From: markyesme2 MSN COM> Date: 21 apr 2002 Subject: Morita Shogi on GBA Hello shogi folk, I am just starting to learn how to play shogi. I play and enjoy Western chess (while not being very good at it), but have been turned on by the excitement and variety provided by the drop and promotion opportunities in shogi. Anyway, enough about me... I was searching on Google and noticed that there was a little discussion about the Morita Shogi Advance cartridge for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. Many people in the US were having great difficulty finding it. I purchased mine from an import game web site in New York state (I live in Washington state, but that doesn't really matter). The URL is: http://www.ncsx.com The price is USD $49.00 and came out to be Fifty-some odd dollars with shipping. While it is difficult to read through everything (quite tedious, but I am managing with my Kanji dictionary and Babelfish), the cart itself is excellent. It is too bad that Virtual Kasparov (the Western chess cart out in the US right now) doesn't provide some of the features that this one has, but we can wait to see if the Chessmaster cart coming out in June does. Anyway, some of the features are: 10 save slots A board set up feature (Kasparov needs this desperately) Quick save (if you turn off your GBA, you can continue the game you were playing whether you had saved or not). Many mating problems (tsume?? Is that the right word?) An extensive tutorial (Kasparov has a tutorial, but the text scrolls by and you don't really get a chance to ponder the alternate plays that speed by). I don't have a link cable, so I don't know about the head-to-head play, but it is there. I think they designed the cart to use some wireless network that the Japanese have, so you could be riding the train and play others over the network without having the cable. Well, that's all the info I have, but I hope this helps a few of you US-based Shogi-L subscribers to finally procure the Morita Shogi cartridge. I am not sure if they do international sales, but Europe generally seems to have better import opportunities than the US, but they may just be me thinking that the grass is greener over there. Mark :)