Games of the Abstract: Oyaji Hunter Mahjong (1995)

Developer: Warp Inc.

Publisher: Warp Inc.

One Player

Originally for: 3DO Interactive Multiplayer

Warp and its founder Kenji Eno are unsung indie heroes of nineties video games, but tragically their legacy is marked by little of it being available officially. We can only be thankful D (1995), their most well known game, got ports on everything to the point Night Dive Studios, a retro game preservation developer, re-released the PC port, but Warp are a cult studio in a medium where preservation is still an issue with video game distribution. It neither helps Warp's legacy was backing the cult machines, not the winners, of the fifth and sixth generations of video game consoles. D, a really inspired attempt at an interactive movie that yet had an attitude to puzzles that I feel was more accessible, was a big hit but it was ironically Sony, the winner of the fifth and sixth generation with the Playstation One and Two, which under published copies and annoyed Eno so much he deliberately revealed he would jump to the Sega Saturn at a Sony press even with Enemy Zero (1996)¹, a full motion video sci-fi horror game. There is D2 (1999), sadly on the Sega Dreamcast, Sega's last hardware, and an unsung machine for arcade ports and experimental works. It would also be the last project under the Warp name even if Eno worked afterwards. More obscure is most of the work which helped Warp come to be. Those would be the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console games, which is a very unpreserved console for any game which was not ported from or to the PC.

With hindsight, this console doomed by how expensive it was among other factors, such as a lack fof a mainstream killer app, was innovative and its figurehead Trip Hawkins deserves lionisation for. The founder of Electronic Arts in 1982, he spearheaded an idiosyncratic and bold console, taking a really un-mainstream attitude to a machine at the time where the hardware was not unique, and could have a variety of different versions created by outsourcing to electronics companies, had no censorship which allowed for adult games to be made for it officially, and had no region locking. The cost to develop for the CD based software was a lot less expensive too, which leads into how even next to Microsoft, a huge company who struggled to get the Xbox over twice in Japan, the 3DO managed to have an easier time, just from the exclusives, in that country, and even in South Korea which had exclusive games too. Kenji Eno was an admirer of Hawkins because of these aspects², and it was clear the model, whilst not a successful console, allowed Warp to exist. Knowing one of the variety of games they made for the 3DO, the block puzzle game Trip'd (1995), was clearly named after Trip Hawkins shows the company were grateful for the machine.

Among the obscurest is Oyaji Hutner Mahjong, which comes from Kenji Eno seeing all the erotic mahjong games including for the arcade, where beating female players leads to them taking their clothes off, and being sick of them, thus imagining a game where a male superhero exists to protect women from perverts³. It is a fun premise, and you have to respect someone even if not a serious satire playing with gender stereotypes in this genre. Innately, I do not see anything inherently amiss with the idea of strip mahjong games, but if they are all clearly designed for a heterosexual male audience, with the female players always the ones meant to lose, then you see an accidental issue of objectification this game rightly parodies. It is not perfect itself, and it would have been cool to see a female heroine fight the sex pests, but our lead the Oyaji Hunter does stand out in a funny way. With women even having a way to turn on his own equivalent of the Bat Signal in the sky to call him, be it by Hunter Yo-Yo to the face or the Hunter Beam, the Oyaji Hunter is there to beat up and force wrong-uns to apologise for acting like pigs. Like the man in just women's underwear and a trench coat terrorising a schoolgirl for an underskirt shot with a camera for the first opponent, he will beat these men up and then humiliate them in a game of mahjong.

