order to get Pop'n Music 4 to work, you actually have to start up Pop'n 2, hit this Disc Change

option, and physically switch the disc to the next version. Konami was notorious for

doing this back in the early days of CD media, from DDR to Beatmania to, yes, even the candy-coated,

macaron-shaped Pop'n Music. Makes DLC seem a bit easier to deal with, doesn't it? Anyway.

There've been 21 proper arcade releases of Pop'n Music since 1998, with each bringing

a couple mechanical tweaks and a whole bunch of new music to the scene. Pop'n 4 is still

a distance away from bringing a comfortable level of features, though this is where it

starts to look like what we'd expect today. You can even increase the scroll speed. That

alone is a pretty big step.

Fourth verse, same as the second, hit the buttons on the moderately-frustrating Dreamcast

Pop'n Controller thing when they hit the baseline, then realize that there's A/V lag you can't

configure away and adjust your internal sense of timing accordingly. Once you do, though,

you get the sense that the musical selections are coming into their own a little more comfortably,

as Pop'n starts to distance itself from its Bemani cousins with its super-eclectic mix

of tracks... that you have to identify by just their genre again. But we can deal with

that. The lineup's a bit more diverse this time, including a couple Beatles-style rock

tunes, and... um... Analog Techno. And Nudy. The less said about it the better - there's

already a hell of a lot of Engrish in this thing as it is - but at least the gameplay

digs it out of its hole. Its Nudy hole.

So ultimately you need two different games to get to the contents of this disc, which

seems like kind of a stretch today. All of these early Pop'n releases, adapted from their

massive arcade versions, saw simultaneous play on the Dreamcast and PS1... which is

kinda frustrating when you consider that the 'Cast was ostensibly a 6th-generation system.

In fact, the PS1 got two more versions - Pop'ns 5 and 6 - that the Dreamcast never saw, before

the series became more-or-less PS2 exclusive... barring Wii and XBLA spinoffs that, in a just

world, would've never happened. While those versions got rid of the need for a specialized

controller... what they came up with sucked even worse than just getting a button stuck

every once in a while.

So if you're looking for a quality Pop'n Music experience... pony up a couple grand for an

Arcade machine, because that's really the only way to roll. But if you MUST have it

on your home consoles... pony up a couple hundred for one of those awesome full-size

PS2 rigs and play that one. But if you MUST have it on your Dreamcast... I have to wonder

what the hell is wrong with you. As much as I can appreciate the nature of nostalgia for

an old tracklist - Nudy though it may be - the fact of the matter is that these old versions

are just too feature-poor to stand up against what's available today. Look, Nelson. Move

on. I am.