Note: I've used AI tools only to polish grammar and phrasing. Every story here is my real experience or something my friends told me. Thanks again to them, and thanks to you.
A while back, I was watching retro gaming videos on YouTube. One channel did a deep dive on the story of SEGA's Sonic. Really detailed. As I scrolled through the comments, I noticed that when those veteran players talked about how they saved up to buy cartridges as kids, or the first time they held a Mega Drive controller in a store—it overlapped with my own memories.
What surprised me even more was the comment section itself. Very rational. Different opinions, but no fighting. They were also pretty包容 (tolerant) of my comment as a Chinese person.
So I thought, I'll write something too. Write about how we grew up playing games over here.
Not to compare who had it worse, or who knows more about games. Just the real experiences of my generation—how we blew into Famiclone cartridges, got yelled at by arcade owners, and went from smuggled PS2s to an official Chinese version of the Switch.
We're all gamers who love life. We just grew up in different places.
Before I start, a few things. Not to defend myself. Just to help you understand where we started.
First, we don't avoid the topic of piracy. In that era, we had no other path. As adults, we bought genuine games—not to whitewash the past, but because we genuinely wanted to pay that ticket back.
Second, Steam helped a lot. For many Chinese gamers, the concept of buying genuine games started with Steam. For those older games that never got remasters, we're also happy to hunt down original used discs from back in the day.
Third, the console ban and the "war on gaming addiction" really did affect us. I won't talk politics. I'll just say: it was a generational disconnect, not anyone's fault.
Fourth, going from smuggled goods to genuine products was a natural process. I'm very optimistic about China's console market and China's games. If you're interested, you're welcome to come check them out.
Fifth, we just live in different places. Our love for games is the same. People in China are generally busy, but the way we support genuine games might be a little different from yours.
Alright. Here's the main story.
I. 1980s–1990s: The Subor "Learning Computer"
Near the end of the Famicom's life, China got a very interesting product: the Subor Learning Computer.
It looked like a keyboard. It could teach basic computer programming. More importantly—it could play Famicom games. Many parents thought their kids were studying. The spokesperson was action movie star Jackie Chan. The price wasn't high. So it ended up in a lot of homes.
Casual Chinese gamers today might only know Tencent, not Nintendo. But that generation who grew up with Subor is different. What they remember is a startup voice line:
"Ah~ Subor, it's an endless joy!"
Subor used pirate cartridges. The chips were cheap, and stability couldn't compare to genuine ones. But it also worked with official Famicom carts.
And there's a habit unique to Chinese players—some still do it today: blowing into the cartridge.
Three puffs on the gold contacts before inserting it. It didn't actually help. It was pure superstition. But if you didn't blow, something felt missing.
Subor cartridges were famous for "multicarts." "999 games in 1." Sounded like a great deal. In reality, it was the same few games recycled with different titles. If you wanted a real hit game, you had to buy a 4-in-1 cart. It cost more, but it was worth it.
Then there was the legend.
The underwater hidden levels in Contra.
Kids all over the country were talking about it: after you beat the 8 levels, there were 8 more underwater. On the 6th level, there's an enemy that glitches out and looks like a frog's mouth. Jump on it, and you'll enter the hidden area.
We all tried it. We jumped. We died.
Some kid bragged that he'd done it. We believed him.
Later, when we got online, we learned it was fake—the Famicom cartridge didn't have it.
But in 2016, a Chinese player went through every version. On the MSX2 version, after beating the final boss, the main character really does dive deep underwater. There really is a path.
A 30-year rumor finally came true. Even Konami itself acknowledged it later.
It's not that we loved making up stories. It's that back then, there was no internet, no guides—just word of mouth. And sometimes, the rumor outran the truth.
Pirate sellers were even more ruthless. If a game played anything like Contra, they'd slap "Contra" on the box.
- "Water Contra" → real name: Kage (katanas, no guns)
- "Air Contra" → real name: Final Mission (difficult to the point of self-hatred)
- "Space Contra" → real name: Raf World (excellent music, nothing to do with Contra)
- "Contra 6/7/8" → all fake (the real Contra 4 came out on NDS in 2008)
- "Super Contra" → a Chinese bootleg, English title "Super Contra 7"
You'd buy it, plug it in, and realize you'd been scammed. But you'd grit your teeth and play anyway. Some of them were actually pretty fun.
My generation grew up being scammed like that.
II. Arcades and "Token-Powered Youth"
I was born in 1999. After the Subor era, I fell in love with arcades.
The graphics were way better than the Famicom. Especially beat 'em ups.