It is a mahjong game, with it explicit these villains or the Oyaji Hunter himself the first to challenge the other to the game, even the later having to bring out a game board for a last ditch attempt against the big bad of the game, in a giant tall building sized robot, which is funny for a broad slapstick comedy. You still have to play mahjong, specifically Japanese (riichi) mahjong rules, to which this was my first encounter with mahjong in a competitive form than mahjong solitaire. As a result, I cannot attempt an expert opinion, but I will call Oyaji Hunter Mahjong a good example of experimentation in what I would call "ephemeral" video game genres, those which exist throughout video game history but are always doomed to be replaced by new version for new consoles and machines. Mahjong games have always been made for video game consoles, and even the strip adult ones are replaced by new versions, making this a case of one where the personality is its advantage of being remembered. Sadly despite the desire for electronic versions of such games, as is the case for soccer or golf, they can be replaced with ease, making those which are really idiosyncratic or openly distort the rules some of the more memorable even if in bad ways as well as good.

The game itself here is not that radically altered in mind to this. Attempting to explain rules as a new player, the goal is to match tiles in threes (and fours if lucky) by matching images or orders from a variety of different sets like the Sō bamboo tiles.  You can only do this if the tile an opponent discards is the one you need, and you can also win if you have a full hand (or what remains from those you still have) when the next tile you pick up for your round, especially the last one, can complete a set of tiles which all match or connect in a certain way. This raises the innate issue here of random choice, but you can win either by making full sets clearing as many as possible, or if you can manage to have a "fully concealed" hand, a full set of matching/ordered titles only revealed to the opponent when you have won the round instantly.

There is more to this game's rules though, as you both have life bars, the numbered states which are the equivalent of betting with money, yours always at "5000" and jumping into higher numbers over the five opponents for theirs, which have to be knocked down. If you are lucky, each time the opponent sacrifices their life points for a bet, believing they have a perfect hand, and you screw them over, you can still chip at this number, but you are advised to win hands so they cannot, especially as this leads to the one new factor for this game for whoever wins. If they win, you hope to choose the randomly shuffled card that leads to them miss a blow, or the one which only causes the least damage, as they can use a special attack like in a comedy anime story, such as saying a pun so bad it hurts, which can be destructive to your chances of winning. This is more an issue as the score they get for how they win is used for the initial attack damage, something you thankfully have as an advantage if you win. The Oyaji Hunter, if he wins that round, can through a roulette wheel kick, punch or use one of his attacks which have bigger multipliers, 5x for the hunter boomerang, or the Hunter Beam itself, which is a 10x and can decimate enemies in one shot if you won by a big point hand. Or you can miss entirely too and feel like a tool.

This presents an obvious issue with the game whenever you bring random choice. Mahjong has a strategy, but random choice is as much a factor here even with strategy involved, rather than the full ability to win by master planning, or puzzle games where you are previewed what the next item you will receive will look like. This reminds of another curiosity, the type Kenji Eno was satirising, Sega Saturn's Haunted Casino (1996), a bizarre erotic gambling game for that console which however envisioned a full video ghostly mansion to explore. It felt like it was a game in the mould of Myst (1993), if instead of puzzles you played Western style games like poker against cat girl card dealers. It also had the issue that you could be grinding through rounds in games, or that if the A.I. got good hands over and over, you are doomed. Random choice is innately difficult with games, as it is not due to you having made a mistake, and Oyaji Mahjong Hunter is affected by this.

Which is a shame, as it is a compellingly odd project. For a low budget production too, it is still ambitious, as Warp brought in Ichirō Itano as the director of the animated cut scenes, a huge name in Japanese animation. In fact, as an animator, he is legendary, a huge figure for his art form especially for the likes of the Macross series. This is even seen here with his trademark "Itano Circus" where at one point, with the final opponent's giant robot, the individual missiles they fire at the Oyaji Hunter, as they were in the Macross series from robot/fighter plane hybrids, take different (individually drawn) trajectories whilst in the air. As a director, this is probably the most abrupt yet wholesome work for a notorious animation director, Ichirō Itano's work some of the most controversial and nihilistic you can find. His entry in the three Violence Jack  episodes, made between 1986 and 1990, was not readily found uncut and would make some edge lords green; Angel Cop (1989-1994) is notoriously an ultra-violent jingoistic sci-fi action work which, infamously if the English subtitles for the Japanese dub were not censored, sadly fell into actual anti-Semitism for its final plot twists; even a television series Gantz (2004) had befittingly a director suitable for its nihilistic and very violent premise, of resurrected people who died forced to kill aliens in death match-like scenarios, which had to be censored for the gore and sexual content for its television broadcasts. It is quite perverse, in a sick humoured way, he fully committed to this comedic project and created some playful cut scenes in spite of this record of accomplishment for controversial, problematic and not necessarily well regarded anime as a director which violently contrasts his justifiable legacy as a talented animator.

