Don Tolson
05-24-2005, 05:00 PM
<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-demo.gif" /><br /><br /><b>Product Category:</b> Games -- single person<br /><b>Manufacturer:</b> <A HREF = "http://www.landware.com/shanghai/ppc/index.html" target = "blank"> LandWare Corporation </A><br /><b>Where to Buy:</b> <A HREF = "http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=21289" target = "blank ">Handango (affiliate)</A><br /><b>Price:</b> $14.95 USD. A 14-day trial version is available. A free bonus pack of 7 additional tile sets and background music is available <A HREF = "http://www.landware.com/shanghai/ppc/index.html" target = "blank"> from the LandWare site.</A><br /><b>System Requirements:</b> “Pocket PC 3.0 or higher” (by this, I assume they mean Win CE 3.0 or higher, so that would mean Pocket PC 2000, 2002, Windows Mobile 2003, and Windows Mobile 2003 SE.) There’s no mention of VGA support.<br /><b>Specifications:</b> The standard version requires 570K of memory. The bonus pack requires an additional 1.81M of memory. The game and bonus pack can be installed to main or card storage.<br /><br /><b>Pros:</b><li>High quality tile graphics;<br /><li>Challenging game play;<br /><li>Hundreds of layouts and new tiles;<br /><li>Free Bonus Pack of layouts, tiles and sounds available;<br /><li>Create-your-own Layout Editor included.<b>Cons:</b><li>The interface doesn’t follow <i>all</i> the rules for the O/S, so the top menu doesn’t work the way one would expect;<br /><li>Background and buttons on the default layout are hard to see in low or very bright lighting;<br /><li>Online Help is only available from the Demo screen and you must exit/restart the program to get to this.<b>Summary:</b><br />LandWare brings the quintessential version of electronic mah-jongg to the Pocket PC – Shanghai. Licensing the look and feel from Activision, they have now brought this classic game to the Pocket PC... and they’ve added a whole bunch of layouts and new tiles, too.<br /><br />Read On for the full review!<!><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Introduction</b></span><br />I first came in contact with ‘Shanghai’ when I was programming on the <A HREF = "http://www.amiga.org" target = "blank"> Commodore Amiga.</A> Man, I loved that computer! (Google on “AmiGantt” for a look at my biggest seller :D) For its time, it was the only one that had a true-multitasking operating system and the graphics were superb! Anyway, Shanghai was Activision’s version of electronic mah-jongg and it was the only version of the game where the tiles actually looked like tiles. I’ve played Microsoft’s Taipei for a number of years, but I always found the graphics to be a bit on the ‘cheesy’ side and difficult to get a feel for the level each tile was at.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-taipei.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 1: Microsoft’s Taipei product.</i><br /><br />I longed for the Shanghai version I remembered from the Amiga. Well, was I surprised when I was doing the review of the <A HREF = "http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,39275" target = "blank"> Best of Everything CD</A> from Thaddeus Computing, to find LandWare’s Shanghai Pocket Essentials! The intro screenshot in the demo certainly <i>looked</i> like the original Shanghai; and they <i>did</i> mention they were licensing it from Activision, so I decided to give it a try.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-puzzle.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 2: A puzzle from LandWare’s Shanghai Pocket Essentials – Just as I’d remembered it!</i><br /><br />Suffice it to say I have been very pleasantly surprised. Not only does this look and feel like the original, but LandWare has added a number of options, features and layouts to provide a greater variety of gameplay. But let’s go take a closer look.<br /><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Installation and Set-Up</b></span><br />The package received from LandWare is the common PC-based, self-extracting .exe file which, when you run it, uses Activesync’s program installation manager. Everything went very quickly and smoothly with the basic install, but I had some difficulty getting Shanghai to find the new tile types and music when I installed the bonus pack. Not a big problem... It turns out that when the bonus stuff is installed, it creates a separate folder called ‘LandWare Shanghai Bonus Pack’. If you move all of the content from this folder to the original ‘LandWare Shanghai’ folder, everything works just fine.<br /><br />Once installed, you can settle down for hours of relaxing game play. Whether you are a novice or seasoned master, Shanghai can be tailored to provide a worthwhile challenge.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-demo.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 3: The opening Intro screen from Pocket Shanghai Essentials.</i><br /><br />When you first run Pocket Shanghai after installation, you are presented with the screen shown above. From here, as shown by the buttons at the bottom, you can start right into playing the game (using the defaults provided); set up the options the way you want them; access the online help file; or exit the game. Note: As far as I could tell, this is the only place where you can get at the online Help file. So, you might want to at least take a cursory glance at it before you tick off the ‘Show Intro’ box in the Options so this screen doesn’t show.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-prefs.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 4: The ‘Prefs’ screen from the Options button.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-games.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 5: Selecting which type of game you’d like to play.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-tiles.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 6: ...and the Tiles.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-layout.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 7: Selecting a favorite layout (or just letting it pick one at random).