Curiosities Vol. 6 - Heim Waltz (Saturn)

So firstly, I should point out that I've renamed the "Arcade Curiosities" series of posts, and included stuff like those X68000 Space Harrier hacks and stuff, just to allow a bit more variety in future posts.  Mainly things that are on games consoles but aren't really games, like Heim Waltz, for example.

What is Heim Waltz then, if not a game? Well, it's an interactive video tour of two model homes, a house and a flat, in mid-1990s Japanese suburbia. Since it was only given out to prospective customers of one particular housing company, it's also one of the rarest Saturn discs around. The odd thing about this situation is that you'd think that it'd make more sense for them to make this a PC disc, and if they did, no-one would have cared about preserving it and it would have just vanished into true, irretrievable obscurity never to be seen again.

But they didn't, and here we all are. It actually bears some superficial similarities to the Mega CD and Saturn game Yumemi Mystery Mansion, in that your navigation of the properties is very limited, basically giving you a choice of different paths from one FMV to the next. There's no puzzles or butterfly ghosts though, just a voiceover (you get to choose between a male and female voice) describing the details, and some kind of floor plan menu thing that's all in Japanese, as well as a feature to move a cursor round and see additional details on certain parts of each room.

Unless you're in the market for middle-class suburban housing in 1990s Japan, Heim Waltz will have no interest or use to you, so obviously, there's no reason to "play" it. There's especially no reason to pay £300 to get a legit copy of it either.