Gaming Hell

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.
 

Both the Japanese and World ROMs are included, but no Preference Settings are available. Be careful with the rapid fire settings though- they will cause the game's music to slow down, this is accurate to the original hardware if you fired too fast!

The world has been covered in darkness by wicked demons, banishing all into an endless night! If there's any hope of seeing the morning sun again, the world needs a brave heroine... Well, Cotton the witch isn't exactly jumping into the role. She's only interested in Willows, the delicious candy she craves. After she meets a fairy, Silk, begging her to save the world, Cotton just walks on her merry way... Until Silk mutters something about the legendary Willows of the fairy world. With an enthusiastic "LET'S GO!", Cotton sets off with Silk to save the world from eternal darkness and maybe get some candy along the way! As a witch, she's got her broom, a standard shot and an arcing bomb that you upgrade by grabbing crystals that drop from enemies as well as two colours of magic, red and blue, that have different effects depending on whether you hold one button or two. Silk the fairy also helps out by pummelling enemies, and additional fairies can be recruited and even sacrificed in battle.



Cotton was pretty dormant as a series for a good long while, but since around 2019, the witch is back, including a new version of the X68000 port that includes Pril from Trouble Witches as a bonus character, Cotton Reboot! that remade the game and included a mode based on the X68K port plus a whole slew of rereleases coverig pretty much the entire series aside from the Pachislot game... The original arcade game, however, has only resurfaced on the Sega Astro City Mini, until now. As mentioned by ohfivepro, this version of the game was playtested by TYR Yeti, a multiple-world-record holder for Cotton for the past 30 years, so yeah, it's damn accurate for sure! I must confess though, I don't have that much experience with Cotton. You'd think I'd be all-in on it- cute witch, Hallowe'en-esque setting and all that- but it's a pretty tough game for me, and I've never really sat down to properly figure it out, mostly because I need to be in the mood to really mash that fire button and it hasn't happened just yet. Still, the presentation is absolutely adorable, even if this arcade version doesn't have some of the graphical flourishes of the X68000 port (which, to my understanding, is generally considered the superior version), so if you want the pure arcade experience at home, this is very nice to have, but perhaps some might want to stick to the X68K mode in Reboot!, it's up to you~