Dai-Mahjong

"A very enjoyable, even practical Japanese mahjong game any non-beginner can have!"

Note:

This is my second review for a Japanese mahjong game. If you don't know what REAL (not tile matching) mahjong or Japanese mahjong is, please read the introduction in my review for Dokodemo Taikyoku: Yakuman Advance.

Intro:

This game is called Dai Mahjong, in Japanese pronounced “Dai Maajan” which literally means “Big Mahjong”. I'll personally prefer the term “Dai Maajan” though. The title is simple enough, but true to its word for those who played it.

I don't know much about the history of this game, but I know that two companies, Hori and Success, made this game together. Success isn't listed as this game publisher but in the past, it has produced heaps of board and puzzle games for Playstation 1, including Japanese mahjong, hanafuda etc.

Story:

Like Yakuman Advance, there's NO story. Not only do I feel that stories are unnecessary, (read my story section of Yakuman Advance please), but it also distracts the player from the mahjong gameplay, and once the story is completed, he/she wouldn't have as much incentive to play the game again. Through observation, I personally feel that the mahjong gameplay in most games with storylines (one or two anime exceptions) is more dumbed down/less enjoyable.

I am sure that most of the engrossed/hardcore Japanese mahjong players out there who play electronic mahjong games would rather the games have no story. After all, they bought/downloaded those games for mahjong related reasons. If they want a story, they should read a fiction book or play something with a stronger storyline like Final Fantasy 7 or a Japanese renai game (an RPG relationship/love simulator).

Dai Maajan is definitely an entertaining and excellent, if not perfect, game without a story (those who play this game will know what I mean). I apologize if you find my opinion opposing your thoughts.

Gameplay:

I'll split this into starting, play modes, and gameplay.

Starting: When the game is started, the logo for Hori, then Success, appears for a short while and fades. There's nothing really “cool” about that and it makes the game seem boring (trust me, it's not). Fortunately for the impatient, you are allowed to skip this by clicking any button on the controller/emulator, which is quite respectful to the player if you ask me. The title screen appears with the kanji for “Dai Maajan” in these big mahjong tiles with “press start” at the bottom that's a nice flashing red.

Once you press start (you have to), you are to input your name using kana, English and/or numbers/symbols. You are presented with two pictures, one of a young man and the other of a young woman. You have to pick one of the two faces to represent you. BE WARNED: Once you make a final decision for your name and face, you will never ever be able to change that again!

Play modes: There are 3 main modes of mahjong play for one player. There's also a 4th play mode which only gets revealed later which is large enough to be another main mode too (I'll explain in the extras section). All of the modes potentially involve 15 different opponents who represent different countries.
They are World Grand Prix mode, Ougonhai Soudatsu (Golden Tile Contest) mode, and Free Taikyoku (match) mode. These play modes require quite some explanation, so I'm sorry again if you are confused.

World Grand Prix mode is a series of mahjong matches played in each of 16 different countries around the world. These countries are where you and the various opponents hail from. All countries use Japanese rules but with different rule alterations.

Your aim is to accumulate as many “competition points”, not the points as for scoring in mahjong, as you can by the time you finish playing in all 16 countries. You do this by trying to reach a higher stage with a higher match rank. The highest competition points per country is 10, therefore the absolute highest points you can have is 160. Playing all 16 countries is considered a “year cycle”.

Normally, there are 3 stages: selection stage (first), semi-finals (second), and finals (third). One mahjong match is played per stage. In order to proceed from one stage to the other, you must either finish as either 1st or 2nd place in the match. All 16 players (15 opponents and you) are split into 4 random blocks of 4. The match played within this block is the selection stage. If you don't make it in the selection stage, you compete no more in that country and proceed to the next with absolutely no point gain.

If you make it to the semi finals but end up as 3rd or 4th there, you get sent to an alternate place called “place determination” stage. The 1st and 2nd place people in this stage will receive the two lowest possible points but 3rd and 4th place people will still receive nothing. If you make it to the finals, you'll definitely receive points no matter what place you are.

This may sound complicated, but once you play it, you'll realize it's a simple system (try drawing it out when you get it). To show how easy/hard this mode is, I got a total of 46 competition points and overall 6th place (out of 16 people) in my first year cycle.

Some people may find the World Grand Prix mode too competitive and would rather try the Ougonhai Soudatsu (Golden Tile Contest) mode. Although the name of this mode in English contains the word “contest”, you're not actually ranked against other people by some measurement like competition points in World Grand Prix mode. Instead, you are given a “box” with 8 random mahjong tiles with a golden yellow foreground (normally, it's white). I'll call these golden tiles. You can collect up to 9 pieces for every single tile, unlike a normal mahjong set which has 4 of each. These golden tiles are special in the way that if you bet one of them before the start of a hand (you don't have to) and you win, it will function as a dora indicator.

