Mah Jongg software (1 Viewer)

[Richard Huck]

Hello everybody,my wife has found her latest game passion, a simple game called Mah Jongg. Does anybody have a suggestion for software this is a request from Santa. Thanks for all your help. Rich

 

[Jay H]

Which platform, Mac or IBM?
And what exactly do you mean by Mah Jongg, the solitaire version or the real 4-player Mahjongg? But in either case, there are a couple of pretty good shareware versions and also commercial software out there.
If you're looking for a good shareware 4-player game, check out this site:
http://www.mahjongg.com
It's a shareware program (you can download a 30-day demo) by Berrie Bloem and it's very good. I've tried it and the graphics are great and it even has built-in voices. The fact that this is shareware is not indicative of the quality and work that this guy has built into it. It's been around for awhile and is my favorite version. It is scored practically the same way that my family plays except for the special hands. When we play, we don't bother calculating who gave it out and stuff cause it's too slow, but with a computer, it's easy to keep track of the scoring. With the scoring that they play, you can lose a hand, but actually win more money than the person who won if you had a great hand. In real life, we tend to just play winner takes all because it's faster and it's usually just between friends or family.
I've also played some older DOS based ones like Hong Kong Mahjongg. It's basically the Chinese version of mahjongg and uses the Chinese rules and scoring. This is about $30 registration.
A decent commercial version of Mahjongg is Shanghai Dynasty. Not only do you get the 4-player version (and in different rules, Chinese, Japanese, American, etc) you also get the Solitaire version (where you match the tiles to reveal a fortune (Commonly mistakenly called "mahjongg"). And you get a bunch of other games with it.
I think you can probably find this for around $30 too, it's been out for about a year now and is made by Activision.
Jay
I'm sure you can find many shareware solitaire versions out there too.
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HUGGBEES!
Certified HTF bike nut and mayor of
Obscuria.
[Edited last by Jay H on November 14, 2001 at 07:50 AM]

 

[Richard Huck]

Thanks Jay for all the info she prefers the solo method on the Windows 98 platform.I should be able to find something thanks again. Rich

 

[Jay H]

Oh, I didn't mention but I do not thing Berrie Bloem's version contains the solitaire game. But the Shanghai Dynasty from Activision has a very good solitaire version and a pretty good 4-player one. If she likes card games like Rummy, the 4-player game is not hard to learn and is pretty fun. More fun when you play for money though

I also recall that you are ONLY at all interested in the solitaire version, Shanghai has a whole bunch of older predecessors that you can find fairly cheap (like in the $15 and under bin at Staples and stuff) There's a bunch of older Shanghai games that only include the Solitaire version and is cheaper than Shanghai Dynasty. I think you should be able to find and differentiate between the versions at
www.activision.com
Just look for the Shanghai pages on it. I'd paste a direct link if I could access there at work.. but alas, I can't.
glad to be of help, enjoy!
Jay
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HUGGBEES!
Certified HTF bike nut and mayor of
Obscuria.

 

[Iain Lambert]

If its the solitaire version where you take pairs of tiles away that you're after, the shareware game Kyodai Mahjongg has the distinction of being one of the rare pieces of shareware I've bought. Its very much worth it, as its completely configurable, has more versions of the game than I've had hot dinners, and looks absolutely stunning - though the idea of eating up the full power of a GeForce card rendering fully shaded, bumpmapped near-photorealistic 3D tiles at 1600x1200x32 is either a senseless waste of resources or absolutely gorgeous, depending on mood.
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woohoo!

 

[Edwin-S]

I'll second for Kyodai Mahjong. It is a great program. The only problem I have with it is when I quit out to my desktop, my sound card hangs up on the last note of whatever song was playing. Sometimes you think it is going to freeze up the machine but it never does. Other than that a great program. The developer has put a lot of sweat into it. There are some commercial programs that don't look as good as his game.

 

[Iain Lambert]

Edwin, I've not had that problem in Kyodai myself, but on my previous soundcard I did get it a few times with a couple of things. Let me guess- you were listening to one of the midi tracks, not one of the mod ones? For a quick fix, either stick to a mod track as your last track before exiting, or just play and stop a midi song via winamp or whatever to get rid of the sound. I think its a driver/windows quirk with exiting a program while a midi note is playing.
[Edited last by Iain Lambert on November 15, 2001 at 04:13 AM]

 

[Edwin-S]

Iain
You know, I have never actually checked to see if the problem is only caused by the Midi format. I am going to have to check it out...Thanks. Other than that one problem, the program is very good. It is the perfect relaxer if you have had a bad day at work. The mellow music along with the simple act of matching and removing tiles can be quite calming. The programmer has created a commercial grade product and still leaves it as shareware....very unusual.

 

[Iain Lambert]

Actually, he probably does ok out of it being shareware. Apart from the cut for processing the online orders and money to pay for the website, I'd imagine he gets nearly all of the the $25 to himself. Thats a lot more cash than the programming teams of your average PC game get per copy, and once you get into it its blimmin' hard to resist paying to get rid of the nag button. In 3d mode with the 'real' tileset chosen at a high resolution and all the frills turned on it looks almost photorealistic, so its a great showoff game as well.
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woohoo!