Two years back i went to Sakuracon in Seattle and they had a whole room dedicated to teaching Riichi Mahjong, and my wife and i found it to be a particularly addicting game. Naturally wanted to find some console versions because we dont really have other people around us who are interested in playing the table game.
ive seen a lot of retro mahjong games and not so much modern console ones. not really a big deal, but there seems to be a lot of import mahjong games and i cant really tell even from gameplay videos are considered ‘good’. So, if you like these games, which ones would you recommend? i have a super famicom, and a saturn. im not opposed to buying another console for a game if it is like the golden goose of mahjong.
Additionally, why do a lot of these games have some sexy overtones to them? i dont mind it, but this game type seems to have it in excess.
Professional Mahjong Kiwame series would be what I’d recommend if you already learned most of the basics and want to get good at the game as beginner/intermediate player, the series contains several SFC and GBA versions, but the best version in my opinion is NEXT for PS2/Windows PC. The company created the series, Athena Co. Ltd. also made other solid Riichi Mahjong games with flawless (in the sense you won’t feel it is making unreasonable moves) ai. An incomplete list is on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena_(game_developer) but you might want to check game dbs for more information.
Nintendo Switch actually has a large number of good mahjong games. Dispute been criticized overpriced I’m still highly recommend Touhou Genso Mahjong because it has some very unique historical rule variants not seen on any other riichi mahjong games and the offline content is solid enough.
Mahjong games (and other PC games) were mostly targeting adults in Japan and there was no any kind of censorship back in the days. Unfortunately most of the ero mahjong games uses very weak ai which made it much less fun, either too easy or just felt like NPC is using cheat abilities.
I’d like to share a much comprehensive list of recommendation of PC-98 mahjong games if you don’t mind use the emulator on PC, but I guess you would be more prefer console/mobile phone.