Janshin Densetsu - Quest of Jongmaster

Released on June 29, 1994 (Wednesday) in Japan.

The title of this game translates from Japanese as 'Jong God Legend'.

Janshin Densetsu appears to be a complete ripoff of 1991's Mahjong Quest by Taito. The basic premise is the same : a girl in an RPG-style format walking along a world map and encountering enemies which are battled through mahjong matches. The enemy encounter screens have identical borders and the enemies are drawn in the same comic-anime style. Before each mahjong match, there are selectable spells that can be bought with stored MP, the screen and spells being identical in both cases. The player also has a Sword and Shield which can be activated during a match which give the player special abilities. The in-game text is virtually identical. The mahjong tiles themselves look almost exactly the same save for the backs; the mahjong game screen itself is almost exactly the same. Even upon defeating an enemy, they are turned into a scantily-clad woman as does your character when she is defeated. The only major difference between the two seems to be that Mahjong Quest is controlled with a mahjong control panel and Jyanshin Densetsu is controlled with the MVS Neo-Geo joystick. The next Aicom game on SNK Neo-Geo MVS is 1995's Pulstar, shares lots of similarities with R*Type as well.