I contend that nothing good ever comes of a story that begins with the words “So, this one time, I was on Hongfire.” And nothing proves this more than the tale I am about to tell. Be mindful that this post is not only possibly not safe for work, but probably not safe for you either.
So, this one time, I was on Hongfire. I had made this egregious mistake earlier this week while searching the vast and wondrous internet for mahjong games that I hadn’t seen before. I had already beaten a fairly high ranking guy on Tenhou and the day before had beaten a ridiculously hard AI on my iPhone mahjong app and so, feeling naively confident, I decided to hunt for a more “worthy” challenge. Clearly, as you can tell by the tone of my writing, my hubris would best me in the end.
As such, I had exhausted the google’s normal searches and had even looked through several nefarious downloading sites when I remembered that a friend of mine, who likes japanese things quite a bit, had used hongfire in the past. “Golly,” I said, “I bet there might be a game or two on there!” Thus, I traveled to the old HF and searched for “mahjong” which lead to several single posts (because I don’t know how thread view works in searches) which called me to download a game called Fullani. And being the aforementioned confidence guru of the moment, I threw caution to the wind and just downloaded it, sight-unseen, and went about my business waiting for the 1.6 gigabyte monstrosity to finish.
Hours later (hooray for low seeding torrents), around midnight, I remembered my little game and set about installing it in my virtual machine. At this point, I should have sensed that something was off. It wasn’t the fact that the installer was all in Japanese, a language I have a kindergardener’s listening and a preschooler’s reading comprehension in, no, that was to be expected; it was that the splash screen behind the ever growing progress bar was covered in a bunch of anime girls. Young, nubile, anime girls.
'Nubile' may be too generous a word
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Tsunami! You fool! Don’t you know this must be one of those weird Japanese sex games?” And, but for a moment, this thought crossed my mind. But understand, I had played a mahjong game before which had some women of the voluptuous variety in it and the worst that happened was that when you won, you got money to buy them bikini’s (also a japanese game, this is a trend). “Surely,” said I, “Surely, there would be no reason to have a game in which you play mahjong, a game similar to rummy played with tiles and used for gambling, to also be an eroge (an erotic game).” And as those words fell past my lips, I heard the universe chuckle to itself.
Undeterred by this, I set about playing the game. The screen darkened and suddenly I was privy to a scene of a young man hunched over his computer, playing an RPG in the dark. The scene was fully animated. “Woah! An animated game! Thats pretty cool for a mahjong game,” I said, now understanding the large file size. And it was animated, just as a normal episode of an anime would be. While contemplating if perhaps other games out there had this level of dedication of their development staff, there was suddenly a knock at the door, in the game. Our unnamed protagonist, leaves his dungeon and goes to answer it. Flinging open the door, Lo! his unseen-sister’s tsundere friend has come to seek female company for the evening. Or something to that effect. Being in Japanese, I started filling in the bits of the dialogue I didn’t understand with my own words, making sense of the situation. This point becomes useful later on as I will interpret any dialogue I here in the way my brain did.
As the boy stands there, like a moron, with a girl I suppose he has a crush on in the doorway, telling her that no, his sister isn’t here she’s off… buying tiger meat supposedly, a storm begins to brew! Oh readers, the maelstrom is sudden and catches our couple off guard. A cyclone evolves above the complex and a sharp clap of thunder startles the young maiden, thrusting her into the unwilling arms of our boy hero. Of course, being tsundere, she punches him for his obvious use of weather control to make her do such a thing. But before he has a chance to tell her where to get off, a bolt of lightning strikes the building and, lacking a UPS surge protector, opens a portal in the computer, sucking our characters screaming into the abyss. Cue lighthearted opening credits!
At this point I am a bit bewildered. Questions run through my head. Why would lightning cause that to happen? Where was that guy’s sister? How come this opening has this princess looking chick and the tsundere girl fighting over the guy? Where did that cat girl come from? Why does this song sound so generic and trite? Why does this opener seem to be focusing on tsundere-girl? Things like that. But mostly, I was thinking, “Cool, if this game has an opener, then I guess I am in for a long and difficult mahjong challenge… oh right, this game was about mahjong wasn’t it? Hmm…”
However, my lovelies, my thoughts were interrupted by the show, er, game starting back up again. Our hero has been dumped into the middle of a forest, dressed in the clothes of his RPG character. What a twist! He has been pulled into the world of dragons, of arcana, of knights and heros! What shall he make of this!? Let us listen to his introspective monologue!
“Hmm, where am I? Man, these clothes are weird. And there seems to be a castle over there. Huh.”
At this point, his investigation into his whereabouts and circumstances comes to an abrupt end. As far was I was able to tell, not once in the rest of the game does he question this again. We have come to the literal end of the amount of care that this man can give. But fear not, we need not dole on about his lack of self-awareness because suddenly a bat-girl!
Kids these days, with their short skirts and horns.
A purple-haired bat-girl saunters up to our hero as he continues to scratch his head and sit on the grass. She is sporting a purple skirt and a top not unlike the bat girl from Persona, who’s name escapes me, consisting of a leather, strapless bra. “Hello,” she smiles cheerfully, “I’m rulururulurulru (sp?) blah blah blah blah.”
