Sokoban and Beyond: The Games of Thinking Rabbit
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- Опубліковано 2 сер 2024
- PATREON: www.patreon.com/user?u=97540811
Thinking Rabbit and Hiroyuki Imabayashi are famous for Sokoban, but the story of his company didn't end there. Covers Sokoban and an overview of its many sequels, ports and clones, The many games in the Disk Mystery Adventure Series, work done for other publishing companies which Thinking Rabbit was involved in such as 8 Eyes and the SNES Lodoss game, and their varied subcontracting work.
Apologies for any audio glitches, still recovering.
My video on the Takeru vending machines
• The Story of the Taker...
Fan translations utilized:
Fighting Road (Immutable) -
www.romhacking.net/translatio...
Record of Lodoss War (Dynamic Designs) -
www.romhacking.net/translatio...
Cyber Knight II - (Aeon Genesis)
www.romhacking.net/games/703/
0:00 Introduction
01:38 Hiryuki Imabayashi and Sokoban
08:09 Other puzzle games
09:22 The Keyhole Murder Caae
15:04 The Clown Murder Case
19:02 With Love From Casablanca
24:39 Madeleine
26:27 The Man I Love
29:11 Jack: The Las Vegas Serial Murders
32:02 Detective Minakata Appears & Dragons of China
34:28 8 Eyes, Lodoss, Ooparts, and other console games
41:28 Subcontracting work and the end of Thinking Rabbit
44:04 Conclusion, Patreon, and credits
One of my online friends is obsessed with Mega Man 2 GB (and Thinking Rabbit in general) to the point where he shared this with me today.
That game was reportedly developed in 3 months alongside a different GB game, with no assistance from Capcom themselves (e.g. the Famicom games had to be bought out-of-pocket to examine the source material). All things considered, the game is actually really stable compared to official entries - the music suffered the most, unfortunately.
Yep, the tricky part that I ran into there was just that different sources cite different companies for dev. (It's sorta like Double Dungeons which is credited in some places as Thinking Rabbit and others as Masaya/NCS). Lack of full credits doesn't help. Knowing who worked on it partially , it's clear Thinking Rabbit coded some parts of it, but cites conflicted in whether it was a larger part like Fighting Road or something more like the work done on What's Michael.
Chances are if one of the five folks mentioned in the ending credits of the Disk Mystery Adventure series worked on it games are gonna be either Thinking Rabbit like Lodoss or "Falcon" like Dragons of China, but they all worked for different companies at various points. So it becomes almost like a Ship of Theseus logic experiment lol - if the same five people developed it, but they're all working for different companies at time of development, , is it still a Thinking Rabbit game? (That's the reason Urusei Yatsura: Koi no Survival Birthday wasn't featured)
-it's a headache lol, I feel like if I was going as granular as GDRI I'd go insane.
My gut feeling from play is it's almost like Falcon work, because if it was creative work like Lodoss, there'd be a hair-tearing puzzle in it - that's almost like a stamp - but since I couldn't confirm 100% it was cut.
As far as the sound design (i think Bluemoon? I'll check that) , that composer likes his music *harsh* and I'm not sure why. Fighting Road is like that too and it's definitely an acquired taste. It's funny because you hear remixes of Fighting Road and they simply tone down the harshness and it's much more pleasant to listen to.
@@f_t_b2238 I'm the person OP mentions with the "Thinking Rabbit obsession" :p
[edited, since according to CRV, the emails weren't actually Nakamura himself.]
@forple8930 Comment pinned for this very detailed explanation. I can't pin your reply, but I'll pin the thread. it's nice to have confirmation - that famicom driver is *distinct*.and it's amusing the Sunsoft driver came out of Thinking Rabbit as well.
Outback's an offshoot of Thinking Rabbit that did a lot of portable titles, notably Hiden Inyou Kikohou Cada.
Kinda surprised the leak didn't come out of Superman, that game sounded like hell to work on.
