HyperCard Hanafuda ♥

Good news, everyone!

For over a decade I’ve wondered if there was a 1-bit Hanafuda game for Macintosh made by somebody in Japan back in the day. It turns out there is!

It’s called 花札スタック (Hanafuda Stack) and was created by Kenji Chihara (千原健次氏)in 1992/3 using HyperCard. YES! ✨🎴✨

I couldn’t find a single thing about this game online. My first Googlewhack!

According to menu system on the disc it came on, this game was the Winner of the Miyuki Oshige Award, the judges’ prize in the “1st HyperCard Stack Contest” which was sponsored by Japanese Macintosh magazine MacPower Monthly.

Where did this come from?

I found this game in my collection of Japanese Macintosh Magazine CD-ROMs, which at the time of writing consists of over 120 discs and almost 500,000 files. It’s a real treasure trove of old software that has many more secrets waiting to be rediscovered! You can help me preserve more lost software by joining my Patreon.

How can I play this game?

You can play it in your web browser right now at: https://archive.org/details/hanafuda-stack

Alternatively, you can download it to play on your real Macintosh or in an emulator.

Version history

This page refers to version 0.6. However, the DOS game HP-華時雨 (HP-Hana Shigure) from 1997 says that it reuses, with permission, the card images from version 0.8 of Hanafuda Stack.

Hanafuda Resources

If you’re into Hanafuda, be sure to check out the Hanafuda Discord and Fuda Wiki where a fantastic group of people from around the world are building a comprehensive resource for these traditional Japanese flower cards. There are rules for a multitude of different games (not just Koi-Koi), a list of over 300 Hanafuda video games and so much more. Come on!