The Microcomputer Mahjong (マイコン麻雀)

 Hi folks! It's been quite a time i haven't posted anything, especially since i'm in the mist of selling about 75% of my personal video game collection. The most obscure and exotic game consoles have now been sold but still have a few ones left but this is not the subject (selling the collection) but rather about an very obscure game console called the "Microcomputer Mahjong" or in Japanese "マイコン麻雀".

This was only sold in Japan in 1982 and was distributed by Japan Mail Service which you had to buy by mail order. The cost of this console was 48,000 Yens (which is now about $360.00 USD as August 2022 - heck that wasn't cheap back then) and there is two models...er...rather two different colored casing: The fist one (showned above) is the white model which has the inscription "マイコン麻雀" on the left corner-top on the console and with three drawing of Mahjong pieces and the other model (the grey), which is just plain grey with a black lining:

At the price it was selling (back then in 1982) and the distribution (mail order only), no wonder this game console is very obscure! There is almost "NO" information regarding the Microcomputer Mahjong so it was a challenge and took at least 15 years to gather all the information i am posting here. I finally discovered that not only there is two different colored casing but also the white edition was sold in November 1982 and the grey edition was sold in December 1982....some of you must be saying when reading this: "What the F%$? ?!" Yes, both models were sold one month apart! 

Check out these scans of the magazine "All Mahjong Feature" of November 1982:

(Cover of the magazine)

(the November 1982 ad - white version)

And here is the mail-order form which is in the back of the ad (inside the magazine) with a description and some specification of the game console.

Then, just one month later in the magazine "Special Selection Mahjong" of December 1982, it is the grey version:

(Cover of the magazine)

(The ad of the grey version)

And the mail-order form which again, is also on the back of the ad inside the magazine.

 Since i just know a few Japanese words, don't ask me what is written on the ads and mail-order forms as i'm not influent in Japanese and will eventually OCR these scans to try to translate. 

Here's a video (not mine) of the Microcomputer Mahjong in action:

As i've said, not much information regarding this game console but before i've sold mine, here's some few pictures:

The inscription on the left is "Power On/Off" and on the right is "Power input".

The inscription on the left ..ah! no need to translate ;P, the one in the middle is "Monitor output" (composite video out) and the one on the right is "TV output" (RF out).

And the power supply which is 6 volts DC at 1 amp and has a negative tip.

And here's a look inside (yup...the guts!) of the game console:

So this game console runs on a Z80 CPU and has 1k of RAM and 1k of VRAM. The main program is 16K and the graphics is 2K. Here's the list of all the major parts:

IC1 = 74LS166N

IC2 = MSM2716AS (graphics ROM)

IC3 & IC4 = MSM2114L3RS (RAM)

IC5 = 74LS245P

IC6 = N/C

IC7 to IC10 = M5L2732K (program ROM)

IC11 = 74LS20P

IC12 = SN74393N

IC13 to IC15 = 74LS157P

IC16 = 74LS138P

IC17 = Z80A (CPU)

IC18 & IC19 = MSM2114L3RS (RAM)

IC20 =  74LS02P

IC21 = 74LS00P

IC22 = 74LS75P

IC23 = 74LS367AP

There is al lot of TTL chips! And before i've departed of my Microcomputer Mahjong, i dumped the EPROMS to preserve them and especially, to be able to play with the "eMuCom Mahjong" emulator done by Hiroaki Goto aka GORRY. He made an emulator of this very rare and obscure game console but it doesn't include the dump of the EPROMS because of copyrights in Japan.

 

You can get the emulator with the roms and ready to play here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GkLJtRU6QW3i_-f3Ld6nYHyf9gWH5rAu?usp=sharing

I also included a (rough) translated instruction on how to use the emulator as originally the instruction were only in Japanese. So hope that this was very informal and helpful.

So until the next post, take care folks! =)