Little Golem seems to have the wrong promotion rules for Tori Shogi:
I recently acquired a copy of Tori Shogi from Mrs. Hodges (along with several other Shogi variants), and upon reading the included leaflet, noticed that it said that promotion was compulsory - i.e. a Swallow moving to b or f had to promote, and could not remain a Swallow.
Wikipedia: "If a piece crosses the board within the promotion zone, including moves into, out of, or wholly within the zone, but not including drops (see below), then that player must promote the piece at the end of the turn."
Shogi.net: "Promotion is compulsory when a Falcon or Swallow makes a move wholly or partly within the promotion zone (furthest two ranks from the player)."
This is then different from minishogi and normal shogi, in which promotion is only compulsory if a piece would otherwise be left without a move.
Little Golem implements the rules wrong, as it gives the possibility to not promote a Swallow, e.g. in this past game of mine:
[game;id:1286141;title:Checkmate via illegal move]
... with the correct rules, promotion to a Goose would have been compulsory and the game would have continued.
you definitely should message Richard the webmaster on this one! I do not see any link on littlegolem for Tori Shogi rules. (?) But it would seem that the rules are definitely not correctly implemented here. If littlegolem version is different, then it should be clearly stated.
Too bad that your only shogi loss has to be this way!
kingofthebesl - It's been here since winter or so, I think - give it a try, it's much more congested and with less maneuverable pieces than normal or Mini-Shogi, which gives a feeling of a partial gridlock at times. Allowing two Swallows (Pawns) per file gives it quite a different feeling as well.
Regarding the rules: I don't mind if the rules here are different than the historical rules (e.g. the Try rule being used for Shogi / Mini is not an official rule), but I definitely do think that it needs to be clearly stated somewhere.
(As far as the loss goes, I really don't mind it - I have been making quite a few mistakes in Tori, as the game was quite new to me - my only previous experience was against the rather weak (but amazing in variety) Shogi Variants program - at the time, I just chalked this up as yet another rule I had missed, and it wasn't until now I realized that the historical rules were different than LG's.)
Little Golem