Hikaru Handheld Game

Official webpage for Hikaru No Go Game Boy Advance game (Japanese).

Walkthrough for Hikaru-GBA For those who can't speak Japanese, and don't understand what's going on. Building this HERE as I go along, please feel free to contribute!

--JanDeWit: Discussion moved from HikaruNoGo main page.

I've heard that there is a handheld Hikaru computer game (for the Gameboy Advance, I believe) out in Japan, anyone know more about that? Sales figures, playing strength...

jvt: Just tried it (on a PC emulator). Very nice graphics and tutorial for beginners, but the playing strength seems to be pathetic (what did you expect?).

JanDeWit: But, but... that's illegal, isn't it? :-) The graphics are definitely cute, you should have seen Akari when she made two eyes (at least I think that's what she said - time to start learning to read Japanese I guess).

jvt: So you want to learn Japanese. Read this (LOL!)

JanDeWit: Well, I don't really want to learn Japanese, I just want to be to read some of the letters, like I can with Russian. I recently figured out atari and dame, and it was quite a revelation that the text on the book in the room at the start means story (su-to-ri)... Also, it is nice to have some projects which potentially last for ever.

jvt: I understand :-) I am doing the same. At first I used a dictionary (a real book), but looking up the kanji in it is a slow and tiresome task. Then I found Japanese/English and Chinese/English dictionaries to download off the web. I have been adding hundreds of words of Go terminology to them. Now I just select the characters or group of characters and copy it to the clipboard. All matches in the dictionary are immediately displayed. Actually, understanding Chinese is much easier than Japanese for a complete novice like me because there is almost no grammar.

The problem is: when I can't copy the words to the clipboard because they are in a picture (like in handheld games), I'm pretty much lost. I need a Japanese OCR to convert the picture back to text. Or maybe I could extract the texts somehow from the software? Does anyone know how to do this?

JanDeWit: If this game is designed to teach newcomers to play Go in a more interactive way than most tutorials then I could forgive the poor strength; it would even be a plus. Too bad you can't directly (?) go up to Touya Meijin!

I just left the game unattended and some kind of influence started blinking!?!? Weirder and weirder... Runs like a slug on my computer though :-(

And sometimes strange psychedelic displays in the background... Akari deliberately plays weak - Tsutsui is a little better. Does anyone know where I can find some hints as to what the characters are saying? So far I figured out the words for Go, Hikaru, black, white and points. I tried the Japanese dictionary at Jan van der Steen's site but that didn't get me very far.

jvt: I wish I new how to change the playing strength. Is it possible?

There is an option window with 8 menus displayed when the game starts.

• North starts the game,
• North-East changes the size of the board (9x9, 13x13, 19x19),
• East changes the first player (Black/White)
• South-East changes the handicap (0-9)

The emulation runs fast enough on a 1 GHz PC. About 5 seconds/move.

If you set a handicap and have yourself playing as White, this gives the computer the handicap. This is worth remembering if you're not strong enough to win in such a situation (I found out the hard way), and it should be good for some of you stronger players to know. :)

--JanDeWit: In the club, you can choose to play either Akari or Tsutsui, by pressing left when the pictures appear. I don't know yet what happens when you go to other buildings, such as Hikaru's school. There seems to be two tutorials in there as well.

I only have a 200 Mhz machine, so I have to be patient :-)

Why on earth would Akari play the 3-5 point as her opening move? It's like a chess beginner would play f2-f4... I don't consider it a standard move for 'beginners'.

The more I think about it, the more the idea of Writing A Go Program To Teach Beginners becomes interesting. Make the computer a good teacher instead of a good player!

As soon as you play other players in the story mode, you become able to play them in the FreePlay mode. All the characters you can play in FreePlay mode are given stars. Akari is 1 star, Tsutsui is 2, Kaneko (The Volleyball girl :P you get her by going to the Gym at Haze Middle School and playing her on a 13x13) is 3, Mitani is 4, I do not know who 5 is yet, but I'm guessing once I figure out Hikaru's Grandpa's Go problems it may be him, 6 is Kaga, 7 is Hikaru, 8 is Kishimoto (the Kaiou Middle School Captain, who you unlock by going to a bookshop southwest of the Internet Cafe with Mitani's sister and playing a game with him with a 4-stone handicap on a 19x19), 9 is Touya Akira.

If you really want to play a stronger computer, you have to go through the story mode and unlock those characters. If you put the programming for some of the higher players like Kishimoto on IGS, my guess is it would probably rank 24-25kyu, I'm guessing. I'm not good at judging that sort of thing though. It's still nowhere near the level of the strongest computer programs currently available though, I don't think anyway. There's also no way to give the computer oki'ishi if you're stronger.

Mike

Glue---5 is Hikaru's grandpa, 10 is Akira's father, the meijin. But who is 11? And how to find him? Please let me know...

AyameTan? - Where do you find Akira's dad? I'm rank 9 at the moment. Is he somewhere special in town? Or do I need to rank up to level 10 first (which I also seem unable to do). Do I need to give Akira a few handicap stones?

akira---This game is great! Took me 2 hours to complete on a 1GhZ pc!!!!!!! But in the end you get to fight with only 6 people and you can fight them over and over again!!!

JanDeWit: Great link, thanks! I didn't read the entire storyline, so I still have some reason to play the game and try to decode some Japanese...

I'm not playing the game to see whether it will become the next HandTalk, but because I'm a HikaruNoGoJunkie! :-)

Sales figures for 2001: 95,520 according to http://www.ciudadfutura.com/nintendonation/noticias/300masvendidos2001.html. Not bad considering it only started selling in November.

MikeNoGo: Hikaru No Go/GBA Two , the sequel to this first HikaGo GBA game, will come out in Japan on July 18th. I'm starting a new page for it.

Ricbit: I started a translation of this game from japanese to english. The current version can be downloaded here: http://700km.com.br/mundobizarro/hikaru.php

Ricbit; Is there any way you could make it something else besides a ips file? -Spectrums

Ricbit: I'm afraid anything else than an ips file would be illegal.

anonymuos:The Mejin is below kayio school, wich I think reads "Akira's home/dad", to decide to choose for colour in a game to set one lower right option as "Ikiri", though you could choose black or white as the default

Does anyone know who wrote the video game or if any others exist?