Windows Phone Thoughts: Getting 'Shanghai-ed' with Pocket Essentials

Product Category: Games -- single person
Manufacturer: LandWare Corporation
Where to Buy: Handango (affiliate)
Price: $14.95 USD. A 14-day trial version is available. A free bonus pack of 7 additional tile sets and background music is available from the LandWare site.
System Requirements: “Pocket PC 3.0 or higher” (by this, I assume they mean Win CE 3.0 or higher, so that would mean Pocket PC 2000, 2002, Windows Mobile 2003, and Windows Mobile 2003 SE.) There’s no mention of VGA support.
Specifications: The standard version requires 570K of memory. The bonus pack requires an additional 1.81M of memory. The game and bonus pack can be installed to main or card storage.

Pros:

• High quality tile graphics;
  
• Challenging game play;
  
• Hundreds of layouts and new tiles;
  
• Free Bonus Pack of layouts, tiles and sounds available;
  
• Create-your-own Layout Editor included.

Cons:

• The interface doesn’t follow all the rules for the O/S, so the top menu doesn’t work the way one would expect;
  
• Background and buttons on the default layout are hard to see in low or very bright lighting;
  
• Online Help is only available from the Demo screen and you must exit/restart the program to get to this.

Summary:
LandWare brings the quintessential version of electronic mah-jongg to the Pocket PC – Shanghai. Licensing the look and feel from Activision, they have now brought this classic game to the Pocket PC... and they’ve added a whole bunch of layouts and new tiles, too.

Read On for the full review!