Trying to find out some early Chinese games

[Fisine]

I'm diving into the early history of Chinese computer games and have hit a wall with my research. I'm hoping this community's collective knowledge might shed some light on particularly elusive titles
Here's what I've managed to gather so far:
《孙悟空》 (Monkey King / Monkeykings):This one is obscure. According to fragmented records, it was developed in 1983 by a research team organized by the Beijing S&T Commission. The software was reportedly sold abroad as part of a bundle. Technical specifics mention an image storage capacity of 36K bytes, a program size of 40K bytes, and that it was written entirely in Z80 assembly language. Also there's a tangram game in that game bundles. As far as I know it was received good rating, however, it's strange that no any reviews or some data about it.
Another one is from Taiwan but it's an Apple ii game so I will post its information on Apple ii section.

I would be incredibly grateful for any information, leads, or personal anecdotes you might have. If you know of any specialized retro gaming forums, archives, or collector circles in China (or elsewhere) that might have knowledge of this era, please point me in the right direction!

Thank you for your time and expertise.

 

[cj7hawk]

Is this a CP/M question? CP/M didn't really have much in the way of graphics games outside of the Amstrad PCW.

And all of the information I found on that game suggests it was made for game consoles rather than for a CP/M machine.

Though I didn't know how z80 focused China was at the time - It's interesting to learn they did have z80 machines with graphics capabilities during that era.

What can you tell us about your research and what you're looking for? Even if we can't help, we can learning something from what you're doing?

 

[Fisine]

Is this a CP/M question? CP/M didn't really have much in the way of graphics games outside of the Amstrad PCW.

And all of the information I found on that game suggests it was made for game consoles rather than for a CP/M machine.

Though I didn't know how z80 focused China was at the time - It's interesting to learn they did have z80 machines with graphics capabilities during that era.

What can you tell us about your research and what you're looking for? Even if we can't help, we can learning something from what you're doing?

The records are scarce and from what I gathered, at that time China had machines like TRS-80 and Apple ii, in addition they manufactured TP805 in 1983 using Z80A. So in general, we only know they made them and exported aboard, that's why I posted on here cuz I haven't get any information on specific one. Maybe I should focus on machines and game console using Zilog Z80 processor like Colecovision.
Btw I was confused Z80 assembly language with Zilog Z80 when having the research since I don't know much about vintage computers, is machines using Z80 processor compatible with Z80 assembly language?

 

[cj7hawk]

I'm not trying to change your focus - I'm just curious as to what you've uncovered in an area in which I know nothing, and in which I assumed there was very little activity until your question prompted me to look

And yes, z80 processors, and also z80 compatible processors such as were produced in huge numbers outside of zilog - eg, Sharp, Hitachi etc, all recognize z80 machine code. z80 Assembly language is a mnemonic based language to make it easier to create machine code to run on those processors.

From a practical perspective, if you said z80 or z80 assembly, everyone here would understand what you meant. What is not common is for z80 systems to be CP/M systems. Most z80 systems either were not capable of running CP/M or didn't run CP/M as their primary OS.

Though "z80 assembly" has a different meaning, especially in the context of games. Some games were written in BASIC or other languages. Some were compiled to machine code, while others were run as interpreted code.

z80 assembly means programs written to convert *directly* to machine code, and generally infers they are written to run very fast on a z80 compared to other languages.

 

[Svenska]

The Z80 processor is compatible with Z80 instructions (should be obvious) and almost fully compatible with 8080 instructions. The Z80 processor was invented by Zilog, the 8080 processor was invented by Intel.

Assembly language is a human-readable form of computer instructions, it needs to be translated to be usable by a computer first.

CP/M is a bad platform for East Asian software, because their writing systems require graphics capabilities and CP/M does not have any. (Only Japanese can cheat a little.) So you are unlikely to find many Chinese programs for that platform.

 

[cj7hawk]

The Z80 processor is compatible with Z80 instructions (should be obvious) and almost fully compatible with 8080 instructions. The Z80 processor was invented by Zilog, the 8080 processor was invented by Intel.

Assembly language is a human-readable form of computer instructions, it needs to be translated to be usable by a computer first.

CP/M is a bad platform for East Asian software, because their writing systems require graphics capabilities and CP/M does not have any. (Only Japanese can cheat a little.) So you are unlikely to find many Chinese programs for that platform.

That's what I thought too, but turns out that wasn't the case.

They needed graphics capabilities, and there were lots of challenges, but it seems they were well developed at that time, and centered around z80 systems.

But that's all I know - and I'd love to hear some more first person accounts if the OP has any ?

 

[Fisine]

The Z80 processor is compatible with Z80 instructions (should be obvious) and almost fully compatible with 8080 instructions. The Z80 processor was invented by Zilog, the 8080 processor was invented by Intel.

Assembly language is a human-readable form of computer instructions, it needs to be translated to be usable by a computer first.

CP/M is a bad platform for East Asian software, because their writing systems require graphics capabilities and CP/M does not have any. (Only Japanese can cheat a little.) So you are unlikely to find many Chinese programs for that platform.

The first microcomputer in China was developed in 1977 using 8080. However , in 1983, China's first Chinese character microcomputer operating system, GF20/11A, was developed based on the Zilog Z80. During this period, I guess China was still using CP/M.

 

[Fisine]

Judging from what I found from a Chinese podcast, these games are called color TV game programs. The most possible platform could be consoles that run games written by Z80.
As for the Chinese operating system, in 1983, DJS-0520 was produced, which is compatible with IBM PC and has CCDOS system using Chinese language. In 1985, the CH version of DJS-0520 was capable of displaying Chinese characters with a character generator and equipped with comprehensive Chinese information processing capabilities.
History about Chinese computer is relatively easy to search cuz it's one of the important technologies, games gained attention at first but it was not that much focused by researchers. Till now I haven't found much research projects about early Chinese gaming industry.

 

[Svenska]

They needed graphics capabilities, and there were lots of challenges, but it seems they were well developed at that time, and centered around z80 systems.

CP/M simply does not do graphics, so anything needing it is not CP/M (by definition, and excluding GSX). That does not mean you cannot run machine-specific graphics applications from a CP/M environment - they just won't be true CP/M applications.

I would not be surprised to see Chinese software written for Z80 systems. But I would be surprised if they were for CP/M.