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developed by Activision
Released in 1986 by Activision


Description
Shanghai is one of the first video game adaptations of the tile-based game played with the Chinese mahjong stones - essentially a puzzle game that has little to do with real mahjong rules.

The gameplay involves 144 tiles, each depicting different images, which have to be removed by matching them into pairs. The tiles are arranged in a gridded pattern, which is higher near the centre. A tile can only be removed if it has no tile next to it on at least one side.

This computer implementation can generate a random board layout to take on and features five preset challenges, some of which have time limits of five or ten minutes, as well as a multiplayer mode.


Overview

Shanghai is a board game where the goal is to remove tiles from the board by selecting pairs of currently "free" tiles, defined as any tile with a side free (other than the front) that can be removed from the table without disturbing its neighboring tiles. If the player is able to remove every tile on the board without getting stymied by locked tiles, they win the game. Though circles, bamboos, characters and dragons must be removed in identical pairs, a flower can be paired off with any other flower and the same is also the case for seasons. This is because there is only one flower/season tile each.

Shanghai is frequently mistaken for the game of Mahjong, which is considerably more in-depth and plays more like the card game Rummy. Since Shanghai uses the same tileset as Mahjong and it is a one-player game, it is often called Mahjong Solitaire.

This particular version was created in the late-80s and ported to various systems courtesy of Activision. Sunsoft is credited as responsible for the Famicom version, which was only available in Japan.