“Just to clarify — I know buying a used PS2 copy doesn’t support the devs financially. It’s more like a personal ritual, a way to say ‘thank you’ to the version of me who played this on a cracked disc. Totally understand if that doesn’t make sense to others.”

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"I’ll add a picture of a Subor learning machine. Even though what we played back in the day were bootlegs, our love for gaming was still real

Blowing on game cartridges and smacking old TVs seemed to work mainly because reinserting the cartridge improved the connection, while the smacking temporarily fixed loose solder joints in aging CRT televisions — it wasn’t the blowing or hitting itself that actually did the trick.

“You can play it, but it’s a bit of a hassle. The official version has given away some DLCs, but it’s just not that popular in China.”

However, it’s worth noting that the first generation of Chinese Paladin (or The Legend of Sword and Fairy) is only available in Chinese on Steam, with no official English translation. There are fan-made English patches, but their quality varies. Starting from the fourth generation onward, some later titles gradually added official English subtitle support. For example, Chinese Paladin VI had an international version with English language options. If you want to try a version with English support, it’s recommended to start with the sixth generation."

"The early Chinese game market was indeed quite chaotic, but the situation has improved a lot now.

When it comes to the impact of bad games on the market, I think China’s Blood Lion is a classic example — it was so bad that it made many people lose faith in domestic single-player games for a while.

As for excellent Chinese games, The Legend of Sword and Fairy (Chinese Paladin) truly showcases a unique kind of romance that is distinctly Chinese. This romance is very different from JRPG stories — it’s more about chivalric culture and the emotional ties of the jianghu (the martial world)."

"We have a Reddit-like forum called Baidu Tieba (Baidu Post Bar), which features Chinese-language content and has very few posting rules. However, a common posting habit there is to break a long article into multiple short replies. I’m also getting familiar with the forum culture of Lemmy.

The timeline of this article is as follows: Subor Game Console, stories from arcade halls, PS2 rental shops, PSP handheld study rooms, the game console ban and the war on Internet addiction, the rise of Steam and support for legitimate games, and finally a Q&A section."

“Personal blogs are not very popular in China. I posted the Chinese version on Gcores, which is a pretty good gaming media website.”

yes

thank you

The VCD300 carried the childhood memories of countless children from impoverished families, allowing them to access the outside world and experience simple joys through discs in an era of material scarcity

Thank you for sharing sincerely

Tomorrow I’m planning to write a short piece about how a simple translation difference created an unexpected connection between two games that couldn’t be more different in style. The way Chinese gamers turned that into a running joke really says something about our sense of humor — self-aware, playful, and deeply rooted in the quirks of language.

I’d like to learn more about foreign gaming meme culture and emojis — where people share them, how they evolve, that sort of thing. Do you have any recommendations on where I should go to observe and participate? And out of curiosity, where doyoupersonally go for gaming memes?

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“I personally feel that Chinese players care more about gameplay experience when it comes to EA, while they tend to be pickier about operations and originality when it comes to online game companies like Tencent. So even though EA often gets criticized, I’m still looking forward to them doing a good job with series like Battlefield and FC.”

A Final Note

China did have a few homegrown consoles with big ambitions — the Little Tyrant Z, Battleaxe, Snail OBOX. I never got to play any myself. From what I’ve read and heard, their problems were similar: they approached console making with the mindset of PCs, mobile games, or online games. The result: almost no game ecosystem, weak hardware, low value. In the end, they missed their target audience. It’s a pity. I hope future builders learn from those lessons. Maybe one day the console market won’t be just three giants, but four, five, even more. Looking back, those “failures” might not seem so worthless after all.

Imagine this: for the first fifteen years of your life, there are almost no legitimate console games within the law of your country. No official channels, no store counters, no advertisements. To play games, your only choices are smuggled goods and pirated copies. So when Steam — a legal, convenient, respectful gateway — finally opened, we rushed in with near-frenzy to buy games, including countless older titles we had missed. Not to “atone.” Not purely out of compensation. But because for the first time, we had the chance to be seen and respected by the game industry as ordinary consumers. “Paying back the ticket” was never a cheap moral performance. It meant: when the legal path finally appears, we embrace it without hesitation.

This is my gaming story. What’s yours?

Frequently Asked Questions

“Born in 1999, why do you write like someone from the ’80s?” This gets asked the most. The truth is simple: I caught everything at the end of its lifecycle. Growing up in a small county with slow information flow, when I finally got to play Famicom, people in big cities had long moved on. When I first entered an arcade, the PS2 had been out for years. So this isn’t “I was always on the cutting edge.” It’s how a child in a small place in the late ’90s slowly caught up through outdated things. That’s the real rhythm for many players from smaller towns.

2. Is any of this made up? To be honest: the stories are real, but not all of them happened to me personally. “Blowing into cartridges,” “Water Level 8,” “the noodle bowl” — these were passed down by word of mouth across our generation. Some happened around me, some I heard from friends or online — but they resonated so deeply that I wrote them in. So this isn’t my autobiography. It’s a group portrait of my generation of players.

3. Why is online gaming barely mentioned? Fair question. Honestly, it’s not that I look down on online gaming — I just played very little of it. I was strictly supervised as a child and rarely went to internet cafes. By the time I had free access to a computer, Steam was already here. My main path was always single-player, console, handheld. Online games — Legend of Mir, Fantasy Westward Journey — belong to another world, huge and brilliant. But I’m not qualified to write that story. To write it would disrespect the people who actually grew up in internet cafes. So I’ll stick to the path I know. Let someone better qualified write the online gaming chronicle.

6. Steam Arrives, and Chinese Players Begin Buying Legitimate Copies

After the ban lifted, the PS4 got an official China release. The first time I saw a PS4 in a shop, I was stunned. It didn’t look like a game anymore — it looked like art. That game was Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Even now, it doesn’t look dated. The shop owner was patient — taught me how to turn it on, save games, check regional versions. I regret not staying in touch with him.

The PS4 wasn’t cheap. Then I discovered Steam. With China’s lower pricing region and frequent deep discounts, every major sale became a festival for Chinese players. Buy, buy, buy — may not always play, but definitely buy. We know this habit is a bit odd. We’re price-sensitive, we complain about publishers all the time. But when we truly love a game, we still buy a brand new PS4 or PS5 physical copy and put it on the shelf. That’s probably the Chinese way of supporting legitimate games. Not elegant, but genuine.

I’m optimistic about console gaming in China. The numbers are still far behind Steam players, but from CS to PUBG to Black Myth: Wukong, good games never lack buyers. We didn’t play easily. But we played happily. On that, gamers everywhere are the same.