The Second Worst Way To Play Mahjong

 

If you know me, even in passing, you may be aware that I am a big fan of playing Japanese Mahjong which is also known as Riichi Mahjong.  I like it so much, in fact, that during my time at university me and 2 other dudes would travel around Europe going to tournaments for it which led to some pretty interesting adventures.  

If you're unsure what Japanese Mahjong is exactly then to cut a long and complicated explination as short as possible it's sort of like Poker.  It's played typically with 4 people and each of these players have to take turns drawing and discarding tiles to create hands and when one player wins points are exchanged.  You do this for about 8 rounds and then a winner is decided by whoever has the most points.  It's a lot more complex than that are there are a lot more hand variations than there are in Poker but that's the basic gist of it. In actuality it's a lot closer in basic play to Gin Rummy, another card game but every time I ask people if they have played that they say no so Poker is probably the easier to understand comparison.  The wikipedia page for Gin Rummy says its one of the most widely played 2 player card games to this day but I'm almost certain that's total bullshit.

Mahjong has a fairly large popularity in Japan so of course companies came long to make video games of it.  Probably the most famous example of Japanese mahjong in video game form can be found in the Yakuza games where people complain at length that they can't get 100% because they just cannot figure out how to play it properly. But if you dig through the fairly large library of retro Mahjong games you'll find that they are all this weird 2 player head to head variant of the game that is just immensely boring to play.  You may look at an early Mahjong game on the Famicom or something like that and think something like "oh well they had to make it 1on1 because of the system limitations" but that's dogshit because 4 player Mahjong for the famicom exists as a separate game

Also there is this weird abundance of pervy Mahjong games that were exclusive to various arcade machines.  It's the same boring 2 man variant of the game but when you win you get to see some titties or something.

Nowadays it's not something you see very often, if at all.  Mahjong games for modern systems are almost always 3-4 players and in the arcade both Mahjong Fight Club and the Sega Mahjong game are 4 players and the cabs are hooked up to the internet so you can play online, the two player type being the norm on consoles and arcades is long gone, I think.  Maybe there are some 2 player Mahjong games on the Switch or something that I've never heard of but no one gives a shit about those as the market for these kind of games is basically dominated by Konami and Sega.

In the title I said that 2 player Mahjong is the second worst way to play the game,  if you're wondering what the first is, it's that stupid tile matching thing that you get on windows PCs and is sometimes offered as shovelware on some portable systems.  A lot of people just know it as "Mahjong" even though it has very little to do with the actual game, some people call it Shanghai and some people know it as Mahjong Solitare but the point is that this form of it is just a complete waste of time and I'd rather have painful dental surgery than waste my time playing it.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light

I would be willing to bet a few hundred of my Yen that when Super Smash Bros Melee came out on the Game Cube and people saw Marth in this roster, they had NO idea where he was from.  Melee came out in 2001 and Shadow Dragon, the DS remake of this game, didn't come out until 2008 so I bet for a long time Marth's origin outside of "that dude from that FE game" was a mystery to a lot of people.  Hell, I even saw people who looked at Hector in FE7 on the GBA and was like "is that Marth?" when his name and weapon are clearly different.

Silly comments about Smash aside, I recently finished Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light on NES.  The game follows Marth doing some stuff against some bad dudes, I actually have no idea what the story is because the entire game is in Hiragana and if you think I'm going to read long textboxes of only that, you have another thing coming.

If you're unfamiliar with Fire Emblem then it is a series of strategy RPGs where the main feature is permadeath.  Over the course of your 25 level adventure with Marth, you'll meet and recruit a number of people of various classes and skills that will level up as they fight stuff on each map.  However, if one of your allies falls in battle they are dead forever, no coming back, end of the line.  This of course means that MOST people who play these games will have a save before each map and will instantly restart as soon as one character goes down.  I tried to avoid this on stream to make it more interesting but I did have a selection of 5 or 6 core team members who, if killed, would trigger a restart. 

Fire Emblem 1 isn't actually all that dissimilar from its sequels but there are a couple of features missing from this game that make it grueling compared to the others.  For example, this game lacks the weapon triangle from the later games and instead has weapons just having certain qualities.  For example swords are accurate but don't do all that much damage while axes are inaccurate and will cleave a guy in half like its Mortal Kombat.  In later games, you have a sort of "swords beat axes" type thing so if you take advantage of that the guy with the axe is a lot more likely to miss.  FE1 doesn't have that so occasionally a raider will just walk up to one of your mercs or even Marth himself and just send him to the shadow realm in a single hit and there's nothing you can do but curl up into a ball and cry.

