2nd Arukotoha Sando-R (Saturn) review "More of the Same, but Somehow Less"

The third entry in the Puzzle & Action series, called Treasure Hunt in the English arcade version, continues the tradition that's been in place since the first game: chasing scum! Whereas Tant-R involves two detectives pursuing escaped prisoners and Ichidant-R features two knights trailing a demon king who kidnapped a princess, Treasure Hunt has two adventurers tracking thieves who stole precious treasure. The long chase transpires within a "simplistic" graphical design originating from the Bonanza Bros. game, also from Sega, with smooth sphere-like shapes being used as body proportions. And also like prior titles, once you catch up to one of the thieves' henchmen, a fight breaks out. A minigame fight!

While you're essentially doing these one after another, there's a structure: automatically catch up to an opponent, have the option to pick one of four minigames, attempt to win its challenge, and continue completing several minigames until there's a boss encounter. Of course, how far you reach into the game depends on if you succeed at these challenges. Your adventurers have a health meter, and every time you mess up within one of these challenges, you'll lose a heart. Lose too many hearts and it's game over. You have continues, but there's only a limited amount, so don't be so reliant on them.

As the series name so heavily implies, these minigames are based around situated puzzles, scenarios using quick reflexes, or a blend of both. This is a light-hearted game, too, and it shows as the majority of challenges are backed by goofy premises. The "I'm Bald" challenge, for example, has a near-hairless man hastily trying several combinations of medicine potions on his head, and your task is to correctly identify the one consistent bottle. "Lionelle Richie" has two anthropomorphic lions, in speedo briefs no less, fighting over a giant piece of fresh meat; your job is to quickly fire bullets in the middle of the meat to separate, which is trickier than it sounds since they're playing tug-of-war with it.

Good fun. However, if this is your first foray into the series, then you'll quickly realize there's a condition in place: strict time limits. This is done intentionally to place pressure on players so they won't feel too comfortable with the challenges. That, and this was originally an arcade game. For instance, one minigame requires that you drive through a maze-like road to pick up your girlfriend. The catch here is that every pathway has traffic lights that waver between green and red at different intervals. On the go, you must deduce at the right time when to drive through green ones, as failure to guess correctly forces a stop at a red light. This shaves off precious seconds off the timer that ultimately fails the challenge.



You'll get accustomed to these minigames the more you play Treasure Hunt, but the devs took this into consideration; the further you advance, the harder the challenges become. Speaking of shaving, one challenge calls for you to rotate the controller's d-pad to mimic an ice shave machine as it makes a delicious snow treat for a child. Early on this is a very doable task, but play it again late in the game and the timer is now very strict, thus forcing you to rotate like crazy. Another situation involving difficulty escalation is the hot air balloon challenge: four balloons with animal icons move around the screen spinning, and in the end you must pick the correct icon as they face away. Later on, this becomes six balloons. You'd be surprise how mentally taxing that is.

As for the quality of the minis, they're not all too different in terms of format from prior games, but don't fix what's broken, right? As mentioned previously, it's all based around memory and reflexes, so you're bound to have a feeling of deja vu regardless. Though, some make a legit recycled return albeit with different themes, such as the challenge where you have to remember the placement of disappeared UFOs after they erratically spin around a field; other than new visuals, this is no different from the ninjas in Tant-R or the silhouettes in Ichidant-R.

But a good portion of challenges are fun fresh takes. Along with the speedo lions, the traffic lights, and the shaved ice, you also have such quirky objectives like saving people from a burning building; of course the only way to do this is to reduce the structure to one floor by destroying all the burning floors with an omnipotent hammer. Then there's the coin flip: not only must you keep a coin in the air by shooting it at an angle, but you have to keep shooting it upward to reach a certain height. It's actually much more gratifying than it sounds.



However, tragedy strikes concerning the lack of cool extras in this Saturn conversion. There's the usual "Free Play" mode that allows you to try all minigames without restrictions, along with an "RPG" mode; the latter being the same flow as the main mode, except there's some minor difficulty adjustments, some bonus mini-minigames, and you can occasionally use mode-exclusive items. It's okay, but absolutely pales in comparison to the Quest Mode in the Mega Drive port of Ichidant-R: an actual RPG mode where you wander an overhead map and have random encounters. Unfortunately, the 4-player competitive mode from the Mega Drive ports are also nowhere to be seen; you would think, out of all the things to remain consistent in these home ports, that a party mode would survive.

It's sad the game's extras are bare bones, but hopefully it was due to meeting deadlines and not because the devs were lazy. The fact that the same developers who were responsible for those Mega Drive ports also did this one makes that all the more questionable. But again, it should be emphasized that the core game is still entertaining, and at the very least the arcade's 2-player co-op accessibility is still intact. Being the third in the series and recycling the same routines and minigames might give players fatigue who are coming from the first two titles, but that only drops its overall quality just a tad. Treasure Hunt is still worth a go if you're up for straining both your brain and your hand-eye coordination in wacky scenarios.

Community review by dementedhut (April 19, 2026) Bang.