Sanrio Shanghai(SNES) FAQ/Walkthrough
version 1.0.0 by
[email protected](antispam spoonerism)
Please do not reproduce for profit without my consent. You won't be getting
much profit anyway, but that's not the point. This took time and effort, and
I just wanted to save a memory of an old game and the odd solutions any way I
could. Please send me an email referring to me and this guide by name if
you'd like to post it on your site.
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OUTLINE
1. INTRODUCTION
2. CONTROLS
3. STRATEGIES/GAMES
4. VERSIONS
5. CREDITS
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1. INTRODUCTION
Sanrio Shanghai isn't a particularly ground-breaking game, but it's one you
can play even if you don't know Japanese. Shanghai is maybe better known as
Mah-Jongg. In it you have a pile of tiles where you remove two matching ones
at a time. You may only remove tiles that have a free area to the left or
right and that are not covered. There are four of each type of tile on the
board. The object is to clear the board. This obviously gets harder as you
put more tiles on.
Sanrio Shanghai offers five different boards, with a different number of
tiles. The strategy is the same, but you have cute little Sanrio tiles which
are nicer than the standard Mah-Jongg stuff you get with your installation of
RedHat Linux, where I in fact first discovered the game. (I liked SameGnome
much much more.)
This FAQ won't decipher the Japanese but was rather an effort just to see how
I could get through a game and not worry about the foreign language that
should not trip up the abstract concepts and strategy. However, if anyone is
willing to decode something I may have missed, I'd be glad to know the
details. Basically I'd worked with other Sanrio games before, mostly
translated, and I wanted to take the jump to untranslated.
2. CONTROLS
For the simple 24-piece game, choose option 1.
At the end of the game you have options to take back moves.
Option 2 seems to be frozen.
For a 2-4 player game, choose option 3 then options 1-3 respectively.
Scroll over a piece and push the A button to select it, then the A button to
select another piece. If they match, you get a small animation, and they
disappear. Push B to un-select the selected piece, which is in a picture in
the DL(useful for larger levels.)
3. STRATEGIES/GAMES
The top game in the options menu is a 1-player, 24-square game. I played it a
while and kept getting the 24-square game, but maybe I am missing something.
At any rate, the board is like so:
111111
1221
1221
111111
The only way you can lose is if you ignore a 3-in-a-row or 4-in-a-row, but
fortunately rows are small enough that you can attack these from either side
and in fact make them an easy win.
And you need to focus on a few things:
1) what are the pieces under the 4 raised squares? Are there any that might
cause 1 similar piece to be on another? If so, you need to remove that top
piece. Note that it should have a match somewhere on the board. There is
almost no way for a forced loss here. I can't prove it, but I can only show
that even with a disadvantageous draw, it could only happen with careless
play.
As long as there are 4 rows, you will have 8 ends to the row, and 6 possible
tiles to match. That means you will always have a match. So let's collapse to
3 rows--if there is something on top of the center row, you'll have 6+ tiles
to match. If not, then you must have no more than 16 tiles left. Something
like:
eabcdf
aefb
ceeffd
Is not winnable, but then from these moves it is pretty obvious you could
have chosen something better i.e. you could have paired a c on row 2 with the
2nd c, when the c on row 2 was visible. Similarly for the a's and b's.
Basically, you want to keep as many rows as possible for as long as possible,
and there is always a way to do that.
2) what are matching pieces next to each other? These are the hardest to
match up together. In fact, if you know there are two more such pieces and
nothing is to either side, wait to match them up. If another matching piece
appears as you reveal tiles, you have an easy match.
aabcde < here you have to match up b-c-d-e, or another a can match the other
a.
3) if you can see all 4 of a piece, try to see how much effort it takes to
match it up.
3a) if you can touch all 4 of a piece, match all of them, and that is a good
pair of moves no matter what.
4) if you have two pieces like so:
abcda
You will want to try and release one of the a's. You should always get a
rough cost-benefit analysis of if you really need to get to the area between
the a's, or whether a b or d will be more useful later. For instance, if
there is a solitary b tile out somewhere, it will not block you from
revealing anything. So you will want to see if the d tile might have a match
that opens things up.
5) get rid of the very top one tile, and the tiles in the center to the far
left and right, first if you can. If you can't, make it a priority. Because
the shifted tiles open up two to four tiles.
6) you need a certain amount of guesswork with timed puzzles as to what is
where. In 3-player games you can give yourself several chances, or maybe even
a deadline--map out the board and decide what to do. Try to make the move
that reveals a square below or to the side that you can use, and avoid an
impulse move "just because." Random moves are sure to trap you.
7) if you are really serious about winning you can keep track of which pieces
you have pairs of, or which must be under others. Be especially careful if a
piece at the top of a tower has another piece hidden--that one could be under
the top tower piece. This is more common as towers grow taller.
8) in general, scan for any way to complete a 4-set, then scan for anything
that might reveal either an annoying piece you need, 2 pieces stuck together
that don't already have a match, or part of a big tower. Unfortunately the
big judgement calls like should you release part of a big long row, or should
you look under a tower, can only be decided by trial and error. Use save
states before a critical juncture, if you must emulate.
9) if playing a timed game, take time at the start to identify which squares
you want to remove, and at the end of a game you're losing, take time to
identify which pieces you need to get on restart--and then, on the restart,
take a bit of time to visualize it. Remember the ending bit goes faster,
because it's the reverse of "oh, there are so many more pieces, it's so so
much harder."
Other strategies that are more game-specific include watching the pieces as
the computer lays them down(not needed for small boards, but you can only see
1/4 for large boards) and identifying the different facial expressions of
similar characters(Keroppi's different smiles, bears with different ears,
Hello Kitty's different bows.)
Boards for the bigger levels are:
#28
111 111
12 21
1 * 11
12 21
111 111
#68
1111 1111
122 221
1123 3211
1 * 11
1123 3211
122 221
1111 1111
#128
11111 11111
222 222
1233 3321
11234 43211
1 * 11
11234 43211
1233 3321
222 222
11111 11111
End of FAQ Proper
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4. VERSIONS
1.0.0: sent to GameFAQs 12/13/2007, complete
5. CREDITS
Thanks to the usual GameFAQs gang, current and emeritus. They know who they
are, and you should, too, because they get/got some SERIOUS writing done.
Good people too--bloomer, falsehead, Sashanan, Masters, Retro, Snow
Dragon/Brui5ed Ego, ZoopSoul, War Doc, Brian Sulpher, AdamL, odino, JDog and
others I forgot. OK, even Hydrophant in his current not-yet-banned message
board incarnation. I am not part of his gang, but I want him to be part of
mine.
