The game of Shisen-sho was popularized by, and maybe invented for, a Tamtex arcade machine that became known outside Japan as Match It. In Japan, it was known as Shisen-sho Joshiryo-Hen and rewarded successful players with mildly erotic images similar to Bubble Bath Babes or Strip Fighter 2. This is pretty common for Japanese arcade machines, but was omitted for the export version (Match It).
While Shisen-sho is usually played with MahJongg tiles, it cannot really be compared to the other form of solitaire MahJongg, often known under the name Activision gave it, Shanghai. The purpose of an arcade machine is to draw quarters out of the gamers' pockets, therefore there must be some way to lose. In this case, it is a time limit for the levels. Nearly all the follow-ups on home computers left this time limit in place.
(BTW there were Shanghai arcade machines too, like Shanghai II or Super Shanghai; they, of course, had time limits too, but no computer implementation I ever played had.)
In Shisen-Sho, there is only one layer. You can remove matching tiles if they can be connected with a line with no more than two bents in it, and of course the line must not cross any other tiles.
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Kemal Ezcan | |||||||
| Stoneage | |
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Harald Breitmaier | ||||||||
| Take Two | |
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| Lin Wu's Challenge | |
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90 | |
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| Sarakon | |
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| Match-It! | |
91 | |
Steffen Fischer | |||||||
| Sixx | |
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93 | |
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| Tautology | |
94 | |
Reservoir Gods | |||||||
| UJA's Petite Fleur | |
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Ulrike Jahnke | ||||||||
| FourRivers | |
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Kusunoki Masaya | ||||||||
| Short Circuit | |
95 | |
Carl Limsico | |||||||
| Pairs | |
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96 | |
Tobias Lenz | ||||||
| Match-it | |
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Philippe Melleret | ||||||||
| ShisenSho | |
00 | |
Franz Janisch | |||||||
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Martin Fiedler | ||||||||
| AcChen | |
01 | |
Stefan Preuss |
Astonished by the high number of German games? Such geographic concentrations are indeed rare. But Shisen-Sho was at first mainly a craze of the German Atari scene. The commercial games were usually ported to other platforms, but seem to have had little impact there. Later, when the Atari was mostly history, you find it on other platforms, Kemal Ezcan remade his game on the Mac, Stefan Preuss on NeXTStep and Windows, there were a few for BeOS.
I suppose there is a similar Japanese tradition, there are now a couple of freeware and shareware Shisen-Shos for Windows in Japan. But older Japanese hobbyist games are mostly inaccessible for me, since they will be written for Japanese platforms like the FM Towns or the Sharp X680x0.
Nowadays, Shisen-Sho is moderately popular with the shareware industry for Windows and handhelds. There are also some versions for uncommon or otherwise defunct platforms. Kelvin Sherlock wrote one for BeOS and the Apple IIGS.
