Mah Jongg Magic

• Platform: IBM PC Compatible
• Release Date: 1999
• Genre: Traditional
• Style: Tile Game

Game Description

Grab your tiles and head to your computer's virtual table. It is time to play Mah Jongg Magic, a mah jong game from the developers at Cosmi. Mah Jongg Magic features 145 original tile sets, traditional Chinese music, dozens of background images and inspiration quotes from Eastern philosophy.

To play the game, players remove identical tiles in sets of two from a pile and place them in stacks off of the game board. Players can only remove tiles that are completely unblocked by other tiles. If a tile on a higher level is touching a lower tile, a player cannot remove the lower tile.

While playing, players can request hints, reshuffle tiles and undo moves. These actions will change the game to a practice mode and the player's score will not be kept in the top scores list.

Mah Jongg Magic is for beginning mah jong players and champions alike. It features online help, hints and strategy guides for playing this ancient game. Mah Jongg Magic is for one player only.

Roots & Influences

Like Solitaire, Hearts and Minesweeper, tile games like Mah Jongg Magic became extremely popular on Windows-based machines in the 1990s. Tile games were simple, small, addictive and somewhat more exotic than card games.

Review: Overall

Mah Jongg Magic is one of those games that grabs you by the throat and holds on. It is on the same level as Tetris, Solitaire and Hearts when it comes to simplicity and addictiveness.

Mah Jongg Magic is not original. It does not have mind-blowing graphics, and it does not have millions of dollars in research and development capital backing it. It does have the power to keep you playing, and that it the true test of any video game.

When I first began playing Mah Jongg Magic, I thought that there was no strategy to the game. The computer shuffled the tiles, and if you got a good draw, you could win the game. If the tiles fell in the wrong places, you could not win, no matter how well you played.

My assumptions were totally wrong.

A good draw definitely helps in Mah Jongg Magic, but it is not the only way to win. After several hours of playing, I began to understand when to play the wind and season tiles. After a few more hours, I learned to play from the outside of the board inward, freeing as many tiles as possible. I did not always win, but I found myself playing frequently. At the end of the day, Mah Jongg Magic may not be the hottest game available for your Windows-based PC, but it is definitely very fun to play.

Graphically, Mah Jongg Magic is simple. While the packaging boasted different tile sets, I did not really notice a difference between them. I do not know if I just do not pay attention well or if the game has a bug in the tile selection. The backgrounds and other visual elements of the game really do not stick out in my mind, but the game is not ugly.

If you play Mah Jongg Magic, play it with the sound enabled. I seemed to play much better with the soothing sounds of ancient Chinese music flowing softly from my speakers. The musical selections in Mah Jongg Magic are definitely mesmerizing and add greatly to the game's addictive qualities.

Overall, Mah Jongg Magic is a tile game like many other tile games. It is easy to learn, difficult to master, and hard to quit.

Review: Enjoyment

I could not stop playing this game. It was too hard to simply walk away.

Review: Graphics

Mah Jongg Magic doesn't stand out graphically. It's simple, and that is appropriate.

Review: Sound

The soothing music adds to this game's strong appeal.

Review: Replay Value

Mah Jongg Magic definitely has terrific replay value. The more you play, the more you learn.

Review: Documentation

Mah Jongg Magic is light on paper documentation, but it's online help screens are very extensive.