</i><br /><br />As you can see from the screen shots, setting up the game's options is pretty self-explanatory. You can even make these changes in the middle of your current game!<br /><br />For those who are in competitive mode (as opposed to <i>contemplative</i>), Shanghai keeps a scoring table for each user as they progress through each layout. I’m not exactly sure how you would identify another user on the Pocket PC, since I didn’t see any logon screens within the application.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-scores.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 8: Scores are automatically calculated and stored at the end of each successful game.</i><br /><br />I play Shanghai for fun and relaxation, so I didn't do an extensive analysis of how the scoring works.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Game Play</b></span><br />LandWare has provided 3 different modes for game play. The first is the traditional version of mah-jongg, where you remove pairs of tiles which are ‘free’ – meaning they can be slid sideways off the board without moving other tiles. If you’re looking for something more challenging, you can select either the Path mode – where you can remove pairs of tiles that can be connected by a line with two or fewer turns; or Contemplation mode – where the tiles are placed face down. Here, you play in a similar manner to the old memory game kids play with cards. When you find a matching pair, they can be removed. I found the Contemplation mode fairly easy, since it leaves the last tile tapped upturned until you tap another unmatched tile, or find a match. Thus, it’s fairly quick to simply search through all the tiles until you find the first match, then remember approximately what you came across while you were searching.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-puzzle.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 9: The default ‘Shanghai’ configuration.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-math.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 10: With the Math tiles, you find pairs by finding the tiles which answer simple math questions.</i><br /><br />Unfortunately, LandWare has taken some liberties with the programming standard for Pocket PCs, so the tapping the top row doesn’t produce the Start bar or menu, as is normal. If you want to multitask, you’ll have to exit from the game first. (Re-running the game after leaving will automatically return you to the point you left off, unless you've selected 'Start with New Game' on the Prefs tab.)<br /><br />However, they do provide some useful information in the bar along the top of the game. Starting at the left, you see:<li>the number of tiles left to remove;<br /><li>the number of available tiles for removal;<br /><li>the name of the layout;<br /><li>the game number; and<br /><li>a timer of how long you’ve been playing this layout/game. Along the bottom of the screen are a number of buttons which allow you to: (again from left to right) <li>start a new game;<br /><li>restart the current game;<br /><li>go back one move;<br /><li>get a hint (show available pairs of tiles, but only for a second or two);<br /><li>go to the Options screen; and<br /><li>exit the game. Game play itself is pretty straightforward. The game is responsive to screen taps only, and you can alter the speed and display of animated removal of the tiles from the Options screen.<br /><br />As I mentioned before, I’ve played Microsoft’s Taipei for a while, but was getting bored as of late when it was becoming monotonous to win all the time. I was pleasantly surprised when doing this review of Shanghai Pocket Essentials that the puzzles were more difficult and I was getting a number of <b>GAME OVERs</b> before all the tiles were gone.<br /><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Layouts? We Got Layouts!</b></span><br />The original Shanghai game on the Amiga basically provided a single, classical layout for the mah-jongg tiles. Not so with this version! LandWare has added over a hundred versions, organized by various categories.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-layout.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 11: A Huge List of Layouts is available (each one of the categories expands!).</i><br /><br />My favorite, however, is the random selection, where a new layout comes up every time the game is restarted.<br /><br />If your creative juices are stirred, you can also build up your own layouts, up to 5 levels deep, using the included, no-extra charge Layout Editor. You access the editor from the Layouts tab of the Options screen.<br /><br />Creating a new layout is then as simple as placing tiles on the grid, in whatever order or pattern you wish. The tiles can be stacked up to 5 levels deep.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-layoutedit2.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 12: Creating a new layout.</i><br /><br />When you're finished, you can specify which tiles and game types it may be used with, and save it as a new layout set, or a subset of an existing layout group.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/don-may05-shanghai-layoutedit3.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 13: Saving your new creation.</i><br /><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Support</b></span><br />The rules for Shanghai are pretty simple, but it is helpful that LandWare has provided online help as well for strategies, etc. The Help file, which is included in the application, provides basic information on the set up options, playing the game, and how to use the Layout Editor.<br /><br /><span><b>Conclusions</b></span><br />I am <i>so</i> glad to see Shanghai back on the Pocket PC! LandWare has done an excellent job of porting this application and adding unique and interesting graphics and layouts to keep things interesting.<br /><br /><i>Don is an Associate Director of Project Management and System Development with Fujitsu Consulting. Getting ‘Shanghai-ed’ is one of his more enjoyable pastimes, when not consumed with deadlines for reviews ;-)...oh, and work, too!</i>