Well dear readers, whilst our Christmas video went swimmingly, excellently spliced together by my dear brother Nebachadnezzar, I was left feeling that my own contribution was sadly lacking in detail and even incorrect in a couple of places. I have only myself to blame for this lazy description of the game, as I had sent my own copy over to a Segata acolyte in Australia, who's devotion to Segata I felt deserved this very disc *... In the video I lamely discuss Segata Sanshiro Shinken Yugi, a Saturn import title that has our titular hero as it's main protagonist....
You can watch my faltering description here...
*This act of selfless generosity however, left me disc-less and therefore unable to play the game before I described it. So as something of an addition to the video, I will now describe the mini -game in more detail and with more accuracy.
The Segata Sanshiro Shinken Yugi game was a Japanese only release containing a collection of minigames based around the star of the Saturn's Japanese advertisement campaign. Segata Sanshiro was a judo suited martial artist who would berate children to "Play the Sega Saturn!" at all times, occasionally physically chastising the children by giving them a severe beating for indulging in youthful pastimes such as, wanting to play baseball or attend a disco.... The figure was a huge success in Japan and each of his classic adverts are included on this particular disc. In order to see each one, you must play a mini game which will unlock one at a time...
The "present drop" game sees a tiny caricature of Segata Sanshiro as Santa in a sleigh or sled. He moves across the sky from right to left (the opposite direction to the vast majority of side scrolling games) flying through seasonal snow flurries over houses and tower blocks. The houses of course have chimneys on the top, and it is Segata's job to drop a wrapped present down each one... This can be achieved more readily if you are flying close to the chimneys... but one impact and you are dead, so it is important to pull up or dive down sharply at various times. To make things more difficult, you have to fly through flocks of birds (which will kill you), cave systems (which will kill you) and over tower blocks (which will kill you).
Despite the seasonal jollity of it all, with it's jingle bells, holiday themed soundtrack, Christmas trees with twinkling lights, snow and presents, it's a bloody hard game. It soon becomes very clear that the present dropping part of the game is merely a means to distract you from the main goal of the game - which is to simply negotiate your sleigh, between the many obstacles, devilishly placed in some very complicated landscapes and skyscapes!
You do not seem to speed up, although the intensity of the game seems to make the whole experience feel faster. A counter in the left hand corner of the screen tallies the amount of presents successfully and consecutively placed, but the counter goes back to zero if you miss a chimney....
There is a sliding scale monitor in the top right corner of the screen, showing you how far you have travelled. I can only tell you about the first half of the journey, because I have never got further than that point!
Anyway this is a great game for the Christmas period. If you have had enough of Christmas NiGHTs and can't speak enough Japanese to access the Father Christmas interactive novel, this might be the game for you!
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