XBLA in Brief: FunTown Mahjong

by Richard Mitchell { Jan 29th 2009 at 3:30PM }

It's not often that we get to take a trip to FunTown, so we were thrilled at the prospect when FunTown Mahjong released on Xbox Live Arcade this week. To put it bluntly, our excitement was not warranted. Dull presentation and hilariously bad translation make this game entertaining enough, but for all the wrong reasons. Watch the latest episode of XBLA in Brief for our impressions of the trial version.

Tags: arcade, funtown-mahjong, live-arcade, x3f-twitter, xbla, xbla-in-brief, xbox-live-arcade

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neuromancer @ Jan 29th 2009 3:47PM

The hair's either coming out of his nostrils, or they're ponytails tucked into his nose.

Jeff @ Jan 29th 2009 4:24PM

haha great little write up. Perfectly summed up my disappointments with the game as well. As much as I love mahjong, my expectations aren't THAT low.

joeybeast @ Jan 29th 2009 5:10PM

I thought it was a Mahjong tile game. Like the one came with Vista.

UNSCleric @ Jan 29th 2009 5:10PM

LOL, I was waiting for this one ever since I saw your status update on Facebook.

Aero @ Jan 29th 2009 5:13PM

Nice to know it's a 360 exclusive. I don't want any other console to have this gem of a game.

Rick @ Jan 29th 2009 6:49PM

I've begun to enjoy these 'XBLA in Brief' videos so much that it's now my sole deciding factor on purchasing the game or not. I'll pass this week though.

Maybe i'm just tired or that work today is slow, but i laughed every time i heard Mahjong being said

JAmerican @ Jan 29th 2009 7:28PM

LMFAO! He basically said: "This game sucks and is not worth the cents that made it."

Boudin @ Jan 30th 2009 3:33PM

This review, although entertaining, does not answer the number one question people who might be tempted by that game would have: if I know Mah-Jong and enjoy playing it, is this worth my money? I don't care about presentation, all I care about is good IA, respect for the international rules and online play. Does this game match these criteria? The review doesn't say. Maybe it would have been relevant to ask someone who knows Mah-Jong to play the game to try it and give impressions rather than somebody who has no clue what this is about (no offense intended).

hsuchi1 @ Feb 5th 2009 2:00AM

In case anyone still cares, I did buy this on day one mostly due to be craving for an online (non-japanese rules) mahjong game.

Unfortunately for me, despite mentioning 13-tile (HK rules) and 16-tile (Taiwan rules) mahjong in the "tutorial" of the trial game, the full game only features the arguably less popular (and much less "skillful" or interesting) 16-tile Taiwan rules mahjong, with almost all options disabled (from what I assume is port of their online mahjong pc gaming portal of the same name).

As if to rub salt in our wounds in an act of perverse mockery, scoring and game type appears to have been meant to be selectable, but (permanently?) greyed out, leaving only rounds and time limit adjustable when creating a multiplayer game on XBL.

I can imagine (from a laziness perspective) why no-limit 16-tile Taiwan rules was chosen over the more "intelligent" 13-tile HK rules... the AI is much simpler to implement. There is no minimum limit for winning hands, no mind games to "guess" other peoples strategy while formulating your own, just mindless collection of "triplets" in a race to win by the lowest and simpliest hand possible, taking the "intellegence" out of AI all together and favoring luck heavily over any skill.

I wouldn't have minded as much if they took "next easiest way out" and allowed different rule sets/limits on online human-to-human XBL games only, and left the mindless no-limit 16-tile for single player.

In fact, I would gladly pay another 200-400 points for DLC that allows this (seriously), just to wash the bad taste in my mouth after spending 800 on what amounts to a half-assed and unnecessarily handicapped port of the FunTown MJ Online portal on the web.

Instead we are treated with a 160 point DLC that allows us to change the background while playing a mindless shell of a mahjong game.

All this said, you'll probably still find me online, secretly sulking while playing what could have been the only decent (but perhaps the just last) mahjong game to reach north american shores.