It has been a smidge over a week since I arrived in China. In that short space of time I’ve seen a lot, eaten a lot, and breathed a lot of foggy air.

From what I’ve discovered so far, the Chinese gaming scene appears entirely restricted to online games. As I’ve yet to see a single video game shop, or even a store that stocks video games.

Amazingly, even the big brand retailers don’t stock games…

Wal-Mart China, 0 Video Games.
Best Buy China, 0 Video Games.
Toys-R-Us China, 0 Video Games.

I have no idea what the hell is going on. I’ve found myself down so many back-streets, gone to far too many shopping malls, and I literally haven’t seen a single video game for sale. If anyone has been to Shanghai, and knows where to track down one of these fabled video games shops, I would be much obliged if you could give me some directions.

The closest I’ve come to trying my hand at gaming was at a really shady Mahjong club in an old part of Shanghai, which is pretty much the highlight of this, my first China Gaming Adventure post.

Before I start explaining what I was doing in a shady back-alley Mahjong Club, and for those who haven’t read my forum posts, I arrived in China early December from a lovely place known as Australia. The primary reason I traveled here was for my girlfriend’s (Stella) brother’s wedding, although my hidden agenda was to spend the entire holiday hunting for unique games.

I’m currently living in the Songjiang district of Shanghai with my girlfriend’s family, about a 2-hour subway trip to the centre of Shanghai.

Me unimpressed by the fog (photo taken from family’s apartment).

Stella showing off the fog in Songjiang, Subway Station hidden somewhere in the fog.

On my 6th day in China, with the brother’s wedding finally over, I felt comfortable to travel into the city to try and discover China’s hidden gaming treasures. So we boarded a pleasant bus outside of Stella’s family’s apartment, heading towards the nearest subway station. The bus paved its way through all the major sections of Songjiang before finally arriving at the subway, I was hoping I would see a video game shop on this rather long bus journey… but alas, it was not to be.

The subway ride into Shanghai was pretty uneventful, with the exception of that, if you are western and you are busting to take a dump, Chinese Subway toilets are quite a different style to western toilets, no toilet paper and nothing to sit on, instead you need to squat.

My Camera’s flash ‘accidentally’ went off, I got a few weird looks when leaving the stall.

As you can see the toilet comes equipped with a hole in the floor, a toilet brush and a garbage bin. And, if you weren’t aware, in China, toilet paper isn’t provided free at toilets, instead you have to travel with your own paper handy. Fortunately for me, I didn’t need to ‘offload’ anything, but I felt honest pity for the western tourists who could find themselves in a rather shitty situation.

But I digress, the subway carriage became extremely packed as we came closer to the city centre (think Sardines in a can, but with a policeman trying to push an infinite amount more Sardines in). Luckily, since we boarded at the start of the line, we managed to score ourselves some prime seats, which made it somewhat easier to guard my belongings from the pesky pickpockets.

When we finally arrived in Shanghai City, we were greeted by Stella’s friend who picked us up from the station, and took us to her humble home located about a 20 minutes drive away from the city centre.

Stella was able to have an in-depth conversation with her friend, friend’s husband, and their parents, apparently I was the first white person that they had seen in their district (yay), so the entire family all wanted to be there, and to be the first to welcome me. Sadly, due to my lack of Mandarin speaking skills, I was paired up with the baby, whom I nicknamed ‘Dumbo’ because his ears were so insanely epic. The family was trying to get the baby to call me white uncle in Chinese (prounced bai shishu), although the baby, at nine months old, didn’t have much luck comprehending it.

After about an hour, the husband got a little bit bored with the banter, and went to his nearby computer to play a Chinese QQ version of Hearts. I was slightly elated, as it was my first sight of any video gaming in China – even if it was just hearts. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to ask if I could have a turn.

It was starting to get late and I was hungry, so Stella’s friend and husband decided to take us to a popular eating joint for foreigners, which apparently is normally packed with white folk. I happily went, hoping to be able to have a somewhat-intellectual conversation with someone other my girlfriend. We get to the restaurant. I get a little excited about having a conversation in English. But, alas, there wasn’t a single English speaking person to be seen. They figured it might have been because all the foreigners had gone back to their countries for Christmas… sucked, but the food was decent, except that damn chicken head looking at me from across my plate of fried rice.

