Videogames in China

[kevincure]

So I'm over here in Beijing until June (studying until the middle of March and then working until mid-June), and wanted to throw in a word about what the game collecting situation is like here. I'm mainly been keeping an eye out for China-only releases.

I've only seen the iQue once - at Carrefour, a French chain similar to Walmart. It was 799Yuan, which is just under 100US. This is actually quite a bit, because everything is dirt cheap here - I can eat cheap for 1US, go to a fancy restaurant for 4US (tax and tip included), bus rides are 12 cents US, (legal) DVDs tend to run between 1 and 3 US, etc. The iQue looked pretty cool, so I'll pick it up before I come home (hopefully less).

The handheld scene is big here because 1) The Chinese (like Koreans) don't really like Japan because of WW2, 2) Handhelds are cheaper and this is still a poor country, 3) TVs are PAL, I think, and electricity is 220, so it's pretty tough to import. GBA SP is massive.

I've seen a number of Famicom and Megadrive games, as well as some stranger items (a new European crystal Xbox pack for 200US, for instance). PSPs and DS can be easily had here - a PSP runs 300-400 US right now. If I find anything else out of interest, I'll let you guys know.

[Flack]

Wow, cool stuff! Document as much as you can, I love reading things like that. Also let me throw out the obligitory "PICTURES!" before someone else does.

[jonjandran]

If you can find an Ique for around $50 , pick one up for me. :D

[davidleeroth]

Thanks for the info! So there's no iQue Flash Depots (where you can download the games) anywhere? I've tried to find a guy in China who could download a game for but if there's no depots it might prove somewhat hard. LOL

And yeah, please take some photos, will ya?

[fishsandwich]

I love hearing stuff like this! Thanks for sharing.

A fancy dinner for $4 with tip included? What do hotels cost? How much would it cost to rent a bungelow or something like that for a couple of weeks?

How do people react to you? You might want to include what you look like versus the rest of the general population in that area.

Any culture shock?

How's the crime? Many police around?

Any crazed vendors?

Cheers

:D

[Ed Oscuro]

If you could do something just for me, check out all the TVs you see! I've heard that there's a lot of NTSC sets in the country, which I'd like to see.

Interesting that the iQue doesn't seem to be around many parts of the country - I'm not really surprised given the price but I was expecting you'd see them at least two places. Oh well :D

[imanerd0011]

Hey , if you could buy all the really cheap Famicom games you see up there, I will buy them off of you when you come back. Thanks

[GarrettCRW]

Hey , if you could buy all the really cheap Famicom games you see up there, I will buy them off of you when you come back. Thanks

A *lot* of them could very well be pirates. It *is* China, after all (home of the Famicom pirate scene).

[DLord0]

Hey , if you could buy all the really cheap Famicom games you see up there, I will buy them off of you when you come back. Thanks

A *lot* of them could very well be pirates. It *is* China, after all (home of the Famicom pirate scene).

Basically you'll have a very hard time finding non-pirate copies of Famicom games. There are a humongous quantity of multigame carts for the Famicom in China though. I go back to China to visit relative and such once in a couple of years, and although I always see an attractive game scene, it is always ridden with piracy...

Legal copies of games is generally too expensive for the masses over there. A blue collar worker in China generally makes what corresponds to 80 USD a month, usually even less than that, so you can't really expect them to pay for a full priced retail copies of games.

[Sothy]

Sorry about the whole rape of Nanking thing but heres a Nintendo.

[Ed Oscuro]

Yep, watch China turn around "Sorry about crushing Tibet, here's a Commicon."

Rape of Nanking = exaggerated by China by far.
Crush of Tibet = likely 2M deaths.

Hmm.[/polyticks]

[GameNinja]

This is good to hear, I have been in Shanghai and Nanchang and I was rather surprised by the amount of videogames there. Besides the usual gameboy and famiclone type stuff I remember seeing a handheld like the "game kid" or something similar. It seemed to have alot of interesting games but unfortunately I wasn't a collector then and didn't buy it. (and I doubt it was a Game King but I don't remember)

[BigGeorgeJohnson]

Yep, watch China turn around "Sorry about crushing Tibet, here's a Commicon."

Rape of Nanking = exaggerated by China by far.
Crush of Tibet = likely 2M deaths.

