This is all the fault of Macaw and Icarus. Don’t even ask, no I can’t defend these purchases, and actually two of the ones I want the most, I still can’t find. Some of these are complete junk and I don’t have much to say about them. Most contain partial nudity.
As an aside, I’ve mentioned below a couple which are good if you’re just starting out, but my #1 pick for best beginner game would have to be G-Taste, which isn’t featured here since I bought it years ago. It’s still not that expensive, the graphics are excellent, and the PCB can be run in a normal JAMMA cab with a joystick, or in a Mahjong cab using a supplied adapter. The game will also prompt you when you can chi, pon etc – it really hand holds the player.
Mahjong Triple Wars – Nichibutsu made a lot of the better quality Mahjong games, this one has a RPG theme with different routes to take and heros to choose who have different in-game perks. It cheats like hell, most Nichibutsu ones do.
Tokimeki Mahjong Paradise – Dear My Love – this one I really like, considering it’s made by Sonnet who appear to not have really made much else, the music and anime style graphics are really good. The audio isn’t correctly emulated in MAME but the PCB was cheap and just needed a new fan.
Ron Jan – undumped earlier version, I’ll sort that out this weekend. Nice music, not really much else to say about it, it’s a betting type game. Not really a fan of those. Doesn’t work in MAME enough to play.
Swing Gal – purchased this specifically to dump, it seems to be a modification of a Nichibutsu title I forget the name of – same layout as some of the Nichi PCBs too and similar label style, so presumably actually made by them.
Quiz-Mahjong Hayaku Yatteyo – kind of misleadingly named, you move around on a map according to dice rolls. Typically well presented but I haven’t played it enough yet to say much more.
Otona No Mahjong – another game on Nichi hardware which isn’t by them – this one has the distinction of some pretty lewd animations and some nice girl designs, it’s set in a ‘gentlemans parlour’. Music is really annoying.
Maikobana – actually a Hanafuda game, bought this because it was less than $15 and thought it might be fun learning that game too.
Mirage Youjuu Mahjongden – trademark Mitchell weirdness comes to Mahjongland. It’s well produced but also incredibly strange, clearly the same staff as Osman. Don’t use the standard Mahjong pinout on this, it will burn the amplifier and someone like me will have to fix it…
Mahjong Vitamin-C – Homedata make two types of Mahjong game, both are janky. There are the hand drawn cartoon style ones which are strangely endearing, and then crudely digitised ones. This is the latter.
Mahjong-Yougo No Kisotairyoku – Homedata again, this one has a sense of humour, Godzilla rolls the dice for example. Digitised again, I actually quite like it though, it’s very Japanese.
Mahjong Triple Wars 2 – better sequel to the RPG based original, this time you have a maze to work through instead of a map. Despite me not writing much about it, this is a very good game.
Mahjong Shikaku – early Nichibutsu game, really dark theme and audio – in fact a few of their games are focused on murders and so on. This is nominally a who dunnit effort, strangely expensive. You build up a number of ‘burning tiles’ in this, hit start before you press N for the next tile and it will give you a better one – that ‘better’ is calculated on what it thinks you need, and it doesn’t always make the right choice. That said it’s a million times more useful than a tile roulette powerup as seen in Lady Hunter and others. Sadly lacking the license seal.
Mahjong The Lady Hunter – otherwise known as Batjong in certain circles. If you’ve always wanted to play a sex pest Batman who bursts through windows, forces women to play Mahjong and then assaults them for gems, until such time as they tire of your bullshit and shoot you, this is your game. It’s pretty special, including the music, amazing Nichibutsu didn’t get sued.
Mahjong Satsujin Jiken – another Nichibutsu murder themed game, this one even has a dead girl on the title screen. Unusually vertical aspect, I really like it. Actually after you’ve interrogated and won against a girl, you can pick them again for a bonus scene. A few Nichibutsu games have elements of jumping between opponents.
Mahjong Sailor Wars – did they have a license for this? Being a later Nichibutsu game the audio and graphics are top class. This contains exactly what you think/hope it does.
Mahjong Pachinko Monogatari – Mahjong with little Pachinko tables in the top right – certain tiles will cause a ball to shoot into the machine and bounce around scoring bonuses. It’s kind of cute and very cheap.