“Oh, I’m o_Onameredacted. You’re annoying”
*huff puff*”Well fine then, I didn’t want to talk to you anyway. But, since I’m here, I should tell you that in this land when a boy and a girl meet like this, they must KUNGFUFIGHT!” She smiles again at his bemusement. “With, mahjong!”
And thus, the first game of mahjong begins! “Hooray! Finally,” I cracked my knuckles and prepared for a challenge. The game proceeded to tell me all the rules in the familiar, un-decycpherable moonrunes known as kanji I have grown to know and love. But, despite not being able to read, I knew the rules well enough for mahjong and so I skipped to the playing bit. The playing field was a weird, unknown to me, variation of Japanese mahjong with only two players, myself, playing the dashing young knucklehead, and the bubbly Dracula. Every few draws, she would make some sort of squeaky noise that, as I have learned from unwanted experience, the typical Japanese nerd find adorable. After only a couple draws I had a ready hand and declared riichi (that i was ready for the winning tile) causing Ms Bat Flaps to pout. Soon she coughed up the tile I wanted and I called ron (I win). And that was when I realized my terrible, terrible mistake.
Her bra popped off.
Mahjong tiles and bra clasps are quantum entangled
For a few moments, I sat there blinking. Long enough for the hands to rest for the next round as I had not yet depleted all her points. Had that been…? Was that..? Wait, is this a…? And then it dawned on me. I had an eroge and didn’t know it. “Oh no,” I hung my head, “I have one of those games that my friend likes a little too much. I should stop playing.” “Wait!” cried a voice in my head, “maybe this is just like strip poker. You win, she removes clothing. Take all her points, move on to the next opponent, leaving her presumably naked by the side of the road with a valuable lesson learned.” “Hmm,” I replied, “you may be right.”
So I continued. Her bra had been replaced and all was well once more. I may have even over-reacted. Maybe it was just a little naughty to keep the nerds playing. And soon I completed another hand, hitting the draculina with a 18,000 point haneman, draining her of her remaining stock. The mini game ended.
Back to the anime, she pouted a bit about losing and suggested that the guy go into the castle. A reasonable assumption, I thought. Then the scene cut again. The cut was such that you could tell that it was one of those scenes that depends on the outcome of a fight or a mini-game. “Uh oh,” was my only thought as the bat-girl took hold of the guy’s hand, flying him and herself to the branches of a nearby tree.
Within moments, she had him mounded and said something I didn’t understand. I can only assume that she said something to the effect of, “You have bested me at the honorable game of sparrow tiles with your haneman hand. You must SEED MY WOMB!”
And thats just what he did. In a tree.
Pictured: Wood
When he had placated her, he got down from yonder branches and began towards the castle. The winged wench, who I guess sleeps with every man she meets because she sucks at mahjong, says something snarky about his sword and the scene ends. We never see her again.
Here is where I considered stopping the game. I thought, “Ugh, is this going to be the whole game?” Then I took the plunge. “Whatever, in for a penny, in for a pound. Lets do this!”
Our hero enters the castle and takes a look around that the abundance of not-people present. A curious situation for a castle to be in to say the least. He starts the old brain turning over, but before he has a chance to reclaim his cognitive functions from his recently used nether-regions, he hears a cry for help. Bounding up the stairs, he finds a young princess, who looks a lot like tsundere-girl, being accosted by a dragon, or lizard man, or something. Regardless, she is holding him off her with her arms despite his biceps being larger than her head, but she requires assistance. After insulting her for bothering him, smug boy draws his sword and in one arching blow sends the fiend screaming down the middle of the spiraling staircase, because he can do that now.
He's too busy ogling to bite her head off
The princess, showing her appreciation for the saving bit and for the insult, flees up the stairs and out of sight. The hero again is confused, but I have a feeling that this time he was really confused as to why she didn’t want to play mahjong so he could bone her. I certainly was. At any rate, he gives chase, but loses sight of her. Stopping to catch his breath on a landing, he heard a door open. A lady, dressed like a green nun, appears from the portal wondering who he is. He explains that he was looking for the princess because he had just saved her and stuff. She says that she probably returned to her room but before he goes, would he mind staying a bit and playing some… mahjong. Gulping, and clearly not wanting to upset the greater deities of this realm, or more likely wanting someone with less bosom than the one being offered, he tries to decline. This attempt fails.
The minigame begins. This time the game explains that you can buy superduper tiles for the points you collect. Using the powerups you can make winning (or simply not losing) a lot easier. I thought that was kind of novel, but had no interest in cheating so I skipped to the playing part. The nun whimpers and mutters a lot but does little else. Soon I have a ready hand and I cringe thinking what terrible thing might happen when I win. Will her bloomers suddenly explode? Will a thousand moths descend from heaven, rending her garments so that I may sneak a peak? Turns out, no. Nothing happens. I breath a sigh of relief. The next hand, I haneman her too, I swear on accident. and take her precious points.
