My new obsession has arrived...

[Sephroth57]

IIDX time!!

heres a pic of my setup with the PopN controller set up

[RetroJames]

Whaaaaaaa?

What are those for!!???

[Sephroth57]

Music games!!

basicly its similar to DDR, cept the notes scroll down instead of up. and you hit the buttons in response to the notes. Beatmania IIDX is more techno/rap based game, where PopN Music is more like happy japanese pop and weird songs. basicly the same concept

[Apollo]

Wow good effort dude, that's pretty cool.

[Sephroth57]

yeah im gonna try to get a video of me playing PopN soon so everyone knows what the hell im talkin about

[JoyMonkey]

Anyone that's seen Lost In Translation might remember the arcade scene where Scarlett Johansson is watching the guy bounce around playing Pop N' Music. She's great.

[hooded_paladin]

And 8th Style!  God bless you!
I need some Pop'N ... I just have a few more other obsessions before it.  And no money.

[Gunstar Hero]

My fiancee has been a IIDX player (and bemani in general) for years. I ordered ger 8th Style for christmas this year. 

She'd kill for your Pop'n'Music controller. The Konami one just doesn't compare. 

My next arcade project (unless I get a driving cab) is a "bemani" multi-cab.... a pc/console based machine that will support Keyboardmania, Drummania, Guitar Freaks (that one is mine really) PNM, Para Para Paradise and DDR... in addition to Stepmania of course.

[Sephroth57]

My fiancee has been a IIDX player (and bemani in general) for years. I ordered ger 8th Style for christmas this year.

[ChadTower]

All this has my curiousity extremely piqued... is this cab in the Projects section?

[Sephroth57]

no i never really got around to making a formal post, seeing as its been "under construction" for like a year now, heh. Hopefully for christmas ill be getting a camera that can output to PC, so i will make some videos to show off my cab in action

[Silver]

Is that a home-made Pop'n'Music controller? Looks top-notch.... could you provide some info on how you put it together?

[Gunstar Hero]

There's nothing like watching people play Para Para Paradise for the first time. Hilarious!!

[Sephroth57]

Is that a home-made Pop'n'Music controller? Looks top-notch.... could you provide some info on how you put it together?

thanks, yes I made that controller from scratch. The controller measures 12x30 on the surface. and i used jumbo pushbuttons from www.wicothesource.com, theyre the exact size are real PopN buttons and are the cheapest you will find at 10$ a button,unless you order bulk from coinopexpress. and its just your standard arcade button to PS2 controller hack.

there was a kind of brief walkthrough that i used to make it but its down now and has been for a while. I was thinkin about making one myself cause its a pretty simple process. But if you wired MAME controls you should be able to figure it out

[Silver]

Sounds good.... I think I will have to look into it....

Do you know how these compare to Happ jumbo pushbuttons (which only seem to come illuminated?)... I only ask as I'm based in the UK and ideally I would like to avoid international shipping....

[ChadTower]

So what's inside there?  a PC?  A PS2?  A Japanese PS2?  I'm new to the Bemani stuff, very new, but it looks like something I'd like to get into.

[Sephroth57]

ive actually not heard of anyone using happs because theyre so much more expensive, and there are no color pictures on their site so i couldnt tell you if theyre exactly the same or not. the wicos also come illuminated too, so theyre probably the same though.

[Sephroth57]

So what's inside there?

[ChadTower]

I started to get into DDR a bit about a year ago but never went too far with it.  I enjoyed it, but thought my wife would play with me and she would not.  Maybe I should get back into it.

[Sephroth57]

i actually rarely play DDR anymore, i started playing like 3 years ago when Max2 just came out in arcades and it was just hitting the states in mainstream locations. I played pretty hardcore up until the summer Extreme came out. this year they never came out with a new mix, which really killed it for me, cause i pretty much beat every song cept for a few 10 foots which i really didnt feel the urge to beat anyway. i find them more challenging and hard, then actually fun, where as passing A on Oni, was fun and hard. Paranoia Survivor 10foot is just nuts, if i ever lasted long enough to play the whole song i think would collapse

you should try getting into the other bemani games, i went from being mainstream DDR, now i barely play and im mainly into PopN and trying to get into IIDX as well since theyre pretty similar.

[crashwg]

I've ordered 1 jumbo pushbutton from happ and it is infact the same as the new ones wico has.  Incase you don't know they switched over at some point in time from one style of button to another...  They both look VERY close to eachother from the top of the panel but underneath they have a different mounting bracket lamp/microswitch holder and microswitch.  They feel a little different and also sound different when they click.

Only reason I ordered one from happ was because Wico refuses to sell to me anymore because one of the buttons they sent me was defective so I sent it back only to have them tell me it was perfectly fine and they wont do business with me because I "obviously can't be satisfied" whatever that means...

but yea wico has the buttons for $10 and happ has them for $26.

[Silver]

Good to know - sounds like they would both be fine.....

Happs appear to be selling the Red Jumbos at $12.75 and all the others at $26....

Does not help me as I would have to use Happs Europe, who have one of the largest international markups I've ever seen (often quoting the SAME price in UK pounds as in US dollars i.e. nearly DOUBLE the prices you guys see..... ouch)

I know all the stepmania stuff has good pc software/emulation/homebrew... but a lot of the DDR seems to be more console based. Are there good PopnMusic/DDR for PC apart from Mame?

[Sephroth57]

there are popN and IIDX emulators but theyre extremely rare to find songs for and most of them arent keysounded, which is really most of the fun. there is no awesome program like stepmania for any other bemani atm

there is an extension for stepmania called stepNmusic, but its not keysounded and doesnt use actual popn songs just converts the DDR songs you have into notes for popn, which is not 10% of the real popn experience.

basicly if you want PopN or IIDX you need a jap or modded PS2