Popira (ポピラ) is a series of plug-and-play rhythm games produced by Japanese toy company Takara as part of its Plug-it! product line. It is a 4-button game using metallic spheres as notes and pinball-like plungers as targets. However, notes hit too late bounce off the plungers instead, meaning that you have to hit them a second time in order for them to count.
The original version of the game was released in 2000. In 2002, Takara released Popira 2, which added multiplayer support by attaching a second unit.
This game provides examples of
- Book Ends: The final unlock on the original version, "Kineticballs", is a medley of several songs from the game. The first and last song in said medley is "CARNIVAL", also the first song in the game.
- Foreign Remake
- Play TV Opus, manufactured by Radica, is based on Popira and features its original music, but has a more gamepad-like controller, and a sci-fi theme. It also contains some different features, such as bomb notes, and a "Smart Bomb" power-up that clears the screen of notes. The unit itself also uses the same hardware platform as Popira, as Opus was released a month prior to it.
- The American arcade machine manufacturer ICE produced a game called Rhythm Nation, which has similar gameplay and songs to Popira, although it is unknown whether Takara had any involvement in the game.
- Expansion Pack: The game unit accepts cartridges with different song packs, usually focusing on J-pop songs, anime music, or specific musicians or idol groups. Many of these cartridges are also compatible with e-kara—a plug-and-play karaoke system also manufactured by Takara (with some of the game's promotional materials emphasizing this).
- Fan Remake
- PPRPlayer is a simulator based on the mechanics of Popira 2, with other additions like an actual scoring system.
- Gratuitous English: Most of the interface on Popira actually is in English. Inverted by Popira 2, which is almost entirely in Japanese instead.
- Life Meter: The game uses lives (similarly to Oni mode/the battery lifebar on DanceDanceRevolution), with some e-kara cartridges using eight lives on the Easy and Normal difficulty and four/five lives on the Hard difficulty, however some cartridges and mainline Popira releases use eight lives for every difficulty, and some even use just five for every difficulty.
- Regional Bonus: The original release of Popira got a very obscure release in Korea in 2001, with most of the songs changed out for brand new ones. This release changed 5 of the songs, and even gave one of "The Hard4" songs ("GOOD NIGHT") EASY and NORMAL charts.
- Scoring Points: Inverted. There's no traditional scoring system or judgements unlike other rhythm games, with the only real result at the end of a song being the prompt "Try Again!", "Good!" (standard clear), and "Perfect!" (full combo). Usually, the clear percentage is considered the "score" by many players. A simulation of Popira called PPRPlayer adds a full-on scoring system, however.
- Spin-Off: There have been two variants of Popira manufactured, including:
- Taiko de Popira (2002), which uses a two-sided Taiko drum pad.
- Jumping Popira (2003), a version in the form of a dance pad.
- Unlockable Difficulty Levels: Each base song has an unlockable hard chart. Beating each Hard chart unlocks "The Hard4", a group of four boss songs. Beating them unlocks the final "SuperHard" song. Jumping Popira changes this, replacing the Hard4 songs with 6 "SuperHard" songs, and the final SuperHard song with one "Ultimate Hard" song. The Ultimate Hard song is a medley of classical songs, which hasn't been done up to that point.
PERFECT!
REPLAY → START
MENU → SELECT
