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Shanghai: Great Moments
Following the success of the original Shanghai and its sequel Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye, comes Shanghai: Great Moments, a Windows multimedia production offering quite superb tile animation, film clips, music and sound effects. In addition, Rosalind Chao, who has appeared in The Joy Luck Club and Star Trek: The Next Generation is your very personable host and on-line guide. Rosalind will explain the games to you and she will offer tips and strategies as well as some gentle chiding if you are stuck and ask her to show you a move. 'How could you miss these?" she'll ask, as the program highlights matching tiles that were staring you in the face.
Indeed, for those of you who have yet to discover the addictive delights of classic Shanghai, the game involves removing matching pairs of tiles from the layout screen. Only those tiles with a left or right edge free can be removed and sometimes the tile you are searching for may be hidden beneath others. The game ends successfully if you remove all the tiles, but perhaps more often you are left with a number of blocked tiles and no more moves to make. It all sounds very simple and it is, up to a point, but it can also be quite difficult to clear all the tiles until you develop a strategy for mastering the game.
Those of you who already have an earlier version of Shanghai are probably wondering why you should buy this -- certainly not for the 'bells and whistles' of animation and sound effects which, although entertaining, are not crucial to the enjoyment of the game. In fact most players will probably turn them off after the novelty wears thin in order to speed up the actual play. No. Of more interest to experienced players are the three new tile games that complement the original.
The Great Wall sees higher tiles drop when lower tiles are removed and you must change your strategy accordingly. Action Shanghai can really get the adrenalin flowing, particularly if played on the most difficult level. This game is played against the clock and the computer adds tiles as fast as you can remove them -- sometimes faster. (Don't worry, there is an easier mode to get you into the swing of things.) Finally, Beijing allows you to match tiles in the usual manner with the added strategy of being able to slide tiles vertically or horizontally to complete a match. The real experts may then want to face the challenge of the tournament where each game must be played in turn.
There are nine different categories of tiles to choose from, such as music, romance, science fiction and inventions. Each successful tile match is rewarded with a video clip or animation based on the subject and some of these are humorous in a Monty Pythonesque style. A successful outcome to the game is rewarded with an extended film clip based on the background screen or related to the chosen tile set.
A word of warning though, Shanghai, in all its variations, can be a real procrastinator's delight, as a matter of fact I might have just one more game before I finish this review ...
Copyright © Gordon Aplin 1995.
All rights reserved.
System requirements:
486/33, 8MB RAM, 7MB hard drive space, 2xCD-ROM, Win 3.1, SGVA
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