Proceedings of CDiGRA 2023 © 2023 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author. The Enduring Famiclone Hugh Davies RMIT, Australia Keywords Platform Studies, Console histories, Videogame Hardware, Famiclone, INTRODUCTION A famiclone denotes a counterfeit game console designed to replicate the workings, aesthetics and play experience of the Japanese Nintendo Famicom. This presentation documents the history of famiclone’s in China, but also explores their enduring impact upon contemporary tech devices and peripherals. Explored here is the contemporary nostalgia in Chinese game consumption and the industries that tap into longstanding aspirations for game accessories and consoles of the past. Revealed in this discussion are unsung areas of videogame industries and production. In the late 1980s, during the height of their popularity, official Nintendo Famicom consoles were prohibitively expensive and officially unavailable in Mainland China. Rather than preventing access to game consoles altogether, this ban gave rise to a large grey market and burgeoning industry of locally produced famiclone consoles and games – inexpensive copies that emulated the Nintendo Famicom appearance, workings, and play. Hundreds of these unauthorized clones and unlicensed copies were produced across Southern China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, among the most popular being the Xiǎ Bàwáng (小霸王 ‘Little Tyrant') by Subor (China) and the Xiǎo Tiān Cái (小天才’Micro Genius’) by TXC Corporation (Taiwan). Despite enormous developments in game technology and several generations of platform progression, these Famiclone products have a lasting cultural impact. They affected childhoods, influenced generations, spawned industries, promoted literacies, and defined what a videogame console was for millions. Although videogames have migrated from electronic hardware to digital software altogether, the inertia of nostalgia ensures that an ongoing industry of Famiclone manufacturers and entrepreneurs remains to this day. Their contemporary products are state-of-the-art controllers and accessories, but they are skillfully designed and built to evoke the aesthetic, haptic, sensory, and tactile dimensions of 80’s era Famicom and Famiclone alike (Hjorth et al. 2020). Thus far these histories and industries have received little attention. With specific attention to the famiclone in its many historical and contemporary iterations, this paper considers the critical importance of bootleg consoles to game history in China (Larson, 2022). Investigated here are the shifting understandings of shanzhai industry from cheap bootleg to honorable homage