It makes it fun, IMO. It just goes to show how much complexity can be put into shogi based games. Soon I will teach you a variant I designed that is very unique in nature, if you're still interested by that point. It has some unique geometry and would be a terrible game for a chess variant, but it works out rather well for shogi, I believe.

Anyway, S*3d. The more this game progresses, the more I value the knight above what I value them in regular shogi. Though they only have access to two squares each move, their unique move is impossible to block and has a far and unique reach, making them a threat in such close quarters to all pieces, even rooks and bishops.

I know, I'm rambling a lot. There is a fantastic program called shogivar that was programmed back in the late 90s. Sadly, it doesn't work on 64 bit operating systems like I'm running (Windows 7). However, I discovered another amazing bit of software called VirtualBox that allows me to emulate other operating systems. It's truly amazing. Right now I'm running XP within Windows 7, and I've just installed a few shogi programs including shogivar that no longer work. Very cool stuff! It makes me happy to see these old bits of software working again. What operating system are you using?