Yakuman (Game Boy, Japanese Import) - Authentic Nintendo Launch-Day Mahjong Cartridge, Tested

Day one of the Game Boy, in Japan

On April 21, 1989, the Game Boy launched in Japan with four games: Super Mario Land, Alleyway, Baseball, and Yakuman, Nintendo’s two-player mahjong. The name is the term for the rarest, highest-scoring class of hands in Japanese mahjong. It never came out in the West, so if you play riichi on Mahjong Soul or at a club, this is your game in its 1989 launch-day form.

Why the Game Boy has a link port

In 1983 Nintendo made an electronic handheld called Computer Mah-jong Yakuman, and its engineer, Satoru Okada, built in a cable so two units could play each other. When Okada led the Game Boy hardware, he pushed for the same link port, overruled colleagues who thought nobody would use it, and wrote the communication code himself, as he told it in a 2022 talk. Seven years after this cart, Pokémon trading ran on that port.

Nintendo’s own pitch for this cart: with the cable, “you no longer need four people.” It was one of the Game Boy’s launch-day link-cable games, alongside Baseball.

Nintendo’s mahjong line starts here

Yakuman began a first-party mahjong series Nintendo kept going for decades, on Famicom, GBA, DS, Wii, and Yakuman Hōō on Wii U and 3DS, and the cover’s mahjong player turns up as a spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

About the Japanese

Menus and rule settings are Japanese and the tiles carry kanji, as all mahjong tiles do. If you play riichi you will be fine; it is not the place to learn the game. You play against a choice of five computer opponents, and head-to-head over a link cable needs a second Yakuman cart. Ask and I will look for one; the Game Boy Head-to-Head Bundle has the two Game Boys and the cable.