Hmm.[/polyticks]


I guess you were there idiot?

...what?

[Sothy]

Ok lets not turn this into a political debate lets just all agree that Stalin was a Neo Geo collector.

[Promophile]

Ok lets not turn this into a political debate lets just all agree that Stalin was a Neo Geo collector.

HOW DARE YOU SIR, He was obviously an atari man.

[Sothy]

Modern right wing historians have blatantly overstated Stalins fondness for Atari games.

He had a few xonox double enders and maybe stuff from Mystique but that hardly overshadows his obsession with SNK. Please only state facts here friend.

[evildead2099]

A fancy dinner for $4 with tip included? What do hotels cost? How much would it cost to rent a bungelow or something like that for a couple of weeks?

$4 (US) may seem like peanuts to you, but don't many Chinese people work for a few cents per hour? Nike didn't set up factories in China for the sake of giving the Chinese fiscally sound labour opportunities....

[racecar]

what's a.. iQue ??..got any pic's of it ??

[soniko_karuto]

WTF with all the raping and stuff? go away, you scare me :/

Anyhoo, a friend from china had only backup copies of his psx, i asked if he had any nes/snes/genny stuff, and he showed me 3 different backup units. He only has backup units :S that sucks. He doesn't wanna sell them!

[Drexel923]

what's a.. iQue ??..got any pic's of it ??

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=177&products_id=3831&


If you can find an Ique for around $50 , pick one up for me. :D

Me too :D

[kevincure]

I don't know what Stalin played, but I'm sure Mao was a Mario man. He's a man of the proletariat with the red hat and all that.

Wages here aren't pennies, but you can hire a nongren (migrant from the rural areas) to come to your place every day for a couple hours and cook/clean for something like 400RMB ($50) per month. I think there's a quite large income discrepancy - in the cities, you should make a few thousand $US per year, and cell phones are everywhere. In the rural areas, 1000US/yr would be a very good salary. You can live very cheaply, though - if you eat street vendor food, you can get a shishkebab, for instance, for 1RMB (.12US) and a small bottled water can be as cheap as 7 Jiao (.08US).

I'm over 6 foot tall and white, so yeah, people know I'm not from China. I can speak a decent bit though, so it's going OK. Nonetheless, there have been a few trips to Maidanglao (I'll give you a hint - they sell fries at this place). When I head out to more rural areas, I'll look around some more.

Oh, as for pirates, most of the MD/Fami games looked pirated to me, but you can buy non-bottleg copies of modern games.

[Ed Oscuro]

I guess you were there idiot?

...what?
Well, let's ask John Rabe (the "Good Nazi" or "Good German of Nanjing"), who WAS there; he claimed 50,000 were killed and he was in the thick of things the whole time. Mind you that this is a totally mind-blowing figure; he wasn't trying to downplay the atrocities in the least and neither am I. I wouldn't be surprised if the figures are higher.

China's official figure is 300,000; and it won't change for now (as it would be a completely bald-faced lie, and they know it), anyhow. Why do I say this? In 1995 President Jiang Zemin gave a speech in which he changed the number of war victims to 35 million; previously it had been 21.69 and of those 9.32 million KIA. Immediately after WW2 the Chinese defense minister had the figure at 1.75 million soldiers dead - this is quite a jump. I've seen sources that put very specific numbers on the dead (a popular book puts it at no less than ~370,000, giving a number to the person); but it seems most of the high numbers come when people include the whole Japanese advance from Shanghai onward. Is it really still the Massacre of Nanking at this point?

Trying to whittle down the number of dead does nothing for the debate but it's important to be aware that the Chinese are usually doing their best to inflate the number, while a number of Japanese radicals are trying to disregard the whole affair and marginalize it.

Now, on the other hand, there is relatively little discussion about the number of Tibetans who died when China invaded, but the accepted number seems to be in the range of 1.2-1.5 million (and with that figure comes the 6,000 Tibetan religious places destroyed).

I don't care how you cut it, there's a vast difference between 300,000 and 1,200,000 dead - even 370,000 doesn't touch it. What's more, we kicked Japan out. Japan isn't forcing their rule on the Chinese anymore; rather, it's the Chinese who are telling the Tibetans how to live their lives.

