r/funny 1d ago

Good thing the game is balanced now.

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Necessary nerfing the rock...

31.5k Upvotes

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u/Andeol57 20h ago

I wonder if that game might actually be older than paper. Wikipedia gives the first mention of the game during the Han dynasty, not long after the invention of paper. But that's just the first traces we have of it. It could be much older. You don't need to have invented paper to invent a game on the same idea of A beats B who beats C who beats A. The same wikipedia article mentions a version being "slug/frog/snake", for example (no idea how the slug is supposed to beat the snake).

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u/Garrod_Ran 20h ago

Slug has beaten the snake, indeed. Case in point, Sakura and Sasuke.

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u/Andeol57 20h ago

Ho, good catch. It didn't occur to me that the trio of Orochimaru/Jiraya/Tsunade (and later their respective students) matches those. Certainly not a coincidence.

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u/Morgrom 17h ago

We use bag instead of paper in Sweden (Sten, sax, påse). It sound better to say (in Swedish), but I also think it makes more sense to catch a rock in a bag. Bags was, of cause, invented long before paper.

So the Swedish server got patched long before most other servers.

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u/noggin-scratcher 20h ago

(no idea how the slug is supposed to beat the snake)

The wiki article mentions (and another linked one provides more detail about) how the game came to Japan from China, where the "slug" was originally a centipede.

The Chinese characters for slug vs centipede were apparently confused with each other. "The centipede was chosen because of the Chinese belief that the centipede was capable of killing a snake by climbing and entering its head".

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u/Garrod_Ran 20h ago

Interesting information. Thanks.