This is a game that Sega used in-house to test the hardware it was developing during the late 1980s through the early 1990s. It is a simple game that lacks sound and the familiar player prompts (e.g. "insert coin"). It was never fully developed nor intended to be released to the public.
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Definitely has a more interesting backstory than game itself tbh. So Sega made those Astro City-style arcade cabinets in Japan that are designed to be a one-size JAMMA machine to throw whatever PCB into to play games on. Thing is, there's a law in Japan which mandates that all arcade machines come with at least one game, so this game was made essentially to comply to that law and be the default game that comes with every interchangeable arcade machine made by Sega.
Because of that, this game was designed to be as cheap and disposable as humanly possible. You get NO sound hardware, NO colors, 256x192 resolution, it's literally just a head-on clone using the most primative graphics imaginable. I will say that compared to head-on, there's at least some sauce in movement as you essentially have free movement in any direction (except backwards) and the AI isn't as hell-bent on smashing into you to make juking enemies out more possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the AI programming follows a seemingly random path with as little lines of code as possible though. There are also no continues, or even credits to begin with which is honestly a bit surprising, if you were a cheapass arcade owner that couldnt afford any actual games for your cab you wouldnt even be able to make any change back on just dottori-kun.
It's certainly fascinating to see a game designed with the purpose of being replaced. Sega told their team "don't try too hard with this one" and they followed through. It's mid by design, but i guess in that case then mission accomplished? It also kinda makes this game extremely rare out in the wild, since the only way you'd be able to find this would be if an arcade operator fucked up and didn't actually put an actual game in their machine, or if its intentionally left inside a cabinet as either a historical curio or gag or something. I do appreciate how it is included in the astro city mini cabinets, giving people at home the wonderful experience of playing something that you'd really rather be best off playing anything else over.
Because of that, this game was designed to be as cheap and disposable as humanly possible. You get NO sound hardware, NO colors, 256x192 resolution, it's literally just a head-on clone using the most primative graphics imaginable. I will say that compared to head-on, there's at least some sauce in movement as you essentially have free movement in any direction (except backwards) and the AI isn't as hell-bent on smashing into you to make juking enemies out more possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the AI programming follows a seemingly random path with as little lines of code as possible though. There are also no continues, or even credits to begin with which is honestly a bit surprising, if you were a cheapass arcade owner that couldnt afford any actual games for your cab you wouldnt even be able to make any change back on just dottori-kun.
It's certainly fascinating to see a game designed with the purpose of being replaced. Sega told their team "don't try too hard with this one" and they followed through. It's mid by design, but i guess in that case then mission accomplished? It also kinda makes this game extremely rare out in the wild, since the only way you'd be able to find this would be if an arcade operator fucked up and didn't actually put an actual game in their machine, or if its intentionally left inside a cabinet as either a historical curio or gag or something. I do appreciate how it is included in the astro city mini cabinets, giving people at home the wonderful experience of playing something that you'd really rather be best off playing anything else over.
The frozen store brand plain cheese pizza that you find at Aldi for 50p of video games.