MAHJONG (NES)
Translation by Psyklax
v1.0 (20170705)

CONTENTS
1. Intro
2. ROM Information
3. Background
4. Gameplay
5. Final Thoughts

INTRO
This is a 100% English translation of Mahjong for the
Famicom (NES). All Japanese text has been either translated
or transliterated, therefore some knowledge of mahjong
terminology is required.

ROM INFORMATION
This patch will work with either revision identified in the
GoodNES set: the only difference between the two revisions
is that someone at Nintendo clearly didn't like the number
8, and its design was modified. Literally nothing else is
different between the two, and since the numbers weren't
touched in this patch, it doesn't matter which you use.

Furthermore, I have included two patches: one
(mahjong-arabic.ips) adds Arabic numerals to the Wan tiles
(those which normally have just Chinese numerals) as they're
the only tiles that might cause people problems with forming
Chii (a sequence of tiles). However, if you are familiar
with mahjong and want to keep the tiles as they were, I have
included a second patch (mahjong-original.ips) which doesn't
change them.

GoodNES name: Mahjong (J) (REVA) [!].nes
CRC32: CB99AFE8
GoodNES name: Mahjong (J) (REVB) [!].nes
CRC32: 41C49409

BACKGROUND
Released on 27 August 1983, Mahjong is the joint fourth game
ever released on the Famicom, along with Gomoku Narabe Renju
(also translated by this author). It portrays a slightly
different version of Japanese mahjong, the key difference
being that it uses two players, rather than the traditional
four. Other than that it plays very much like regular
mahjong, and fitting it all in just 24KB is quite
impressive. Nevertheless, this lack of space meant that
explaining the mahjong terminology in this translation was
impossible, so prior knowledge is essential.

GAMEPLAY
Unlike most 8-bit games, Mahjong cannot be played without
some prior knowledge. There are many excellent resources
available should you need to know more. I recommend the FAQ
by Adamant on GameFAQs, and Barticle's Japanese Mahjong
Guide (links at the end of the document). Here I will limit
explanations to the game screen, given that it may not be so
obvious. If you want to know what Honba, Yaku and all the
other terminology means, please refer to those other
documents, or just do a web search.

When you begin a game, you will see a black rectangle with
information inside. On the left is the Wind of the round, or
who is the dealer in this hand (East or South in this game).
Next is the number of the Honba. Below them is how many
Reaches have been called. Next is the Dora tile for that
round. In the centre is the hand being dealt (again, only
East and South are used). Finally, you can see the scores
for this match (beginning at 30,000 each). There are two
East hands and two South hands before the match ends, but
certain criteria must be met for the second hands to end
(refer to the links at the bottom).

Next, the tiles are dealt, and in the centre the CPU level
is written (1, 2 or 3) along with a green box saying
"Agari". This is an action to declare a winning hand, and by
pressing up or down you can cycle through the other actions:
Kan, Chii, Pon and Reach. Each action can be done with the B
button. If you perform Agari on Level 2 or 3 without having
a Yaku, you will be penalised.

The box at bottom-right can say six things: discard (to
choose a tile to discard); Tsumo, Pon, Chii, Kan (to declare
one of these actions with the B button before drawing a new
tile); No Win (if neither player gets a Yaku); Ryansi (after
5 Honba, a winning hand now needs at least 2 Han, not 1);
Choose (if you can make multiple melds and you must choose
which to make); or Can't (if you declare Agari in Level 1).

Upon winning a hand, a score table will appear. First you
have the Yaku along with the Han value of each, then the
detail of whether it was Dealer or Non-dealer (D or N). The
total Han and Fu are shown, followed by the calculated final
points for that hand. These are deducted from the opponent's
score. In the centre you can also see the Ura Dora, if Reach
was called. The person with the most points after 2 rounds
(4 hands) wins the match, and the first to win three matches
wins the series.

FINAL THOUGHTS
This translation was an interesting challenge. Most
translations involve a lot of preparation work extracting
the script and translating it all in one go, but due to the
nature of this game (a board game, relatively little text,
only 24KB ROM size) I had to work through every little bit
of text, byte by byte. A bit of ASM hacking was required to
get things working right, though nothing really major (there
wasn't a single spare byte to put any new routines or
whatever). The biggest problem (maybe) is that very little
is actually translated: mostly I just wrote the Japanese
names of things in Roman letters, but it seemed appropriate
given that these names are recognised by English-speaking
mahjong players, and as previously mentioned there are an
abundance of resources to learn what it all means.

I must confess I never understood mahjong itself much before
translating, but now I see that it's even more hideously
complicated that I imagined, and I was still learning new
things and modifying the translation after I thought it was
finished. the 4x8 font used for most of the names of things
is obviously not ideal, but in the circumstances there was
little else I could do. The low resolution of the Famicom
combined with such long names of Yaku and other things meant
I had to resort to this. On a modern emulator on an HD
display it won't cause much of a problem, but I'd like to
see how it looks on a real NES through a CRT, though I don't
have a cart that can do that (yet).

The one thing that looks a little untidy is the winning hand
table where the headers aren't perfectly lined up, but this
is because every character is a sprite, and the NES has a
limit of 8 sprites per line, so putting them all on the same
line was impossible. Other than that, everything looks
pretty good. The title was surprisingly easy to make, and
although some of the notation isn't so obvious at first
glance, there wasn't much more I could do on this.

Overall, I'm happy with the result, and it's certainly nice
to complement Gomoku Narabe Renju since they were the joint
fourth games released on Famicom (that board game is much
easier to understand, by the way). Internally the games are
quite similar - they were clearly developed by the same team
- so I wouldn't say I learnt a great deal, but any
experience is helpful. So, if you like mahjong, or are
willing to learn, give this game a try and see why it proved
so popular in Japan. Enjoy!

Tools I used for this translation:
FCEUX (best NES emulator for debugging and hacking)
HxD (general hex editing)
WindHex32 EX (checking text)
Thingy32 (typing in the yaku)
Tile Molester (graphics)

Other games I used for this translation:
Tennis (Nintendo logo)

Useful links:
Mahjong (Famicom) FAQ by Adamant
https://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/578219-mahjong/faqs/45452
Barticle's Japanese Mahjong Guide
http://www.uspml.com/japanese_mahjong_guide_v103.pdf

Psyklax
http://s346165667.websitehome.co.uk/psyktrans/
