Reachmahjong.com

I started playing mahjong a little over a month ago and started buying import console games as I found them. So far I have Mahjong Master (N64), Mahjong Station Mazin (PS1), 2 for Gameboy and 1 for Super Nintendo (I forget the names off the top of my head). I was curious of anyone wanted screenshots, gameplay videos, and short reviews of each game.

Hi Travis, welcome aboard! I'd certainly be interested in hearing your impressions and seeing a couple of screenshots - i.e. gameplay view and mode/rule options.

Bart

Mahjong Station Mazin
System: Playstation
Developer: Sunsoft
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZt85UxyMUk (Skip to 23:42 after the opening video is over for maximum WTF)
Summary: Not a bad game. Battle mode is absurd and potentially annoying. Standard mode your typical mahjong game. Overall the game has an interesting theme and is very Japanese.
Full review: http://www.fakegamerguy.com/2015/05/mah ... ion-mazin/

Watched the video and the game sure looks old.

And that battle mode looks tiresome...

I was a kid a at that time, it made me remember those times.
But, well, it's a game from the start of the life of the first Playstation... Cool to see it.

Yeah, it's certainly not as polished as other games, but if nothing else I appreciate it's historic value. I still have 4 other games I need to get footage for and do a review of. My Super Famicom game is another really strange one.

That looks pretty good for its age, and that melodramatic 3D sequence is quite something.

Nice to see the box art too.

I just realized I forgot to add the screen that shows the point totals from the hand.



Edit: And here's the tenpai/noten screen.



Edit 2: Abortive draw.



I'll try to update the original post if I ever get higher in the campaign mode, too.

In the back box art you can read all of what is said during the intro of the game.

Also, quite a good hand you've got there: Chiitoistu, Riichi, Ippatsu, Menzenchintsumohô, Dora 2. For a grand total of 7 Han, and 12,000 points being Non-dealer/Ko Haneman.

Super Nichibutsu Mahjong 2
System: Super Famicom
Developer: Nihon Bussan, Co., Ltd.
Gameplay: National Champion mode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF2QNSHmfpo), Freeplay with 2-player mode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VO4Wluhobg), Lesson Mode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIOJOb40hFo)
Summary: High quality game but dripping with sexism. If you want strip mahjong get a real strip mahjong game.
Full review: http://www.fakegamerguy.com/2015/05/sup ... mahjong-2/

The full breakdown of the game will be added to this post when I finish it. For now, I just thought you guys would like to see this "interesting" game.



Oh. Ah. Okay...

I've only played this game a bit but I decided to explore the other main menu options I haven't looked at. The core game looks to be a series of progressively more difficult tournaments you can enter. The gameplay is pretty much what you'd expect from a Super Nintendo game, though I wish it looked a little nicer for being from 1993. Of course the first thing you notice is the woman in a bathing suit. This is... clearly a game for a certain type of audience.



Game has similar control and feel to other games of the era, except that X and B are used to open the menu for ron, chii, pon, etc. rather than down and A and Y are the confirmation buttons.



But this is all so normal and boring so let's take a look at the other options we have.
(Please bear with the translations; they're either rough or guesses based on context. I'll have proper/accurate translations added later.)



The left option is the default and is the tournament mode. You're can choose 2-, 3-, or 4-player games.
Top right is free play. Under that is lesson mode. Third down is a quiz with three difficulty levels. Last is... tea time...

...

Freeplay is just freeplay with the same 2-, 3-, or 4-player option so we'll skip over that for now. First we'll look at the lesson mode.



Now let's learn mahjong together.



When you feel like quitting press the 'B' button.



Which lesson do you want to start?



The lessons actually seem helpful and comprehensive. They're illustrated lessons on the game components and mechanics. They'd be super useful if they were in English.



Sexy teacher aside I'm really impressed with this. None of the other games I have actually tell you how to play.

Next is the quiz. Judging by the answers it's not a mahjong quiz but more of a general knowledge quiz. I don't really understand it and haven't translated it yet, so if anyone had any ideas I'm all ears.



Short quiz, middle quiz, champion quiz.



Bathing suit quiz girl wishes me ganbatte (good luck!) as I select Champion Quiz.

Here I'll just post a bunch of screenshots of the questions. I randomly guessed and got quite a lot right.









After that's done the quiz fades away and you see three girls on a bed wearing pink bathing suits.



How did you do on the Champion course?



You answered 19 out of 49 questions.



Here's your participation prize!



Participation prize

Oh, Japan...

Last is Tea Time. I haven't translated any of this but basically you're in a tea house and you can choose different customers to talk to. By which I mean have them say a thing to you and immediately move onto someone else. I haven't translated any of the dialog yet so... *shrug*



Welcome!



Just one today?



Please, this way.





Please, relax.



It's quiet. Everyone is nervous.



So yeah, kind of a lot of strangeness that's going on and I haven't even covered the core gameplay. It shows a lot of promise but the whole theme of sexy swimsuit girls being paraded around as sex objects really puts me off.

My full review of Super Nichibutsu Mahjong is over here: http://www.fakegamerguy.com/2015/05/sup ... mahjong-2/ and contains 3 separate gameplay videos for different parts of the game. Overall it's a solid game that's well made and has a lot of good features (lesson mode and it's quiz), but I really can't overlook the sexism in this game. Apparently they fixed that in Super Nichibutsu Mahjong 3 but I don't know if I'll actually get a copy of it.

FakeGamerGuy wrote:My full review of Super Nichibutsu Mahjong is over here: http://www.fakegamerguy.com/2015/05/sup ... mahjong-2/ and contains 3 separate gameplay videos for different parts of the game. Overall it's a solid game that's well made and has a lot of good features (lesson mode and it's quiz), but I really can't overlook the sexism in this game. Apparently they fixed that in Super Nichibutsu Mahjong 3 but I don't know if I'll actually get a copy of it.

I looked for this Super Nichibutsu mahjong 3 for an emulator, just to see if they ammended it. Looks like they fixed it. I´ll play it more later, to see how it is, then I´ll delete it.

Edit:

Playing it right now. It has a free mode (with a wide amount of options). A story mode, which varies just a little depending if you choose to be a man or a woman, and has fixed rules for each match. Tournament mode in which you can set the rules before the tournament starts. There's mahjong training course, and options (where you can set the difficulty). Ah, yeah, you can choose to play 4, 3 or 2 people mahjong.

In the story mode the woman wears a pink suit, the man wears a blue suit, without the jacket. The mode, as tournament mode, has passwords.

Everything starts with a scrap of paper your character finds or something. I was going fast so I didn't pay attention...

The visuals and sound are very good for a Snes game.

There's also a 4th installment of the series, also for Snes. But I didn´t try it. Judging from the video I saw, it is not better than the third game.

That's good to hear. 2 was pretty impressive, so I'll keep an eye out for 3.

FakeGamerGuy wrote:That's good to hear. 2 was pretty impressive, so I'll keep an eye out for 3.

During the story mode, after the second match I had to choose where to go, I had 4 places to go or so. My third game turned ot to be a 3 people mahjong, so probably the number of players varies fom event to event, that´s cool. Looks like this game has a fun story mode. Looks like, too, that I will have to go all those places to find the man the character is looking for. I don't know how long this game is.

I will search for Super Nichibutsu mahjong 4 to see for myself how good it is. But as I said the other day it doesn´t look better than the 3rd. Maybe is on the same level, maybe is better, maybe it´s worse. I want to find out playing it.

When I did my initial research on the game I saw 1-3, didn't see 4. The only other one I came across from them was an ero majhong game for the PC Engine CD.