The NES Series:

Mahjong

"Hey, kid, it's your turn."

Villager looked around in confusion. He and Olimar seemed to be sitting across from each other at a small table, while all around them was pitch black emptiness. On the table, a mahjong match had been set up, although it seemed to be only set up for two people.

"Wh-where are we?" he asked.

Olimar glanced around and shrugged. "Some sort of primordial void that existed before our multiverse was fully formed."

"Okay," Villager said slowly, "but, what are we doing here?"

"Mario explained it all at the meeting. Weren't you paying attention?"

Villager's cheeks turned red and he looked down. "Not really," he admitted.

Olimar cocked his head to the side. "You're Mario's biggest fan," he said. "You hang on his every word. What in the world could possibly have distracted you?"

Villager looked at the ground, refusing to meet Olimar's eyes. "Jazz was . . . stretching in the next room."

Olimar's mouth hung open as he stared at Villager. "Dude, that's just wrong."

"No, no," Villager said quickly, "it wasn't like that. I was . . . she was . . . just tell me what Mario said."

Olimar grinned and chuckled. "Mario and R.O.B. 01 sent us on a mission to travel through the dimensional rifts and gather data on every Nintendo game produced for the NES, or in this case, the Famicom. Mahjong was one of the very first, so we're here. Mario also wanted us to look for prospective newcomers for Smash Five, but," he picked up a small tile from the table and examined it, "I don't think we're going to find many possibilities here."

"Wait, what about The Smash Freshmen?" Villager asked with concern. "Is it over? Did we miss the end? You were—"

"Don't worry," Olimar said. "Prastarkeepers is still writing it. He just wrote this little thing up in his spare time. For fun, you know. Just short little pieces here and there. Definitely not a weekly thing. Just whenever he can get around to it."

"So, does this mean we win, in the end? Does this mean we save you?"

Olimar shrugged. "Don't know. Haven't gotten that far yet. Although, between you and me, I certainly hope so. But enough about me, we're here to talk about mahjong. How do you play this thing anyway?"

"Why don't you read the guidebook?"

"I tried. It's all in Japanese."

"So? You're a Japanese character."

"I'm the English dub."

Villager sighed, shaking his head. "Alright. First off, I'd just like to point out that we are technically playing Japanese mahjong, not the original Chinese mahjong. There are a few differences, but for now let's focus on the Japanese version. See the row of tiles in front of you. The basic point of the game is to form it into a winning hand."

"Which means?"

"You have to have four melds and one pair."

"Melds?"

"Yeah. A meld can either be three of the same kind, or three in sequential order, like one, two, three, et cetera."

Olimar squinted at his tiles. "I don't think I'm seeing any ones, twos, or threes here."

"They come in three different kinds of suits. There's the ones that have the big circles on them, the ones with the little bamboo sticks on them, and the ones with the little Chinese characters. You can only make melds with tiles of the same suit, so no mixing."

"Okay, I think I get it," Olimar said. He held up a tile with Chinese characters on it. "How am I supposed to know which number's which on these ones?"

Villager scratched at his ear, thinking for a minute. "Um, I'm . . . not sure. Just stick to the other ones for now. You can look it up later."

Olimar nodded, studying his hand. "Okay, but what about these other tiles? The blue characters and the block thing?"

"Those are the wind and dragon suits. There are four kinds of winds and three dragons. They don't have a specific order, so you can only use them for sets of the same kind."

"Okay, okay, I see," Olimar said. "And you play by picking up a new tile and discarding another one, like most western card games?"

"In a nutshell," Villager replied.

"Cool, so is that all I need to know?"

"Not really, there's actually a lot more to it than that. I just kind of gave you the skin-and-bones version of it."

"That's good enough for me. Let's play. Oh, by the way, it's still your turn."

Villager shook his head and smiled. Reaching across the table, he picked up a tile from the wall of tiles in front of Olimar. 7-Nin, he thought to himself. He glanced down at his hand. Yeah, I could use this.