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

Installation and Set-Up
The package received from LandWare is the common PC-based, self-extracting .exe file which, when you run it, uses Activesync’s program installation manager. Everything went very quickly and smoothly with the basic install, but I had some difficulty getting Shanghai to find the new tile types and music when I installed the bonus pack. Not a big problem... It turns out that when the bonus stuff is installed, it creates a separate folder called ‘LandWare Shanghai Bonus Pack’. If you move all of the content from this folder to the original ‘LandWare Shanghai’ folder, everything works just fine.

Once installed, you can settle down for hours of relaxing game play. Whether you are a novice or seasoned master, Shanghai can be tailored to provide a worthwhile challenge.


Figure 3: The opening Intro screen from Pocket Shanghai Essentials.

When you first run Pocket Shanghai after installation, you are presented with the screen shown above. From here, as shown by the buttons at the bottom, you can start right into playing the game (using the defaults provided); set up the options the way you want them; access the online help file; or exit the game. Note: As far as I could tell, this is the only place where you can get at the online Help file. So, you might want to at least take a cursory glance at it before you tick off the ‘Show Intro’ box in the Options so this screen doesn’t show.


Figure 4: The ‘Prefs’ screen from the Options button.


Figure 5: Selecting which type of game you’d like to play.


Figure 6: ...and the Tiles.


Figure 7: Selecting a favorite layout (or just letting it pick one at random).

As you can see from the screen shots, setting up the game's options is pretty self-explanatory. You can even make these changes in the middle of your current game!

For those who are in competitive mode (as opposed to contemplative), Shanghai keeps a scoring table for each user as they progress through each layout. I’m not exactly sure how you would identify another user on the Pocket PC, since I didn’t see any logon screens within the application.


Figure 8: Scores are automatically calculated and stored at the end of each successful game.

I play Shanghai for fun and relaxation, so I didn't do an extensive analysis of how the scoring works.