Sunday Longplay - Othello (NES) - COM Levels 4 & 5

This week on Sunday Longplay, I'm revisiting my first exposure to one of the games from the Nintendo Switch's Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics collection. Welcome to Othello on the NES!

Also known as Reversi, or in the Clubhouse Games collection as Renegade, this game was invented by two bickering Englishmen in 1883. This game uses 64 pieces with both a white side and a black side. One player plays black side up, the other plays white side up. Starting with the player playing black-side-up, players take turns placing their pieces on the board in a way that each piece must be on a straight occupied horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line between that piece and another piece of your color. After placing a piece, all pieces of the opposite color on any line between the piece you placed and another piece of your color will be flipped to your color. If a player cannot make a valid move, they must pass their turn. Players take turns in this fashion until either the entire board is filled or neither player can play, at which point the player with the most pieces of their color on the board wins. This is kind of a weird game because what may seem like the most optimal move to a beginner (a move that flips the most pieces at once) is actually more often than not the last thing you want to do, and the CPU will capitalize on that and trap you into an endless pass cycle turning the tides against you in a heartbeat. You need some deep forward thinking to win this game!

There are a couple things that make this version different from the Clubhouse Games version. The first thing is in this version there is a time limit. You can set the time limit to either 20 minutes or 30 minutes (World Championship standard is 30 minutes), and if your timer runs out, you lose regardless of board setup. Your timer stops when you move and starts up again when it's your turn. Another difference is that there is a hidden difficulty level that isn't selectable from the options menu. Once you beat the game on level 4 (arguably the equivalent of Clubhouse Games's Impossible difficulty), you then go straight from there to the final match against COM Level 5 with no time limit, which means the computer can process all of the available moves and scenarios it needs to. Which brings me to the last difference between this game and Renegade from Clubhouse Games: the wait times. The computer tends to think for a VERY long time at levels 4 and 5, while it was pretty quick in Clubhouse Games. When I was recording this, I decided to cut out most of the "Computer Thinking" time to keep the video moving as much as I could. But to show just how much waiting time was involved in this game, I also uploaded an unedited version for the sake of perspective. You can watch that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu0OEfQ4jUU

In the credits I also found a familiar name. Satoru Iwata was involved in making this game. Rest in peace, Iwata-san.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Game Setup
0:34 - Game #1 vs. COM Level 4, 20 Minutes
5:14 - Masters' Stage vs. COM Level 5, No Time Limit
9:40 - Ending
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