"Shanghai" - Turbografx-16/PC-Engine

----- Introduction -----

In the early 1980s, a Stanford student named Brodie Lockard was introduced to the PLATO terminal by one of his friends. Right as he was getting hooked on it though, he suffered an accident while practicing gymnastics that left him paralyzed. While he was in the hospital, he learned how to type using a mouth-stick, and was able to acquire a PLATO terminal to try ideas out on.

His relevance to this game is that he was the first one who programmed a version of solitaire mahjong in video-game form.

And that's why in 1987 when Hudson developed this version for PC-Engine in Japan, they attributed the original game design to him.

And that's all the educational content you're getting out of me today.

The music in this game is attributed to Tomotsune Maeno, who I have never heard of and couldn't really find anywhere else, with some soundtracks on the PC-Engine otherwise.

So anyway, let's see what Hudson was able to do with Shanghai-- by the way, the Japanese Wikipedia says that the reason Activision called it Shanghai was to further the illusion that it was an ancient Chinese game, which is pretty funny to me. They also mention a false remark on the app "Random Mahjong Pro" which claims that Confucius invented solitaire mahjong. Heheh.

If you're curious, apparently mahjong was invented somewhere around the 18th or 19th century in China.

So anyway, let's play it.

This is most definitely a mystical ancient Chinese ritual.

----- Playthrough -----

You probably know exactly how this works, but if you don't, here's how it works. In solitaire mahjong, you can remove two tiles on every turn, but they have to either be matching tiles, or of the same kind. So you can remove any two tiles that look the same, or in this case, are one of the seasons together.

You can also only remove tiles that are open on either left or right side. That's all the rules to playing solitaire mahjong.

Apparently this tile shape is called a 'turtle' in some of the versions of Shanghai. I mean, I guess I can see that.

I developed a strategy while messing around with the game to try to remove any tiles that were up on the top of the stack first, but that seems pretty basic. Sometimes I'd try to get clever and follow a chain of removable tiles as far as I could remember to try and get the most bang for my buck before removing something.

It wasn't a very effective strategy because I lost 3 times before I finally won one.

If I could just access the 'SUM WIN' tiles I could finally have some win, but nooooOOOOOOoooooo...

There's also a variety of options available if you press select while playing the game:

Herupu? Herupu! HERUPU, ME!

We have 'file select,' 'new game,' and 'help.' Under help, there are options for 'playback,' 'try again,' 'hint,' 'music,' and 'cursor'.

By looking in new game, I realized there was a challenge mode for up to 5 people (!) which I guess the point of is to leave your opponent without any valid moves like a jerk.

The most helpful options here are music, of which you get 3 choices, and of which 2 are poppin', and 'cursor,' which lets you change your cursor speed. I'd recommend setting it to high, if I were you.

Eventually, you'll win a game too, and then you get this dragon who breaks through the board and does shifty-eyes to some extremely Chinese-sounding music for about 25 seconds too long. Then the game starts over with no other messages.

So did you see, uh-- what movies have you seen lately? Nothing? Me neither. I don't get out much...
... this is nice, just me and you. Hanging out. Like buds, you know?
What do you mean you're uncomfortable?

----- Review -----

Innovation:

Does the game show anything not yet seen on this system/ever before?

Well, this is certainly the first mahjong/puzzle/not-platformer game on the PC-Engine, so we have to give it that. This is also only a year behind the Activision popularizing of Shanghai on other systems, but I guess that had already been done in the early 80s by Lockard, so there you go.

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Spitting Rage:

Does the game make you want to tear your own organs out of your body?

I kind of have a hard time imagining someone getting upset at something this calm. It can be frustrating when you play or a long time and get to the end with no way of continuing though, like any solitaire.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

I imagine if you didn't know how to play solitaire mahjong you would definitely have to look into the manual on this one, but maybe by hitting the 'hint' button and watching the screen you would eventually figure it out? The controls are simple enough, but the rules are unclear without a little help.

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Satisfying Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

It's actually pretty satisfying when you finally manage to clear a board. You might not believe me, but imagine how you felt the first time you cleared the board in Klondike solitaire. You felt pretty cool, right? That applies here.

My sex appeal is finally going up!

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Game Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

There seems to be only one board, but there's a file select, which implies to me that there might be more? However, when I beat the first one, it just came up again, so... I'm not really sure, but it seems pretty shallow if there's literally only one board.

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Sound Design: 

How's the sound?

The music is actually pretty poppin'. We'll have to keep our eye on Tomotsune Maeno from here on out. Everything else is standard game sfx stuff, you're not gonna have your mind blown by these bleeps and bloops.

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Graphics:

How's it look?

To be honest this barely looks any better than Mahjong, which I reviewed for the Famicom, and that came out in 1983, so I think that Hudson could probably have done a little better than this. At the same time though, do you normally come to solitaire mahjong games to be impressed by graphics...?

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Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

No, not really. I mean, my dad used to like to play solitaire mahjong on the computer when I was a kid, so it's kind of nostalgic, but I definitely don't have much personal attachment to Shanghai.

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Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

You can play solitaire mahjong as a flash game in your browser. Just do that. This music is nice, though.

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This picture is too awesome to not be the banner.