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~ MAHJONG CLINIC SPECIAL ~
Naxat Soft
Super CD-ROM
1993
Disregard the "Special" part and you'll find that this game's title provides a good idea of what it's all about: you roam the halls of a clinic and play mahjong with the patients, workers, and loiterers you come across.
It should come as a surprise to no one that only girls are to be encountered in this clinic--and that said girls aren't hesitant to strip in the presence of a mahjong-playing mate.
Options are occasionally presented, and the selections you make determine just how much skin you'll get to see.
None of the images are particularly naughty or racy, however.
All of this is typical PCE-mahjong-game nonsense, but the triteness isn't particularly problematic. The real issue is that there's nothing random about the tiles you're dealt in any given match. The game provides preset hands that are often tough to work with. Of course, if you stumble around enough, you'll eventually become familiar with all of those hands, and then the title becomes a puzzle game of sorts--figure out how to win with the motley assortments of tiles you're given.
Even if you take the most direct path to the end, you'll run across plenty of hand-repeats. You can see me defeating two different girls with the exact same playing-piece arrangement in the following screens (notice that the matches proceeded in identical fashions right down to every last discarded tile):
Of course, once you've sussed out the correct way to proceed with each hand, you can systematically thrash your rendered-helpless opponents.
The bits of story that link these all-too-predictable matches are largely negligible, but the game won't hesitate to toss hands that can't be won with at those who stray from the "proper" path in order to "nudge" them towards the characters it wants them to deal with.
The real shame here is that a couple of good tunes, not to mention commendable usage of said tunes, are utterly wasted. Each contest commences with a pleasant, loungy track that's replaced by a much more intense number once a player calls reach. The switch really did increase the game's level of excitement the first time I experienced it and made me believe I was in for some fun times and exhilarating matches. Man, was I wrong.
~ QUEST OF JONGMASTER ~
Aicom / NEC Home Electronics
Arcade CD-ROM
1995
Quest of Jongmaster is an RPG that has you defend a town from a death dragon, the world from spacecraft-piloting invaders, and your own hide from all sorts of frightful things.
Of course, to do away with your multitudinous adversaries, you'll have to defeat them in mahjong matches.
And of course, the wicked beasts and horrifying creatures eventually reveal themselves to be silly anime girls who possess very little clothing.
If your interest has somehow been piqued by all this but you have concerns about the possibility of a language barrier, have no fear: it's very easy to figure out how to keep your character in good health and well equipped (with most articles enabling you either to win matches more swiftly or to hold out longer while you receive a pummeling).
The adventure is as linear as they come--you can't stray from the correct path to travel even if you want to, and the "mazes" are hilariously simplistic in design.
Questing and labyrinth navigating were never meant to be the title's most enticing elements, though. Sure, the story has its interesting moments...
...but any fun you manage to have will likely come from meeting the strange beasts/wild ladies who inhabit the land. The designers came up with lots of nice girl and monster designs...
...but were unsuccessful in their endeavors to provide quality in-game graphics, as the charm of the funny-looking, large-headed sprites fails to offset the blandness of the environments.
Dull field visuals are hardly the title's most significant problem, though. The matches play out slowly; and for all the "thought" your opponents put into their moves, they simply aren't very good at mahjong. I do realize that the designers didn't want players to have to experience a high number of draws and defeats with so many random matches to play through, but easy victories don't make for fun, rewarding gameplay in the long run.
As the adventure is far too simplistic to appeal to RPG fans and the "battles" are too slow and easy to prove worthwhile for mahjong aficionados, I don't believe there's really much of an audience out there for Jongmaster. The naughtiness factor prevents me from recommending it even to the many little kids who are looking for a good mahjong RPG, which is quite unfortunate.
~ JANTEI MONOGATARI 3 ~
Atlus
Super CD-ROM
1993
Jantei 3 starts off in sobering fashion. Its opening cinema details the deaths of three girls, with one sequence depicting the suicide of a ten-year-old. We're talking some relatively heavy material here.
But then a cool musical track starts playing--our sign that it's time to move on from that serious stuff and play some mahjong.
The adventure proceeds in the style of a digital comic, with bits of pointing and clicking necessary every so often. Thankfully, Jantei 3's artwork and animation are far superior to those of its predecessor.
And 3 is much wackier than 2 (and most other PC Engine games at that). It features a roster of deviants that includes a crazed centaur, a not quite fully armored (but quite perverted) knight, and a gargantuan school principal.
You'll engage these nutjobs in mahjong warfare and likely find them to be worthy (but not infuriatingly prescient) opponents. Some of them refuse to buckle even after suffering numerous defeats, so to speed things up, you'll probably want to spend points you earn for wins on "techniques" that enable you to cheat your way to quick victories.
Dispersed among the comic-style festivities and mahjong festivals are strange mini-games. You'll have to fend off a team of volleyball-playing maniacs and outmaneuver a wrestling-proficient cat-girl.
Fans of the game's immediate predecessor will be happy to discover that some old friends and foes play important roles in this episode. And said fans will hardly be surprised to learn that this chapter provides a substantial quantity of bare-skin shots.
Actually, Jantei 3 goes so far out of its way to be naughty that the panties-based gimmickry eventually wears out its welcome. While I hardly consider myself a PCE-playing prude, the gratuitousness reaches such absurd extremes that it really doesn't sit well with me, especially since it's juxtaposed with such a weighty opening. But the only other way in which the game proves irritating is in presenting a string of drawn-out mahjong-battles towards its conclusion. On the whole, it's well made and highly entertaining.
