After postponing the game’s release date from spring to summer 2026 due to its crowdfunding campaign being “too successful” and amassing over 1,690% of the original goal, publisher ILLUMINATION recently announced that Super Real Mahjong Venus Returns would be coming to Steam on August 27.
Super Real Mahjong is one of Japan’s classic, if not the most well-known, “strip mahjong” game franchises. Starting out in the 80s as an arcade title, the series later expanded to consoles and PC, and is finally going to see a big comeback with its first 3D VR-supported installment, Super Real Mahjong Venus Returns.
In a recent interview with Famitsu, the game’s producer Kentaro Matsui and director Yoshi-K talked about the level of detail that went into creating the game, and specifically, the development process behind the stripping animations of the four heroines.
According to Yoshi-K, before being implemented into the game via motion capture, various stripping motions were tested out in real life by the development team members themselves.
“We put a lot of effort into making the stripping process enjoyable. This time we used motion capture for the undressing motions, but in order to test it, all of us game designers came together and actually tried taking off our own clothes. We’d get serious critique on how us old guys strip clothes, like ‘Mr Yoshi-K, you’re unzipping that a little bit too fast’ (laughs). That’s the kind of process the motions were gradually built upon,” Yoshi-K commented.
The animation process itself was very detailed, especially for the animations of the clothes being stripped. While motion tracking was mainly used for capturing the undressing movements themselves, everything else, including the stretching of the fabric, was done by hand.
“Technically speaking, our approach is quite similar to claymation. The designers put a lot of determination and effort into animating the 3D models for the clothes, making them move manually bit by bit,” Yoshi-K said.
Apparently, the team attempted to use different 3D animation techniques, like physics simulation, to automate and simplify the process. However, it was quite difficult to achieve natural-looking animations, so they decided that the best course of action would be to animate everything by hand.
As an homage to the classic Super Real Mahjong, the developers tried following the same production process, like drawing actual storyboards and then using them as blueprints to create the animations.
“To be completely honest, I feel that, in a sense, even modern technology can’t completely surpass the animation of that era. There are many fans who say that the “flavor” (of animation) back then was great, and I truly have a lot of respect for that,” Matsui added. “However, I do also think that we can compete in certain aspects by using VR technology, which is something that’s unique to our time. That’s why I’m seriously determined to make it into a game that will be able to surpass the original.”
Super Real Mahjong Venus Returns is coming to PC (Steam) on August 27.