As a story, this game has one which is far from perfect, but I was not expecting a profound tale of gender politics here considering the type of game this is set up as, a silly parody. After the first opponent, the dirty mac photographer, you get a man in BDSM gear trying to tie up and drip hot wax on a female biker, one who eventually gets revenge by revealing he accidentally targeted a Queen Dominatrix. The third is a man trying to grope a geisha, forgiven by her when you win, especially when revealed from then on the men are being brainwashed and cannot remember their actions. The fourth is an odd duck, using his bald head as a forfeit attack in its shininess, trying to force cooked meat products down a poor air stewardess' throat while saying bad food puns, getting his comeuppance when she turns out to be a talented chef who decides to however use ultra hot wasabi, part of the goofy cartoon tone. The big bad, the fifth and final opponent, is human Gollum getting revenge for being mocked for his short stature by wrecking havoc with a giant robot. His conclusion may disappoint, as he is forgiven by the women involved despite using a beam himself to briefly remove all their clothes and his comments on their gender's laziness. However, literally looking like a wizened Benjamin Button baby when defeated and humiliated, I again think the project was always a knockabout farce parodying erotic mahjong games, a proper video game satire tackling gender politics left to be created and worth trying one day.

The sense of where this came in Warp production is found in how, by accident, this has a compelling historical footnote for the company. There is little in the way of extra options, but the one you get, set up as an elevator with multiple floors for the options, allows players to try demos of other games from the company and has previews, one being an original tease for D2. D became their most successful game in terms of sales, but sadly, their company found themselves always on the wrong side of history afterwards. This version of D2 sets up what did happen in the Dreamcast game, only with the fact our lead Laura rather than just being the "virtual actor", Kenji Eno pioneering the idea with "Laura", a blonde Western female lead, playing different characters per game, is still playing the same one from the original D in that game's aftermath.

She is on an airplane, and whilst she is not pregnant as this trailer has her, the airplane crash that sets up D2 as it became is established here. D2's trajectory shows the unfortunate history for Warp, with Eno's untimely passing in 2013 happening long after that name did not exist as a developer. D2 was to follow Laura's son, warped into a medieval dungeon setting after the set up on the airplane leading to Laura's death⁴. It was being created for the M2, what was supposed to be the follow up console to the 3DO which never came, despite games being created for it. D2 as we got, which is effectively a re-telling of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) that kept Laura alive and surviving an airplane crash in the Canadian wilderness, tragically found itself on a console which only lasted for three years and led to Sega stepping down from being a hardware powerhouse to just being a software publisher. Oyaji Hunter Mahjong by pure accident presents a tantalising piece of their legacy, and whilst not a perfect game, this game itself is unique as a production, so odd and full of charm you can forgive its game play mechanics, a real testament to the studio even as a lesser title for trying to make interesting work.

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1) Kenji Eno, Japan's Maverick Game Creator, Dead at 42, written by Chris Kohler for WIRED and published January 14th 2015. Archived on March 8th 2017.

2) CoreGamers Interview and Profile of Kenji Eno (Part 2), written for CoreGamers and published August 21st 2008. Archived from the original November 20th 2015.

3) Saving Women by Crushing Perverted Old Men at Mahjong – Oyaji Hunter (3DO), written by Snowyaria and published on their Kusoge Coffeehouse blog on April 15th 2021.

4) D2 [M2 – Cancelled ], written and published for Unseen 64 on April 7th 2008.