Genre: Puzzle

Format: CD

Developer: JAMDAT Mobile Canada

Publisher: MacPlay

Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS 8.6 or Mac OS X, 64MB RAM, 50MB free hard disk space, 800x600 video display supporting millions of colors

Review Computer: 400 MHz G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) with 768MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 Pro (16MB), and Mac OS X v10.3.3

Network Feature: No

3D Support: No

Price: $19.99

ESRB Rating: N/A

Availability: Now

Version Reviewed: 1.0.14

It seems that every time I turn around, another Mahjong Solitaire game gets released, each with its own twists to distinguish itself from all the others. The Emperor's Mahjong continues this trend with a Chinese theme and a goal to become Emperor.

The Emperor's Mahjong has an Emperor's Challenge story mode in which you can become emperor if you complete all of the challenges. These consist of removing a certain number of tiles from each level before the time runs out. If you succeed, you get a proverb (most of which make no sense at all) and access to the next level with a new layout. There are also one-player and two-player modes which let you choose from all of the available layouts even if you haven't reached them in the story mode. Finally, you can make your own layouts with the built-in editor.

The above features have become somewhat common in recent Mahjong Solitaire games, so I'm going to pay the most attention to the interface, graphics, sound, music, and the other touches that make The Emperor's Mahjong different than all the others.

There are three different tile designs, all of which are similar to each other. I don't understand why more weren't offered or, at the least, why we aren't given the option to create our own tile designs. The black tile design was difficult for me to see clearly. Since Mahjong Solitaire is a tile game, I think there should have been more of an emphasis on tile design.

There are also three different music clips which are about 20 seconds in length and have the worst looping I have ever heard. They are very annoying, and I find it hard to believe they are the only Chinese themed background music that could have been used. Fortunately, music can be turned off in the options. The sound effects are no better, with a grand total of two sounds: one for a tile being selected and one for selecting a tile that can't be removed. There isn't even a "whooshing" sound when you've removed two tiles, and I'm sure there are plenty of free whooshing sounds available that could have been used.

The Emperor's Mahjong lets you know how much time you have remaining in the story mode and how much time you've used in the one-player and two-player modes, along with the percentage of tiles you have removed. However, it doesn't tell you how many tiles you have removed or how many tiles remain. This is important, because your goal in story mode is to remove a certain number of tiles before the time runs out. Since each layout uses a different number of tiles, knowing the percentage doesn't tell you how close you are to achieving your goal. In addition, some layouts stop immediately when you've reached your goal to let you move on to the next level, while others don't. Perhaps this was intentional to give the story mode more difficulty. If that's the case, then the fact that the ability to undo, shuffle, reset, and get hints was also removed from story mode is probably another ploy to make the game more difficult. However, it just ends up making the game needlessly irritating.

Since The Emperor's Mahjong has a Chinese theme, it has gold dragons, uses a Chinese horoscope as the first of five themes (crafts, nature, scenery, martial arts, and emperors being the other four), and has a lot of red. It would have been nice to be able to change the red to another color as it got a bit tiring after a couple of games.

If you only want to play an occasional game of Mahjong Solitaire, I'd use one of the many free versions available on the Internet; such as GameHouse or Yahoo. What you're really getting when you buy The Emperor's Mahjong are the story mode, two-player mode, and the ability to make your own layouts. I hardly think this is worth $20, unless you really like Chinese proverbs and want to become Emperor of China.