| Graphics: |   4 |
| SFX: | 3 |
| Music: | 3 |
| Gameplay: | 4 |
| Challenge: | 4 |
| Replay: | 4 |
| Overall: | 4 |
| Genre: | Mahjong |
| Reading ability: | Minimal |
| Company: | Jaleco |
Background:
Character design is by my favorite anime/manga artist, Kenichi Sonoda. He's best known for his designs for Bubblegum Crisis (the original one, not the remake with stupid Pioneer/Tenchi-Muyo-looking character designs), Gal Force, Otaku No Video, Riding Bean, Gunsmith Cats, and more recently, the incredibly cool manga God Cannon Exaxxion. There is an anime DVD "Idol Fighter Su Chi Pai" that was released domestically.
The Game:
Suchie Pai is a mahjong game. I was first introduced to mahjong in college when my friend from Hong Kong taught me how o play it on Yahoo Games. It plays a lot like poker, but with tiles instead of cards. Since then I've learned that there are Chinese rules and Japanese rules. Naturally, Suchie Pai uses Japanese-style mahjong rules and I still have not yet become used to Japanese rules.
In this game, you assume the role of Suchie Pai, the title character. You can select the scenarios from a VHS video collection, and when you chose one you load it into the VCR and the story unfolds. You go around to different places to play various girls, The game shows pictures of the girls and you begin talking to them. Really, you can skip the dialogue and go straight to the game. If you can't read Japanese much, don't worry because it doesn't seem to be really required.
The Good:
I love Sonoda's art. He's by far my favorite anime/manga artist, and his character designs are immediately recognizeable. And by looking at Suchi Pai's costume and headset, his quirky sense of design is apparent in this game. Sonoda is certainly not as popular as he was in the 80's and early 90's, and that's a shame.
The Bad:
No real gripes. Mahjong is pretty straightforward if you know the rules.
Overall:
I really haven't spent a lot of time playing many mahjong games (especially since so many of them are hentai), so I can't say how this differs greatly from other mahjong games except that this features Sonoda's artwork. There are several games in the Suchie Pai series, including even a Suchie Pai dating sim game. Suchie Pai for the Super Famicom is all-ages, however later Suchie Pai games are hentai. According to the DVD, only five months after the release of the original game for the Super Famicom, the hentai strip mahjong Suchie Pai Special was released in the arcades in July of 1993.
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