A Brief History of iQue Brand

Bland iQue Player Thumbnail. Based on Wikipedia's material.

Gaming industry is no stranger for copycats. Many individuals and groups in certain regions of the world dabbled on bringing specific consoles and games to their market in one way or the other. It could be done via official partnership with big company or not so official "borrowing" of the preferred system. There are many examples of that (probably more than I'm currently aware of), but I would like to start with one interesting brand I've somewhat interacted with personally back in "better times of my childhood".

Although that experience was limited to just one specific handheld, I would like to direct more focus on more unique exhibit of that peculiar company that managed to kind of stick around to this very day. Perhaps not in a way it operated before, but I will get to that.

A Player, "Not a Console".

iQue company was a result of collaboration between Nintendo and Dr. Wei Yen with the goal to manufacture and distribute official Nintendo products under different name on mainland China to solve the issue with government's ban on video game consoles. Not to mention the rampant piracy scene, unsurprisingly. That specifically halted Nintendo's original plans to sell Game Boy Advance through Hong Kong's sales agent Mani. To combat all those factors, they've decided to focus on localization since Chinese players definitely missed out with all those games being written in English.

Their first and most original console by the name iQue Player was released back on November 17, 2003. Driven by desire to combat aforementioned piracy situation, they've settled on rather curious game distribution model for this Nintendo 64-esque device using system-on-chip technology. I'm not going to pretend that I know how this thing actually works, but I think that's what allowed Nintendo and its Chinese partner to fit the "not-console" in this chunky controller. Which is impressive for the time, I would say.

All 14 available titles were purchasable and downloadable through special iQue service that could've been accessed through special network of kiosks called iQue Debot or a home-based Internet service iQue@Home available via USB connection to your computer. As of 2018, games like Yoshi's Story or Super Smash Bros. aren't officially available through iQue services due to their discontinuation. If you manage to get iQue Player to your collection, you would have to hope that previous owner had something besides included Dr. Mario 64 or several expired demos of some classic games.

Super Mario 64 (iQue Player) "Mario's Head" Screenshot. Taken from The Cutting Room Floor.

Perhaps to a surprise to some of you, but iQue Player has some value outside its uniqueness. This version of Nintendo 64 is popular among certain speedrunners, particular for those focused on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64. Faster scrolling speed of Chinese text and faster loading screens thanks to device's specifications make it a good pick for this kind of players. Controller's design is curious and favored by some retro game enthusiasts that aren't particularly a fans of original Nintendo 64 controller. Due to my "lazy research", I've seen many people compare iQue Player to Duke controller for original Xbox, for better or worse.

Lastly, I think it's no surprise that currently the system has something going on from homebrew scene. Not as much as you would probably hope, but I suppose that's a given since all the efforts on that front really took off only after all official iQue Player services were shut down. I don't think any "new" Nintendo 64 title is playable on the console besides those that were officially released on it, but maybe it's just a matter of time.

Other Endeavors.

Either way, Nintendo's efforts for mainland China market through iQue didn't stop there. Reportedly, iQue Player wasn't particularly successful there (which you could've guessed by a number of available titles on it) and GameCube successor didn't come to life. There were some plans for releasing Wii via iQue brand, but they never materialized. Typical consoles weren't particularly successful there, but what about portable ones?

iQue versions of Game Boy Advance and SP were released in June and October 2004 respectively. Game Boy Micro was only made available at some point in time. I would like to give a special shout-out to the iQue's Game Boy Advance SP as that's the rendition of legendary console that was in my possession for most of my time. There's actually like three GBA SP's within my grasp right now, but I'm only one of them actually works... as far as I remember, at least. Because I don't have working charger, sadly. Either way, unlike iQue Player, all versions of Game Boy Advance and later handheld releases by iQue lacked both anti-piracy and regional restrictions. Nice for your cartridge collection of varying qualities since officially only 8 games were released for the device, which I'm sure wasn't a problem for its Chinese audience in that specific case.

After that, company went on to release all versions of Nintendo DS (besides DSi XL) and Nintendo 3DS XL under iQue brand. Even fewer titles were released with proper translation: 6 and 2 respectively, to be exact. Although a few releases from Nintendo Taiwan and Hong Kong are supposedly playable on iQue's Nintendo 3DS XL.

Current Approach.

Despite being formed and having close relationship with Nintendo, iQue became an official subsidiary of Japanese company somewhere in 2013. Dr. Wei Yen has also reportedly left the company around the same time. Although iQue stopped its console distribution services on mainland China in 2018, that wasn't the end for the Nintendo in China. At the end of 2019, they partnered with popular conglomerate Tencent to sell Nintendo Switch with certain region-lock elements in Chinese market.

Meanwhile, iQue company shifted its operations to cooperate with Nintendo Hong Kong in production of Simplified Chinese localization for company's games released worldwide. There're also reports that iQue kept offering support for previously released products, but I'm not sure if that's still the case in spite of company's website still being active.