Othello World, Super Famicom

During the weekend, I played several hours of Othello World.

For this blog post, I will call the game Othello. In the US, the game is known as Reversi. Othello is a trademark name that was developed in Japan in 1971 based on the English game Reversi, developed around 1880. For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversi.

I enjoy to play Othello against computers and I can usually beat the simpler ones, but not this one. As one reviewer on gamefaqs said, this is a hard Othello game.

There are five world. Eventually I did beat Sky World after I found a strategy I could use, but after Sky World there is the Sky Caslte world that is REALLY hard. I may have had a won game at some time, but in the endgame you have to be a master of calculation and that is very hard against the perfectly calculating computer.

In order to beat Sky World, I had to put some time into actually studying Othello. I read this strategy guide: http://www.samsoft.org.uk/reversi/strategy.htm
and "Othello lesson" on youtube (lesson 2 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at0g9zibQZY

These strategies didn't work well against the computer, however, so I played  different against it. I played the opposite of what the guides suggested, but I think I did alright. One needs to realize that I am not an expert player and can't remember long lines of opening play or do long lines of precise calculation.

It was an anti-computer strategy. My plan was to take possession of three of the four sides, and give one of the sides to the computer. Most importantly, I take the side to the opposite of his side. Then I would allow him to give me disks and try not to get outside of the inner 16 squares.

Since I have all sides but one, I will have the last move on any row or column and slowly he will run out of good moves. It is useful here to have a few waiting moves. Because I have given him one of the sides, once he runs out of good moves, he will have to move on that side to give me the corner, and a theoretically won game (just needs some hard calculations). 

There videos might be boring for the average person, but I think that someone who is really interested in Othello or Othello World might find them interesting.

Here is how i defeated the fairy


And here is grim reaper. He was harder than the fairy.

On Sky Zone, you are allowed to get three hints. Just press start, and the computer will tell you how to move. This is useful for the endgame. Unfortunately you con't have this on the Sky Castle and I didn't have much chance without my hints.

There doesn't seem to be any password online for this game so here are passwords for Sky World and to Sky Castle. To enter the password, select Continue from the start screen, then you enter your name in 4 letters (press Select to change to Latin letters), and after that you will be able to enter the password. The password screen allows many letters, but only enter the ones you need.

Here is the password for Sky Zone.

And here for Sky Castle.

There isn't much else to say. It is Othello, and it is hard.