Best Mahjong App on the site - oops – Mahjong Demon - Japanese Mahjong Review

This is a re-write of my earlier positive review. The current version keeps crashing back to my "desktop" on the touch. It is now unplayable. Hope this gets remedied. Be aware that this is one of the Japanese variants of Mah Jong but, if you play Chinese Classic or Hong Kong or Shanghai or any other popular version, it's easy to learn - at least enough rudiments to play. Reach, Dora Tiles and Sacred Discards are some of the fundamentals - and, for my money - they enrich the game. I still enjoy the other variants, but Japanese Modern is my favorite. The AI, unlike all the other Mah Jong apps I've tried for my Ipod Touch, is fairly strong. For example, SG Mahjong - the Shanghai game - is an app I really like. Yet, I can consistently win at the hardest level. Mahjong Mobile takes me to the cleaners as often - no more often - than I beat it. To win consistently, you need to read discards and really know special hands that will yield limit scores. I like the graphics on this program a lot - but my favorite game play feature is the means of discarding a tile. On most apps, you double tap or slide a tile. If your fingers are not thin - or if your aim is off - you end up accidentally discarding that red dragon you just drew for a hidden pong. With this app, there is a slider that moves beneath the tiles. When the proper tile is chosen for discard, you tap the slider bar and get the discard you want every time. My only beef with the app is the voice adaptation. It's annoying, because it pronounces char (hard k, as in characters) like char (as in burn the food). Dora tiles are called duh-rah' - emphasis on the last syllable. I think the author might either consider losing the voice - or programming the words to be pronounced phonetically. But this is a small complaint about a really first rate program. Buy it - you won't regret it! Dr. Gary Axelson
Review by Dr Svensk on Mahjong Demon - Japanese Mahjong.