My hometown is a small county that developed slowly. Twenty years ago, gamers with more money played PS2. The rest played arcades. All bootlegs. I never saw what a genuine arcade cabinet looked like.
One day, a friend said he'd take me to a magical place.
The first time I went, I was shy and didn't dare play for long. But the games there blew me away—way better than the Subor.
Before that, I was the only kid in class with a game console. I was popular. After arcades appeared, fewer and fewer people came over to my place to play.
Where I lived, 1 RMB got you 5 tokens. The most popular game was The King of Fighters. Domestically, everyone loved the '97 version, even though it was full of problems.
There was also a Chinese game: Knights of Valour: Raging Storms 2. A side-scrolling beat 'em up that didn't lose to Tenchi o Kurau II: The Battle of Red Cliffs.
Arcade owners also had another payment method: 10 RMB (about $1.40) to beat the game. Max two players, unlimited tokens, just finish it.
The Pinnacle of Sword Fighting is the one I feel sorriest for. A wuxia (martial arts) theme, adapted from Jin Yong's The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber. Short, very hard, released too late. Never got popular.
Let me tell you about an arcade "house rule."
It wasn't set by the owner. It was created by players themselves.
In Tenchi o Kurau II: The Battle of Red Cliffs, there's a stage where you eat buns. No one taught it—everyone just believed that the faster you spun the joystick, the faster you ate. So everyone spun the stick like crazy, shaking the machine so hard the owner was afraid it would fall apart.
Eventually, the owner had no choice. He put up a sign: "No spinning the stick during the bun-eating stage."
There's no such rule in the game. The players made it up entirely.
But all these years later, when people mention that game, the first thing they remember isn't the fighting—it's that bun-eating stage that almost broke your joystick.
The arcade I went to as a kid had a "treasure cabinet"—it contained a collection of many classic games. But the owner had a rule: if you turned it on yourself, you'd be fined 10 RMB (about $1.40).
One time, I didn't even eat breakfast. I went and begged him to let me play. He joked with me: "First, you have to watch me beat Metal Slug without dying. Then help me bring in five customers."
I actually did it.
Then I got up to play myself and died in less than five minutes.
But he brought me a bowl of fresh-made noodles with shredded pork, and slipped me a few tokens.
To this day, I don't know why that cabinet had that rule. I never got a chance to ask.
But don't get me wrong—the owner was good to me. He was just messing with me.
III. 2000s: Rental Shops and the PS2's "Underground Living Room"
Back then, the PS1 and PS2 were things only rich families had.
Ordinary players had to wait at least five years to access PS2 rental shops—you paid by the hour, about 3-5 RMB (less than $1).
Most shop owners couldn't get their hands on genuine PS2 games. Pirate discs cost 15-30 RMB ($2-4) each. Some were even 3-5 RMB (less than $1).
Pirate discs often had bugs and cut content. Some players, wanting the full experience, would find ways to buy genuine copies. Those who didn't know English or Japanese would flip through game magazines for guides. Some people even learned a foreign language just to understand the games.
You read that right—for some Chinese gamers, their first foreign language textbook was a game manual.
Pirate sellers rushed to be first, often using machine translation. That gave us classic memes:
- Devil May Cry → literally translated as "Devil May Cry" (same Chinese characters, but sounds awkward)
- The Elder Scrolls → "Old Man Rolling a Log" (shortened to "Old Scrolls," which stuck even after official translations)
That "Old Scrolls" meme was so popular that the developers eventually found out about it. Some of them actually liked it and made references in later games. Chinese players still call it "Lǎo Gǔn" (Old Scrolls) to this day.
The game that best represented the PS2 rental shop era was Winning Eleven (Pro Evolution Soccer). That was its last great period.
Back then, Chinese players' main concern was "will this pirated disc run?" Not many people could even afford lots of pirated discs. Those who couldn't played by reading game magazines. Some magazines hyped up the Dreamcast, but people who bought one found very few games to play.
I'm not putting down the Dreamcast. I really like SEGA. As an adult, I've bought many genuine Sonic games—consider that my ticket paid. If I get the chance, I'd like to buy a Dreamcast someday. Its game library was indeed a bit weak, but I really appreciate the machine itself.
During the PS2 era, China's unique urban legends started to fade. The internet and magazines were spreading. Most "rumors" didn't survive a week.
But one thing hasn't changed: those young people who played PS2 back then are now middle-aged. Some of them only play PS2, spending significant money to collect rare genuine discs.
IV. 2000s: PSP and the "Study Hall Handheld"
Many Chinese players treat the PSP as synonymous with "game console." That's different from the global market—worldwide, the DS sold twice as many units as the PSP, matching the PS2.
