insert random proverbs wherever possible, though. Oh, it also introduced EX charts, but very few songs had them, and they could only be played in the also new Extra Stage.

Unused Graphics

Location Test Leftover

Among the assets present in TITLE.GCZ is a graphic leftovered from... take a wild guess.

Placeholder Graphics

Each song is marked with a specific ID, in which 58, 68-69, and 76-79 are not used. Despite this, placeholder background, splash screen, character portrait and genre graphics for these IDs can be found.

SE/SEGEN[ID].GCZ

CHIL/CHILA0[ID].GCZ, CHILA1[ID].GCZ

BG/BG_0[ID].GCZ

HA/HATI[ID].GCZ

Early Ending Screen

An early graphic for the game's ending screen (if playing as Mimi [5]) can be found in END/SEND000.GCZ, in which the differences between it and the final variant will be noted below:

Unused	Final

• The text in the credits is much bolder in the early variant.
• The "Here's pop'n music 5 staffs" and "PRESENTED BY KONAMI" text lines are centered in the final release.
• Mimi and Nyami's positions in the start of the credits were readjusted.
• The position of the squares and of the text in the panel containing the designer credits was readjusted.
• The "DAY & NIGHT" background text in the programmer panel was slightly changed to "NIGHT & DAY".
• The font in "GREATEST" in the end of the credits was changed.
• In the older graphic, the console team was still referred to as Konami Computer Entertainment Yokohama, indicating that the graphic was created before the merge between the Yokohama and Sapporo studios had happened.
• Mimi's position was slightly changed.

(Source: tikal.)

Development Text

Several of the game's security strings, which are present in gea04-ja_gca04-ja_gca04-jb.bin and in offset 0xA58B4 of a decompressed FIREBEAT.EXE form the following message:

THANX2REVERSeNG.THS_warn

Also present in FIREBEAT.EXE at offset 0xA590C is another set of strings which contain a programmer credit:

MoDe:MaNuFaC/-normal?- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:SeRViCe/-service- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:EVeNT  /--event-- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:OVeRSea/--------- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY01/-no-hard- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY02/--------- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY03/--------- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)
MoDe:DuMMY04/--debug-- BY Hideaki Kawash (03638)

(Source: tikal.)