The minigame ends and we are back at the stairwell. The nun looks sad, but our hero, pure of mind, decides it is best to continue up the stairs. No sooner does his foot touch the first step than he hears those terrible words, “Before you go, could you look at this?” And behold! She has pulled up her long dress for easy access! “Ugh!” I cry, throwing up my hands. “How does this even make sense!?” But remember, our boy has a pure heart about this nun plowing thing, so he does the only honorable thing he could do. Just gives her cunnilingus.
"Oh dear, I seem to have made a mess on the floor. Could you get that?"
That completed, he moves on up the stairs to a closet where he hears the muffled cries of a princess in distress. He bursts his way in and witnesses said princess being tied up by a cat girl. “How dare you!” He cries, and lunges for her. Then mahjong!
Events here are cloudy. Partly because I had done this song and dance twice before, but mostly because the woman kept making nya nya noises like Digiko from Di Gi Charat, which was unnerving. I quickly defeated her and untied the princess who ran away again. She seemed like a very confused person to me. As soon as she left the cat woman moved between Mr Cool Pants and the door, shutting it. You can imagine what happened next. I don’t know, I decided to take this interlude to start tweeting this ridiculousness to the world.
I came back to the game when the hero had found the princess caught and bound (again) by a young, a very young, sorceress. This wizard had an amusing item with her: a staff with the bust of a chicken on the end of it, whom, it seems, had a bone to pick with the princess and made fun of her by growing boobs.
You thought I was making it up
Heroman steps in and a mahjong fight ensued. This time I decided to get one of the superduper tiles, jsut to see what they did. I purchased the most expensive one and started the game. Turns out, it gives you a four wind yakuman starting hand with an incomplete pair. Within five turns I had drained her of all per points–roughly twenty seconds. The game over, the boy untied the princess who fled. “Next time I found her I will give her a stern talking to about manners,” I said to myself. The young wizard though, too young for the obvious choice of mahjong-reward in this world, decided instead, for the sake of modesty, to just sit herself down on a pillow, spread eagle, and pleasure herself to ecstasy through her undergarments. For the hero’s benefit of course. And having been given such a stunning and emotional show, one that caused the performer to pass out from exhaustion, our man did the only thing a gentleman in his situation would do: he turned and walked out of the room without a word.
Pfft, I don't need this
Up the stairs he bounded. Up to the very, very top of the castle. Flinging open the doors to what could only be the throne room, he stopped cold in his tracks. The princess and the nun from before were beind held by what seemed like some sort of magical force to the ground in humbling and undignified positions. Drawing his sword once more, the dashing warrior sped into the room and demanded an explanation from whoever was doing this. A dark figure rose from the throne (couch). Stepping into the light, she is revealed as an evil enchantress! She explains her dark and ominous plan to the boy. “I was planning on taking over this castle and the whole kingdom you see. I have moseyed into an unguarded fortress, sent my three minions to try and kill the princess but now I see they were failures and I shall rectify this.” “Not if I stop you!” cries our courageous lion of a youth, leveling his sword at her face. “Oh ho,” she retorts, “if you want to beat me, you will have to do so, WITH MAHJONG!”
"Get off that throne.. couch.. before I mahjong you to death with my riichi stick!"
And so, throwing any amount of sense he had to the four winds, he engages her in a pitched battle, which I won for him in two hands. I should point out that this witch would spend literally ten seconds saying the word “riichi” in the most un-sultry sultry manner she could muster. Having bested her, she was defeated. Oh wait, no, that didn’t happen. Instead she turned our hero, through mind control, into an ottoman and sat on him (not in a sexy way). But realizing that she was breaking the great traditions of the land, she decided to pleasure him with her mouth instead. On the throne-couch. Then she moved on throwing her whole self into the act. But wait! Our boy decides, no! he will not stand for this diminishment of his station and puts her on the bottom, having his way with her. The witch, pleasured beyond the measure of reality, sinks back on the now sloppy wet couch and decides that getting boned is a much fate than being ruler.
Meanwhile, the princess, being freed from her bonds, walks up to the guy and, without a word of explanation, slaps him. Then runs away. I can only assume that she was mad about the couch getting ruined. I say assume because THATS IT. The credits now roll.
"Do you know how much Febreze that's going to take?!"
And as I sat there, watching the credits, I realized that this had possibly been one of the worst wastes of time I have ever taken part in. First, the tsundere-girl, despite being the main character in the credits, is never seen again. Could she be the princess? I guess thats possible, but we don’t know because she kept fleeing. Second, the logic in this magical kingdom is screwed up twelve ways to Sunday. Mahjong ends with someone getting money, not someone being offered to deflower young maidens in the prime of their youth. If that were the case, I would have no problems getting more players in town. Third, that was the worst coup in the history of ever. “I was going to using my arcane magicks and demonic powers to take over your kingdom, but since you bested me at mahjong, I’d rather suck your dick,” is not proper military strategy! Finally, The developers completely wasted their time. They built a mahjong AI, calculator, special tiles and power ups, none being a simple task, for a total of five battles! Why!? I can not fathom it.
So did I learn anything from this game? Yes. I have learned two very important lessons from this game. One is that eroge are stupid and the people who play them are clearly insane. But more importantly: never, ever, download anything from Hongfire.
Rating: 