But China was an exception.
Casual gamers didn't buy the DS. They thought it couldn't function as an MP4 player. You read that right—many people bought a PSP not to play games, but to watch movies, read e-books, listen to music, and even practice English listening comprehension. Hardcore players valued the PSP's graphics and performance. I'm not saying the DS is bad—it has an irreplaceable charm, and its gameplay and hardware design changed the world.
But in China, the PSP won.
Ask Chinese gamers what they played most on PSP, and most will give the same answer: Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. Plenty of people put over a thousand hours into it.
Let me tell you a little story.
In the spring of 2008, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai came to China. He wanted to visit a game shop himself to check the market. The clerk didn't know who he was and enthusiastically taught him how to jailbreak his PSP.
Hirai kept a straight face—even seemed quite pleased.
Back at the company, he had his engineers take that jailbroken unit apart to study how to improve anti-piracy measures. That later led to the PSP 3000's V3 motherboard.
There's an even more dramatic version of the story: the clerk did it on purpose. He knew it was Kazuo Hirai, and he wanted to create a memorable moment.
Realistically speaking, if a clerk actually did that, he'd probably get fired. But that doesn't stop the story from circulating among Chinese gamers to this day.
Back then, the PS2 was something only veteran players had access to. The PSP was different—it was the exclusive possession of the rich kids. Since you couldn't run a PSP rental shop like you could with a PS2, the person who owned a PSP had particular prestige in class.
Fortunately, I caught the tail end of the PSP's lifespan and finally got to play one. Even now, I consider myself a lucky gamer.
How influential was the PSP in China?
Some people who had never touched a game console would see a Switch and ask: "Is this the new PSP?" See a 3DS and ask: "Is this the folding, dual-screen PSP?"
Veteran gamers want to laugh. But those people genuinely don't know.
Jokes aside, new players really do need someone to help them out.
Back then, most Chinese gamers' PS2s and PSPs were "gray market" goods—unofficial imports. The hardware was real, and it was cheaper than official imports, but there was no after-sales support. If it broke, you were on your own.
Next, I'll talk about why things ended up this way.
V. While China Dove into Online Games, Why Were Consoles "Banned" for Fifteen Years?
In June 2000, China issued a ban on selling game consoles. The reason: arcades had gotten too chaotic—fights, gambling—and parents wanted kids to focus on the college entrance exam. A blanket ban was the simple solution.
That ban lasted fifteen years. To buy a console, you had to go through the gray market. Some people ran rental shops out of their homes—they became the secret bases of that generation of gamers.
But here's where it gets interesting: consoles were pushed out, but online games exploded. Legend of Mir, Fantasy Westward Journey, World of Warcraft—they all appeared. China's online game industry even got ahead of the rest of the world. "Not allowed to play games"? Then how did internet cafes become more popular than almost anywhere else?
In 2002, the Blue Lightning internet cafe fire in Beijing changed everything. Several minors were refused entry, went home to buy gasoline, came back and set the place on fire. Twenty-five people died inside.
After that, the national crackdown on internet cafes was severe. Minors were no longer allowed in. The media started calling games "electronic heroin." Parents were terrified.
Right at that moment, a psychiatrist named Yang Yongxin from Linyi, Shandong province, rose to fame. He treated "internet addiction" in his hospital—with electric shocks to the temples, solitary confinement, and medication. If you didn't obey, you got shocked until you did. Parents sent their crying children in. After coming out, some kids would tremble at the sight of a white coat.
The medical community had long rejected electric shock treatment for internet addiction—they didn't recognize it at all. But fueled by media hype and parental fear, Yang Yongxin remained famous for years.
So you see: consoles were banned, but online games flourished. The government wanted to stop gaming, but it couldn't stop internet cafes and mobile games. Parents were afraid of their kids getting addicted, so some people electrocuted those kids' temples. Every action was taken with "good intentions," but every blow landed on the players themselves.
The ban wasn't fully lifted until 2015. Online games never stopped. But there are things from that generation's youth that can never be brought back.
VI. Steam Arrives, and Chinese Gamers Start Buying Genuine Games
After the ban was lifted, the PS4 got an official Chinese release. The first time I saw a PS4 demo in a game shop, I was completely stunned. It didn't feel like a game—it felt like a work of art.
That game was Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Even now, the graphics haven't aged badly. The shop owner was very patient, teaching me how to turn it on, how to save games, how to tell different versions apart. I'm sorry I didn't keep his contact info. I really hope I can see him again, even if it's just to buy a disc from him.
The PS4 wasn't cheap. Then I discovered Steam.
