Sokoban (NEC PC-88) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 435

Channel:

Gaming Jay

Subscribers:

6,240

Published on September 30, 2019 1:00:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=539L6DSh1dM

Game:

Sokoban (2006)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 31:00

1,306 views

29

Classic puzzlin' on the NEC PC-88

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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...

Sokoban
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban

Sokoban (倉庫番 sōko-ban, "warehouse keeper") is a type of puzzle video game, in which the player pushes crates or boxes around in a warehouse, trying to get them to storage locations.

Sokoban was created in 1981 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, and published in December 1982 by Thinking Rabbit, a software house based in Takarazuka, Japan.

The game is played on a board of squares, where each square is a floor or a wall. Some floor squares contain boxes, and some floor squares are marked as storage locations.

The player is confined to the board, and may move horizontally or vertically onto empty squares (never through walls or boxes). The player can also move into a box, which pushes it into the square beyond. Boxes may not be pushed into other boxes or walls, and they cannot be pulled. The number of boxes is equal to the number of storage locations. The puzzle is solved when all boxes are at storage locations.

In 1988 Sokoban was published in US by Spectrum HoloByte as Soko-Ban for the IBM-PC and compatible computers, Commodore 64, and Apple II series. (The game title screen text "Copyright 1984 ASCII Corp." is a reference to copyrights, not the publishing date.) A review in Computer Gaming World praised the game for being "pure and simple, very playable and mentally challenging", citing its addictive qualities.[2] It was also reviewed in Dragon giving it 4½ out of 5 stars.

Sokoban was a hit in Japan, and had sold over 400,000 units in that country by the time Spectrum HoloByte imported it to the United States. Implementations of Sokoban have been written for numerous computer platforms, including almost all home computer and personal computer systems. Versions also exist for video game consoles, mobile phones, graphic calculators, digital cameras and electronic organizers.

Sokoban can be studied using the theory of computational complexity. The problem of solving Sokoban puzzles has been proven to be NP-hard.[6][7] Further work showed that it was significantly more difficult than NP problems; it is PSPACE-complete.[8] This is also interesting for artificial intelligence researchers, because solving Sokoban can be compared to the automated planning that needs to be done by a robot that moves boxes in a warehouse.

Sokoban is difficult not only due to its branching factor (which is comparable to chess), but also its enormous search tree depth; some levels can be extended indefinitely, with each iteration requiring an exponentially growing number of moves and pushes.[9] Skilled human players rely mostly on heuristics; they are usually able to quickly discard futile or redundant lines of play, and recognize patterns and subgoals, drastically cutting down on the amount of search.

Some Sokoban puzzles can be solved automatically by using a single-agent search algorithm, such as IDA*, enhanced by several techniques which make use of domain-specific knowledge.[10] This is the method used by Rolling Stone,[11] a Sokoban solver developed by the University of Alberta GAMES Group. The more complex Sokoban levels are, however, out of reach even for the best automated solvers.

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