Yep, that’s a chicken head nestled away in my fried lice. Why they would put a chicken head in my beef fried rice is extremely puzzling; my guess is that the staff wanted to see what reaction a foreigner would have to a chicken head. Surely they didn’t want me to eat it?

Yet after about the fifth time of Stella’s friends quizzing her regarding why I hadn’t touched my chicken head, I had a little nibble. The flavour wasn’t great, and it sure enough tasted like chicken, but it wasn’t for me. Although, compared to the pigs’ brains and ducks’ blood (yes, seriously), which I was eating earlier in the week, it wasn’t too bad.

After dinner, I was taken on a tour of the Shanghai nightclub scene; enjoyable, but alcohol at nightclubs is damn expensive here. The highlight of the evening was when we ended up at a nightclub where they had an African-American singer. From what I gathered, all the Chinese thought that it was a pretty big deal, and worth the exorbitant prices.

By the time we finished our nightclub crawl it was about 2am, and by then I was pretty damn tired and drunk. Stella’s friends (at her request) dropped us off at a seedy looking place called Motel168, where, as it’s name implies, you can stay the night for 168 yuan, which is close to $25 USD (very cheap for Shanghai).

Please excuse the bad photo join.

You pretty much get what you pay for: a junior size double bed, a bathroom with no door, and a strong cigarette odour wafting through the ventilation system.

The next day we did the usual touristy stuff around Shanghai (which I will leave for facebook). Towards the end of the day we were pretty trashed from having a poor night’s sleep, a hangover, and spending the day non-stop walking. Hence, we decided to take Stella’s Mum up on her offer of picking us up and taking us home.

To get to the Mum ‘pick-up’ point, we had to catch a sardine bus, similar to the sardine subway mentioned previously. This time, I wasn’t lucky enough to get a seat. Now, I come from a relatively quiet island off Australia, known as Tasmania. Buses, when they are full in Tasmania, are still comfortable. This bus was the opposite; people were packed in so tight that their faces were pressed up against the window. It was highly uncomfortable, and I kept getting a feeling someone was trying to snag my wallet out of my pocket…. joy.

The bus trip took a good hour, and, oddly, it was heading away from Songjiang district (home). So, after an uncomfortable hour-long bus ride away from our target destination, we ended up in an almost slum area of Shanghai. I wanted to take a few photos, but Stella advised against it because she thought someone from the crowd would try to nab my camera (…seriously). It wasn’t a pretty place but this was where Stella’s Mum was waiting for us.

Last photo taken before being told not to use my camera (or it’ll be stolen)

After navigating the slum streets for half an hour, we found the place we were looking for: a run-down 10-story building with the number ‘9′ on it. This is where Stella’s mum was waiting for us. Well, not really waiting, she was there playing the popular gambling pastime of China: Mahjong. Upon entering the building, I honestly felt like I was walking into one of the slum buildings from Hollywood movies. You know the ones where they are riddled with druggies, very poor lighting, people hanging around at the doorways to their apartment, random rooms with loud music coming from them. Well, it was exactly like that; what I would call a slum, but apparently a good place to play Mahjong.

We took the stairs (the elevator wasn’t working, unsurprisingly) up to the fifth floor where Stella’s Mum was playing Mahjong in a tiny room with three other mature-aged Chinese ladies. The windows were all covered with paper, and there was a heavy fog from the excess smoking. In the corner of this room is where I spent a good two hours waiting for her to finish her Mahjong game so we could go home.

I got offered a seat at the table when one of the ladies was leaving, but since I have no idea how to play Mahjong, I declined. And that, as anti-climatic as it is, is the closest I have come to playing a game in China.

With the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum this week I couldn’t help but replay and revisit all the old Batman games in anticipation, although most of the Batman games are utter rubbish there are a few gems among them, and these are the top 6.

6. Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu – XBOX

Rise of Sin Tzu is a back to basics brawler and is very similar to the classic brawlers like Double Dragon. The main villain is Sin Tzu a never before seen character making his debut appearance in this game, although not to leave out the regulars, 3 villains from the comics make appearance as end level bosses, the Scarecrow, Bang and Clayface.

The playable roster is Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing and of course Batman, most feel very similar to play but they are great for cooperative play.

It’s a pretty decent game if all you are looking for is to mindlessly beat up thugs for a couple of hours.

5. Justice League Heroes – XBOX

Although this game is based around the ‘Justice League’ Batman is one of the primary characters.

Justice League Heroes was created by the same developers and on the same engine as the hack and slash game ‘Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance,’ thus it comes unsurprisingly that JLH plays like a Hack & Slash game, as you progress you can level up and gain new ability for your characters, although instead of item collecting they have replaced it with Jewel collecting as I guess it’s hard to imagine Batman wearing a + 1 Luck Ring *ahem* anyway the jewels can be used to augment your characters and improve the stats of your choice, there is a bit of depth to jewels but I wont go into it.

Batman sadly isn’t playable throughout the entire game, although whenever he is playable it’s great fun whooping out some Batman kick ass action.

4. Batman – NES

Batman, just Batman. No lengthy title was needed to sell this game, no gimmicks, no expensive cut scenes just pure Batman induced carnage.

Batman loosely follows the 1989 movie, the villain is the Joker and Batman is on a mission to lock him up.

It’s not a particularly great game by today’s standards and some of the stages difficulty are trauma inducingly hard, but I still love it for nostalgia’s sake and because it was the first Batman game I ever played.

3. Batman: Vengeance – XBOX

By far the best Batman 3D game to be released, the storyline is based in the Cartoon series continuity, Batman is the target of a conspiracy after being framed for attacking Commissioner Gordon. Now it’s up to Batman to figure out who is behind this before Gotham City is destroyed!

The graphics are very nicely done and almost look like they are taken straight out of the animated TV series, and the in game cinematics definitely give the feel the you are playing through a ‘feature-length’ episode.

The boss battles are great fun and are definitely the highlight of this game, street roaming is quite good although the first person sections let the game down a little.

2. The Adventures of Batman & Robin – SNES

My personal favourite 2D Batman game, ‘The Adventures of Batman & Robin’ is a side-scrolling action platformer, there is no overarching storyline in this game instead each level has its own storyline, setting and villains. Each stage is remarkably different to the previous and each feels like your playing through a different episode of the cartoon series.

The gameplay is where this game really shines, you can do the usual punch, kick and throw but you can also use the bat utility belt which comes with a plethora of equipment, including a grappling hook, stun grenades, night vision, flashlight, smoke bombs, grenades and Batarangs!

The levels are very varied going from a carnival to a museum, to even fighting on a chess board, each level is very detailed and is a blast to play through.

Fortunately for Robin haters his role is minor in the game, as he’ll just chip in occasionally to help you when you are in trouble. Nearly all the main villains from the series make an appearance including The Penguin, Clayface, Poison-Ivy, Two-Face, Catwoman, Scarecrow and of course no Batman game would be complete without the Joker.

1. The Obvious…

To quote Chris from Gamer Limit

Simply put, if you’re a Batman fan, and don’t have Arkham Asylum yet; save your allowance up, trade some games in, Goozex it: the bottom line is somehow, you need to buy this game. Action fans may be left wanting more, but for the studio’s first foray into the Batman franchise, it’s a solid title.

Read the full review here.

Well yet another week is over and yet again it’s time to touch base with our sister site Gamer Limit, check out the latest hot stories below.

Tomb Raider Movie Reboot, who should be the new raider?

Real Life “Portal Gun”

An in-depth look at all 15 films that influenced the Metal Gear Solid series

The 5 Most Recognisable Gaming Icons Ever

Well thats it until next week, enjoy your weekend.

This week, get inside the mind of Will Wright creator of numerous simulation games.

Until next time~

Duck Hunt was one of the first lightgun games available for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The title sums the game up nicely – all you have to do is murder ducks. There are three game modes: Game A has one duck on screen at a time, Game B has two on screen at a time, and Game C is clay pigeon shooting. You have 3 shots to clear the screen of ducks or clay pigeons, and each round has 10 ducks/clay pigeons to be shot.

This is one of the only NES games to make good use of the awesome Nintendo Zapper. There were a few lightgun games on the NES, but most of them aren’t that good. Personally I played Operation Wolf recently and ended up banishing it from my console after dying in the same place three times in a row. You can’t see where your shots are landing as the sprites are so small and the whole screen flickers every time you pull the trigger. While the game offers much more variety than Duck Hunt, I found it almost unplayable.

Duck Hunt is so simple that anyone can play it. The game suffers from none of the issues that hampered Operation Wolf. The graphics are clear, well animated and large enough to make out properly when squinting through the sights of the Zapper. And the music is classic 8-bit Nintendo, very reminiscent of the company’s other games from the era.

The game starts, traditionally, with Round 1. Here you see on screen the landscape that will be seen for the rest of your play time. I told you the game was simple, remember. Also note your trusty dog sniffing along the ground and diving into the grass as the game starts. Dog lover or not, you will attempt to shoot him in the very near future. Unfortunately it’s not possible to shoot the dog in the console version of Duck Hunt, although Wikipedia tells of an “urban legend” (their words, not mine) that the dog can actually be shot in a bonus round in the arcade version. I would love to know whether this is true or not, but the chances of me being able to find an original arcade cab of Duck Hunt in the UK are slim and none…

Anyway, one or two ducks will soon fly onscreen (depending on which mode you are playing), and you have 3 attempts to shoot them. As expected, in the early rounds the ducks fly slower and change direction less often. As you progress through the game they get harder to hit. Each time you hit a duck it will stop dead in the air with a startled look on its face, then do a spinning beak-dive to the floor. Your trusty dog then picks up the duck corpse as a little congratulatory jingle plays. WARNING: this bit of music gets played every time you hit a duck, and gets VERY annoying. Possibly more annoying however, is the dog when you miss a duck. Rather than console his master, or offer some constructive criticism, he merely stands up and laughs at you. As if he could even load a shotgun, let alone kill a duck with it! Anyway, this is the reason you’ll want to blast the dog – because if you’ve never played before, chances are he’s going to be laughing at you a lot.

Although you can only have one Zapper plugged into the NES at a time (as a controller needs to be plugged into the second port to select games), it is possible to play Duck Hunt with two players. The second player is unable to shoot at ducks, but can use the direction pad on the controller to control the direction that the ducks fly.

The clay pigeon shooting mode is very similar to game modes A and B, but the clay pigeons are smaller targets, and always fired two at a time. This mode provides a little more of a challenge, and the annoying dog is absent too.

The only problem with Duck Hunt is the repetitive nature of the game. It goes like this: shoot duck, watch dog animation, repeat. The game requires extreme patience and concentration – I can’t imagine most gamers sticking with it for longer than 10 minutes at a time. I have never finished this game, in fact I don’t even know how many rounds there are. I recently had a Duck Hunt session where I got to Round 17 but I had to stop in the end as my arms were aching from holding the Zapper and the squinting to aim was giving me a headache. And I was also starting to think to myself that life has probably got more to offer me than this.

Duck Hunt has been around pretty much as long as the NES itself. It was packaged with the console for some years, sharing a game cartridge with that other early NES classic, Super Mario Bros. The game even has a cameo in the movie Boyz ‘N’ The Hood, that’s how legendary it is. Although the gun they used certainly wasn’t a NES Zapper!

To summarise, Duck Hunt is a well made early lightgun game that works well in small doses but will test even the strongest-willed gamer’s patience. The game can easily be picked up at car boot sales, second hand game shops or eBay for next to nothing. Right, I’m off to find me the arcade version. God I’d love to kill that dog…

After a long way break TakeTwo is finally back in action, this weeks episode is a history of New grounds, so grab a drink, get comfortable and enjoy the latest episode.

Until next time~

Well another week is over and yet again it’s time to touch base with our sister site Gamer Limit, check out the latest hot stories below.

Trailers

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Trailer

News

New ‘Infamous’ Gameplay footage, Force Unleashed 2?

Wii remote originally a gamecube accessory?

Phantasy Star Zero Hands On Preview

Reviews

Guitar Hero: World Tour Review

Tomb Raider Underworld Review

Gaming Ottoman Review

Well that’s the latest from the limit for this week, our regular publishing schedule will resume on monday(tomorrow) as per normal.

As we have haven’t caught up on the normal gaming front in over two weeks, I thought it best to do a quick recap of the top stories from our brother site Gamer Limit, check em out after the jump.

November’s top 5 must haves!

Why All Gamers Should Love D. Jaffe

Sequels: Are They Good For the Industry?

5 Things We Don’t Want In 2009

Five Other Uses for Videogames

Looking to the Future

To be continued… next week.

After a bit of a wait, here is my latest retro review. Unfortunately I don’t do this full time and real life has a way of wasting my precious time, but tonight I thought I’d take a minute to review the classic racing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super Mario Kart.

Released in the early years of the SNES, Super Mario Kart took Nintendo’s trademark characters and threw them into a hectic, addictive game that spawned many a sequel, and the odd rip off (Street Racer anyone?). The game was a great success; in fact most of the features you see in Mario Kart Wii come directly from the original game.

I can’t think of another franchise that has transcended genres as well as the Mario series (other than Typing of The Dead, the baffling yet ingenius House of The Dead spin-off that used zombies to aid your touch-typing skills). Platformers (the Super Mario Bros series), puzzlers (Dr Mario), art (Mario Paint), sport (Mario Golf, Mario Strikers Charged Football etc) and now racing. I’m just waiting for the day someone puts an AK-47 in his white-gloved hand and makes a first-person shooter set in the Mushroom Kingdom.

But I digress! Usually when I sit down to write a review I’ll play the game for a while to get the feel for it, and some screenshots. Tonight I’ve been playing this game for ages. Once you get used to the sensitivity of the controls (cornering is not as easy as it looks, especially when trying to avoid a banana skin or dinosaur egg) the game becomes great fun. Unlike in more recent incarnations, the characters aren’t so evenly matched here. For example, Bowser and Donkey Kong are heavy and slow, but they will win any shoving match with the other characters. The smaller characters are faster but will get pushed out of the way when they collide with bigger characters. I prefer this to the likes of Mario Kart Wii, where Toad could just as easily bash Donkey Kong out of the way.

The graphics in this game are charming to say the least. This was one of the first games to use Nintendo’s hyped up Mode 7 graphics, making it kind of 3D in places, but not quite. This is a good thing though, because in those days full-on 3D meant blocky polygons (eg. Starfox). Super Mario Kart retains the well animated graphics we had come to expect from Nintendo, as well as the cute, soppy celebratory animations when a race is won. And it still looks strangely impressive when the camera pans around your character at the start of each race…

The tracks are based mainly on levels from that other SNES classic, Super Mario World. Most of the levels from the original Super Mario Kart have been recreated in subsequent games, which either shows how good they were to start with, or how uninventive Nintendo have been in recent years… I’ll let you decide!

There are four cups to complete, each with five tracks. There are also 3 engine sizes to choose from, which caters for gamers of all abilities. As with most racing games, Super Mario Kart is best enjoyed with friends, and two-player mode is where the real fun is to be had. Tossing a red shell at a computer-controlled driver is all well and good, but smashing your mate off the course is way more satisfying!

This game can be picked up fairly cheaply on eBay these days, and since it isn’t available on Virtual Console yet, that is about the only way you can play it! Personally I think it’s well worth the purchase, if you’re into fun racing games or are a Nintendo/Mario completist.

Execution is key on everything: from packing up your stuff into your bag to creating games. In the case of eating, to execute eating: you use your utensils, pick the food up, put it into your mouth, chew it, and then swallow it. If you don’t execute it well, you’ll be a toddler who uses his hand to pick up food and swallow food without chewing. That is the point I’m addressing today: If you can’t do it properly, why bother?

Many game developers, including Adobe Flash and Console developers, tend to skip these subtly important part of processes because they feel that it’s unnecessary and cumbersome. There are reasons why these stepping stones are made so the execution will feel more organized and well-executed.

Brainstorming:

To get good ideas, you need to get inspired and write out all the ideas no matter how absurd the ideas are so you can find an amazing idea to make. You might have brainstormed a bit before when you’re solving Sudoku puzzles or thinking of a witty comment on your friends’ embarassing photos on Facebook and you’ll understand why it’s so important. This step is clearly the appetizer for a good course meal so why do people skip it? To get a quick amount of cash, of course. If you’ve seen the recent American Pie, Disaster Movie, and possibly Twilight, you could see how horrible and cliched the movies are. Having jumped the shark, these movies still sell well and can be classified as a “get-rich-quick scheme”. The same can be said about console and Flash games: movie-based or trend-based games are the money-takers. The countless TD Flash games (Dungeon Defender, Whiteboard Tower Defense ad infinitum) and IP Protocol Games (South Park games, CSI games, Barbie games ad infinitum) can be seen everywhere and it is possible because of the profitable ventures of the internet. The internets is serious business indeed.

Scripting:

Although this only apply to games with storyline, scriptwriters seem to skip it or do a slapdash work on it. The works of such scripts can be easily compared to B-Movies that have been poked fun of by Mystery Science Theater 3000 and you will see how similar the scripts are. They usually feature generic or overused plotlines which can be terribly annoying and viewers may wonder why in the world will the game need a storyline at all. Games such as wpnFire (Flash) and Dance Dance Revolution (arcade) are more favored as it has no storyline and just features the action players want unlike games such as Thing Thing 4 (Flash) and Need for Speed: Carbon (Multi-Platform) that have sub-par storylines.

Storyboarding:

This is the process where the game is organized so it will be easier for the game developer to create. It is more popular in the filming/animation business and is similar to the outlining process for research papers. Also the process for eliminating bad ideas and saving good ideas, it is worthwhile to stay in the storyboarding process till it’s ready to be created. However, horrible ideas do exist. Amazingly, the underdog PS2 game, Okami, lacks a target-locking feature and is way too easy to finish which pushed the game back to perfection. In more dreadful news, Bomberman: Act Zero (Xbox 360) has a cheesy Sci-Fi theme into it and has the worst features known to mankind. Flash games also suffer from this disease and Pandemic 1 and 2 are just a couple of the many victims that this disease has killed.

Beta-Testing/Peer-Editing:

When you feel the game is set to go, you should ask your critic friends to let them play the game. The top-notch developers such as Bungie and Blizzard Entertainment are amazing in this process as they let a bunch of players play the beta servers. Beta-testing is here as it is easy to find bugs and if the idea is well-polished and seems playable. Should a developer forget this step, it will be a miracle if the game is bug-free and actually fun because in the developer’s perspective, “all the games I made HAVE to be fun!” Imagine the well-loved movie, The Godfather, filled with nonsensical garbage like Don Vito Corleone engaging in a dance-off with the Barzini Family because Francis Ford Coppola accidentally used it as a plot device but you tell him, “Dude, take out that crap and the movie will be better off without it.” This is why beta-testing or peer-editing is important. If you just take a sniff at Newgrounds Flash Portal or at a Japanese department store on the PC section which is filled with hentai games, you could see that most of the games/movies are made by no-brainers who have never asked their friends to criticize it.

Promotion/Advertising:

The final step is promoting the game you’ve just made. If the game is not known to the public, you won’t make a single cent and you should have spent your free time on baby-sitting your neighbor’s children instead. Publishers gives out copy of the console games to reviewers for them to review and advertise the games on TV and on the World Wide Web. They also uses sites like Digg.com to get the attention the game deserve. It is like trying to be popular in school: you have to somehow be known and the easiest way is to be handsome/beautiful or get a hot girlfriend/boyfriend. Sadly, as many game sites stated, Okami (PS2/Wii) is undersold and basically, almost every Kongregate Premium Game published as of to this date, suffers from this drawback.

You may think these kind of rants are very common but they do exist as the flaw(s) exist and the steps skipped. For those developers who are still unconvinced, it’s like learning how to walk: you don’t walk straight-away but you try to become stronger as you need to learn how to stand up and then balance after stepping. The processes for learning how to walk is long and annoying but the result is worthwhile just like how Neil Armstrong felt when he stepped on the moon: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonpratt/1167155238/ – Campfire background