一筆 / Hitofude / Ippitsu Japanese puzzle game

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 11 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

一筆 (“Hitofude” = Single Stroke) aka “Ippitsu” is a puzzle game by H.Hirabayashi.

Released in 1995, a decade before Mitchell Corp & Nintendo’s Polarium 直感ヒトフデ (“Chokkan Hitofude” = Intuitive Single Stroke) & Polarium Advance 通勤ヒトフデ (“Tsūkin Hitofude” = Commuting Single Stroke).

As huge fan of the Polarium games this discovery has rocked my world.

You can read about it in this 1997 feature at Vector and download it from its listing page. The author’s website is archived in the Wayback Machine. It will run on Windows 3.x and Windows 95, at least. I’m running here in English Windows 95 through DOSbox-x.

Polarium Advance: Daily Puzzle Challenge

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I started a new job at Apple in June 2013, and seeing as I was living away from home a fair bit I had a bit of free time and the hunger for a big puzzle game to get my teeth into. So I bought an extra copy of Polarium Advance. I’d played the game before but had never finished all of the puzzles.

It’s a typically brilliant game by Mitchell Corporation which was in development for Game Boy Advance when Nintendo saw it and requested a version for their new handheld: the Nintendo DS. After that version was released the team returned to the GBA version, which probably explains why it’s a more fully featured and all round better game than the DS version.

The game’s Daily Puzzle mode has 365 puzzles and I started playing them on 8th August 2013. I made quick progress: by 13th August I’d done 87 puzzles and after a week I’d done more than one hundred. The half way point of puzzles was reached within two weeks! Things slowed down during September as the puzzles became more difficult.

I’m writing this looking back and the first mention of finishing it by New Year was on 11th October 2013. But I have to think I’d considered before that point.

Anyway, it was a bit of a squeeze in between Christmas and New Year but I managed it!

You can download CSV data of my progress.

Get Info: #polarium

一筆 / Hitofude / Ippitsu Japanese puzzle game

Polarium Advance: Daily Puzzle Challenge