This week, Funtown Mahjong was released on XBLA. I freaking love mahjong. One of my favorite anime is Mahjong Legend Akagi, and until now there hasn't been a good way to play mahjong on consoles (excepting maybe Yakuza 2 on the PS2).
The presentation is pretty straight forward, and it follows standard Chinese rules - no Reach here, Akagi fans. The visuals include a three-dimensional mahjong table with cutesy anime characters surrounding it. Including avatars here would've been awesome, and I've love to see a patch that allows that.
One issue I do have to take with the demo though, is a certain something it lacks. Like, more than one hand. What I mean by that is that every time you start a game, you're South (opposite the dealer) and you get the exact same tiles. I'm not exactly expecting to get the whole game in the demo, but it's hard to see what sort of computers you're playing against when you can predict what tiles you're getting.
I'll probably end up buying it because I'm a sad man desperate for a good game of mahjong, but here's hoping I don't get burned for my trust.




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