Crits also seem significantly more abundant in this game for both sides.  I got out of many stick situations with a lucky critical but also I lost a fair deal of good, well leveled and geared units over the course of the game to some guy who usually does 10 damage, suddenly doing 30 damage to my guy with 27HP max. There's a lot of frustration with these games but that's what makes them all the more satisfying when you eventually beat them.

I wouldn't recommend Fire Emblem 1 on NES to someone new to the series, I don't even know if I could recommend it to a fan either.  It's not a bad game but its sort of obtuse, slow and seemingly unfair at times.  If you're new then I'd say go and play Three Houses on the Switch because I heard you can turn off the permadeath in that game so if THATS the feature that's turning you off, you can test the waters with a game that doesn't do that.  If you don't mind the permadeath though, go dig out your GBA and play Fire Emblem (7) instead although I'm only saying that because, despite owning Three Houses since December, I haven't actually played it yet.

I personally never want to play THIS installment ever again although I was digging through my old NES carts on Sunday and I found the sequel, Fire Emblem Gaiden so despite everything I just said about this game being obtuse and unfair, I'm probably going to start that very soon.

February/March Stream Marathons

Over 12 hours of Sekiro was successfully completed and while I didn't come anywhere close to finishing the game, we all hand a grand old time watching me beat bosses in the exact opposite way that the game wanted me to do it.

Now, thanks to some extremely generous donations made at the weekend I can now announce the marathons for the next two months!  

February will be the NES Wheel 12 hour mini marathon.  Basically the same as my usually scheduled NES wheel but for 12 hours over a weekend instead of a 2 hour slot on a weekday.  Exact dates are still to be decided and I'll announce on Twitter (@Taurinensis) once I've made the plan.

March 1st however, will be a little bit more interesting.  The marathon will be another 2 players 1 controller with Pithoui only this time, instead of Megaman 4 and 2 very easy games, we will be doing all the classic Megaman games back to back to back.  Megaman 1 through 6, 2 players, one controller.  As a stretch goal, if we get another 100 pounds for the charity we will add Megaman X on the end of the marathon!  So tune in for some absolute madness in March

Don't forget you can see these marathons AND regularly scheduled streams at 

www.twitch.tv/taurinensis

The July Retro Haul

Picture unrelated I guess, but whatever

Here is this months retro haul.  Fuck Front Mission

March Retro Haul

I bought a bunch of old stuff! Enjoy the video

The January Retro Game Hunt

First of all, sorry I've not posted anything in the last couple of days.  On Friday I was busy and on Saturday I was sick with a hangover.  I was planning to make these Game Hunt things a series of videos, except my camera is complete arse so I'm hoping to get a new one, or at least a spare battery very soon.  So for now, here is the stuff I bought in text and picture format.

So just in case you missed it, here was the video with the initial 4 games that I purchased with my FC Dual system.

Except there's been a few more purchases since that video was uploaded, so allow me to share them with you

The first two I'm listing were actually donated to me by a friend, so big shoutouts to him.  First up we have Xevious!

I don't think there is anyone who doesn't know what Xevious is.  Released in 1983, Xevious is one of the big grandaddies of the whole scrolling shooter genre.  Great little game, fun way to kill an hour or so at home.  Sure, there are tons of better shmups than Xevious, but if you're in that retro mood then you can't go wrong with this one.

The second game that was donated to me was an RPG

Drakkhen is a game I know very little about.  In fact, I hadn't even heard of this game until yesterday, and for a mere 250 Yen what do I have to lose really?  From what I have read on the Wikipedia article, it's a port of an Amiga game and it's a 3D RPG where you wander around a big world and do missions for dragons....or something.  When I popped it in there was a cleared file with maxed out guys with the best equipment and I couldn't really figure out what the fuck I was doing so it's the kind of game I'm going to have to sit down with and properly figure out.

Next up is a strange space themed game called Daiva

Sorry about the picture being sideways, no matter how much I fuck with it, it keeps coming up sideways.

Anyway, Daiva is some kind of strategy space thing.  I couldn't really figure out what the fuck I was doing in the 5 minutes I gave to test it out, but it looks like you have to fly around a map and take over all the other planets and destroy all the other enemy ships or something.  I could be totally wrong, yet another game I'm going to have to spend a long afternoon with.

Then there is battle commander.

Yet another one that is just sideways for no reason, fuck my camera.

I have no idea what the fuck this game is aside from being some kind of strategy game.  I fired it up and as soon as I got in game, BAM!, wall of fucking Kanji, so it's on the pile of long afternoon games like Daiva and Drakkhen.  As far as I can tell it's some kind of Gundam game...or it least has giant robots in it and I know fuck all about Gundam so this one is really going to take some time to get going with.

