Hey Gang, I've lately been on a weird Mahjong kick and I don't mean the tile matching game, but the real 4 player game I think best crudely summed up as "Asian Gin Rummy" If you simply search for "Mahjong" in the AppStore the results are usually pretty depressing with the VAST majority being simply the tile matching games and of the few that are of the actual full game, most were in Chinese/Japanese only. What I don't think I fully comprehended until getting into this search is how different each country's take on Mahjong is. While they all share the basic concepts of making sets of 3/4 of a kind or runs of 3, the size of your hand and how points are scored for the winning hand can really vary. Here is my current top 3 (all are localized in English): Mahjong Mobile (Japanese rules) iGame 13 Mahjong (Hong Kong rules) iGame 16 Mahjong (Taiwanese rules) All three are nicely localized to English (complete with the Westernized tile sets with the character suit having numbers and the winds having the corresponding letters). They also had nicely detailed English rules, detailed statistic tracking, and very competent AI (big requirement for me).
I remember a thread like this from you already... Was it deleted or what? On thread: I have no idea about what you mean by "real" Mahjong... My mother plays that tile matching Mahjong a lot..
Yeah, I killed it earlier but am trying it again. As far as I can tell it goes something like this. The game Mahjong, a very ancient game developed in China and plays sort of like a 4 player game of Gin Rummy (try to go out first by getting all of your cards in sets of "3 of a kinds" or "same suit sequences"). Also I believe very ancient is the spin-off game of Mahjong Solitaire which uses those same tiles to construct pyramids and other shapes that the single player then tries to disassemble by removing unblocked matching pairs. Over the years, especially here in the west with computerized versions of the Mahjong games, the Mahjong Solitaire became far more popular and developers decided to drop the "Solitaire" part of the name and simply call their games "Mahjong". So now if you ever see a game called Mahjong it isn't clear if they mean the full game or this solitaire spin-off. Heck, one of the bigger Mahjong titles from Activision, "Shanghai Mahjong", attempted to do both the full game and the solitaire game all in one package but when it soon became clear the vast majority of the players really only wanted the solitaire version, in later incarnations it become just a suped up version of the solitaire version of the game (like you see from them in the AppStore now).
Have you also tried MahJong Nagomi? I tried the lite - seems pretty good, some options, including english ;-). I may pick up the HD version at some point as the lite has limited gameplay. The regular version is on sale until 31st (wish they put the HD version on sale - I'd rather play Mahjong on that).
Oh yes... how I hate those 'matching tiles' mahjong games! I have yet to seriously search for a good mahjong game in the appstore but the only one I have, 'hongkong mahjong' is rather decent.
Not a big fan of Mahjong, but it does piss me off that pretty much 99% of the games in the App Store that say they are "Mahjong" games are actually that lame "matching tiles" ripoff that is not the real "Mahjong" games.
I've only held off on this one do to one reviewer's comment about a nasty bug with going out they never addressed...but then again this might be an issue only with this player.
update? I'd like to revisit this thread. Currently looking for a real Mahjong (not matching) game with following requirements: 1) not matching, duh 2) english supported 3) great AI 4) suitable for beginners 5) aesthetically well done (iGame Mahjong 16 mentioned above doesn't cut it) 6) preferably variable local rules with explanations 7) hopefully $2 or less 8) I can find it by searching!
How about the excitingly titled, Standard Competitive Mahjong HD for $1.99? I just snagged it and it seems to have the most detailed scoring I've seen in an MJ game (like awarding points for all chows being within the upper 4 (6-9) or granting a bonus for a hand made of only 2 suits). There is even a free trial version if you'd like to test it out a bit first.
Thanks for that suggestion. Exciting title, indeed! The imperial China theme is a little overblown and the buttons still look designed for a Commodore 64 but still better than the other options. The titles are big enough to be visible on an iPhone. I will try the Lite version first. Still, I'd consider this an open thread. A perfect version is either out there already hiding amongst the matching games, or still waiting to be made. One with variable rules would I think corner the market if it were half as well done as this one.
Graphics are better than iGame 16 but still Commodore 64 like as SCM above but I'm a beginner and want to use it to learn Mahjong rules. I think learning Japanese rules will be of limited use if I plan to play mostly with overseas Chinese friends.
What is the difference between the Japanese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese rules? Is there a Mahjong game that incorporates all these rules, so that I can just pick which one I want to play with? Smallest installed size?
That depends if you consider 1981 very ancient. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong_solitaire http://www.softwarediversions.com/catalog/mahjong_history.php
I'm a beginner as I said but those "local rules" I think mostly refer to very major variations that are typical or preferred in those places. In fact, there are hundreds of rule variations, and probably in each of those places there are several accepted variations. I think you have to agree on them somehow when you play with others. I am waiting to see whether there are any iPhone games that handle these variations in a compelling way.
FYI, this Hongkong Mahjong is by a company called Joymaster. They seem to have made a number of other variations, but it seems most are not available in the US store, and the others have not been updated in a while and I don't think support iPhone 5 resolution, ruling them out for me.
Still just a newbie to real MJ as well but I think the biggest differences in these various rule variants are simply number of tiles and scoring (for example, Hong Kong scoring seems fairly simplified whereas the Japanese scoring seems to get very intricate). While an over simplification to be sure, MJ plays a lot like a 4 player version of Gin Rummy only that it isn't just about going out first, but what exactly your various melds (pairs, sets, or sequences) are composed of even if you do manage to go out first. In Hong Kong rules, as I recall, really a fairly small handful of basic conditions of a winning hand are factored in, like a bonus for having all melds of a given suit, having all pongs/kongs (i.e. sets, without any sequences), having a hand with dragon melds, and stuff like having a hand with your seat's wind. On the other hand, say the scoring system in the one I just mentioned, Competitive Standard Mahjong, they seem to acknowledge some 81 unique possible facets of your hand like, "No melds with honors (none of the melds made contained 1's or 9's)", "Only two suits used in all melds", etc. In some of the variations they sort of compromised between the simplistic and advanced scoring by having the basic scoring plus recognizing several special hands/situations like these: http://www.mahjongg.com/gamespecialhands.htm I personally am a fan of more advanced scoring, especially if I have the computer figuring it out for me in the end as I would have no idea what special bonuses any of my winning hands could qualify for. Just a lot of those, "Oh, sure, I meant to do that" when I win with what I assumed was a very common hand but get all sorts of cool unknown bonuses for it. ;-)
An excellent mahjong resource and FAQ here - including debunking a common myth that mahjong is "ancient". Unless you count late 19th century as ancient. I've recently developed an interest and play Chinese Archaic rule-set, but would like to learn and play Chinese Classical.
Thanks, that's informative and the history is interesting (tho not getting us any closer to an ideal iPhone implementation).
