King Mahjong

When I was young, I noticed my grandmother would play this interesting Taiwanese Mahjong game. It was made by Pamirs Corp in 2001, and known as 至尊麻將. This was amazing to me, and I had not seen anything like it.

The thing that really makes something transcend... into a work of art, is it's ability to give a sense of how it was like to live in the time period that bore it.

This game was more than just a typical Mahjong game. It was an immersion in the multilingual culture of the Taiwanese people. There were 4 distinct characters who competed against each other, and spoke in different accents and languages (Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka) to reflect their background.

Even if it was just snippets of responses (Pong! Fa Chai! Fang Chiang!), each of the speakers had a commanding personality that would often be emitted off my own family. It really gave me the feeling that I was at the table.

It also had some weird satanic pentagram and ram's skull atop on the multiplayer InterCab board... weird, maybe it's just to look totally metal.

And the music is amazing, the kind you hear in a nice jazz cabaret. I've searched far and wide for the sources of these midis, but they must be some kind of special Taiwanese improvisation.

Thankfully, the one time I managed to get the game running, I extracted the all the music files by directly recording the direct sound output from the PC Speakers, and separating the waveforms. I've posted it here for your listening pleasure.

• Original Game Download
• King Mahjong Music

Pamirs Description

至尊麻將

全國第一套完全模擬真實麻將規則的遊戲。

一個站在玩家角度思考所製作的麻將遊戲。

• 產品名稱：至尊麻將
• 產品類型：益智類，支援網際網路多人連線
• 操作環境：視窗98、95中文版
• 建議售價：NT$ 299

帕米爾資訊股份有限公司 製作、發行

第三波資訊股份有限公司 總經銷

從今天起打麻將不再怕三缺一全國第一套完全模擬真實麻將規則的遊戲。

實現網路休閒生活的理想─ 遊樂場就在你家。

擺脫時間與空間的限制,提高遊戲的人性化。

讓您一圓網際雀戰的美夢、牌技精進、不再是牌桌上的菜鳥，

從走進遊樂場開始，你可以完全自主的選擇牌友。

玩家們都知道

打敗電腦對手，不算大師

節錄的麻將規則，不算正宗

複雜的上網動作，不算真連線

沒有支援DirectX，不算真正流暢

不能在牌桌上互相叫陣，不算真語音

特點

完整的麻將規則(正統台灣十六張麻將)

單人 / Internet 網路連線模式

全程語音及語音叫陣功能

完全支援 Direct X

支援網際遊樂場﹝InterCab﹞，提供一個穩定快速的網路環境

• Pamirs King Mahjong

Running on Windows

Here is the actual game.

Unfortunately, running this game on Windows is a pain. For one, it's a Windows 9x DirectX game, which is a difficult system to emulate and causes all sorts of compatibility issues with newer systems. It doesn't function on Windows XP SP3 or FLP, but I remember that it worked fine on SP2.

Also, it has some kind of curious anti-piracy feature which requires some kind of property of the original CD-ROM inserted to play correctly, so as to thwart file-sharers that copy it straight off the disc (perhaps a hidden file or whatnot that doesn't get copied over?). This is a major oversight when I grabbed the files straight off the disc instead of making an ISO.

Thankfully, the computer I used to play this game and the disc is still at my old house. One day, when I make it back to my old house, I'll make a direct ISO image of the original disc.

Here's a list of steps you must do (for Windows XP):

1. Install a Disc Drive emulator, such as WinCDEmu.
2. Install East Asian Language support via Control Panel. A Windows XP Setup Disc may be necessary for this (grab it from somewhere online).
3. Under Advanced, set the encoding to Chinese (Taiwan).
4. Download and mount KingMahjong.iso.
5. An autoplay program splashscreen will appear. Click the first option to install the game.
6. Click the second option to install DirectX.

Conversion

In order to make this game work for the rest of time, I'm trying to convert the assets into a Python game engine. Perhaps with It's simple enough, since all the sound files are just wavs, and the graphics are all in one nice bitmap. It's more about whether I have the patience to do it.

Someday, I will. It will at least be a great present to my grandparents.

Game Logic

The game logic is no different from any Mahjong game that I remember, so this is no difficulty. Just grab an existing Python-based Mahjong game and expand off of it.

Game Art

The art, the game board is all encased in bitmaps.

Dialogue

All the dialogue and sound effects and recorded as short WAVs, labeled in English, thankfully. Though there are a ton of them, but that's what makes it fun.

It can be

Extracting the Music

The only hurdle I had to face was to extract the music. I could not find the music files anywhere on the ISO, though I saw tons of .wav files. The music must have been generated MIDIs, hidden somewhere deep in a .exe file.

Instead, I resorted to the brute-force method: I ran the game and recorded the music straight off of the PC speakers, using Audacity. It wasn't pretty, and since each piece of music played in a random order, it took a while to grab them all.

But eventually, I managed to match duplicate waveforms, eliminate the ones with bad audio pops, and narrow it down to 7 files. Here it is, in lossless FLAC Format: King Mahjong Music

Sources

• Pamirs Product Page
  • Pamirs King Mahjong