The game Sokoban was created in 1980 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, president of the software company Thinking Rabbit, based in Takarazuka (Japan), who edited the first collection for IBM PC in 1982 (Sokoban, 20 levels) and 1984 (Sokoban 2, 50 levels ). The same company released two sequels of the game, which is only sold in Japan: Sokoban Perfect (1989) and Sokoban Revenge (1991), both with 306 levels.
Soko-Ban (1988), for MS-DOS - Spectrum HoloByte |
Outside the Japanese market, the legendary game company Spectrum HoloByte (California) published to 1988 (© 1984) the first version of Soko-Ban (called collection "Original") for Apple II, MS-DOS and Commodore 64 ... And from then until now have appeared a host of new game versions and new collections: for all computer platforms and consoles (Atari, Windows, Macintosh, Nintendo, Amiga ...), scheduled in all languages, Java and Flash versions for Internet ..., even for mobile phone.
"Sokoban" in Japanese means something like "warehouse keeper": in the original version of the game, the warehouse keeper has to pushing boxes to their destination. Sokoban collections that can be considered "classics" are designed by Thinking Rabbit, all with puzzles very intuitive and relatively easy: "Original" (1988), "Sokoban Perfect" (1989), "Sokoban Revenge" (1991) and the two sets of "Boxxle" (1990-91). If you've never played Sokoban, these are the most desirable collections, and certainly the best way to get into the game.
Boxxle, 1990 - Nintendo
GameBoy |
The popular Box World (1992 to Windows 3.1), by Jeng-Long Jiang, is a selection of 100 puzzles from Namida no Soukoban Special by Thinking Rabbit (1986, 150 levels, only distributed in Japan).
Currently, there are a handful of great creators of Sokoban collections, all over the world: monry, ZiKo, Sven Egevad, J. Franklin Mentzer, Mic, Jacques Duthen, Yoshio Murase, Masato Hiramatsu, Howard Abed, David W. Skinner, Aymeric du Peloux, František Pokorný, Kevin B. Reilly, Erim Sever, Hirohiko Nakamiya, David Holland, François Marques, Jean-Pierre Kent, Marcus Palstra, Kenyam, Evgeny Grigoriev, Ghislain Martin, gyjgw, Thomas Reinke, Eric F. Tchong, zhenying, stopheart, Jordi Domènech, Martí Homs, Blaž Nikolič, Shaggath, Přemysl Zíka, laizhufu...
Certainly Sokoban is the best puzzle game of all time. |