Here's the thread about the misattribution that I ran into as well - this person thought the dev was Biox / Japan System House Company Limited. I don't recall the exact sources he means but I saw this too, I'm gonna guess magazines. Errors are fun! X.X
I'm immensely relieved my guess in the thread was right tho lol.
I really get the feeling Imabayashi just got his co workers to help on things no matter who they are working for or where they are working lol. Makes research interesting, for sure!
x.com/Monodi/status/1768439942177272206?s=19
@@f_t_b2238 I get the feeling Thinking Rabbit's staff had more "personal" connections than typical Japanese business relationship connections; After all, most companies and their higher ups in Japan wouldn't want to keep in touch with their former staff that quit, especially to make a up and coming rival company. Purely speculation on my part, sure, but I feel like Hiroto Nakamura had such a connection with Imabayashi because if it was a traditional business relationship, why would they hire their ex-programmer to do a ton of their work with them again?
These old Japanese companies retrospectives have became my favorite series, they are so fascinating, almost always have some very interesting games that I never heard of, but eventually links to something I know well. Incredible job on this as always.
Excellent rundown. Was nice to see Ooparts get a call out, that game deserved better.
Masterful work once more. Bringing out all those immensly hard to find info and games as always, especially those that were out on the net at one point and are now stashed somewhere in some archive nobody knows how to access.
I like the allusion, Inabayashi, "Inaba" therefore "Rabbit" and thus "Thinking Rabbit". Is good.
So, for Inabayashi, you mean to tell me the guy had a Kojima-like humble beginning, then went on to unleash his madness in ways that would make Suda and Kotaro Uchikoshi blush in embarassment for not thinking of such things first, while using his generations "Star System" that was popular in manga by Osamu Tezuka only to go full SWERY65 and plagiarize his favourite films? Absolute madlad.
Ok, the OO Parts section got me hooked, I gotta play that. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, had no idea Terada nor Nirasawa worked on that, haven't had info about them developing it, unlike Keita Amemiya who had the games he worked listed on his name.
Yeah Ooparts was tough to find information on, I was surprised. I don't know why Ooparts was good and Dragons of China wasn't tho. And Imabayashi feels auteur-ish just as much as Suda or Kojima, he definitely has his favorite things to use (notably one *incredibly difficult puzzle* in everything he writes) , he just comes off more humble. I actually don't believe in autuer theory that much but Imabayashi's involvement is making me doubt that because you feel his involvement as much as like a Sandy Peterson level in Doom.
Ooparts is a good game, it's just a bit more true to like - early Wizardry than SMT. I wish the dungeons were better. As much as I gripe about the puzzles, I missed their absence lol. The final dungeon is pretty good, tho. Reminded me of the end of Zeta, or Psy-O-Blade. I feel like if he wrote it, it would've been a classic, but IIRC non TR staff wrote it. Bet good money he had hand in the character dialogue, though!
Apologies- Masaru Takeuchi (of Zeliard) wrote Ooparts. So that's another big name.
@@f_t_b2238 Oh, so even in Japan it was kinda niche, out of all the games shown(bar the licensed ones and Sokoban), I suspected that would be the most accessible for info. I don't know about auter theory but to me he comes off closer to Uchikoshi, the guy that's completely insane and uses his favourite type of tropes and tidbits from genres to actually make a game he would like to play, or in his and Uchi's case, a game he'd like to mostly read.
I see, interesting comparisson to Psy-O-Blade; yeah, the Wizardry feeling is far stronger than SMT, being closer to a SNES Megami Tensei 2 with more of an overworld instead, even given the battle screen.
Thanks again for the video and the info, always a delight to finding out more about the earlier devs and their journeys through the years, especially if they influence somebody or share a common ground of influence.
Really love these videos about forgotten video game companies. It gives a different pespective in the game creation process
I'm always excited to see out your new videos on my feed. Such interesting and unique topics that are presented so well. Thanks for providing this high quality content, looking forward to your next video.
