Snow Battle Princess Sayuki (PS4)

Sometimes the best collector's pickups are the ones nobody else is paying attention to. Snow Battle Princess Sayuki Limited Edition for PlayStation 4 is a Strictly Limited Games exclusive, individually numbered and capped at 1,000 copies worldwide. It ships with the game and a colorful manual, a clean and focused release for a game with a wild origin story.

This was supposed to be a Pocky and Rocky game. Developer Starfish was building Kiki Kaikai World for home consoles when Taito got absorbed by Square Enix and the project got axed. Rather than trash years of work, Starfish stripped the licensed elements and launched Sayuki as her own thing. The core gameplay, that top-down, run-and-gun aggression the series was built on, survived intact and got expanded with snow magic and a combo meter that rewards relentless offense.

You play as a snow goddess on a quest to cure a mortal boy's illness, blasting through hordes of yokai with your bunny companion Toto riding along. Two-player mode lets a friend jump in as Koyuki for competitive co-op scoring. The hand-drawn art layered over pixel work gives it a visual personality you don't see much elsewhere.

At 1,000 copies on PS4, this is the kind of limited release that flies under the radar until it doesn't. While everyone chases the obvious grails, the collectors who recognize a piece of Pocky and Rocky's lost history are the ones building the interesting shelves. This is a numbered physical copy of a game most people don't even know exists. That's where the real finds live.