Mahjong Natsu Monogatari – early Video System games have the worst audio section ever, seriously – loads of background noise covering up the otherwise fair sound. Not much to say about it, also known as Mahjong Summer Story. Translations in Mahjongland are confusing, even the PCB label has the English name. Oh yes, the guy selling powerups before rounds is pretty freaky. Video System draw terrifying male faces.
Mahjong Joshi Pro-Wres -Give Up 5 Byou- – ultimate Homedata jank. Female pro wrestling themed, this game didn’t actually get a full release and I dumped the board for MAME so everyone can enjoy its unique charms! It’s so amazingly awful it’s like staring into the sun, but interestingly is quite fair to play, easy even.
Mahjong Kakumei – bought this thinking the sparse sound must be an emulation error. It isn’t. Jaleco really didn’t put much effort in here. Art style is different to everyone else at least.
Mahjong Hourouki Part 1: Seisyun Hen – bought for completeness, the Hourouki series are excellently scummy themes from Homedata. This seems to be factory workers illegally gambling, as far as I can tell from my understanding of the intro.
Mahjong Hourouki Gaiden – the second, this one has you taking advantage of homeless women, the smaller character faces in-game are quite cute. Also features the famous ‘smoke chan’. Bonus points for the intro where a girl throws a tile at the screen. I played this quite a lot when I found it, and through savestating can confirm the tiles are fixed once you start, and outcomes within a game only vary based on player actions putting them onto a different sequence. Of course it makes the game next to impossible even with savestates but it’s very interesting to study it actually doing this.
Mahjong Hourouki Okite – the third and final Hourouki game from Homedata. This one is the darkest by far. As a man with a gambling debts, the mob come and take your sister away and you have to play Mahjong to strip other mens sisters/wives while using your own sisters innocence as collateral. Nothing says ‘you fucked up at life’ like that game over screen. It’s also got sad music and an animation showing her being taken away. I must admit to loving this game for its uncompromisingly miserable subject matter. I think this might be a location test board, one ROM is hand written, many are EPROMs with correct labels which have been adapted to fit mask sized sockets.
Mahjong Gal No Kokuhaku – honestly I just like the face of one of the women and the music is really cool. The sort of unique feature in this game is that some tiles release fruits – you have 4 sets of slot machine style ones to collect, they’re your bonuses / power ups. It’s a very cheap game too, not bad but there are so many better ones.
Mahjong G-Men ’89 – it’s late 80s Nichibutsu and yet again someone has been murdered. This one allows you to set up sets of tiles at the start, sometimes you’re allowed to pick one in a reach situation (they get jumbled) giving you a 1 in 5 chance of the right tile. Not sure how much it cheats on that as unlike some of the other games with this feature, it did actually give me the right tile once. Some of the others never have.
Mahjong Fun Club – Idol Saizensen – again bad Video System early audio, notable for the hilarious guy in the suit offering you a menu of power ups before the round, but little else. This is about the cheapest MJ PCB you can buy, seriously they must have made thousands of this game.
Mahjong Gakuen – Capcom PCB but the game is actually by Yuga. Very well produced and with the most epic TSUMO! sample in all of Mahjong. This game is very fair, has scoring (rare!), very common and very cheap to obtain, but it’s also pretty graphic – Yuga games are not shy. It’s up there with the best beginner games in my opinion.
Mahjong Fantasic Love – Nakanihon had a go at Mahjong too. They’d already put girls in pool (Real Break) and Shanghai (Rong Rong) so why not this? I actually highly rate this as I do their other games. These aren’t ambitious genres but the sound and graphics are of the highest quality. This one is also very tame in terms of lewdness and quite fair to play against. Unfortunately it’s not that common from what I’ve seen.
Mahjong Erotica Golf – oh boy. This is from Fujic and AV Japan while being on Nichibutsu hardware. I do wonder if that like ‘Sphinx’, Fujic was another trading name for Nichibutsu when they didn’t want to associate their main brand with a product. The ‘AV Japan’ part should tell you exactly what’s in this one. Winning means having to make a timed golf shot. Succeed and you’ll be treated to some crude digitised video of the actual adult models used. Great music, this one is fixed in recent MAME versions, the inputs were scrambled.
