MAMEWorld Forums - News - Sly DC’s Micom Mahjong blog post

Sly DC wrote a blog post about Micom Mahjong, with plenty of pictures of the console itself (inside and out), as well as the magazines in which it was advertised.

These kinds of single-game CPU-based TV game systems are historically important as they represent a stepping stone between the “Pong consoles” that implemented built-in games using dedicated logic and the later CPU-based consoles that ran software from cartridges (or other removable media). It’s awesome to see this working in MAME.

Mahjong was a natural choice for a system like this:

Popular game, and requires multiple people to play. There’s a market for an “electronic opponent” so people can play alone.
Too complex to easily implement using dedicated logic, but relatively easy to implement with a CPU and limited RAM.
Simple layout doesn’t require complex graphics hardware capable of drawing at arbitrary pixel offsets, detecting collisions, etc.

Using current market rates for USD/JPY is misleading. The Yen had less relative purchasing power in the early ’80s than it does now. Deflation from the mid ’90s onwards as the asset bubble collapsed meant the Yen appreciated against other currencies and its relative purchasing power increased.

It was about JPY230 to the USD in 1982, so USD208. After factoring in inflation of about 3.07, that gives about USD640 equivalent in 2022. Still expensive, but not as expensive as it would have been if it was USD360 equivalent in 1982.