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Shanghai II

FAQ
NES 1990

Version: 1.0


BASICS
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* Controls:

     The D-Pad is used to control the cursor and cycle through options.

     During the game, select two tiles with the A-button and press a third
     time to remove them from the board. Deselect with the B-button.
     

* Settings:

     Music:    Select from three different music tracks played during the
               game, or have nothing at all if you prefer. Auto will select
               them automatically for different boards.

     Message:  Choose whether or not to receive game messages when you play,
               such as non-matching tiles. This display is at the bottom left
               corner and I suggest leaving this one unless you feel you
               require the extra challenge.

     Level:    Easy or Normal difficulty.
     
     Tile:     Choose a tile set, either Japanese or European.


* Help 1:

     Find:   Shows a hint for helping you find matching tiles. In Tournament
             mode you only get this hint option, not the second one.


* Help 2:

     Peek:   Look underneath tiles, it means you need to restart a game,
             however, so only use this when there are no more moves to see
             where required tiles are, for next time you play this set.

     Retry:  Restarts the level from the beginning.

     New:    Restarts the board with a different tile arrangement.


MAHJONG
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Rules:
``````

The object of the Mahjong solitaire board game is to match and remove alike
tiles and get rid of the entire stack of five layers. To removing a tile it
must be:

Free:  No other tile is lying above or is partially covering it and no other
       tile is lying to the left and to the right of it. In other words, one
       side must be free for the tile to be removed.

Pairs: One must remove the tiles in pairs. Two tiles are identical if they
       look exactly the same such as "O". Other pairs include flower and
       season tiles. Any of these tiles can be matched up with another.


Tiles:
``````

A MahJong set consists of 144 tiles. These are split in seven groups, called
sets. There are nine ball tiles, nine bamboo tiles, nine characters tiles and
four seasons tiles. Each season only appear once. There are also four wind
tiles: East, South, West and North represented as their Chinese characters.
The four flowers tiles also only appear once each: ORC (Orchid), PLM (Plum),
BA (Bamboo) and MUM (Chrysanthemum). Any flower can be paired up with
another. Finally, there are the dragon tiles simply represented by the
character of 'dragon', not a picture of it. You shouldn't have a hard time
noticing similarities of two tiles and get to know what they are.

For the European tile set, the tiles include a chalice, pitcher, and the
characters are replaced with roman numerals and so on.

Blank tiles are new to this game, and they work like the other pairs.


Strategy:
`````````

When removing a pair, an identical pair exists in the layout. Check if the
other pair has any problem being removed later or one of the tiles you want
to remove now should rather be used with another of its kind.

Long rows and tall stacks are hardest to remove and block the most tiles. Work
on those first but still keep the other strategies in mind when doing so.

Plan ahead to see which areas might have problems and which tiles need special
attention, so you do not remove a pair and get stranded with one you cannot
remove.

If all of a kind can be removed, do so straight away to clear space. An
emptier board is much easier on the eye and mind and after all the objective
is to remove all tiles anyway.

Using the hints shows you A possibility, not the best one. Following this 
advice might lead into a dead end.

If you have the choice between 3 tiles, keep the one that is least
affecting the rest of tiles, in other words remove the one that free up the
most tiles.  


Stages:
```````

There are six stages to choose from, differencing not only in layout but also
strategy to be used to remove the tiles. The stages are Tiger, Scorpion,
Monkey, Snake, Panther and Dragon.


Game Modes:
```````````

Solitaire:
            1-Player. Try to remove all tiles without a time limit. Select a
            stage from the six available and press Game Start to begin.

Tournament:
            1-Player. 1 point is rewarded for each tile removed. Go through
            several puzzles with a time limit. Your overall score is recorded
            on the hi-score sheet. You get three 'find' hints per level. After
            quitting a game you can later choose to continue the same level
            from the beginning and starting with 0 points.

Challenge: 
            2-Player, time-limited turns. Choose between 6, 8 or 12 seconds
            per turn. Player 1 starts. A player gets one point per tile
            removed. Inevitably, some turns will result in a match being
            removed and some won't. At the end (when the layout is clear or
            unwinnable) the player with the biggest score wins. Each player
            has three 'find' hints available to them.


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