Title: Othello Genre: Board Developer: Tsukuda Original Released by: Kawada Date: October 13, 1986 Japanese level: 1 MSRP: 2980 yen Current Price: 500 yen

What are they thinking

And what makes me wonder what Kawada are on is - are they making that much money from these constant re-releases? I would assume that anyone who actually wants to play Othello or Reversi on their computers (instead of actually engaging in human interaction and breaking out the board) have either bought it once and never again, or have a freeware or Java version they play. Personally I had enough of computer Othello after playing some version on my brother's Mac SE ten years ago.

This version has the same problem that the last one does: it's utterly the most aggravating one-player game ever created. It's different from a game that has no ending like most classics, or a game that's impossible to actually finish like, uh, the 7800 version of Impossible Mission - even at the easiest level, the computer commits fraud. It presents the false possibility that one can "win" and then takes full advantage of every tiny mistake the human player makes to win (playing perfectly normally I once lost as black with only about 3 black chips remaining on the board).

Because this is Othello, it's always going for cheap, meaning that the best use for this disk is for sending to Nintendo to trade for another, actually playable game..