And, of course, it's the Chinese who have often tried to suggest that the pre-invasion population of Tibet was 4 million, when in fact their own records put it at somewhat over 6.3 million. Of course then there's folks who say 4 million stayed, 2 million were displaced - it's all one big fun happy game with numbers, that's what.

As always, I appreciate the sentiment as it's important to honor the dead...but ultimately I believe you've just shown yourself to be ignorant of the whole situation.

Sorry folks, I suppose I should've known bringing up politics would be bad (part of why I don't go into Off Topic for political debates!) Heh, funny how a couple words set me off like this (this is the end of it, however; I've nothing else to write).

Also, :D @ Sothy. Good stuff man!

[kevincure]

(Not to walk toward politics either, I must note that even a million Tibetans is pocket change compared to the destruction done elsewhere in China, mostly before Deng Xiaoping. I've heard reliable numbers of around 30 m dead as a result of Maoist policies, and a ton of China's history was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the late 60s. The Chinese tend to know this - even the Communist Party has the slogan that "Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong". The reason the Rape of Nanjing is so well-known is because of the outright brutality, with 100000s killed and even children raped, over a few days. The other reason is that Japan really never apologized for WW2 in the way that Germany did, so Korea and China (as well as many other places in SE Asia) still hate Japan. So, the Rape of Nanjing was a big deal, but nowhere near as destructive as Maoist-era policies (in terms of life of cultural heritage), and no matter what the CCP has done, many Chinese still feel they rightfully dislike Japan.

Nonetheless, I still think Mao was a Mario man.)

[BigGeorgeJohnson]

I guess you were there idiot?

...what?
Well, let's ask John Rabe (the "Good Nazi" or "Good German of Nanjing"), who WAS there; he claimed 50,000 were killed and he was in the thick of things the whole time. Mind you that this is a totally mind-blowing figure; he wasn't trying to downplay the atrocities in the least and neither am I. I wouldn't be surprised if the figures are higher.

China's official figure is 300,000; and it won't change for now (as it would be a completely bald-faced lie, and they know it), anyhow. Why do I say this? In 1995 President Jiang Zemin gave a speech in which he changed the number of war victims to 35 million; previously it had been 21.69 and of those 9.32 million KIA. Immediately after WW2 the Chinese defense minister had the figure at 1.75 million soldiers dead - this is quite a jump. I've seen sources that put very specific numbers on the dead (a popular book puts it at no less than ~370,000, giving a number to the person); but it seems most of the high numbers come when people include the whole Japanese advance from Shanghai onward. Is it really still the Massacre of Nanking at this point?

Trying to whittle down the number of dead does nothing for the debate but it's important to be aware that the Chinese are usually doing their best to inflate the number, while a number of Japanese radicals are trying to disregard the whole affair and marginalize it.

Now, on the other hand, there is relatively little discussion about the number of Tibetans who died when China invaded, but the accepted number seems to be in the range of 1.2-1.5 million (and with that figure comes the 6,000 Tibetan religious places destroyed).

I don't care how you cut it, there's a vast difference between 300,000 and 1,200,000 dead - even 370,000 doesn't touch it. What's more, we kicked Japan out. Japan isn't forcing their rule on the Chinese anymore; rather, it's the Chinese who are telling the Tibetans how to live their lives.

And, of course, it's the Chinese who have often tried to suggest that the pre-invasion population of Tibet was 4 million, when in fact their own records put it at somewhat over 6.3 million. Of course then there's folks who say 4 million stayed, 2 million were displaced - it's all one big fun happy game with numbers, that's what.

As always, I appreciate the sentiment as it's important to honor the dead...but ultimately I believe you've just shown yourself to be ignorant of the whole situation.

Sorry folks, I suppose I should've known bringing up politics would be bad (part of why I don't go into Off Topic for political debates!) Heh, funny how a couple words set me off like this (this is the end of it, however; I've nothing else to write).

Also, :D @ Sothy. Good stuff man!


I have no interest to get into a pointless debate with you. Both incidents were equally tragic regardless of statistics. Anyone with half a brain understands that.

The bottom line is you made an ignorant statement and I called you on it. You then felt that you needed to explain yourself further because of said ignorance.

You try to pass yourself off as an intellectual but ultimately I believe you've just shown your idiocy. But anyone who frequents these forums is most likely already aware of it.

