All that aside... In 2010 someone named EvilDragon decoded the game and swapped out the Japanese Kanji/Kana in Saikyo no Mahjong 3D for English equivalents. This is highly unofficial and while I don't condone the use of such patches, I also don't have a hardship when someone buys a product (supporting the developer and publisher) and gets more use from it with a localization that was likely never coming through official channels (the number of westerners this game will sell to can probably be counted using a standard set of Go stones). The English translation is quite good - favoring the real Japanese terms for the Yaku (i.e. Pinfu Tsumo is used instead of 'Self-Drawn Peace').
On to the mini-review.
The title screen comes up almost immediately when you launch the program - on a semi-modern machine this is a fast-loading and quick-entry game. No fancy movies to watch and no long menu navigations.
The top selection starts the game. The other highly familiar "ruru" kana is the third line which is where the myriad of rules and settings can be tweaked.
There are 5 pages of rules - and pretty much everything you would expect is here. The only non-default I turned on was Red Fives (2/1/1) and everything else was pretty close to the Riichi rules I enjoy playing with.
When you start up a game, you are given a dozen players to play against. All the way to the right are amature players who play slightly poorly and as you progress to the left you get 'former pro' level players. To be honest, I'm not the best judge of Mahjong AI but there is a definite difference in strength between the computer opponents you go up against and having a range is quite nice. In addition, you can tweak the settings for any of the players you play against as seen in the next shot.
With the slider bar and options you can change how the person approaches the game. What types of hands they favor. What kind of defense they like to play. How often they open up their hands. How much they favor keeping Dora. Etc.
The main game screen is just as you would expect. Professionally laid out and beautiful design touches in the design of the mahjong set, table and the animations of the players and actions (lightning flash for RON!, etc.). You can even click on the other player's to see their hands - taking a peek is a nice novelty but you shouldn't use it in your real matches! My only gripe here is that it lays out 7 tiles in a row for the discard pond instead of the usual 6. Oh well...
Scoring is equally professional. It gives you a breakdown of the various scoring elements and the total points gained. Then shows a screen (not shown here) that shifts the point sticks between winner(s) and loser(s).
And finally the aforementioned highly unofficial English translation.
Having this in English really does help with navigation. The Statistics screen shown here is 1 of 3 stats screens they keep - it tracks average points, number of times you opened your hand vs. kept it closed, all the various Yakuman hands you might have achieved, etc. Very cool.
Some other nice touches... when you minimize it pauses the game and stops the background sounds. It also has a quick save feature so if you have to close it fast, you can get it back up where you left off with no hassle.
The game is a compact powerhouse of Riichi Mahjong. Not a ton of frills - just good solid interface and non-flashy get-it-done gameplay. You won't find your anime babes here but you will get a lot of Mahjong mileage out of the game. Highly recommended and is my go-to Windows/Linux/PC based Mahjong game currently.
Windows 9x, 2k, xp, Vista and Win7 compatible. Runs fine under Linux with WINE
Publisher: http://www.unbalance.co.jp/
