SameGame is one of those games that has been everywhere without ever being famous. It shipped with Linux. It was bundled with classic Macs. It appeared on Windows, on Nokia phones, on TiVo boxes. Millions of people have played it without knowing its name or where it came from.

It started as a block of code printed in a Japanese magazine in 1985. Here is the full story.

Chain Shot, 1985

The game was created by a Japanese developer named Kuniaki Moribe, who went by the pseudonym Morisuke. In November 1985 he submitted the source code for a game called Chain Shot! to Gekkan ASCII, a monthly Japanese personal computer magazine popular with hobbyists and early home computer enthusiasts.

The distribution method was entirely of its time. Readers would literally type the source code into their computers from the printed page and run it themselves. There was no download, no disk, no cartridge. Just a magazine, a keyboard, and patience.

The game ran on Fujitsu's FM-8 and FM-7 home computers. The playing field was 20 columns by 10 rows with four colours. The mechanic was exactly what it is today: click a group of two or more adjacent blocks of the same colour, watch them disappear, let the blocks above fall down to fill the gap.

Chain Shot! was one of the earliest examples of what would later be called tile-matching games, a genre that eventually produced Bejeweled, Candy Crush, and dozens of others. The chain-reaction mechanic Moribe designed in 1985 became the foundation of an entire genre. He published it in a magazine.

Same Game, 1992

For seven years, Chain Shot! existed mostly as a curiosity, known to Japanese home computer enthusiasts but not much beyond that. Then in 1992 a developer named Eiji Fukumoto ported it to Unix platforms under the new name Same Game.

The name comes from the Japanese word samesame, meaning "all the same", a reference to the matching mechanic at the heart of the game. The same year, Wataru Yoshioka ported it to the NEC PC-9801 series.

The Unix port was significant because it put the game in front of a completely different audience: developers and researchers working on Unix workstations. Software spreads through developer communities in ways it never spreads through general consumer channels, and Same Game started accumulating ports and adaptations at a pace Chain Shot! never had.

Windows and Mac, 1993 to 1994

In 1993, Ikuo Hirohata ported Same Game to Windows 3.1. This version was later translated into English by Hitoshi Ozawa, which was the first time the game was widely accessible to non-Japanese speakers. The Windows version added an optional larger playing field of 25 columns by 15 rows for players who wanted a longer game.

In 1994, Takahiro Sumiya ported it to Macintosh. This version made a significant change: it reduced the number of colours to three rather than four or five, making the game slightly more accessible and the board slightly less cluttered. Sumiya's Mac version became probably the most widely distributed of all the early versions, partly because it was bundled with classic Macintosh systems and found its way onto the computers of people who had never heard of Chain Shot! or Same Game.

Linux, Nokia, and everywhere else

The Macintosh version became the basis for two Linux versions, KSame for the KDE desktop and Same Gnome for GNOME, which was later renamed Swell Foop. Anyone who used Linux in the late 1990s or 2000s likely has memories of playing one of these, typically while waiting for something to compile.

The game also appeared on Nokia phones, on Palm handhelds, on TiVo set-top boxes, on game consoles, and under dozens of different names. Clickomania. Jawbreaker. Bubble Breaker. Drop Sum. The same mechanic, the same satisfying disappearance of blocks, the same score formula rewarding large groups over small ones, showing up everywhere under different names for forty years.

Why the scoring formula matters

The formula (n-2)² is one of the more elegant design decisions in the game's history. Remove 2 blocks and score 0 points. Remove 3 and score 1. Remove 10 and score 64. Remove 20 and score 324.

This single formula does something clever: it makes small moves actively costly rather than just less rewarding. Clicking a group of two blocks gives you nothing and makes the board worse by removing a potential future connection. The game punishes impatience mathematically rather than through a rule. It is a design worth appreciating.

A full board clear earns a 1,000 point bonus on top of the regular score, which is why serious players sometimes sacrifice large groups early to maintain a board state that makes a full clear possible later.

Forty years on

Chain Shot! was published in November 1985. The game is now forty years old. It has been ported to more platforms than almost any other game from that era, adapted under more names, and played by people who have no idea it started as source code in a Japanese hobbyist magazine.

Moribe published it in a magazine. Fukumoto gave it the name it carries today. Sumiya brought it to the Mac and from there to everywhere else. None of them probably imagined the game would still be running on new platforms four decades later.

It is still a good game. The mechanic is still satisfying. The scoring formula still makes you think twice before clicking.

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