A good insight into a rather obscure studio here and their output. Made for interesting viewing.
F_T_B, This is so fun! I'm happy I found your channel!
Ooparts looks awesome, first time seeing that one. It's pretty interesting that Yasushi Nirasawa designed enemies in that very SMT looking game, then came to design demons in SMT4 years later. This also reminds me of the sokoban style mini games that I hated in SMT Nocturne.
It's a good game, although sadly no fan translations as of yet. I really wonder what it could have been if it wasn't going for SMT so specifically.
The characters you meet - feel a little goofier than SMT, and that was such an odd angle to take that it became intriguing to me. But the visual style is great all the way through.
Let me give you the full title, as there's a company by the same name and a different adventure game with the same title.
It's Maten Densetsu: Senritsu no Ooparts, or 魔天伝説 戦慄のオーパーツ.
Really fascinating video here. Thanks for helping to bring attention to such an odd, brave, and wildly inconsistent company.
Nice! It's such a treat seeing a new video from you in my timeline.
I can't imagine how much time you've put into these videos, which are always a treat. Thank you, and I hope a wave of thousands new subs is just around the corner bc you more than deserve it.
This was quite interesting, entertaining and very well told. Thank you, sir. I will watch you did before and be around for what you will do next.
Great video! I love the style of your videos - always a joy to see you upload a new one! Keep doing your thing, and thank you for the hours of entertainment/information!
Excellent as always! Thank you for exploring this niche.
So I guess the Thinking Rabbit that exists today is literally just Imabayashi himself.
Yeah. Basically he took the trademark with him, so a lot of times you'll see "Thinking Rabbit" on Falcon mobile apps and such. Also in the Japan IGN interview - I'll link it- he mentions he still maintains Grampa's Machine on the website as of 2023 (despite the site being extremely difficult to run on modern browsers, which is why Grandpa's Machine wasn't covered.)
jp.ign.com/games/72805/interview/adv
It's actually in relation to that Portopia game that turned out bad, but his stuff is more about text adventures generally and his own history.
Easiest sub! Always such interesting topics. Great job!
Christmas came early! thanks for the video
It's always awesome to see that you posted a new video! By the way, thanks for adding subtitles!
Thanks! Let me know if there's any issue, UA-cam's been weird about them since they 'upgraded' the captioning.
Another amazing video. Thank you for sharing.
It feels like so many games ripped off the mechanics of Sokoban. Like I never played the game, but that type of puzzle is so familiar. I'm pretty sure many other games used it as just one aspect of gameplay.
Yeah, pretty much every block pushing puzzle is derived from it in some way, although the original is much stricter. There's another video that went more into Sokoban's math and stuff that I'll link when I recall it. I feel like the grid based design to be logicked outwards to stuff like the classic Tomb Raider games. "If boxes are grids, what else are grids?" Etc.
The existence of these sorts of puzzles in Dragon Quest is a shoutout to Imabayashi specifically, according to an interview done last year for IGN Japan.
There was an even an "I hate block pushing puzzles" article recently lol, forget where - made me sweat a bit while making this lmao
Here it is
ua-cam.com/video/BED0qJYXyjg/v-deo.htmlsi=CZ8hPXIJ4_JdTVUu
Different vibe from what I do but goes more into the "how" of it.
Another very good documentary on game history! :)
Always love watching your videos, can't wait for the next one.
The clown murder case?
I never want to back to that Big Top again
To be fair, I did mention the memories may not be positive lol... but yeah, it's a bit of a shout out to that game. Clown Murder's case is much more intricate and dark, though - it's like a Patricia Highsmith novel, with making people believe they are terminally ill through poisoning feeling like a Ripley novel. I was very surprised at how dark the game was.
Must've been disappointing for players who played both, I couldn't stand that case in PW either lol
MAN I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS
great video thanks!
