The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, as of iPod Touch firmware update 3.1.1, my beloved Mahjong Mobile no longer works. It crashes on startup. What’s worse, the program has apparently been completely removed from the app store for some reason, so it seems unlikely that it will ever be updated. This really makes me unhappy, honestly, but, especially seeing as Saki just ended and thus pushed my Mah Jong lust to new heights, I attempted to find another understandable Riichi Mah Jong game for my iPod.

Unfortunately, I could only really find one. Most of the others I had looked at when I got Mahjong Mobile seemed to have disappeared! It seemed my only real option was Simple! Jong Touch. But it was only a buck, so I felt little hesitation in trying it.

Simple! Jong Touch is a completely adequate single-player Mah Jong game. The interface works fine. It’s not quite as slick at the sliding bar in Mahjong Mobile, but since it’s on its side, it’s easy enough to tap the tiles you want, and then you just tap again to discard. I haven’t made any mistakes in that regard yet. It also has all kinds of options on rules, if you know enough about Mah Jong house rules to have preferences in that regard. So, you know, it seems to work pretty well.

The problem is, where Mahjong Mobile was completely aimed towards a more casual effort, Simple! Jong Touch assumes you know Mah Jong backwards and forwards.
Mahjong Mobile only shows you options when you can do them. It puts up useful markers on tiles immediately discarded so you can learn to track the pond better. It breaks down how everyone who goes out scores in pieces, tells you what their fan was and so on, so you can try to figure it out.
Simple! Jong Touch does none of this. When people go out, you see the official name of the hand and a score. That’s fine, but again, the foreign words that make up the names of the hands aren’t helpful in me figuring the game out, because they’re just nonsense to me. It also displays buttons for basically everything you can do in the game all the time. Even if you have an open hand, it still offers you the option of calling Reach constantly, for instance. You can also call false Tsumos and Rons all day long, and the game penalizes you according to the rules. This is probably preferable for higher-level players trying to train and remember the things they need to while actually playing at a table, but since I still haven’t completely gotten all the rules to the game down, this just makes the whole experience less fun.

So, basically, I really hope that Mahjong Mobile gets updated again so I can play it. Still, if you’re some actual person who plays Mah Jong, Simple! Jong Touch seems like a pretty solid buy, especially with that dollar price tag. I think Mahjong Mobile was worth the $3 I paid for it, but I can see someone not needing all the helps I want as I figure it out, and just wanting the most Mah Jong for their dollar. Simple! Jong Touch can give that to you.
And hey, at least it’s not another stupid Mah Jong Solitaire game. (Not that I dislike Mah Jong Solitaire, it’s just, seriously, you can’t even find anything about the actual game under the millions of shitty Solitaire games.)