Pop'n is to Beatmania what Darkstalkers is to Street Fighter - but if instead of heading down the 'sexy body horror' axis, it treads into 'happy hardcore sanrio scrimbleabouts'. The key-based layout is familiar to BM, but now with 9 color-coded circular buttons and the scratch table gutted out. In place of the concept album-y music videos of IIDX are mascot characters that represent each song, dancing along based on your performance. They play with this by having each character's songs match the genre or backstories - it's a fun way to add heart to a genre that's usually somewhat depersonalized.

Popn also sets itself apart with a suite of progression-based activities. Every game has a unique unlock system where you participate in a special activity to get new songs and trinkets, usually centered around the game's theme. If nothing else, pop'n's one of the best when it comes to offering genre newcomers things to do that help them naturally learn the core mechanics without just practicing the same arcade mode ad-hominem.

As for playing popn music on a rhythmic level, I'm admittedly not a big fan. It's fine when it works - it has smatterings of what I like about beatmania without the horrible agony of spreading your fingers awkwardly over the scratch table, - but 9 buttons is total overkill. Much like beatmania, the keysounded charts mean songs get harder by adding more 'layers' of notes, and the transition into this form of difficulty is really harsh. It's like jumping right from 1-handed piano to 2-handed freeform jazz before even getting the chance to learn chords.

I also don't like the UI, the color-based notes aren't as easy to differentiate as DDR arrows, or hell, even BM 5-key. Swapping between this game's equivalent of 'white' and 'black' keys was really unintuitive for me. Other titles fix this with the 'beat' option - it replaces the lower-half notes with grey BM notes and the top-half with blue, something more comfortable for BM players. But Best Hits doesn't have this feature - no idea if it was a later feature, or if they excluded it to fit the 'best of' setup. I've been playing Popn 11 and 14 alongside this one and got too comfortable with that mode, and fucked myself over when i swapped back to this and had to rely on parsing 5 color types again.

The other thing that kills pop'n is not the game itself, but the PS1 controller designed for it. This thing. It feels awful to handle. The flat buttons have barely any travel distance or tactile feedback, it feels like you have to slap it to get any response instead of treating it like a button. I know pro pop'n players slap the notes for timing accuracy, but the arcade and professional controllers are larger and have rounded caps: It's easier to tell when you've made contact. If you're going to invest money in a popn setup, avoid these and invest in either a community custom controller or a premium model.

And I'm 50/50 on the music. Sometimes it's amazing, sometimes it's unbearably obnoxious, and all the time it's extremely anime OP playlist core. Having to write songs that fit characters first and complement rhythm gaming second means a lot of songs have a similar pop-rock structure, but filtered through a slightly different genre.

Damn, this wasn't really a review of Best Hits as much as it was a pop'n review