1. 1980s–1990s: The Little Tyrant and the “Learning Machine”

Near the end of the Famicom era, a peculiar product appeared in China: the Little Tyrant learning machine. It looked like a keyboard. It could teach simple programming. More importantly — it could play Famicom games. Many parents believed their children were studying. The spokesperson was action star Jackie Chan. It was affordable. So it entered many households.

Today’s casual Chinese gamers might only know Tencent, not Nintendo. But the generation that grew up with the Little Tyrant remembers one catchphrase — the boot-up jingle: “Ah~ Little Tyrant, so much fun!”

The Little Tyrant used pirated cartridges. The chips were cheap, nowhere near as stable as legitimate ones. But it was also compatible with official Famicom carts.

And then there’s a habit unique to Chinese players — some still keep it today: blowing into cartridges. Three puffs of breath onto the gold contacts before inserting the cartridge. It didn’t really help. It was pure superstition. But without it, something felt missing.

Popular cartridges were multi-game compilations. “999 games in 1” sounded like a great deal, but in reality it was the same few games with renamed titles. For a real AAA title, you had to buy a “4-in-1” cartridge for about 1 USD. More expensive, but worth it.

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And then there was the legend. Contra’s hidden “Water Level 8.” Kids across the country were whispering: after you beat the normal 8 levels, there were 8 more underwater. On the 6th level, there was an enemy that glitched into a frog-mouth shape. If you jumped onto it, you could enter the hidden stage. We all tried. We jumped. We died. Some kids bragged they had done it. We believed them.

Later, when we got online, we learned it was fake — the Famicom cartridge never had it. But in 2016, a Chinese player went through every version. On the MSX2 version, after beating the final boss, the protagonist really dives into the deep sea. The path underwater really existed. A 30-year rumor, finally proven true. Konami themselves later acknowledged it.

It wasn’t that we loved making up stories. It was that era: no internet, no guides, only word of mouth. And sometimes, the rumor outran the truth.

Pirate sellers were even more ruthless. As long as a game played like Contra, they’d slap the Contra name on the box. Water Contra → real name: Shadow of the Ninja (katanas, not guns). Air Contra → real name: Final Mission (difficult to the point of self-harm). Space Contra → real name: Raf World (great music, nothing to do with Contra). Contra 6/7/8 → all bootlegs (official Contra 4 didn’t come out until 2008 on the DS). Super Contra 7 → a domestic bootleg, literally titled Super Contra 7. You’d buy it, plug it in, and realize you’d been tricked. But you’d grit your teeth and play anyway. Some of them were pretty good. Our generation grew up being scammed like that.