Finally, the best find of the month!

Once again, fuck camera etc.

Chrono Trigger!  Do I really need to say any more than that?  Chrono Trigger for 350 yen (that's £2!).  Popped that sucker in and played it for a few hours, great RPG, absolutely classic.  There was also a file already on there from the previous owner with some really high level characters on it, so it was fun to muck around in that file as well.

So there you have it folks, that's all the retro stuff I got over January.  I'm not really going to have time to do another retro shop which is why this post is coming a little early but next time I hope to get this in video format.

Also let me know if there is anything I should look out for!  I'm hoping to get a PS2 in the next few weeks so I can start buying PS1 games!

(Just as a side note, yes, the price stickers do come off easy, I'm just lazy)

Final Fantasy 1 (Origins Version)

I've not played a Final Fantasy game until very recently, the last one I played before my replay of FF1 was XIII when it launched on the PS3.  Hopefully you are aware that I'm doing a stream of every Final Fantasy I own, so it seemed like a good idea to do little mini reviews as I beat them.

Final Fantasy Origins was a 2 disc box that contained both Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy 2 that came out in 2003 for the PS1.  They were basically graphic face lifts for the original NES titles of the same name but they contained a couple of extras like bestiary's and maps and whatnot.

So recently I beat the Origins version of Final Fantasy and I had forgotten just how tough this game really was.  It's so much different from any other Final Fantasy that if you are a modern series veteran you might find that you get your ass kicked by this one a bit.

The plot is really simple, it's about 4 dudes with gems trying to save the world.  There is some shit about time travel but in a game this old it sort of just feels like fluff, especially when its so thin on the ground.  Still, the primitive story telling doesn't prevent the game itself from being fun, and if you're the kind of person like me who complains about modern Final Fantasy being way way too easy, then FF1 is where you want to be.

This game is fucking TOUGH, especially in the early stages.  Your party at the start of the game are extremely weak and quite frankly, ill prepared for what faces them in the early dungeons.  You'll often find yourself in situations where you have to explore a dungeon a bit, work out what to do, flee, recover and come back.  Luckily the dungeons aren't very long so it doesn't feel like too much of a chore but if you're expecting to go in there and just win first time then you have another thing coming.

Once you level up a bit and get yourself some gear and magic though, things become quite easy.  You eventually hit the point where you can just one shot everything and most fights can be solved by just mashing attack after a while.  That is until the final dungeon appears!  The final area consists of a massive dungeon with a boss gauntlet in it that doesn't allow for any between fight recovery.  This is made extra hard by the game using a magic system that involves charges rather than MP, and charges can't be recovered in a dungeon so resource management is vital.  Once you do beat it though, it does feel like you actually accomplished something which is more than most modern Final Fantasy games.

I'm sure with all the remakes and whatnot, most people have played Final Fantasy by now, but if you haven't do go back and give it a go.  If my description makes it sound a bit difficult for you, then there is an easy mode in the Origins version and the Game Boy Advance version has more classic things like mana for spells and I think it has phoenix downs too, which is something the original didn't have.

Soon I'll be streaming Final Fantasy 2 and I'm not really looking foward to it because if my memory is right, it's a steaming pile of shit.  Tune in for that on www.twitch.tv/taurinensis

Used Games in Japan (With video examples!)

I've had some bad experiences buying used games in the UK.  For example I once bought a copy of Pool of Radiance, and when I got it home there was a completely different game in the box.  Another time I once bought a copy of Shadow of Memories on the PS2 only to take it home and discover fucking Jam on the CD and despite my best cleaning efforts, that shit just would not work.

In Japan however, I've had the reverse of that.  Every used game I have bought has come in pristine condition with all inlays and extra bits and bobs that came with it when it was new.  I have a friend who got the PS1 version of Metal Gear Solid that came with a load of collectors stickers or something, it was pretty neat.

It also had a Suikoden Demo

So while I was up in Kawagoe doing a bit of a retro game hunt with previously mentioned friend, we came across a copy of Final Fantasy 2 and 3 in a junk pile in a Hard Off.  Book Off is a used book store type deal in Japan that also takes stuff like Video Games and DVDs, Hard Off is like that but for things like old VHS players and TVs, but Hard Off also stocks games.

So for about 200 yen each we took these things back to my buddies place, slammed them in his Famulator and turned it on.  First it didn't work and got a load of gunk inside his system, which we had to clean out before trying again, and then when we did make it work, the sound was a bit.....off.  Take a look!

This is the first time I have ever seen this happen, but it was pretty funny.  Usually used games on carts come with all its save slots full of 100% completed games, this one was just messed up.  Still, for only 200 yen it's not like you can really complain.