Idol Janshi Suchi-Pai Special

Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Special (アイドル雀士スーチーパイSpecial) is, to put it bluntly, a strip mahjong game. The whole series of 30-something releases constantly flirts with being an adults-only franchise, but so far the worst I’ve seen is featureless plastic-like breasts. I can’t tell if that was a creative choice, or if it was to avoid an ‘X’ rating. That being said, it would be a shame to dismiss it just because of some 90s anime side-boob.

You start out picking your character. I picked Rumi because she’s clearly the best girl. Each character has her own specialty when it comes to the kinds of hands that form.

Keep in mind that you’re playing as that character, so as a result, you won’t be seeing them undressed. After that, it’s a series of head-to-head (2-player) matches, akin to the ‘story mode’ in many fighting games. In my play-through, it started with Rie Nanjou (南条　理恵). After some brief, fully voiced dialog, round 1 starts.

You’ll notice your starting points are 1,500 while your opponent has 20,000. Like many mahjong games, the primary goal is to deplete your opponent’s points before your points run out. With such a small starting total, though, you start out vulnerable to even the smallest of hands. It’s not a big deal if you lose, though. You’ll have the option to continue right where you left off with the points and tiles (see below) reset.

Your starting hand is usually built in such a way that you should be able to quickly determine the best/fastest hand. Double-riichi, iipatsu, and even tenhou are not uncommon. Once you’ve completed your hand, totals are added and points are subtracted. However, the game also take the han from your hand and carries it over to the tile-flip mini-game.

Each han from your previous hand gives you one pair of tiles to flip. Upon finding a match, you’re granted a special power, points for leveling up, or you can even clear the whole board automatically. This is the other way you can win battles; either by bringing your opponent’s score into the negative or by clearing all the tiles. The types of powers you can get are:

• タツマキ選択氣, which offers you the choice of three starting hands, often already in tenpai with a high value.
• スーチーアイ, which allows you to see your opponent’s hand.
• ハイパーせっかん, which allows you to discard into your opponent’s riichi and keep playing as though nothing happened.
• 必殺！スーチースティック, which guarantees an iipatsu.

I haven’t translated the manual yet, so I have no idea what leveling up gets you, so I’m really not sure what the benefit of the points are. Maybe it triggers a good vs bad ending?

Of course, Panel Clear (パネルクリアー) clears all the panels, effectively auto-winning the match. The down-side is that you miss out on amassing powers and getting your level up.

Once the match is over there’s some additional dialog, followed by one to two images of your opponent in various stages of undress. Pressing up and down on the D-pad will allow you to scroll up and down the image. One cute touch is that the character starts talking to you if you scroll down too far, but I have no idea what they’re actually saying. I stitched a few of the images together and posted them at the very bottom of the page.

This gameplay cycle continues until you beat the last character, after which you are challenged by Suchie-Pie herself. Once you’ve defeated Suchie-Pai and, presumably, have the max level, you’ll get the “happy end”, which is… an image of Suchie-Pie, facing away from you in a bikini. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If the characters look familiar there’s a good reason. The character designer was Kenichi Sonoda (園田健一), the artist behind Gunsmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis, and Otaku no Video. Apparently, he has become the head of a family run candy shop that has been in business since the 1500s.

So anyway, that’s Suchie-Pai Special. I’m not sure how it compares to other games in the series (I’ll find out in a few weeks when my copy of Suchie-Pai III Remix for the PSP comes in). Below are scans of the manual, art book, case, and CD-ROM.

Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Special manual

Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Special art book