Mahjong Daiyogen – creepy clairvoyant themed game from Video System, again with the bad audio. Has some unusual power up features by way of the cards chosen at the start but it feels like it was otherwise put together from leftovers of other projects.
Jangou Lady – vintage early 80s Nichibutsu game so don’t expect too much in the audio/visuals department, but this one has a unique 3 player method of play. There are actually two CPU opponents and a much bigger stock of tiles than in a normal game, it’s definitely worth a few credits because the actual game itself is a lot of fun. The PCB looks like the ‘old’ Mahjong pinout, but it isn’t and needs a special adapter. Remove the death battery too, they leak.
Lady Maker – undumped BET version of Mahjong Jikken Love Story, in which you are a scientist creating women – the power ups are all vials and so on. Really cool sounds in the game, very strange. Once this is dumped I will probably convert it to the standard rev, looks as simple as removing the riser and wire (actually leaving it on probably won’t matter) and burning a couple of ROMs.
Idol Janshi Su-Chi-Pie II – while Jaleco kind of phoned in earlier titles, they put a lot of effort into the later ones. Everything is far, far better here than in Kakumei – proper in-game music, full animation, game cheats like hell though. Another game where wrong wiring will cook the amp, I’ll write a separate post on this problem over the weekend.
Mahjong Hyper Reaction 2 – this is the gateway drug. This is the game that ruins people and puts them onto a road of ‘lewd jong randomiser’ streams. It’s the game Nani (otherwise known as Shark Chan) comes from. Amazing graphics and setting, brilliant audio bar a few pops from the sample endings, but it’s one of the more difficult games and not the best entry point for beginners. PCB has recently started selling for comparatively silly money. I have no idea why and I’m happy I bought this a month or two ago. Might be something to do with it being one of the few with a detachable adapter and a joystick mode so you can play it in a JAMMA cab with sticks.
Mahjong Hyper Reaction – the game that came first. It’s not bad, the scene is pretty cool with the girls all being band members. It’s just not as good as the second game really.
Taisen Hot Gimmick – the Hot Gimmick games are really good ones, they’re very fair, they’re well produced and they’re agreeaby naughty with the multiple win animations. Graphics are some of the best in Mahjong. Along with Mahjong Gakuen and G-Taste (I’ve owned that for years), this is one of the best places to start learning to play the 2p arcade style of Mahjong. The first three games in this series are the best.
Taisen Hot Gimmick 3 Digital Surfing – web browsing themed second sequel to the above. I think the first and this one are the strongest in the series, the second isn’t bad. You really can’t go wrong here. Later titles tried to cram too many rounds in, and sacrificed animations to give them the data space to do so. Integral is the worst in that respect. I should mention these boards all have amps that will cook if you don’t modify your adapter – you’ll get almost no volume, lots of hiss and a burning smell.
Mahjong Dial Q2 – there were actually a couple of adult Mahjong games on the Megadrive, and one of them was called Dial Q – it had really great box art and decent music. I don’t know if this is related at all in terms of who made it, but the concept is the same and obviously the name too. This is the place you go, if you want to see bunny girls tell you about their fucked up dreams. Do you want to see the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland motorboating a bunnygirl? Well if that’s something on your bucket list, this game can help you. It’s certainly a thing.
Taisen Idol-Mahjong Final Romance 2 – Video Systems later series of games are the Final Romance ones. These actually got home system ports and the graphics and audio are by far superior to early efforts, essentially these are like an alternative series to Hot Gimmick, if you want games that cheat so brutally that they’ll hit you with a winning hand at the start of the round sometimes. The animations are great if you can actually get to see them. The second is my favourite, it’s another one with tricky sound wiring.
Bisho Janshi Pretty Soldier 18-Kin – not content with their previous effort, Nichibutsu made another Sailor Moon themed game, except this time you play Moon and she gets stripped if you lose, and content is a little stronger when you win. They put this on their Sphinx label. Be careful with the newer Nichi boards, make sure the larger caps in the sound section are not leaking. Seen a couple already.
