Pop’n Rhythmin, a.k.a Rhythmin, is an original Bemani mobile game. This game features a Treasure Mode, which is a board game-style mode that allows a player to gain additional songs for free.
Song Selection
Rhythmin’s song selection screen is identical to Reflec Beat +. On the bottom left-hand corner of the screen you can choose your game settings, sort songs, or check to see which of your scores have been surpassed by friends.
Gameplay
Rhythmin features a full touchscreen system, and till today it is still the one and only Bemani game that utilizes the entire screen.
For starters, pop-kun is the name of the colorful hamburger-like things. They are the musical notes of the Pop’n Music series. In Rhythmin, you have to hit the pop-kuns at the point where two pop-kuns of the same color collide together.
There are three types of pop-kuns.
1) Pop-kun. Tap the screen when two of these collide.
2) Long pop-kun. Tap and hold the screen until the shooting star tail disappears.
3) Star pop-kun. Star pop-kuns are for pop-kuns (two or more) that are meant to be tapped at the same time.
4) Number pop-kun. Tap the note as many times as the number.
There are four timing judgements in Rhythmin. From best to worst : cool, great, good, bad.
Here is a video to demonstrate the gameplay.
Every time you clear a song, you will get treasure points depending on how well you perform, which brings me to the other main component of Rhythmin.
Treasure Mode
This is basically a board game. To roll the a dice you need to use 20 treasure points (TP) for all maps except jungle and haunted house. Those two require 50 TP. You will move forward by the number of steps you roll. A roulette wheel will spin and land on a number from 1 to 7. You then have to tap the screen to stop the roulette wheel. If you time it well enough you can make the wheel stop on the number you want.
There are two goals in Treasure Mode. One is to collect all the song fragments and wallpaper fragments, and the other is to reach the goal and proceed to the next area or next map if you cleared all three areas of each map.
There are eight different kinds of panels.
1) Empty panel. Nothing happens when you step on this.
2) Treasure panel. Receive a song fragment or wallpaper fragment. Collect nine of each to obtain a song or a wallpaper.
3) Friend panel. Get bonus TP if there’s a friend at the friend panel, otherwise nothing happens.
4) Forward panel. Move forward by a fixed number of steps.
5) Backward panel. Move backwards by a fixed number of steps.
6) Stop panel. Stops your movement when you step on it.
7) Warp panel. Warps you to another warp panel of the same color.
8) Trap panel. Triggers a trap. There are many types of traps in the game, ranging from reduced visibility of the map, to character skills sealing, to being able to roll only 1-3.
Initially, there are only two characters to use. Mimi and Nyami; the two mascots of the Pop’n Music series. Every time you clear a map, you either get TP, a tap sound effect (once on the third area of each map), or a character ticket. Every five character tickets allows you to roll a gacha to get a new character. All characters come with their own skills, all of which require TP to activate and aid in clearing maps in one way or another.
The best character skills are arguably the “roll X” and the “multiply movement by 3 times” skills. The former guarantees a roll of 1/2/3/4/5/6/7, which allows you to control which panel you want to land on. The latter helps you blaze through a map in no time at all by allowing you to move up to 7 * 3 which is 21 steps.
Rhythmin Store
Rhythmin features mainly songs from Pop’n Music, but also has song packs from other Bemani games, as well as two Hinabita song packs.
Like Jubeat + and Reflec Beat +, each music pack contains four songs and costs 500 yen.
Buying a music pack also gives five character tickets which allows you to roll one character. It is extremely crucial to at least get the characters with the skills I mentioned above if you intend to complete the Treasure Mode entirely.
Some last words regarding the game. Konami Digital Entertainment has discontinued updates for Rhythmin as of 2014/11/28. This was perhaps due to the game making poor sales. In my opinion this was due to poor marketing rather than any problems with the game itself. Rhythmin is hands down my favorite Bemani game available on mobile. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this is a great game as it has a rating of 4.5/5 stars from close to 2000 reviewers on the App Store. Even though it will no longer have any new songs, it still has a fairly decent number of songs available, at 255 songs. Do give it a shot! If you have any questions regarding the game feel free to ask me in the comments section.
Get Pop’n Rhythmin!