There are 4 possible leagues (there's a 5th one when you're in a crisis…) for playing against the opponents: To enter a league, you must have a certain number of golden tiles. For example, the Sakura League (first one) requires 1 golden tile. Also, in order to “clear”/finish your league and enter another one, your golden tiles must contain a specific pattern. Sakura League requires an “ikkitsuukan” (air flush,123456789 of same suit) of golden tiles in order to clear. The “better leagues” have a higher golden tile and clear requirement, and you face harder opponents. But the thing is, when you end up as 1st place at the end of any match, you'll receive a bonus number of golden tiles. Therefore, the better leagues compensate difficulty with a significantly higher “golden tile bonus reward”. The better leagues also allow rules which would increase your winning score.

During your mahjong matches in this mode, other opponents will be betting their golden tiles during the hands too. But you're not told what tiles they have betted unless someone has won. This means that if everyone betted a golden tile and you won a hand, not only will you receive their 3 golden tiles and yours back, but all 4 of the golden tiles will act as dora indicators for that hand which in combination with possible kan-dora, ura-dora and kan-ura-dora, gives you a high chance for bonus fan!

This is an interesting mode of gameplay and I've never seen it before in any other mahjong game. It makes any lucky winning hand gain an extra 2 fan or more. One time when I was the dealer, I remembered winning with tanyao being my only yaku but I gained 8 fan due to dora from the golden tiles, increasing my would-be 1 fan (double) 30 fu (tally points):1500 points to 9 fan which is considered baiman (double limit): 24000 points!!! Yummy…………….

Then there's Free Taikyoku mode. You get to pick who you want your 3 opponents to be and what the rules are. Then you play for one match. When you finish the match, you can go back and choose other opponents to play or quit. This is by far the simplest mode.

Gameplay: You can quit a match when you want to. With the exception of Free Taikyoku, if you quit halfway through any mahjong match by formally quitting at hand intervals via select button or switching off the GameBoy Advance, you can always come back. But, the dice is rolled again for that specific mahjong hand and you are given a different hand to start off with, which can be good or bad compared to what you had in the past.

The 15 opponents come from different countries, but some of them come from countries where mahjong is practically never played. For example, there's a man called Igo-ri (Igor) from Russia and a woman called Bianka (Bianca) from Brazil which really “surprised” me. Personally, I feel that the makers should've picked countries which actually have mahjong rules or official mahjong leagues, like the Phillipines, Netherlands etc to be more realistic. But this is a small issue.

The opponents vary in skill level from 1 star(“bad”) to 4 stars(“excellent”). Do not be fooled, just because someone is 1 star doesn't mean they are easy to beat, they just have a more “basic mentality” and can still win as quickly as the expert players, sometimes even quicker. They aim for lower hands or more common yakus, like tanyao, riichi, pinfu etc. I can tell because when I'm in a match with 1 “bad” opponent and 2 “excellent” ones, the “bad” one wins more often and obviously but receives less score while the “excellent” ones are near the opposite. The better opponents also have less furitens (sacred discards) occurring.

You can select which local yakus / Yakumans can be allowed. You can choose whether to allow no-ten penalty and nagashi mangan or not. You can even select up to two akapai (red tiles being extra dora) per suit and change the value of uma (horse: boosts the score difference between top 2 and bottom 2), ryanpeikou and chiitoitsu. Practically all the common rules are there so there's nothing to be worried about.

The rolling of the dice is slow and smooth but you can fast forward it by holding the A button which makes it look as if it was really rolled by someone. The dealing of the tiles is quite possibly the quickest I've ever seen and the melding and discarding is rather quick although sometimes, it takes like 3 seconds before someone declares “Riichi” which seems to resemble real human thought (“Hmm, should I say Riichi or not?”).

The bad things about gameplay is that although when winning a hand, the yakus are listed neatly along with their fan value, but there is no explanation on how the fu is calculated. This isn't good for beginners but advanced players will find it “convenient” in the sense that they don't have to look at stuff they already know.

Graphics:

The graphics are so good! The opponents and you look like characters from a typical “anime” but not to the extent where they look so exaggerated and intolerable. They don't look childish like as the opponents featured in Yakuman Advance, in fact, I think that Teddo (Ted, Kenyan) is the only child. Everyone shows a happy or unhappy face when receiving or losing score. Also, if someone has more than 30000 points, they keep a happy face during the mahjong hand and a sad face if their score is under 10000.

However, I have something to complain. There are often times when I am in tenpai status for a decent hand worth mangan (limit) or more but either someone wins with a lower value hand or ryukyoku (no one wins) occurs. Although I may receive points for the no-ten bappu, I lost my opportunity to win something good, so my character should show an unhappy/annoyed face. Also, if ryukyoku occurs and an opponent is tenpai status for a shockingly valuable hand (perhaps 8 fan+), the other 3 players should show a sign of relief that he or she didn't win. Great comfort should also be expressed by the person who does not have to pay anything when sanchahou (triple ron) occurs. More emotion is needed, not just happy or sad.