China gets lower regional prices, and the sales are even steeper. Every time there's a big sale, Chinese gamers go on a shopping spree like it's the holidays—buying games they may not even play. But they have to buy.
We know this habit is a bit strange. We're sensitive about prices. Complaining about developers is routine for us. But when we truly love a game, we'll still go out and buy a brand new sealed PS4 or PS5 physical copy, just to put it on a shelf.
This is probably how Chinese gamers support genuine games. Not elegant, but real.
I'm optimistic about the development of console gaming in China. Even though compared to Steam players, the numbers are still far behind. But from CS to PUBG to Black Myth: Wukong—good games never lack buyers.
We didn't play easily. But we played happily.
And on that, gamers everywhere are the same.
What do you think? Let me know. And feel free to share your own gaming stories.
Thanks.
A Few Questions People Asked Me, Answered Here
1. "You were born in 1999. Why do you sound like someone from the '80s?"
Haha, this is the question I get the most. To put it simply: I caught the tail end of everything. I grew up in a small county with very slow information flow. By the time I could actually play the Subor and arcades, they were long out of fashion in big cities. I played Famicom games on other people's discarded cartridges. The first time I walked into an arcade, the PS2 had already been out for several years. So what I wrote isn't "I played the coolest stuff at the time"—it's how a kid born in the late '90s pieced things together step by step using outdated things. That's the real rhythm for many players from small towns.
2. "Is any of this made up?"
I have to be honest here: the stories are real, but not all of them are my personal experiences. Things like "blowing into cartridges," "the underwater level rumor," "the owner's sign about not spinning the bun stage"—those weren't made up by me alone. They're the collective memories passed down by my generation of players. Some happened around me. Some I heard from friends or fellow gamers online, and they resonated with me so strongly that I included them. I can't say "I did every single one of these things." But I can guarantee: someone did. So this isn't my personal autobiography. It's a group portrait of my generation of gamers.
3. "Why did you barely mention online games?"
I got this question too. To be honest, it's not that I look down on online games—I just really didn't play them much. I was strictly controlled as a kid and basically never went to internet cafes. By the time I had free access to computers, Steam was already here. So my main gaming path has always been single-player, consoles, and handhelds. When people talk about Chinese games online, they always bring up Legend of Mir and Fantasy Westward Journey—that's another huge and wonderful world. But I'm not qualified to write that world. If I forced it, I'd be disrespecting the brothers who really grew up in those internet cafes. So in this piece, I honestly wrote about what I know: the console path. I'll leave online games to someone who knows them better.
One last thing: my abilities are limited. This article definitely has omissions, repetitions, and things I didn't explain clearly. But one thing is real: I wrote it seriously, and I genuinely love games. Thank you for asking questions. Being asked so much means you're reading carefully—and that means more to me than anything else.
Let me add one more thing. China actually had a few "ambitious" game consoles. Three come to mind: the Subor Z, the Battle Axe, and the Snail OBOX. Unfortunately, I've never actually gotten my hands on any of them.
But based on public information and feedback from many gamers, their problems were pretty similar—they basically approached console design with the mindset of making PCs, mobile games, or online games. The result? Almost no game ecosystem, hardware performance that couldn't deliver, and no real price advantage. In the end, they didn't even capture their target users. Honestly, it was a shame to see, and my feelings about it are complicated.
Those consoles were all flash in the pans. But I sincerely hope that future creators learn from them. Maybe one day, the console market won't be just three major players, but four, or five, or even more. And looking back then, those "failures" might not seem so worthless after all.
Imagine being born into a country where for the first fifteen years of your life, there were almost no legal console games under national law. No official channels. No store counters. No ads. The only way you could play games was through smuggled goods and pirated discs. That wasn't a moral choice—it was survival instinct in a time of extreme scarcity.
So when a legal, convenient, consumer-respecting door like Steam finally opened, we rushed in almost obsessively to buy games—including the old ones we'd missed out on. Not for "redemption." Not just out of compensation. But because for the first time, we had the chance to be seen and respected by the game industry as normal consumers.
The true meaning of "paying for the ticket" was never about cheap moral performance.
It was: when the legal path finally appeared, we ran toward it without hesitation.
However, my limitation is that I've only experienced the online gaming environment from 2012 onward. It's a real pity, otherwise I'd love to share more. The reason I don't plan to go into detail is that I don't want to make uninformed comments on areas I don't fully understand—that would be irresponsible to my readers and a disservice to fellow gaming enthusiasts. That said, if you're interested in China's console gaming scene, we can definitely talk about that. I've written about it in detail in some of my previous posts, and the response was pretty good.