A History of Nintendo's Hong Kong Releases

American. European. Japanese. Long ago, the three regions lived in harmony. But nothing changed when Hong Kong appeared because no one really knows about the history of Nintendo's system releases in Hong Kong, so let's rectify that!

This video was originally uploaded as a part of April Fools Day 2020, with the following title and description:

"任天堂的香港銷售歷史"
是時候看一看大多數人不熟悉的任天堂歷史了!
愚人節快樂 :)

April Fools Playlist:

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:29 Nintendo Entertainment System
03:34 Famicom
04:45 Super Famicom & SNES
06:28 Game Boy
07:07 Nintendo 64
07:50 Nintendo GameCube
08:19 Game Boy Advance
08:54 Nintendo DS
09:57 Wii
10:58 Nintendo 3DS
14:23 Nintendo Switch

BGM List:
• Training Mode - Super Smash Bros.
• Think it Through - Pushmo World
• Introducing Pikuniku Again (Trailer 2) - Pikuniku
• Stage 1 - Gumshoe
• Stage Theme - Gyromite
• Town Theme 1 - BS-X
• Type A (v1.0) - Tetris (Game Boy)
• Choose Character - Pilotwings 64
• A Secret Course - Super Mario Sunshine
• Connecting - Mario Kart: Super Circuit
• Tunnel - Rhythm Heaven
• Game Selection - Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort
• Mii Plaza Music 1 - StreetPass Mii Plaza
• Doodle - Photo Channel
• Ravio’s Theme - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
• Blaster - Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit
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Written and edited by Akfamilyhome
Intro edited by Akfamilyhome
Intro theme composed by COCONABE
Endslate theme composed by MistSomething
Intro avatar designed by StarnyArt, originally designed by Akfamilyhome

#Nintendo #HongKong

[Akfamilyhome]

Corrections:
-Simon & Toys and Mani are the same company! It was a renaming that happened around September of 1990.
-The rarest Hong Kong NES release was Mahjong, due to it not receiving an NES release anywhere else in the world. I knew about this before the video was published, but time constraints led me to leave it out.
-In Taiwan, there were official Famicom cartridges that were released along with the Taiwanese equivalent of the Sharp C1 television, a TV with a Famicom built in. I haven't been able to confirm if similar cartridges we're officially released in Hong Kong, though.
-The GameCube was officially released in Asia as an import of the Japanese version like the GBA! There are photos of Japanese GameCube boxes with Chinese stickers attached denoting that it uses the Japanese voltage standard and plays Japanese games.
-Just like the GameCube, there were GBA systems and games released in Hong Kong by Mani with official HK version labels, but most of them were simply relabelled Japanese imports. In the same way, the original DS was released in HK under this format as well, before the formation of Nintendo Hong Kong.

Further context for the folks who are watching this video for the first time in the future: This was originally uploaded on April Fools Day 2020, hence the intro bit. I don't know if I'll do any more Chinese stuff in the future though considering that's not my main demographic. :P

[marioshi]

Everyone, activate captions. This should help.

[gentu]

This took me a while, but here’s the translation:
[Speaking Chinese]

[tinlunlau]

Here's another fact. The narrator in the Cantonese Nintendo ads is none other than Eric Kok (葛民輝). You may have seen him in such movies as Jackie Chan's City Hunter. He's one of the two who sang that Kala Kala Happy song.

[PleaseUnsubscribeHaha]

I was preparing to watch an entire 16-minute video in Chinese, without knowing anything about what was being said! I was pleasantly surprised.

[jackychang]

me: aw man I better turn on captions
captions: *speaking chinese*

[VERYLAZYTUNNELS]

7:29 " I learned that the hard way." OOF

[Larry]

I always remember recieving a Hong Kong copy of Zelda: Ocarina of time on N64 back in the day, as it was the first place in the world to recieve an English language version.

[zagaberoo]

Super interesting history, and cool to hear some Cantonese too.

[BigOlSmellyFlashlight]

because of kanji I'd assume playing Japanese games as a Chinese speaker would be like playing German games as an English speaker
a few things can be understood because of similarities between languages

[dac]

The joke is that it's actually a video in english

[thundersharkpanda]

Thank you for making this video. I live in Taiwan and ever since the DS era, Taiwan just followed whatever Nintendo of HK decided to do. The only thing I would like to add is how Taiwanese and Hong Kong Wii region is like a mini sub-region of NTSC-J. All Japanese games work on Taiwanese consoles and all the different modification shenanigans like homebrew and letter bomb that worked on Japanese consoles works on the consoles too. However, the Taiwanese consoles have no access to the e-shop. And all games that use the Nintendo wifi connection would recognize the TW-HK-Macau consoles as a distinct region.


Back in the good old days when I still used to play Mario Kart Wii competitively, Taiwanese consoles had its unique regional leaderboards. In online multiplayer, every region also had a different color indicator under the player name. For example, red for Japan, Blue for NA, Green for Europe, etc. The color for Taiwan, however, was White. Some people would even hack their Wiis so they would get the white border. I was one of the two only Taiwanese people in the community when I was playing the game, and many people thought I was using an iso to get the White border. (And therefore asking me how I got the iso, when I was in fact just using my Wii regularly.)


But man I do miss HK and its game shops and arcades. I am studying in HK and this is supposed to be my last semester here, but I am not able to go back to HK due to "insert term here".The video definitely brings back good memories of exploring Mon Kok and Shum Shui Po's narrow and crowded game shops.

[emmbeesea]

While I have listened to my grandmother speak Shanghainese for many years as a kid, I still can't distinguish different Chinese dialects.

[omnisel]

Man, with all these restrictions, I can't imagine being a gamer in Mainland China, must be hell.

[Demeech]

What a cool history lesson! Keep up the great work.

My only question? Was Hong Kong's Super Mario Bros. 2 The Lost Levels or USA?

[J-D]

Okay I was ready to turn on subtitles, got pranked there and was ready to leave, good thing I stayed lol.

Didnt know about the whole Hong Kong/China difference so I always assumed all you got there were bootlegs. Learned a lot today!

[yvanchiavazzo]

So if this is technically NOT an April Fools video, are we also getting an English title for it soon?

[LuxyX]

Here in brazil we use to get some chinese switch games too, they are way cheaper than the US version or even the Brazilian version, and at the end of the day is the same game with all languages supported by the game included so it's a win-win situation, and I like the typography too, it's rly cool

[BahuschBahusch]

The automated captions at the beginning are a thing of beauty

[lrgogo]

My thoughts on your current intro: So when I first heard the Rhythm Heaven count-in, I was super hyped. But then it also played the usual half-audible start up, which broke the mood. I thought the count-in would replace that first part, instead of the equivalent of a bass drop leading to music at the same level as before.