[toddst]

kevincure-- If you get the chance, try and go to Kashgar. That has to be one of the most interesting places that I have been. I know that it is on the other side of the country from where you are...

[evildead2099]

Wages here aren't pennies...

Are you specifically speaking of Beijing, or China in general? Have you visited a sweatshop in the time you've been in China?

[Ed Oscuro]

The bottom line is you made an ignorant statement and I called you on it. You then felt that you needed to explain yourself further because of said ignorance.

You try to pass yourself off as an intellectual but ultimately I believe you've just shown your idiocy. But anyone who frequents these forums is most likely already aware of it.
Okay, George, show me where I made an ignorant statement. I was well aware of the figures before I made that statement. I don't try to pass myself off an an intellectual; and I certainly don't resort to the tactic of flinging insults when somebody challenges my previously held notions (it happens often, as you seem to indicate you're aware) or tries to expand my range of knowledge.

That said, you're free to be content in that warm shell of ignorance.

[kevincure]

evildead...I haven't been to a factory, but what we call sweatshops tend to be better paying than local jobs. I've never understood why people think that sweatshops pay lower wages than local firms/farms - 1) they tend to be located in richer regions (in China, the coast esp. Fujian and PRD, Beijing, Hebei) and 2) they tend to be more productive uses of labor. In any cases, if you made pennies per hour, even Chinese would consider you poor.

Todd...I want to go to Kashgar (they say Kashi here), but it's almost 50 hrs. each way to Urumqi, and then another half day to Kashgar. I don't think I can afford to fly on a non-Chinese airline (honestly, internal China flights - not safe), so I might have to save it for another time.

[Qixmaster]

+ 1 Ed Oscuro

anyone wanna take bets on this? :D

anyway

Hope you are having fun kev, can't wait til you get back to eugene with a suitcase full of those neat famicom pirates for me ;)

also, remember; IQue for Josh is a money in your pocket

[toddst]

Todd...I want to go to Kashgar (they say Kashi here), but it's almost 50 hrs. each way to Urumqi, and then another half day to Kashgar. I don't think I can afford to fly on a non-Chinese airline (honestly, internal China flights - not safe), so I might have to save it for another time.

I understand your fear--I took a Chinese airline from Urumqi (another place that I really liked) when I was there and it was an interesting experience. I was scared from the stories that I had heard about the airline and the fact that the plane looked to be much older than me--but, I did eat the best plane food I have ever had.

I found the train to Urumqi much more uncomfortable since while I was in a sleeper car, several members of the Chinese military decided to open the door. They were not interested in my passport. They looked around, stared me down, and then made themselves at home in the car. I am not good at confronting people in uniforms (especially in a communist country) so I didn't say a word as they ignored me...I didn't get much sleep that night in the car. However, I did drink way too much Chinese wine (which is far from being wine since it is a grain alcohol).

However, the scariest flight I have ever been on was in Iran. The flight was fine, but just as I boarded, I started reading the English language newspaper. The first article was about how the exact same flight that I was on, the previous day, was almost hijacked. I felt much safer when I found out that every plane in Iran has several soldiers on board.

[toddst]

Todd...I want to go to Kashgar (they say Kashi here), but it's almost 50 hrs. each way to Urumqi, and then another half day to Kashgar. I don't think I can afford to fly on a non-Chinese airline (honestly, internal China flights - not safe), so I might have to save it for another time.

I understand your fear--I took a Chinese airline from Urumqi (another place that I really liked) when I was there and it was an interesting experience. I was scared from the stories that I had heard about the airline and the fact that the plane looked to be much older than me--but, I did eat the best plane food I have ever had.

I found the train to Urumqi much more uncomfortable since while I was in a sleeper car, several members of the Chinese military decided to open the door. They were not interested in my passport. They looked around, stared me down, and then made themselves at home in the car. I am not good at confronting people in uniforms (especially in a communist country) so I didn't say a word as they ignored me...I didn't get much sleep that night in the car. However, I did drink way too much Chinese wine (which is far from being wine since it is a grain alcohol).

However, the scariest flight I have ever been on was in Iran. The flight was fine, but just as I boarded, I started reading the English language newspaper. The first article was about how the exact same flight that I was on, the previous day, was almost hijacked. I felt much safer when I found out that every plane in Iran has several soldiers on board.