Another great exploration of gaming's miscellany by F_T_B
'Miscellany' definitely covers Thinking Rabbit, narrowing down to what was something 100% they contracted on was tough, lot of conflicting reports. It feels like they sorta existing as a jack-of-all-trades space in the 90s for others but the one-two punch of Detective Minakata and Dragons of China knocked them out cold.
I liked that their modern website still ties to Sokoban and their adventure games though.
It's a shame though - Ultimate Sokoban is a legitimately great game, as is Clown Murder, which was way too early with the fourth wall stuff. Oddly - the Riverhill game pulls back on that.
Definitely a dev that marched to their beat of their own drum, for sure.
@@f_t_b2238 Great response. I never played games like these, so your channel is definitely an exotic world I never knew. Great work, man!!
Oh! Sokoban was known as "Cajas" (boxes) in my household in Latin America.
Welcome back!
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Time to spend my Sunday night with some great gaming informatio-I WAS THINKING ABOUT THINKING RABBIT A WHILE AGO!
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I have a soft spot for 8-Eyes.
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I feel like if it controlled a little better I'd be kinder to it, but it's definitely better than its rep.
One thing I couldn't find when researching is exactly how the three endings work in both versions, information conflicted so it was cut. But the puzzle aspect is interesting becuase Thinking rabbit absolutely cannot resist making a game with a difficult puzzle aspect. Lodoss has some that are downright *mean* lol
While I cannot understate the amount of respect and reverence I have for Portopia's historical significance, there's something genuinelly laudable about Hiryuki Imabayashi's dedication to PC text parser adventure games, finding graphical interfaces to be limiting and railroading. I do think this played no small role in the ultimate irrelevancy of many of his titles in the eyes of history, with most gaming history enthusiasts labelling him a one-hit wonder who lived in the shadow of Sokoban. He very clearly had a passion for the genre though, and it's fascinating to see how utterly unflinching he was with that design ethos throughout the 80s. I'd almost argue that the key flaw of Jack: The Las Vegas Serial Murders was something of a result for his disdain for command based adventure titles. The Joker command seems to allows you to intuit things that a text-based adventure player would have likely spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out through various commands, and it wasn't too uncommon for adventure games of that era to force you back to the beginning with a game over (even graphical ones), with the knowledge that you had figured out the sequence of events to that point and could easily come back. It's certainly a touch more evil than something like Uninvited, given you have no warning, but I don't know. It has no English translation, but if I could, I'd love to try it at some point.
In any case, great video overall! I've been getting into writing about videos games these past few months to try and share my obsession with the history of the medium, and got recommended this video. Ended up trying to search up more about Thinking Rabbit's adventure games about midway through the video, and found one of your Patreon videos on Vimeo. Abstaining from watching it until I can feel comfortable financially supporting (is it possible to have videos be unlisted on Vimeo? It might have just come up because it's the *only* mention of the game i can find on the english web, but I guess word of warning either way?). Either way, fantastic work on this video, and I'm looking forward to watching more of your stuff.
Vimeo is *screwy*, but thanks for the update - it's supposed to be invisible, but since I've switched to a paid tier it's been weird about patron visibility. I'll be working on fixing that tomorrow.
Thanks for the heads up - I appreciate their hosting especially considering they used to never host game content but man, it's always something lol...
Jack is weird because a lot of it has "there's no way to know that". That's more elaborately explained in a Patreon video but essentially one puzzle requires brute forcing a command that's given a negative prompt response over 13 times, among others. Imabayashi is actually a very good puzzle designer so the flaws in Jack stick out more to me.
As far as Jack, it doesn't texthook well and there is a gamestopper bug in some versions, but after hours with textractor, game2text, and others, what worked for me was of all things just Google Lens lol. Played very well the whole way through (aside from the bug).
Thanks for that - fixed. Vimeo added a privacy setting that I had to change it to @_@.
@@f_t_b2238 No worries there, just wanted to give it a shout. I'll probably be able to pledge next month and give it a proper look, I really appreciate this dive into such an overlooked publisher.