Anyway, the writing and tiles are VERY CLEAR. All the kana and kanji have strokes of at least 4 pixels thickness and are easily read. When you want to “say” something, the katakana appears in the middle of the screen in a neat white rectangle. The tiles are the largest I've ever seen in a GBA game because your row of 14 tiles takes up 90% of the whole row of your game screen. I can clearly see the traditional kanji for 10000 in the manzu (characters/craks) and hatsu (green) isn't a bunch of green coloured “spaghetti”. The pinzu (dots) and souzu (bamboos) have very pleasant colour mix of red, blue and/or green. The akapai is radiant with red like blood. The discarded tiles can be seen clearly on the screen too. To be honest with you, if I ever bought a Japanese mahjong set, I would want one which contains tiles like the ones featured in this game.

Sound:

The background music varies for the mode. In World Grand Prix and Free Taikyoku mode, the normal music reminds me of a casino and when someone declares “riichi”, the music suddenly changes to something of great excitement. You'd probably feel excited too when you declare “riichi” with that music on. But in Ougonhai Soudatsu mode, the normal music is very peaceful, romantic perhaps. It makes me feel as if I'm in a heavenly place playing mahjong, but when someone says “riichi”, the music changes to something of fear and discomfort, like a horror movie (not scary at all though).

The sound of the tile discards, tile drawing and melding is soft and nice to hear. But the sound effects when you move your cursor above your tiles and around the options is like one of those bells which you tap at hotels, which can be quite irritating. Fortunately, there are options for you to allow or disallow sound effects, declaring sounds, and background music.

The opponents' sounds when talking is unique but efficient, no extra grammar. If I looked away when someone plays this game and I hear something, I can identify who said it. I just love hearing Teddo say “Ro--n!” and Marie-ru (Mariel, Australian) say “Tsumo!”. What I find left out is that you don't get to hear the voice of anyone when they declare tenpai, no-ten, kyuushuu kyuuhai (9 types 9 tiles) and nagashi mangan. The winning sound of either you or an opponent is a nice motif to hear and if you win with a Yakuman hand, an oriental tune is heard. The sounds in Dai Maajan make me motivated to play more mahjong.

Extras:

Because there are 4 leagues in Ougonhai Soudatsu mode (not including the 5th one), when you clear each one of them, an activity appears in the “???” area of the game. Of the 4 revealing activities, one of them is a play mode called Mezase 1000 Man Ten (Aim for 10,000,000 points). This game is the 4th play mode which I mentioned earlier. In this mode, all the score you earn (combo score only, tsumi and riichi sticks bonuses not included) are accumulated after every single match you play. All the options for maximising winning score is allowed which makes it rather easy to earn 10000 points per match. But at that rate, you'd have to play 1000 matches to finally reach 10,000,000 points! The mode finishes once you reach that total and the number of matches you needed to play is noted down. I was extremely super duper patient for this play mode and I reached 10,000,000 points within around 400 matches!!!

Nonetheless, like any good mahjong video game, Dai Maajan records lots of important information about your progress in pages of the Seiseki Ichiran (Results Viewing) area. It notes down your average winning/losing score, your riichi success rate, your number of matches played and won, percentage of your wins being ron etc. On the other pages, it records how many times you have scored each Yakuman, the golden tiles you currently have, and special “mahjong titles”. There are 18 titles to receive and you receive them when certain good/bad things happen, e.g. you receive the title of “Baku Dai Ha San” (Extreme Bankruptcy) when you lose more than 100000 points in one match!

Recommendation:

This game is so damn fun and despite the modes sounding complicated, once you get used to them, you'll find them very practical, which is why I stated that in my title. This game has modes which take a really long time to complete, especially Mezase 1000 Man Ten and Ougonhai Soudatsu mode, taking you AT LEAST 100 hours to complete (100 hours is a LOT of game time). I doubt that a constant player would get bored because they are making progress all the time.

Dai Maajan does not have any help options and doesn't teach you on how to play mahjong like Yakuman Advance so this game is inappropriate for beginners, sorry. This game is very pleasing for those who have intermediate understanding or more on how to play Japanese mahjong. It's a great pity that games like these aren't exactly available outside of Japan. I own the ROM of this game (technically illegal) but if I ever see this game on sale in Australia, I'll definitely buy it.

Dai Maajan is a Japanese mahjong game of wholesome delight and you're very unlikely to get rid of it once obtained. When played, it will leave a very positive impression on you about the quality of Japanese mahjong games. For those who still think mahjong is like Shanghai or Shisen (tile matching games, not mahjong), Dai Maajan will make them fascinated with real Japanese mahjong and make them want to learn more about it via internet websites, books etc.

So, if you see this game sold in a shop or it's available on the internet, GET IT!!! Thank you for reading my (long) review.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/04