In his quest for the best online mahjong server, Adrie van Geffen stumbles upon Maru-Jan. During all his adventures on the internet, he has learned some Japanese. Yet, Maru-Jan remains a mystery game in the first place.

A mahjong site created by Signal Talk Inc. Hooray! That could mean a button with English.  But unfortunately, there isn’t one. However, the links on the pages are not coded but simply in English. That way, I am able to find the download page and get myself the application. Installing it delivers an obscure not-Japanese menu, but the icon on my desktop will have to do.

Registration is mandatory and I just guess that I have to click on the link in the all Japanese e-mail I receive for confirmation. That proves right. Then I use my intuition to get further. Clicking a red field gives an error. Clicking an pretty obvious button gets me to the cashier, which page with all kinds of credit cards makes me turn back. Clicking a blue field gets me at a table. First it asks if I want to do a puzzle, but suddenly I’m at a table with - what I suspect - real people.

Flying tiles

Tiles are flying by. Not particularly fast, but to no avail I try to do something else than just discard. Further investigation teaches me that the F7 is a toggle between help or not. If the bird is on top, then you get the suggestions. Before however I had found out that the keys are working as well: C for chi and X for pung. The use of F7 makes it a lot easier though.

Getting the hang of it, I even win some games. The graphics are very good. A nice detail is that you’re playing at an automated table. Even the rumbling sounds of the tiles of the other set are to be heard for a few seconds.  At some point I found a button which gave a choice between 0 and 9. I thought it was the number of Yaku required, but having it set no 1 the sound was almost not heard anymore. Advice: don’t use too many buttons if the effect is not clear immediately. In my quest around the program and site, I find some rankings and forums. No chat box though, but who would be there to talk to?

And when I think I get the hang of it and want to extend my survey, I no longer get access to a table. Game over. Obviously a limit to free play. But with only about 16 hands and some logging in (I found no other way out of the menu than by quitting the game totally and restart it again) the short time of fun comes to an end. No idea how to become member, what the fees are. That’s it. Signal Talk would be wise to get a manual in English on their site. The Japanese in the game itself is easy to overcome, but when you are supposed to pay for playing then you don’t give out your credit in the blind.

Maru-Jan

url: http://www.maru-jan.com
variants: riichi
language: Japanese
download needed: yes
chat: no