On the topic of Jack, that's even more interesting to me then, frankly! Obviously frustrating and quite hateful to the player, but it does make it even more of a standout. At the very least, it's clear with it and his PS1 titles that he was actively trying to do something interesting.
I'll have to give a shot through Google Lens. Do you recommend any particular tool for any of the other games, if you played them? The Keyhole Murder Case, With Love From Casanblanca, and The Man I Love in particular look right up my alley. If not, no worries and thanks for replying to begin with.
For pc-98 ports, textractor works more often than not.
For pc-88 I vary between Lens and game2text. Game2text is very finicky tho fair warning.
For console ports I use vgtranslare thru retroarch.
When all else fails it's photos and translation apps lol.
Man I Love worked pretty good with textractor IIRC
Ultimate Sokobon looks really cute omg
It's a very good game, and more "Thinking Rabbit" style than the other games they did for other companies. It's basically a Pinocchio story - it's a little heavy, think Vivi from Final Fantasy IX but a bit lighter. Itochu published it, but it seems to build off of the engine used for Basic. Easier than the others but sadly no full walkthrough exists that I can find. It really deserved an export, I think.
Vert interesting, thanks.
I really liked the remake of Casablanca ni Ai o (Toki o Koeta Tegami) on the 3DO, thought the story was really good. I've always wanted to try Clown Murder case on the Saturn or PS1 but was annoyed that it's entirely voiced and not subtitled, might have to check out the original sometime.
Yeah that remake ran slow enough that full capture wasn't feasible (turning around is glacial) .The vibe of the remake is different too and it handles the ending a little differently. The original is better by a country mile here, and really nails that discomforting feeling. It's also darker at various points. I'd recommend the Sharp X68000 port for parser but for some reason the pc-88 one feels eerier.
The Casablanca remake is much better. Toki o Koeta Tegami has a pretty snappy Windows 95 port that's almost a direct UI lift of a MacVenture game, but I wasn't able to obtain it for the video. I might revisit it if i have more luck.
on Sokoban, I think the first variant of it I ever played was in high school via the NovaNET terminal? and I think that service debuted in the late 70s so I could see them getting the license to that game. not super familiar with their later work (though I have seen videos on some of their famicom offerings) but it sounds like they had some really interesting adventure games on PC!
This is an absolutely wonderful question and I'm gonna need a minute lol (I have an Educational Technology background, but the channel to research this isn't the usual so it will take longer).
PLATO, Novanet, or mainframe variants of Sokoban seem logical but i haven't heard of them personally, but most likely it's a Star Trek situation where a clone of the game propagated wildly and that might have been the version you played. I suspect it may even be from the 1980-1983 period between the "record store" version of Sokoban and the ASCII licensed one. Do you remember the year? That might assist in figuring it out.
Part of the problem is Sokoban is occasionally taught in Computer Science courses. That's something that was out of the scope of the video but it's relevant here. University terminals had some weird and ingenious stuff on em, so it's entirely possible what you played was locally coded to your school.
@@f_t_b2238 oh it's been about 30 years so damned if I can the exact year of release for that version (if there was any copyright info on it) ... but I'm guessing it was around the same time as it was first getting US distribution? but the clone thing would also make sense.
That would make sense. In 1987 or so Spectrum Holobyte starts sublicensing out like crazy and people start reverse engineering it. From that there was a UNIX version created and that I think was on BSD mainframes. That one could have been ported to the Novanet terminal, so it's most likely a riff on Sokoban 2 and was probably the 60 level version seen in most clones.
Sokoban licensing is messy as hell lol, you can hear me laugh in the vid as I'm trying to keep track of it. I'd bet good money there's a thousand different variants of it if you count type-ins and clones.
Looking it up it looks like it survives in Emacs. So if it's not this it's probably something similar, or one of the games that iterated on it like Ducpel or Chip's Challenge.
github.com/leoliu/sokoban
@@f_t_b2238 oh wow! yeah you might be right on that one.
That's an easy sub