Japan Racing Association x Puyo Puyo collaboration “UmaPuyo” announced
SEGA and Japan Racing Association have teamed up for a new collaboration called UmaPuyo (literally “Horse Puyo”). The Japan Racing Association being Japan’s horse racing division since 1954, hence the association with horses. While the collaboration may seem random, SEGA has had a history with horse racing games, notably the Starhorse series of arcade game, so there’s some logic to something like UmaPuyo.
There are two minigames for UmaPuyo. First is a racing game called UmaPuyo Race where you can select your character and horse and race off. The objective is to get first place by clearing out Puyo consecutively, the more Puyo cleared the faster your horse will run. UmaPuyo Jump is a jump platforming game where you guide a Puyo using your mouse cursor and collect horses. There are a total of 20 horses, each one based on a real-world horse that appears in the Japan Racing Association horse races. You can play both on the official Umabi website.
While on the surface there’s nothing special about this collaboration, the former game UmaPuyo Race has a contest associated with it. Every time the player wins a race, the player will get a raffle. To enter, the player needs to follow @Umabi_Official and share their victory on Twitter. Once entered, they will have an opportunity to win a cash prize of ¥50,000 ($455.00). 5 winners will be chosen at an unspecified later date.
Special thanks for @AFKei with help translating this information.