Arcade Archives: RyuKyu

[tepidsnake]

This week's Arcade Archives release is... RyuKyu (Success, 1990)

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Just the one ROM for this one exists, so Japanese only this time. Preference Settings allow players to change the colour of the colum when the location of the RyuKyu card is revealed. The title screen has been edited slightly- the Sega logo's been removed, as has the credit to ASCII Corporation, replaced with the original game's creator, Ryuji Kuwaki. The storefront says RyuKyu but the titular card is referred to as Ryu Kyu in the manual, so I don't know which one's correct. Arcade Archives has a history of not knowing where to put spaces in names (see also: Sunsetriders, Splatter House) so I'm at a loss on this one.

I don't know how to play poker.

See you next week, everybody!

... Alright, alright, I'll try. Originally a home computer game for MSX, PC-98 and X68000 from late 1989, Success released this version in 1990 and it's an odd choice for an arcade release. It's a variation of poker squares where you place cards in a five-by-five grid to get the best poker hands in a line both vertically and horizontally and aim for a target score in each round. In this version, you can't place the cards wherever you like (they adhere to gravity, like a traditional drop-block puzzle game) but you get four cards to pick from each turn, you can see the cards for the next three turns in advance, and a chart showing how many cards are left in each suit. There's also the Ryu Kyu which acts as a wild card and can lead to huge points bonuses! You have to reach the target score on each stage if you want to keep going, but you have a limited number of cancels if you made a mistake. There's even an o-mikuji between stages (and if you continue) to incrase the value of certain lines in the next round. A sequel to this was released by Success in arcades via Sega's All.Net system earlier this year, so I guess they want to strike while the iron's hot and get people to try the original. Sadly, I am completely useless at poker, so I'm even more out of my depth than usual this week, but hopefully I've given you enough of an overview to let you know if you'd be interested.

The other thing I have to share about this game is it also got Game Gear and PC Engine versions published by Face and, well, their box art sticks out a bit on the GameFAQs page! Bikinis sell card games, I guess. The Game Gear one was also the only one to leave Japan outside of this ACA version as Solitaire Poker, so that's nice.