Lecture Traces Overlooked Home Console History in Chinese-Speaking World
According to an article on SSPai, a Sichuan Fine Arts Institute lecture traced more than four decades of overlooked Chinese-made home console history and argued that the 2000s ban never halted domestic production.
The speaker said that nostalgic articles often reduce Chinese-made consoles to the Subor (Xiao Ba Wang) educational computer, a view that ignores a longer industrial record. Chinese-speaking regions began producing Pong-style machines based on General Instrument AY-3-8500 chips in the late 1970s in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and on the mainland in the early 1980s. Over the following four decades, a division of labour emerged between mainland and Taiwanese companies, with products often manufactured through cross-strait collaboration.
The 2000 ban on game consoles in mainland China, the talk argued, did not actually halt domestic console development. Local manufacturers continued to serve low-age educational niches and export markets, but these machines rarely entered the radar of influential players, who favoured Japanese and American mainstream titles.
The lecture divided the history into six phases. The 1980s saw 8-bit pioneers such as VTech’s CreatiVision and Taiwan-based Poxtech’s BIT-60 and BIT-90. Taiwan makers challenged the mainstream market in the 1990s with the Gamate handheld and the Super A’Can 16-bit console. In the 2000s, design and manufacturing moved to mainland China, shifting toward motion-sensing fitness consoles and low-age educational games. From the late 2000s through the 2010s, open-source handhelds like Dingoo A320 appeared, followed by Android and Windows handhelds such as JXD and GPD Win. Later, maker-oriented devices like Meowbit and the structured-light camera console Persee also emerged.
VTech, founded in Hong Kong in October 1976, was highlighted as an early long-running player. It moved from contract manufacturing to branded products, releasing the CreatiVision in 1982, a hybrid game console and home computer with BASIC programming. The lecture singled out VTech Video Painter, a 1990s drawing and animation device for televisions, which brought a subset of professional video-editing capabilities down to the $100 toy range, a cost-control achievement rooted in a long-standing Chinese manufacturing approach.
Among Taiwanese makers, Poxtech built its BIT series around the 6502 processor and later launched the Gamate, one of the earliest rivals to Nintendo’s Game Boy. Poxtech’s game-hardware research was acquired by Dunhuang Technology, a subsidiary of United Microelectronics, which released the Super A’Can in 1995. The machine used Motorola’s 68000 CPU with graphics and sound chips designed in-house, but it arrived at the tail end of the 16-bit generation and was squeezed by cheaper Nintendo-compatible machines on the mainland and by upcoming 3D consoles. The console was stopped after pressure from major Japanese clients, including Nintendo.
Later sections covered motion-sensing console chips from Sunplus Technology, widely used in Wii-like devices on the mainland, and 6502-compatible chips from V.R. Technology, as well as “dedicated consoles” offering a fixed set of built-in games. The lecture concluded that, despite a reputation for imitation, these neglected consoles contained a multidimensional originality, and encouraged potential creators in the audience to use the history as material for future work.