If you are an anime fan and you’ve watched Saki or Nana and wondered what the heck was up with Mah Jong, it isn’t easy to find out. Mah Jong isn’t just a match two solitaire game. It’s a complex poker like game that originated in China. These days the Japanese version of the game is the most complicated and most incomprehensible. In my quest to understand manga and anime I’ve gone to many lengths in the past. I’ve attempted to learn to read kanji and hiragana and learn the Japanese language. For mah jong I’ve had to learn to read the characters for numbers 1-9, the four seasons, and the four directions. I’ve read several books on the game and spent hours online playing various versions of mah jong against bots and computer AI.

It was disappointing to find out that there wasn’t a real mah jong game for DS. However the App store was another story. There were plenty of mah jong games, many of them were solitaire, but there are several that are real mah jong. There are several offered with the various versions of the game.

Mah Jong is a game, but it has esoteric elements and some even use it to gamble. Nagomi Mah Jong for iPod Touch and iPhone gives the version that has the rules that are closest to what is used on Saki. You can even play against two cute characters. One is a a cat and the other is a cigar smoking panda. Other than that there isn’t any levity in the game. It is all about skill.

If you are learning Mah Jong this game is helpful, but you do have to have an intermediate knowledge of the game to get it. The translation into english is one of the best in a mah jong game that I have read so far. It does help to have either a familiarity with the tiles, or be able to read some basic Japanese, which you can probably pick up from watching videos on Youtube.

It could use to be more colorful, and entertaining. Some better music and graphics would really pick up this other wise solid game. This is pretty much as successful as a real mah jong game has gotten so far. It is understandable, playable and about as much fun as computer mah jong gets. The Lite version is Free. I give Nagomi Mah Jong 7 out of 10.