Released on April 3rd 1998 by Seta, Morita Shogi is the third and last Shogi
game to be released on the N64. This game is much more pleasant to look at than
Seta's other game Saikyo Habu Shogi. It has a traditional Japanese theme, so the
opening cutscene features some nice warring states battle scenes, and the main
menu has some pleasant traditional Japanese music. The options menu even allows
you to choose lovely environmental sound effects that match each of the four
seasons. With these features, and the groundbreaking ability to play online, I
would say that even without a tournament mode, this is easily the best of the
three shogi games on the N64.
The titular Kazuro Morita was a well known programmer in the early days of
Japanese computing. Born in Toyama prefecture to a family of doctors. Kazuro
enrolled at Saitama Medical School where he joined the computer club. With an
NEC TK-80 he programmed his first game, a version of Orthello in 1976. 1982 he
won the grand prize of 1 million yen at an Enix game competition with his game
Morita's Battlefield. This war strategy game was programmed in a month. When it
was released on cassette it earned Morita over 5 million yen in royalties.
In 1983 he formed a game development house with his computer club members and
within six months they released a port of Xevious for the PC-8801 called
Arufosu.
In 1985 he released the first Morita's Shogi title which placed well in many
computer Shogi tournaments. Morita himself was a 5th Dan Shogi player. In total
there would 11 titles in the Morita's Shogi series.
His NES and PC RPG's such as Beast God Rogas, Minelvaton Saga, Dungeon Land and
Just Breed are his best remembered titles.
Kuzuro Morita passed away at the age of 57 on July 27, 2012. He is survived by
his brother Takashi Morita a politician and doctor.
Befitting Morita's contribution to the advancement of Shogi games, the N64
version features online play, a feature made possible by the RJ-11 Modem
Connection port built into the top of the cart. Despite this sales of the game
were reportedly sluggish and therefore it is not uncommon to find complete boxed
copies to this day.
In May 2020 security researcher CTurt discovered that the modern connection port
could be exploited to allow remote code execution on the N64 much easier than
via the game sharks or flash cards. This opens up the possibility of easily
running homebrew games or online multiplayer games on the N64 hardware.
2.Translation Guide
This game require the controller pak to save certain data, but you can play the
game without it. After turning the game on and watching the cool Waring States
style introduction you will arrive at the title screen. Here you have the
following options.
1 Game Room - Play a single game here
2 Shogi Ranking Test - Take a test to check your ranking
3 Research Room - Experiment with the AI
4 Shogi Problems - Try to solve shogi problems
5 Environment Settings
6 Change your online name
7 Japan Shogi Network - Connect to the internet to play Shogi online
1 Game Room
In the game room you have the follow options
Play a quick game
Detailed Settings
Continue a game
Go back
After choosing "Play a quick game" the following settings will be shown
Players - Human or CPU, you can set the CPU level here too (from 1-6)
Handicap - 平手 means no handicap. Otherwise you can choose to remove pieces.
Set the time limit for turns 無制限 means no limit.
Countdown timer on or off.
Then you have two buttons at the bottom of the screen.
Start the game
Go back
When you pause during a game you are shown the following options
Restart the game
Load a game record
Save a game
Load a game
Environment Settings
Return to the main menu
Cancel
2 Shogi Ranking Test - Take a test to check your ranking
You have three options here
Take the ranking test
Read the next move - Shows you the next move in a problem
Go back
5 Environment Settings
You have the following options here
Left side
Style of shogi pieces
Board material pattern
Countdown Timer - on or off
Countdown Style
Right side
Countdown Sound - on or off
Music - on or off
Environmental sounds - Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, or none.
You then have two options
Confirm
Go back
7 Japan Shogi Network
I would love to write a detailed guide of how this mode worked. But considering
the fact that this game came with 2 manuals, both of which are over 30 pages in
length I think its a better use of my time to translate a game that people will
actually want to play. Nevertheless, here is the main menu in this mode.
Connect
Line Settings
Joining Procedures
Server Address Book
Message Settings
Write a sentence
Go back
I assume the sentence writing options allowed you to create a predefined message
to send to players before and after games. It makes me wonder how many people
played this game at the time and if a small community ever sprung up around it.
Do those people still remember the other people they played against on Morita
Shogi 64 and wonder where they are now?
3.Walkthrough
You need to be able to recognize the kanji for each piece in order to use this
guide. The pieces are as follows, with the piece they are most similar to in
chess, the meaning of their name and then the kanji as it appears in the game.
Higher ranked players sometimes have a differently named king, 王將
Pieces that reach the end of the board are promoted and are shown with red kanji
as follows
In this guide I will refer to spaces on the board in the following way. 9 to 1
across the top, and A to I from top to bottom. This is not traditional shogi
notation, but I hope it easier to understand for those people who do not know
shogi notation. So in the traditional opening of a game, the board looks like
this:
９８７６５４３２１
香桂銀金王金銀桂香 A
飛 角 B
歩歩歩歩歩歩歩歩歩 C
D
E
F
歩歩歩歩歩歩歩歩歩 G
角 飛 H
香桂銀金王金銀桂香 I
Apologies for the messy formatting, its the best I can do with all the different
kanji sizes and combinations of Latin characters.
If you follow this guide, you will take and promote pieces automatically but I
have included those instructions in order to make it easier to understand. In
shogi you can also put spare pieces or pieces you have captured on the board if
you wish to. You can do this in game by moving the cursor to the extra pieces at
the bottom right of the screen. At the end of every game your opponent will
resign so there will be no long drawn out games.
