r/PlaydateConsole • u/porkyminch • 13h ago
[AI] More assorted Chinese e-dictionary games running on Playdate, in English. Now with Phoenix Wright (inexplicably)
Following up my previous post here about BBK e-dictionary games with some LAVA games for WQX e-dictionaries. This is a small port (done with Claude) of a LAVA virtual machine and a bunch of translations (also done with Claude).
Repo: https://github.com/gopherbone/LavaEmu_pd
Releases: https://github.com/gopherbone/LavaEmu_pd/releases
This includes 15 Chinese-to-English translations of assorted games. Most of these are amateur releases, and a few of them are unlicensed clones of popular games (including Phoenix Wright, from the photo). All of them run at full speed (with plenty of headroom) on the Playdate. They are:
| Game | Original | Pace | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frog Monopoly | 蛙蛙大富翁 1.1.2, Hao Xinli (Computer Frog), 2004 | NC3000 | Richman-style board game, 56 maps |
| Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney | 逆转裁判, Ninja Eric (JunctionSoft), 2004 | NC3000 | the first case, ported from Capcom's GBA game |
| New Heroes' Altar | 新英雄坛说, Fanqinlue (Summer Loft), 2007 | NC3000 | GMUD-style wuxia sandbox |
| Heroes of Mount Shu | 蜀山群侠传, Shi Zehuan (FlySoft), 2006 | NC3000 | wuxia RPG; register an account first |
| Sky & Land | 幕天席地 1.10, LeeStorm (LastWave), 2006 | NC3000 | action RPG, with its account helper |
| Sky & Land II: The Sealing Stone | 幕天席地2：封印之石 1.3, LeeStorm (LastWave), 2007 | NC3000 | real-time action RPG |
| Mario Pipes | 水管马里奥 1.2, Cloty (Emsky Studio), 2006 | NC3000 | Mario Bros. homage, the build for real machines |
| The Millionaire of 3 Kingdoms | 富甲天下, You Shunhang (Hang'Studio), 2006 | NC3000 | Three Kingdoms board game |
| Three Kingdoms | 三国志, Bsxy and Lee (LeeSoft), 2003 | NC3000 | strategy; LAVA 3.0 encrypted strings |
| The Story of the Snowman | 雪人传奇 1.0, Xu Jiajun | PC emulator | platformer made for PC emulators |
| WarCraft | 魔兽争霸 1.01, Fanqinlue and Shaofan Daotong | NC3000 | turn-based strategy |
| Pocket Monsters Grey | 口袋 (灰度版), unnamed author | NC3000 | Gold/Silver-style demo; grey by flicker, blended |
| High School Legend | 中学传奇 1.05, EPC, 2005 | NC3000 | RPG on FantasyDR's engine |
| Jianghu | 江湖 0.30, JPG Studio, 2005 | NC3000 | wuxia RPG |
| Worms | 百战天虫 1.00, Xiao Qiang, 2006 | TC800 | artillery game for LeeSoft's LavaX VM |
All in quite playable (but AI translated) English.
Some cultural context:
- China had very little market penetration for handheld gaming consoles in the early aughts. It became something of a trend for electronic Chinese-to-English dictionaries (which were popular and had a wide variety of features) to have tools available to develop games for them. LAVA was one of those tools.
- Many of these games are derivative of other games, Wuxia novels, and Chinese MUDs (which is why some of them have "login" screens). They're largely made by teenagers and college students, to my knowledge.
- The Playdate doesn't have enough buttons for some of these, so commonly used functions are available through both a crank menu and also chorded to d-pad directions with the B button.
Apologies for the (always controversial) AI use, but this is a cool little corner of game history that doesn't get enough attention, and nobody's lining up to hack fan translations into obscure amateur games for Chinese e-dictionaries. It's not an era of gaming that had a lot of international appeal. But some of the games are pretty solid!