- PSP Minis Mahjong Solitaire

PSP Minis Mahjong Solitaire

System	:	PSP/PSN Download
Release Date	:	5/11/2010

MAHJONG SOLITAIRE
PSP MINIS/PSN DOWNLOAD GAME

Introduction:
Mahjong Solitaire is based on an ancient Chinese game called Mah-Jongg, with origins which some historians date it as far back as the time of Confucius, over 25 centuries ago.

The worldwide popularity of Mahjong is perhaps attributable to its simplicity. Playing it is something akin to first playing a computer game like Tetris, or playing a card game like poker - a wonderful synergy of skill, strategy, fun and some luck. While easy to play, it is difficult to master.

Game Objective:
Mahjong Solitaire is indeed simple. Players remove matching pairs of tiles from an organized layering of tiles, trying to remove as many tiles as possible as fast as they can.

You are presented with 144 mahjong tiles arranged in an organized, three-dimensional heap. The goal is to match open pairs of identical tiles and remove them from the board, exposing the tiles under them for play. The game is finished when all pairs of tiles have been removed from the board or when there are no exposed pairs remaining, or when time runs out!

The 144 Mahjong tiles themselves can be categorized into, like cards, standard “suits” of tiles. These suits are 1) Characters, 2) Bamboos, 3) Circles, 4) Dragons, 5) Winds, 6) Seasons, and 7) Flowers. The table below shows all the different types of tiles:
Characters
(4 of each) Bamboos
(4 of each) Circles
(4 of each)

Dragons
Red, Green, White
(4 of each) Winds
East, South, West, North
(4 of each)

Seasons
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
(1 of each) Flowers
Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, Bamboo
(1 of each)

When matching pairs, Seasons and Flowers are special, in that they are the only suits you do not need to match exactly. Any Season or Flower combination counts as a pair because there is only one of each tile.

How to Play:
You begin the game, and move a pointing finger cursor symbol around the screen with the directional pad on the left side of the PSP, pressing the "X" button to select tiles, and the "O" (circle) button to deselect them. During the game, pressing "Start" will give you the opportunity to start over, change the layout, reshuffle the tiles, pause or quit the game. If you want to undo any move you can press the triangle button, and it will undo your last move, with up to 3 undo's per game. You can also pan and tilt the board to get a better angle on the tile layers.

Mahjong Solitaire also has a neat Help feature, whereby if you press the square button, all of the open, matching tiles will be highlighted in green, helping you save time when you’re stuck, etc. You get 3 free Help usages for each game.

Scoring essentially is the number of unmatched tiles remaining, displayed in the furthermost upper left-hand corner. Time is displayed by way of a time bar, at the middle-bottom of the screen.

Customization:
Aesthetically, players can customize their experience, by selecting one of 4 styles of background music, 10 types of background wallpapers, and choose among 24 different layouts or stages. The game has 3 options for time limit - either 1, 3, or 5 minutes.

You can also fine tune your audio settings (background music level, sound effects) and well as your cursor settings (type of cursor, cursor speed, etc.), to get just the right fit for you.
Ultimately, this is just a fun "matching" game, using tiles with ancient designs on them, easy to pickup and play anytime, and yet captivating and deeply enjoyable.

Match away!

PSP®Minis/PSN Download $2.99