Pop'n Music Controller

The Pop'n Music series is largely unknown rhythm title from the folks at Konami. The game play revolves around the use of nine coloured buttons which need to be pressed in time with color-coded notes displayed on screen. As the player presses the button it triggers a sound within the song, and when a note is played, an accuracy rating is displayed assessing the players’ musical skills. It's very similar to the likes of DDR, and Beatmania, only with a cuter, anime inspired presentation, and Japanese pop music soundtrack.

 

 

 

 

During the time that the Dreamcast was released this genre of games was extremely popular in Japan

which lead to the game being released on multiple consoles. Four installments of the games were released on Dreamcast although the later titles are more of an expansion disc than a standalone title and require Pop'n Music 2 to play. The game is practically impossible to play using the standard Dreamcast controller and subsequently an official controller was released by Konami to mimic the arcade set up. Understandably, the quality of the controller is not quite up to that of the arcade but it serves its purpose and the design matches well with other Dreamcast peripherals. They are becoming extremely difficult to obtain in recent years and boxed versions almost practically never appear so if you do have one, keep hold of it.