Game Players
February 1993
Page 66 (Review)

Activision
Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye (Super NES)

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.