Shanghai Pocket (GBC)

[Iron Draggon]

I recently rediscovered this game, and I'm wondering why they haven't remade it for the GBA. Did Sunsoft go out of business? This is my favorite Shanghai game, and it plays great on the GBA, but it could be so much better if it was remade specifically for the GBA. They haven't even made a mahjong game for the GBA yet, except for the one that's included in Ultimate Brain Games, and yet mahjong games are perfectly suited for handheld systems, so why haven't they made one for the GBA? Are they just assuming that everyone who wants to play mahjong on the GBA will buy Shanghai Pocket like I did? It's an 8 year old game now! They should update it or at least reissue it on a GBA cart.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Shanghai -was- remade for the GBA, but only in Japan. There are TWO of them! I downloaded the roms a while back, and the names are:

0289 - Shanghai Advance (J)(Independent).zip
1247 - Shanghai (J)(Rising Sun).zip

Both of these were made by Sunsoft. They published the first one, but the second one seems to have been sublicensed.

[heyricochet]

I have to butt in on this topic. Shanghai and Mahjongg are two different games that use the same tileset. Shanghai is the tile matching game where they're all stacked up and its a solitaire game. Mahjongg is a different game, similar to rummy where you have to make a hand out of 13 tiles. Although shanghai is typically called mahjongg in the states, its really not, it just uses the exact same tiles.

EDIT: Sorry that I come off so pompous in the post, I've just explained this enough times that I'm now a robot.

[Stark]

Actually Mahjong is the correct spelling in English of the gin-rummy type tile game from China. Mahjongg is an English variation of the word and can refer to both the gin-rummy and tile matching game. Shanghai is used sometimes for the tile matching game since Mahjong and Mahjongg are so similar. If you want to get real technical the Chinese use Ma Que and Ma Jiang depending on which part of China you are in. Yes I do play both the tile matching game and the gin-rummy game 8-)

[heyricochet]

Bah. Well, I still find it too confusing when people say mahjong(g) and are refering to shanghai. I always get somewhat excited and then ask them what it is they play. Do you have a set and how did you get it? I picked up mine in chinatown in Boston, I'm pretty sure its a full size set, its the same size as a set my friend picked up in Hong Kong, and I've never seen a bigger set. I used to play with this travel set I picked up in Hong Kong, the tiles were ridiculously small but I had a table which was sweet.

[le geek]

Either way check out Ultimate Brain Games

http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/390/390021p1.html

Supposedly the Shanghai on it is white good...

Cheers,
Ben

[Iron Draggon]

Shanghai -was- remade for the GBA, but only in Japan. There are TWO of them! I downloaded the roms a while back, and the names are:

0289 - Shanghai Advance (J)(Independent).zip
1247 - Shanghai (J)(Rising Sun).zip

Both of these were made by Sunsoft. They published the first one, but the second one seems to have been sublicensed.

Really! Gee, I wonder why they never bothered to release either one of them here in the states? I always thought that Shanghai/mahjong games were quite popular here. They certainly sell well enough for the PC. I have over a dozen different PC mahjong games myself. Don't ask me why, I just started collecting them. They're highly addictive.

As for real mahjong, yes I know what it is and I know that it's not the same game as Shanghai, it just uses the same tiles. I have a real mahjong game for the PC as well, but I've never learned how to play it yet. A couple of friends of mine used to play it all the time, but I never could find a partner so I could play it with them. They had a very nice set, but I have yet to buy one for myself. The ones that I want are always way too expensive, and the ones that I can afford are always way to cheap. I'll get one someday.

I do have a set of cards that can be used to play real mahjong, but they are actually for fortune telling. The tiles were originally used for divination long before they were ever used for playing games, just as ordinary playing cards began as tarot cards, which were also used for divination.

As for why Shanghai is commonly referred to as mahjong here in the US when it is not really real mahjong, my best guess is that it's because Shanghai is a trademarked name. Before Shanghai came along and made itself popular here, real mahjong was decades out of style. They used to play it in the 1920's, and mahjong parlors were quite common here. Then for some reason interest in the game died out, and it never really caught on again until Shanghai brought it back to life and renewed interest in it. But by that time most people falsely assumed that Shanghai was indeed real mahjong, so that's what they called it. So imagine their surprise when they finally ran across a real mahjong game, thinking that it was Shanghai, and had no idea what it was.

By the way, for those who are familiar with real mahjong, have the tiles ever really been used for playing Shanghai? I don't know of anyone who's ever used them for playing solitaire. I suppose it's possible, but I would think that it would be a real pain in the ass to lay the tiles out for it. So I would assume that the game of Shanghai never really existed before Sunsoft made it popular for computers.

[heyricochet]

I don't know if it ever was done as a thing, but it really is the same tile set, so it is possible.