Sanrio Shanghai(SNES) FAQ/Walkthrough version 1.0.0 by schultw.andrez@sbcglobal.net(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. ================================ OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONTROLS 3. STRATEGIES/GAMES 4. VERSIONS 5. CREDITS ================================ 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 ================================ 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.