tenhou

A History of Tenhou - Part 1

David

Feb 5, 2018 — 3 min read

Release history until Tenhou:

June 2000 - 25-year-old Tokyo University School of Engineering Postdoctoral student Shingo "C-Egg" Tsunoda released his first game, a free to play RTS 'Egg Market'.

egg_market_screen_l

Egg Market gained a small fanbase, attracting, on average, 30-40 concurrent users. There was a premium membership option for the cost of 1000 JPY per 6 months, premium members had access to replay data, special game modes and the ability to use a unique username in lobby chat.

March 2001 - Shingo boasts about getting his first Suuankou tsumo.

April 2002 - Shingo releases 'Appliguide', a free screen recording program for Windows.

August 2002 - 'Eggzipper' file archiver released.

June 2003 - Appliguide 2.0 released, 1 license cost 49.800 JPY.

December 2003 - 'Virtual Print Studio', a print to file program released.

June 2004 - 'DesktopBridge' remote desktop software released.

August 2004 - Shingo's 2nd game 'TrendStock' released. A trading simulator. It used players' nicknames from Egg Market as commodities. Shingo also released a website design program called 'WebCoEditor'

September 2004 - Shingo releases an RPG programmed in HTML and Javascript 'Landscape Explorer'. It was promptly removed and never spoken about again.

January 2005 - WebCoEditor discontinued.

April 2005 - Sticky note software 'BriefPalette' released and Virtual Print Studio discontinued.

June 2005 - 'ClickFlow' log analysis program for websites released.

August 2005 - Update for DesktopBridge released. Name changed to 'DesktopBridge WebMeeting'

October 2005 - 'FigBox' released. A flash tool to aid in the creation of presentations/diagrams shared on the web.

November 2005 - TrendStock discontinued.

February 2006 - Beta for 'Hanjyukusou (半熟荘)', an online mahjong game, released. Its name was a reference to the popular mahjong server 'Tonpuusou'. The beta of Hankjyukusou featured many rule differences to current day Tenhou:

Red Fives (1 5man, 2 5pin, 1 5sou)
Able to chii switch
No Nagashi Mangan
No abortive draws
Headbump - No double/triple ron

August 2006 - Offical service start for Hanjyukusou. Ranking system added, highest rank was 7 dan. There were three lobbies:

Ippan (everyone allowed)
Jyoukyu (1dan+)
GP

GP was a prototype for Tenhou's championship and limited to 2dan place and only open from 9 PM to 2 AM. C-Egg also offered a service to allow other brands to use Hanjyukusou's software with a reskin and their own separate playerbase.

Rules were also adjusted: