I still remember blowing into Famicom cartridges until my cheeks hurt.
I was watching some retro gaming videos on YouTube the other day. There was a channel diving deep into the story of SEGA’s Sonic. As I scrolled through the comments, I saw other old-time players sharing how they saved up for cartridges as kids, or how they first held a Mega Drive controller in a small shop. Their memories overlapped with mine.
What surprised me more was the comment section itself. People were rational. They disagreed without fighting. And they were quite welcoming to me, a Chinese commenter.
So I thought: I’ll write too. I’ll write about how we played, growing up on this side of the world.
Not to compare who had it worse, nor to claim we understood games better. Just our real experiences — blowing into Famicom cartridges, getting yelled at by arcade owners, going from grey-market PS2s to an official Chinese version of the Switch.
We are all gamers who love life. We just grew up in different places.
Before I begin, I want to say a few things. Not as a defense, just to let you know where we started.
First, we don’t run from the piracy issue. Back then, there was no other path. When we grew up, we bought legitimate copies — not to whitewash the past, but because we genuinely wanted to pay that ticket.
Second, Steam helped a lot. For many Chinese players, the concept of buying legitimate games began with Steam. For older games that never got remastered, we still seek out original physical copies from back in the day.
Third, the game console ban and the “war on gaming addiction” did shape us. I’m not here to talk politics, but to say this: it was a generational disconnect, not anyone’s fault.
Fourth, the shift from grey imports to legitimate copies was a natural process. I’m optimistic about China’s console market and its games. If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join us.
Fifth, we just live in different places. The love for games is the same. Chinese people are often busy, but the way we support legitimate games may be a little different from yours.
Alright. Let’s begin.
(Small note: AI helped polish the grammar a little. Every story here — blowing cartridges, the Water Level 8 rumor, the arcade owner’s noodles, using PSP as an MP4 player — is 100% my real experience.)
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.
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.
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.