They Just Don't Make 'em Like They Used To

[Brett]

Crossposted from VJarmy.
Kaze and I often talk about how the new pop'n charts just don't match up to the old ones. Sure there are plenty of great charts from the newer games (Megane Rock, Tozan, Ancient Euro) but they all have one problem. They're too straight forward. They all have easy timing, lack tempo changes or extremely low bpm, and rarely have broken or complete bullshit sections. Old songs were full of that kind of stuff. Kyogeki, Enka Remix, Darkness, Radio, Oi Punk, Neo Aco, A.I.おばあちゃん, and dare I say, Anime Hero-R. Songs they made back when they didn't know what the hell they were doing are so much better than the ones they make now.

[허드손]

I prefered charts with random elbow hits and jackhammers, like Kids on pop'n 6. Even pop'n 9 had it right with Girls Band 2 and UK Pop 80. Random elbows? Yes please. Hamo Rock is like, one of the greatest charts of all time. Whatever happened to charts like Screen, Classic 7, and Classic 8, where random ass double/triple scales with randomly inserted jackhammers was the most effective way of making a song hard?

Speaking of the old days, you just don't see shit like Jodler anymore. Horrible timing, a jackhammer on red that STARTS OFF ON AN ELBOW, and a completely broken rhythm that makes no sense.

WHAT A GOOD SONG.

[Brett]

Jodler is one of the best charts ever. Solid 29 right there.

[Ledline]

I have never played Hamo Rock before but it does look awesome

I would buy Popn 7 only for that. And Darkness EX too

[Holduptolight]

Ya' whippersnappers! Back in my day we had PONG! and we could play it for a nickel! (Oh, what a nickel wouldn't get in those days...)
I just miss Pop'n Music 10... *gets teary eyed

[Arbel]

Well to argue from the other perspective...If your reasoning for liking those charts are akward bullshit parts and elbows, play s-rand. I like a lot of the new charts because they aren't like enka remix or anime hero R haha.

[Brett]

Originally Posted by Arbel

Well to argue from the other perspective...If your reasoning for liking those charts are akward bullshit parts and elbows, play s-rand. I like a lot of the new charts because they aren't like enka remix or anime hero R haha.

Anime Hero-R is the greatest song/chart/character/timing ever.

[Yuki Ijuin]

But why does it seem like the newer songs on the level 38-40 feels harder to play than the older ones? >_>"

[Owen]

I agree with the main points but I have a few additional thoughts:

A) All charts started to change significantly in structure starting with Pop'n 8. Four, five, and six button chords became the backbone of almost all difficult charts (this is especially obvious in Pop'n 10, 11, and 12), and stacking a ton of these chords on top of each other in rapid succession replaced jackhammers, awkward trills, and other unique sequences as the characteristic that defined a chart's difficulty. This is not to say that the latter things have fully disappeared even in the most current versions or that the difficulty of chords and the degree to which they are featured are the only things that make certain modern charts harder than others, but it is to say that these changes had become obvious and uniform by Pop'n 12. For better or worse, these changes effectively made perfect scores infinitely more achievable on charts from later games with the same numeric ranking as charts from earlier games. If you don't believe me, play Enka Remix or Classic 6 and then follow it with a generic 39 or 40 from Pop'n 12 or after like April Fool's Song or Flow Beat; the songs are all passable at around the same time for a player with the necessary amount of skill (hence their similar difficulty rankings), but charts are like night and day thanks to the aforementioned phenomenon. For me, this is both good and bad; some of the bizarre button functions from the early Pop'n games feel stupid, uninspired, and excessively difficult for no reason, but others are carefully engineered, creative, and wonderful in a beautifully frustrating way. I guess what I mean is that jackhammers and elbow presses aren't intrinsically good or bad, but can be a great and defining feature of a chart if a designer employs them correctly. In this respect, then, I do miss them, albeit with plenty of exceptions and reservations.

B) The generous uniform timing window present on the recent games has also attributed to the increased ease of achieving perfect scores. I am not entirely sure this is a good thing for two reasons. First, I think it builds an unhealthy obsession with perfect scores, and second, unique timing windows played a large roll in making a lot of charts we now consider to be classics truly great. Anime Hero R and Oi Punk 0 are excellent examples of this; the Hyper and EX charts themselves are good, but the notoriously irritating timing windows on both songs definitely added something for me. S-Challenge mode does a decent job of filling this void, though. It's not used too widely here, but I know that Nick (a top US player) swears by it and he has told me that it is used almost exclusively among the elite in Japan.

C) Charts will continue to evolve in the future. While a relative of chords themselves, double scales seem to have played the same roll in Pop'n 13 and 14 that huge chords did in Pop'n 11 and 12, and while I haven't looked at any of the charts from 15 or 16 yet (hell, I haven't even seen most of the charts from 13 or 14), I'd imagine there are unifying themes among charts in those games as well. I may not be the best person to speak on this, though, seeing as I had effectively stopped playing by the time AI upgraded from Pop'n 12. With that said, am I right about 13 and 14? Has anyone played enough of 15 to speak on it?

[Eight]

Originally Posted by Arbel

I like a lot of the new charts because they aren't like enka remix or anime hero R haha.

...how can you dislike charts like Enka Remix and Anime Hero R?

I still have nightmares about those charts. If it's possible to have a "good" nightmare, that is.

Originally Posted by Owen

B) The generous uniform timing window present on the recent games has also attributed to the increased ease of achieving perfect scores.

I wholly agree with this. The game has stopped being so much about "Holy hell I beat song X" and has turned more towards "Holy hell I 100k'ed song X". To be honest, I liked it better when I worried less about score and more about beating the damn song.

Luckily, I haven't completely mastered this game, so some of the joy in beating songs is still undiscovered.

[MZD]

I'm not really into the difficulty aspect of the charts themselves. I like charts that are fun in general, and then I'll play around with Ojamas to make them "difficult" (despite the more practice you have with one, the easier they tend to be). I'm also not die-hard about scoring or anything.

I will say that there have been far less just generally fun charts in the more recent games in my opinion. Straightforward isn't necessarily the term I would use, but they don't seem to focus on the way you're expected to move your hands (in respect to the actual patterns) while playing the song in the same way they used to, if that makes any sense. Getting a good S-Random can save any song from that issue though, too bad it's inconsistent by nature.

[Yuki Ijuin]

Jodler EX is friggin broken. XD. Although I did manage to combo the jackhammers with some trickery (Quickly hitting both keys with the same hand resulting a good but keeping the combo.). I have no idea how the hell to do it legitly.

[Arctures]

Originally Posted by CALF

They all have easy timing

The songs with unnecessarily hard timing are what kill popn for me. If you want timing just play with Cools.

Although I must say they should bring back jackhammer charts like Cyber Rockabilly.

[Yuki Ijuin]

I like properly timed songs too, unreasonable songs aren't really likeable, they're just a good laugh. I can't do the 6 notes coupled together in that song. Always seems to miss one or two. Killing me in the process. XD

[22Davo]

Originally Posted by CALF

Anime Hero-R is the WORST song/chart/character/timing ever.

FIXED.