McCarron's Piece O' Mind

Blackjack 21 is not the only game I developed for the iPhone; another pride and joy of ours at MobileAge is the game Shanghai Mahjong.



As we were developing the title we started to get hints that we'd have a lot of competition, so we tried to separate ourselves from the rest by adding innovative features (like the keyboard-style finger guide) and the downloadable artwork content. But it's hard for users to de-cypher the differences just by reading our descriptions and viewing screenshots. Luckily the highly reguarded website iLounge has gotten around and reviewed all the Mahjong games available so far. What is even better news is that we were rated #1 with an A- rating!

Here's part of their review.

The very best of the current crop of iPhone Mahjongg titles is MobileAge’s Shanghai Mahjong ($5). It’s the polar opposite of Moonlight Mahjong in that there are no fancy 3-D effects, and the board presentations are fairly traditional, but the 2-D artwork and user customization are basically flawless. MobileAge starts you with one set of tiles and one background, but lets you connect instantly to the Internet to download as many more as you want. There are so many board layouts, types of tiles, and backgrounds to choose from that it’s essentially impossible to run out of ways to play and enjoy Mahjong here—there’s literally more to choose from in Shanghai Mahjong than any other iPod or iPhone game we’ve seen. In our view, MobileAge’s “get more stuff from the Internet for free” model is spot-on, and really aids this game’s replay value.

iLounge has personally been one of my favorite sites for many years, the first place I goto when I'm looking for iPod and iPhone accessory reviews. So this is even more exciting to see my own product rated so well on their site. Thanks iLounge, we're glad you liked it!

We at MobileAge put together a quick video of our iPhone and iPod Touch Blackjack game, Blackjack 21. This should help showcase the game in greater detail than simple screenshots.

Finally time to break the big news. The two games I've developed over the past few months for the iPhone are now available on the iTunes AppStore. The games are Blackjack 21 and Shanghai Mahjong. They are each only $4.99 and can be downloaded easily via iTunes 7.7+ and via the AppStore program on the iPhone 2.0 Software.

You can view see more information and pictures of my games here on our company's product page.

Each product's page also has a link that will bring you right to it's page in iTunes, but I'll link them here as well with these easy to re-use TinyURLs. Clicking on these will be the easiest way to get to them as they'll launch iTunes and take you directly to the games.


Blackjack 21


Shanghai Mahjong


Thanks for all your support!
Patrick McCarron

Still looking for iBlackjack? Well the Alpha and even Beta cycles are long over now! We got a new name as well.

The release is just around the corner. So everyone looking for their Blackjack fix come check our my company's website MobileAge.com on Friday for more details on the upcoming reincarnation of iBlackjack for the Apple iPhone AppStore. We can't talk about it too much yet, but after Friday all the details you need will be there. I hope the amount of features and functionality we crammed into the game will whet the appetite of all your iBlackjack fans.

As far as all of you who made generous donations, we're working out with Apple on how best to compensate each and every one of you. We have two options, and looking for a third. So stay tuned, I'll have news soon.