What is Shanghai?

If you tend to be an obsessive person by nature, maybe you’d better not try Shanghai. It's kind of like eating potato chips—you won t want to play just once.

Shanghai borrows elements from mahjongg and pick-up-sticks in equal doses. Basically, it works like this: At the start of the game, players are presented with a game board filled with mah-jongg tiles arranged in what the manual calls a "dragon formation." There are 144 tiles in all, but some are buried in stacks up to four tiles deep. The object of the game is to remove all the tiles from the board by matching them with exact duplicate tiles (there are two exceptions to this—read on).

Of course, it's not as easy as it seems. In order to be removed from the board, a tile must be "free"—that is, you have to be able to "slide" it to either the right or the left. A tile stacked on top of another is considered free if it can slide over the tiles next to it, which is possible if its stack is higher than those next to it. Stacked tiles are indicated by thick borders around their edges. The thicker the border, the more tiles are in the stack.

There are four copies of each tile, with a few notable exceptions: the four seasons are each represented by one tile each, but these can be matched with any other season tile (for example, a Winter-Spring match is acceptable). The same applies to the four different lower tiles, each of which matches any other flower tile.

The basic strategy is to free up the top and sides of the formation first, which leaves the most tiles free for other matchmaking. Long rows of single tries (not stacked) present the most problems later in the game, so a good strategy is to try to whittle them down early in the game. The strategic implications are completely different with each new game The game is very well-constructed, with a number of options that should satisfy every kind of Shanghai fan. For novices, a pulldown menu displays each of the tile types at the press of a button, and a rules refresher course and strategy section are other options in the same menu. Another menu lets players show all moves that remain in the game (a great help when you get stuck), back up a move, restart the same game, or peek under stacks of tiles (the latter requires you to forfeit the game entirely, though).

The program can automatically generate a new, random game every time you play. The disk also includes a number of predesigned games. Game options include Solitaire, Cooperative (there seems to be little difference between these first two). Challenge (two players work on a single puzzle competitively) and Tournament. In competitive modes you have the option of timing your moves or using an indefinite clock.

About the only thing missing from Shanghai is a fake spreadsheet alarm button, which would let people test their strategy skills without the boss catching on. But even after you've seen the dragon breathing a congratulatory salute, your hand will reflexively go back to the new game menu. Just this once more, you'll tell yourself. Really.

Forman Hines, Tracie. (October 1986). Shanghai. MacUser. (pg. 38).

Download Shanghai for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

System Requirements

From Mac OS 1.0 up to Mac OS 8.1

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac