Released during the twilight years of the Super Famicom, *Zenkoku Juudan: Ultra Shinri Game* is an eccentric "psychology board game" that serves as a fascinating window into mid-90s Japanese gaming trends. Developed by Visit, the title tasks players with traveling across a digital map of Japan, stopping at various prefectures to engage in personality quizzes and psychological assessments. Unlike the high-octane action found in the console’s more famous library, this is a sedentary, social experience designed for groups to learn more about their own mental quirks and compatibility with one another.
The gameplay is almost entirely menu-driven and text-heavy, making it an impenetrable wall for anyone without a high level of Japanese literacy. The "Ultra" in the title refers to the expanded scope compared to its predecessors, offering a variety of modes including a cross-country tour and a more direct "Diagnosis" mode. While the psychological theories presented are more "pop-science" and parlor trick than clinical analysis, there is a certain charm in the way the game attempts to gamify the human psyche through 16-bit multiple-choice questions and abstract scenarios.
Visually and aurally, the game is remarkably utilitarian, even by 1995 standards. The character sprites are simple, and the backgrounds are static representations of Japanese landmarks that do little to push the Super Famicom's hardware. The music is cheerful but becomes highly repetitive during longer sessions, serving as mere background noise for the reading-intensive gameplay. For the Western collector, it remains a curious relic of a genre that flourished in Japan but never found a foothold abroad, largely because the local-market appeal of "Shinri" (psychology) games was rooted deeply in Japanese social dynamics of the era.
