Review of Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye by Activision for the Super Nintendo from the February 1993 issue of Game Player’s.
Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye
Leslie Mizell
Cheers for Activision – instead of doing a strict translation when they ported their computer game Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye to SNES, they actually made improvements that cause the Super Nintendo version to surpass the original!
Shanghai, a solitaire version of the ancient Chinese game mahjongg, is one of the best strategy games around. You set up a game board called a dragon using 144 tiles in seven different suits. There are single tiles along the edges of the dragon, but the closer you get to the center, the higher the tiles are stacked. The object is to remove matching tiles until the board is cleared. however, you can remove only tiles that are “free,” not boxed in by tiles on both sides.
There’s a terrific variety of tile sets in Shanghai II. In addition to the classic Chinese figures, try playing with the fantasy set or the flags of the world. Activision has added more sets than in the computer version, so you can even play with fish tiles or other wacky sets.
Special options include two-player competition and tournament games, a time limit for plays, 13 different tile configurations, and a special “Dragon’s Eye” game that’s completely different.
In short, here’s a simple game to learn and play that’s done to perfection.
Source: Game Players – February 1993 – Page 66
