Riichi/MCR Mahjong & the Nintendo DS

[iandstanley]

I\'m looking for a good mahjong game for the commute .... anybody out there recommend a good Mahjong game for the DS? I play Riichi & MCR.

The games I have found so far are

• MAHJONG TAIKAI IV
• Jan Sangoku Musou Mahjong
• The Mahjong (http://uk.ds.ign.com/objects/740/740440.html)

I haven\'t managed to find the comparative strengths/gameplay/rules etc.

They all seem to play Riichi (based on the scores of the player and some of the screens) but I have not found any recommendations.

[iandstanley]

Other options would be pda/phone software? any suggestions?

[gemma]

Do you just have a regular Nintendo DS or a DSi? They have a fun mahjong game on DSiware. But it may only be available on a Japanese DSi...

I have Mahjong Fight Club for the DS (also in Japanese) and that\'s pretty good for the commute.

[Tom Sloper]

I love Mahjong Fight Club. Don\'t bother with the Yakuman game.

[Poochy]

I have both Mahjong Fight Club DS and Yakuman DS.

MFC DS is a great game, and I highly recommend it to all Reach Mahjong players. The Mahjong Fight Club series in general is what I would consider to be the definitive electronic Reach Mahjong game. The only problem is that it\'s primarily an arcade game series, and MFC arcade cabinets are exceedingly rare to find outside of Japan.

If you\'re a beginner or intermediate player and have a modded or Japan-region Wii, MFC Wii also has a couple neat assist features to help you learn to calculate points, shanten, etc. But in general, I recommend MFC DS because it\'s portable.

Yakuman DS, on the other hand, is a waste of your money if you already know how to play. It has a couple good tutorials and glossaries, but the gameplay itself sucks. The AI cheats and colludes so much that it\'s more like playing a slot machine than Mahjong. Against the harder opponents, you\'ll see the CPU Double Reach every other hanchan and get ridiculous yakuman hands suspiciously often. Though seeing as how Yakuman DS was made by the same people who brought us Mario Kart (which is also more like a slot machine than a racing game when CPU players are involved), this was probably to be expected. And to add insult to injury, the tiles are so small that I had a hard time trying to tell the difference between 4-bam and 6-bam when the screen is more than 30cm away from my face.

[Barticle]

Hey Ian. I´ve got Mahjong Taikai IV for the PS3 and - being a geek - I´ve recently written a guide for it which is hosted on GameFAQs here...

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps3/file/930074/57143

(this is a sneaky preview - I´ll announce it officially on this site when I finish tweaking and complete the kanji guide to go with it)

Section 2 lists the basic features and section 12 covers the rule options available.

Remember though this is for Mahjong Taikai IV on the PS3 - I don´t know how it compares to Mahjong Taikai (no number?) on the DS, which is a couple of years older.

Looks like the DS game got a reissue in the \"Koei The Best\" budget range which should save you a few Yen! There are some handy screenshots on http://www.play-asia.com too.

Bart

[Tom Sloper]

Poochy,
I agree wholeheartedly with your findings re Yakuman DS. I got 13 Orphans on it, just before the battery ran down on a flight to Texas one time.

[Gneuz]

Hello all,

there is a lot of riichi game on Ds, all of them in Japanese(for what i know)

nintendo yakuman,
Minna no mahjong,
mahjong haoh
Akagi,
Mahjong fight club

a lot of gundam mahjong, and certainly a lot more that i dont know=)


I\'ve play most of them, and they\'re pretty good, depending on what you\'re looing for ,serious or funny(kawai) game.

[iandstanley]

More towards the serious.

I figure that the AI may be limited but would always try to avoid the funny games (too boring a person I suppose)

[iandstanley]

Tom

Do you have a DS or a DSi ?

I\'ve heard that the DSi is region locked and suspect this will cause a problem playing the Japanese games

[Tom Sloper]

I\'ve heard that the DSi is region locked

Great. :S

[Barticle]

As I understand it, the region locking only applies to DSi-only games (both retail and download) made specifically for that device.

http://kotaku.com/5059870/dsi-games-are-region-locked

So all those lovely DS mahjong games should work on a DSi, although I´ve heard something in the past about Chinese editions of DS games being dodgy in this respect.

Incidentally, despite the console approaching its first anniversary, the first DSi-only retail game was only announced this week. (Monster Finder if you´re interested!)

I don´t have a portable console myself but I do keep up with the gaming news. B)

[Poochy]

So all those lovely DS mahjong games should work on a DSi, although I´ve heard something in the past about Chinese editions of DS games being dodgy in this respect.

The Chinese edition problem is because the Chinese DS firmware has additional fonts and stuff to display Chinese characters, because putting that stuff on every single card\'s ROM data would require denser ROM and massively drive up the prices. If you try to play a Chinese-region game on non-Chinese DS, the game itself might work (not sure on this part), but at best you\'ll probably see a bunch of mojibake in place of any non-image text.

[iandstanley]

I picked up a copy of MFC from ebay and am eagerly awaiting delivery.

Are there any english guides out there. (My Japanese is very patchy ... I know enough to know which buttons to claim with but get a bit stuck after that ... at least until I learn some more japanese)

[Barticle]

I picked up a copy of MFC from ebay and am eagerly awaiting delivery.

Cool. :)

Are there any english guides out there. (My Japanese is very patchy ... I know enough to know which buttons to claim with but get a bit stuck after that ... at least until I learn some more japanese)

There´s some helpful notes (and link) on this thread...

http://www.reachmahjong.com/home/index. ... 2&id=48472

I had no previous experience of Japanese beyond a few basic spoken phrases but in trying to figure out Japanese games I´m learning quite a bit and I can read a lot of katakana and even some kanji now. So because of MJ I´m learning a new (and very different!) language, which is pretty cool.

There´s a Japanese girl at work who was very tolerant of my frequent questions but I started using some good language resources and I´m pretty much self-sufficient now. I got a blue Berlitz Japanese-English dictionary (which lists the Japanese words in English alpha order and has a kanji index too) and I´ve been using this awesome website which lets you search for kanji or words based on the kanji elements as well as translating English or Japanese words.

http://www.tangorin.com/mr-kanji :kiss:

It can be difficult/daunting/slow to try to translate a whole sentence but understanding in-game menus isn´t so bad, especially once you learn to recognise "Mahjong Japanese" words. This list was a big help - although my personal printed copy is now heavily annotated. B)

http://www.osamuko.com/2009/04/03/big-l ... rminology/

Of course there are folks on this site who can help you too. I´ve translated a lot of the PS3 version of MFC now but I think it´s quite different to the DS game.