The Origins of Computer Mahjong

The amazing story of its development.

Garry Kitchen
The Startup
Published in
8 min readDec 18, 2020

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Is there anyone left who hasn’t played the game where you remove tiles, one at a time, to clear the board?

Shanghai ® Copyright 1986, Activision

Have you ever wondered where it came from? I’ll bet we’ve all seen and/or played a game like this, as it’s probably been put on every computer, game system, mobile device, website, watch, toaster and refrigerator…

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Garry Kitchen
The Startup

Garry Kitchen is a retro video game designer whose titles include Donkey Kong (2600), Keystone Kapers, GameMaker (1985) and Bart (Simpson) vs the Space Mutants.