Flower Blooming Competition

Flower Blooming Competition

はなさき合戦

Developer(s): Blue Planet Software Publisher(s): Nintendo Platform: Game Boy Advance Category: Real-time strategy Players: Unknown Predecessor: Successor:

Flower Blooming Competition (also known as Hanasaki Gassen, Hanasaki Kassen, Hanasagi Gaassen) is a cancelled game for Game Boy Advance.

Announcement

Hanasaki Gassen was announced at Nintendo Space World 2000 and also planned for E3 under its literally-translated name Flower Blooming Competition, news sites, and in various Japanese magazines between late 2000 and 2002, such as the Japanese 64 Dream, Nintendo Dream, Weekly Famitsu, Dengeki Nintendo 64 though it was restricted to lists and there was no real information other than it was a planned Nintendo game for Game Boy Advance. The same was also true for overseas magazines, referring to the game as both "Flower Blooming Competition" and "Hanasaki Gassen".

Gameplay

According to former Blue Planet Software employee Tony Caton's LinkedIn page, Hanasaki Gassen was a real-time strategy game. The game involved a complex AI system.

Development

Blue Planet Software were developing this game in C++, produced by Raymond Holmes but the game never surfaced. Simulated annealing was used so that the AI could learn strategies overnight (including new ones) and adjust to changing game rules.

It may be worth stressing that this game was also being developed at a time period close to another cancelled online real-time strategy game by Blue Planet Software known as Genesis (two videos of Genesis originally from Blue Planet Software's website were backed up: [1], [2]), themed in outer space. The player would assume the role of a team member of an advanced alien race, and gameplay was about planting "seeds" and taking over solar systems one moon at a time. Players would compete with each other with the same goal in mind. However, the game may be unrelated to Genesis.

Tony Caton
"Contributed AI to GBA Hanasaki Gassen, a real time strategy game. There were many factors that the AI needed to evaluate, and simulated annealing was used to allow the AI to learn strategies by playing itself overnight, adjusting its internal weights until the best strategy was found. The AI could thus adjust to changing game rules, and even discover new strategies! Written in C++ for Game Boy Advance"
	–Tony Caton, LinkedIn

Notes

"Gassen" is taken from "合戦" (kassen), meaning "battle", "competition" or "engagement" but the form of some Japanese nouns change when appearing after to a different word (the same case as "hako"/"bako" in Kirby no Omochabako).

References

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