0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Bounty Hunter Sara Holy Mountain no Teiou

       

Bounty Hunter Sara Holy Mountain no Teiou is a sci-fi themed adventure visual novel game developed by Flagship Works and published by Capcom for both the Dreamcast and Playstation versions of the game. The game was released exclusively in Japan on both consoles.

The game released first for the Dreamcast on the 23^rd of May 2001 and the following day on the 24^th of May 2001 for the Playstation. The game is a part of the short lived Bounty Hunter Sara series with this game and the 2002 released Critical Bullet 7th Target on the PS2.

Notable people who worked on this game, Noboru Sugimura who worked as a Scenario Writer on the game, a role alongside Scenario Designer he has held on many well known series including Resident Evil, Dino Crisis and the Onimusha series.

Hideaki Katagiri who worked as a Graphic Designer on the game and worked on Clock Tower 3, Haunting Ground, Glass Rose and Ape Escape On the Loose following this game, he worked as Design Director for Ape Escape.

Prior to working on Bounty Hunter Sara Holy Mountain no Teiou, Katagiri worked on the Mega Man Series as a Graphic Designer, with Katagirl working on Mega Man’s 4,5 and 6. Earlier in his career he worked as a Character Texture Artist on the first Resident Evil from 1996.

Akiko Nagashima who’s career dates back to 1991 when he worked as a Background Designer on Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, a role he would also fill in the 1993 released Final Fight 2. During the early to mid 90s he also worked on the Street Fighter series, working on Scroll Design for Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha 2.

During 1999 and 2000 Nagashima worked on the Mega Man series as a Graphic Designer for Mega Man’s 4,5 and 6 before moving to work on the games Background for the 2000 releases Mega Man Xtreme. Nagashima continued to work on the Street Fighter series as well, working as a Background Designer for the 2001 released Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival, he was also a Background Designer for the 2001 released Mega Man X6.

Bounty Hunter Sara Holy Mountain no Teiou plays out like a digital or visual novel, with the player aim in the game to work their way through the ranks of the Lord of the Holy Mountains organization. This consists of the player being presented with still shots of real life actors accompanied by a sci-fi futuristic background in a static screen.

The game will present the player with dialogue interruption which are speckled with film noir looking pieces of narrative to progress the story. The various decisions the player will make during the course of the game will effect the ending the player receives with many differing paths available. At the end of the game the player will be given a detective rank depending on the decisions the player made.

This game has a very basic control scheme with very little in the way of interaction in the game, the D-Pad is used to move between the various actions that are available, when you are happy with the action the main character will take the Circle button is used. You can access the game menu by Pressing the X or L2 shoulder button, dialogue sequences can be skipped by pressing the Start button, this button will also access the options and save menu.

The year is 2060 and Neo Tokyo is overflowing with criminal elements and it’s a thug life for the many up and coming miscreants. With the police force stretched to breaking point they resort to hiring mercenary work to enterprising freelance contractors who have the resources to kneecap the goons who are terrorising the city of Neo Tokyo.(Footage below is the Dreamcast version of the game)

These goons who are only dignified by the warrants on their heads, one of the many mercenaries hired by the police is Sara Fitzgerald a bounty hunter who takes on the most high risk of assignments all for cold hard cash. And this latest assignment will be no easier for her with the Lord of the Holy Mountain the feared gangster her target.

This being a Japanese only release critic reviews for it are none existent, as a result we will head over to GameFAQs for their user ratings of the game. We find the game currently sitting at an average rating of 3.83/5 from a total of only 3 user ratings.

Taking a closer look at the user ratings we find the game did not rate below a 3/5, this user rating coming from one user, there is also one user each that rated the game at either a 4/5 or an impressive 4.5/5, next we will move on to the game difficulty level.

Here we find again just 3 users rating this category and we find all three are in agreement and find the game to have just the right difficulty level. Lastly we have the game lifespan here we find just 2 users have rated this category, with one user each spending either 8 or 20 hours with the game, averaging out this comes to an average lifespan of 14 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

   

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where unsurprisingly this Japanese only release is not available or even listed, the same goes for Retrogames.co.uk. So we will quickly head to eStarland.com where we sadly don’t find the Playstation version of the game listed, we do find the Sega Dreamcast version however, this version is however sadly out of stock.

When in stock the game has a usual sale price of between $4.98 and $9.95, also on offer at eStarland.com is a trade in with up to $3 being paid for a complete copy of the game. Unlike many games that can be traded in as eStarland.com is game will not be accepted in an incomplete condition.

Lastly we head to Amazon.com where we don’t find this game listed, we do find the Sega Dreamcast version of the game available with used prices from $12.98, and new from $29.78 but no Playstation versions of the game. The same goes for Amazon.co.uk were we only find the Dreamcast version of the game available.

 

The last hope for find copies of this game is Ebay.com, thankfully we do find some copies on offer with prices for a complete copy  of the game starting at $13 for a good condition copy of the game. Another copy is priced at $13.36, with a starting price before shipping of $7.36 or best offer. A third copy another complete used copy can be picked up for $13.99, this copy is in very good condition.

Two more used copies of the game are available, both of these copies also come with free shipping from Japan, these copies are priced up at $15 and $16.83 respectively, these copies are both complete and are in very good overall condition.

Written by

P J Gibbon