We Love Shenmue 3’s ‘Grabbing The Coin Between The Car Seats’ Minigame!

Many gaming fans can’t wait for the upcoming release of Shenmue 3 (coming November 19th!). What made the original Shenmue games such an unexpected delight was their ability to turn mundane chores into addictive minigames (remember that awesome forklift?). And it turns out even that masterpiece of the mundane doesn’t hold a candle to Shenmue 3’s minigame where the main character Ryo drops a coin between the seat and center console of a car and spends the next several minutes fishing it out with his pointer and middle fingers.

The brilliant minigame can be activated whenever you reach a tollbooth during the real-time drive between your humble apartment in the fictional town of Guilin on your way to your job at the docks of a riverside village 47-minutes away. En route, you’ll have to drop a coin into a tollbooth, and you must gauge exactly how far to throw the coin so it lands squarely in the basket. And that’s only if Ryo doesn’t fumble the coin and drop it between the seat.

The right thumbstick will fight you every step of the way as you try to center it above the coin’s thin edge. Grabbing it between the pad of Ryo’s middle finger and the nail of his index finger is no easy task either, as it requires a simultaneous button press of the triangle and X buttons on a PS4 controller. This tense moment is made all the more stressful with the ever-growing line of angry drivers honking behind you. If the line gets too long, Ryo will be pulled out of his 1981 Honda Civic hatchback by an angry mob of drivers, initiating a 50-person fight.

If you survive that vicious gauntlet of angry fishermen and food-stall workers who are running late for work, you can climb back in your car and continue on your merry way (assuming you fish out the coin between the seat and console once the minigame fires back up, this time with bruised and bloodied fingers).

It’s such an exhilaratingly tedious minigame that you’ll almost forget it has no impact on the story at all!

Images: Unsplash, Deep Silver