Sushi Bar / Toretore! Sushi
FOOD BATTLE
Developer: Sammy
Platforms: Arcade
First Release Date: Unreleased (Planned for 2003)
Sushi Bar is an unreleased game from Sammy that was supposed to come out in 2003. I can only speculate on why the game didn’t see a release- there were less arcade puzzle releases in general, and a merger with Sega and the company turning focus to pachinko may have put a wrench in the release- but ultimately, it’s a finished game that didn’t see the light of day until it was dumped in the late 2010’s. It’s a great game at that, and one I’d really love to see get more attention. There’s an unofficial (well, I guess no version of the game is official) Dreamcast conversion as well, which is how I’ve played it.
The game builds on Puyo mechanics in some interesting ways. The most notable wrinkle is that you have to grab your next pieces off of a rotating sushi conveyor belt. Handling the usual queue like this leads to some fun strategizing- you can wait for the perfect set of pieces to come around, or take less ideal options to build faster. After a while in a match, the two players' conveyor belts will link together, giving you the same set of pieces to work with. There's some special items that you can pick as well- Giant sushi that will squash whatever it lands on, plates that let you choose a certain piece, and items that will reverse or speed up the conveyor. I’m really endeared by everything the conveyor adds, and I’d love to see other games try similar systems.
There are more mechanics under the surface as well- Your cursor is always active, so you can make active chains while matches are made. The timer is generous enough so that you can almost always get an extra match on your combo with it. The chef special, appearing on the middle conveyor and easy to miss, rewards you for clearing a certain type of sushi by sending extra plates to your opponent. Also, there’s some sort of mechanic at play with the dessert items, where they’ll simply disappear during combos sometimes- but I wasn’t sure exactly why. This is a game I’d definitely like to try playing with others sometime- even if it feels like that would result in extremely swift and violent defeats for me, I bet I’d have a great time.
In terms of presentation, I really enjoy the vast variety of sushi (and dessert) types used as blocks. You only see a few for each round, but there’s so many that get shuffled out. There’s a fun set of characters to pick from, but you don’t really get to see much of them- the focus is much more on the two very animated chefs battling it out on the top of the screen. Their battle is never over. The characters you pick are instead the customers eating the sushi, and they’re a cute bunch regardless. You’ll go through the rest of the selectable characters before facing four elite opponents. The final boss, K. Stroganoff, is rather intimidating. If you’ve continued, he’ll taunt you for it, and he’s only really bested on a perfect run of the game. Rounds are best two out of three, so that’s an even harder prospect than it seems- but you will get a very satisfying, dramatic cutscene for your efforts.
Overall, I just really like this game! It’s very kinetic and charming and endlessly satisfying to hear the plates piling up on your opponent’s board. The credits are full of sketches of almost the entire staff, something that, combined with the game never releasing, got me emotional enough to put all of those photos on their own page. Sushi Bar is a wonderful game that absolutely deserved more than it got. Tell all of your friends and loved ones and strangers to check it out. Please.
Thank you for reading!
