The first Chinese-language RPG I ever played was Fengshen Bang, and that fact alone gives it a weight its actual design does not entirely explain. In the spring of 1995, after being persuaded by Dianruan, I bought a cartridge called Doushen and used to run to a friend's house during the noon break to play it. The cartridge had compatibility problems with Baobao's console: after the third stage it froze constantly. Doushen was also punishingly hard. A month or so later, my friend and I went back to the market, added 20 yuan, and exchanged it for Fengshen Bang.
RPGs have a particular drawback: they are hard to replay. After the winter vacation of 1995, when I failed one run and completed another, I did not touch the game for more than twenty years.
Even by the standards of the time, Fengshen Bang was only an upper-middle RPG among the huge crowd of RPGs. But the words 'all Chinese' were enough. And that upper-middle level was not easy to reach: it was the third little stool among Chinese Famicom games.
Quanwei Information's first FC RPG, and the first Chinese-language FC game at all, was Shenghuo Liezhuan. A classmate had the cartridge and I borrowed it; there was even a guide in Gongguan Mijue. The guide made it sound lively—learn martial arts, recruit companions—but actually playing it was agony. NPC dialogue had no logic, and you could be killed instantly at any moment.
Later some Quanwei staff left and made the second Chinese FC game, Jing Ke Xinzhuan. I eventually got that cartridge through an exchange. Its most notorious feature was a maze that lit only the nine-square grid around the protagonist and left everything else black; to map it, you practically had to draw the map by hand.
Against that background, Fengshen Bang—with a smooth story, reasonable difficulty, a long campaign, and original graphics and music—became a milestone in Chinese game history. My later dislike of Xianjian owed a lot to the fact that its systems did not feel new; I had already seen them in Fengshen Bang.
The cheat
The game also had a famous debug-like cheat that let you cross the map easily and beat powerful enemies. I found it myself, without any reference material. I pressed Up + SELECT + START + B on the controller at the same time and heard a sound effect. After that, three functions were available:
- Free movement. Press SELECT once and Nezha can walk anywhere on the map without random encounters. If he cannot pass somewhere, that spot contains a hidden chest. Press SELECT again to cancel. Be careful about map layers; if cancelling leaves you stuck, a river area such as Women's Village can fix it.
- Simplified leveling. Outside battle, press START once, hear the sound, and the experience needed for every surviving party member to level up becomes 1.
- Instant battle victory. During battle, press START to win immediately.
When I first used it, I was thrilled. I immediately steered Nezha over mountains and seas into Chaoge and killed King Zhou in one hit. Then... why was the game not ending? I had to go back to the village and grind through from the beginning, bit by bit. Ten days later I reached Star-Picking Tower again and found that King Zhou would not fight me at all. I was stuck, deleted the save, and started over. Only after finishing the normal route did I realize I had not obtained a required item, so the event could not trigger. After that, my RPG experience shot up.
This was not my first RPG, so most of my RPG habits did not come from it. But the habit of searching every scene and opening every cabinet definitely did. The game has many hidden chests, and stealing from them is genuinely satisfying.
Story and art
The story naturally draws on the well-known Fengshen Yanyi, and due to hardware limitations the plot was cut down heavily. Lively episodes such as the four generals of the Mo family, Jiang Shang's return from death, and the Seven Monsters of Meishan remain, but the conflict between the Jie and Chan schools is almost absent, except for the Four Sages of Nine Dragon Island. Apart from Nezha and Yang Jian, the only Xiqi fighter who appears is Huang Tianhua, and he appears comically—imprisoned by the Pipa spirit in a dungeon and drained into a dried husk. The others could be missing, but Lei Zhenzi's absence is a real regret.
The two biggest plot changes both come in the early-to-middle section. One is the addition of Little Dragon Girl. It is said that after this game, Fengshen TV dramas and animations began adding a Little Dragon Girl. I have hardly watched them, so I cannot judge. At first, when she appears as an enemy, she is entirely green, so presumably no one was getting any strange ideas.
The other is Nezha's journey through hell. The ten halls of hell each have their own character, but the bosses save space: the same pattern, recolored. The art was clearly designed for the game. It is not too bad, though the minor monsters have little to do with traditional Chinese demons. The famous bosses, apart from the Four Dragon Kings of the Four Seas and the Ten Yama Kings, were each handled with care; most bosses are broad and large, creating a natural sense of pressure. The regret follows from that: except for the Four Sages of Nine Dragon Island and the three Mo generals, boss battles are the party ganging up on a single opponent, which is not lively enough.
There are many events, but the formula is heavy. Most bosses require you to first go to a nearby immortal mountain and get a magic treasure; otherwise the fight is impossible. So when wandering the world map, you learn to note every immortal mountain and remind yourself to try there if you get stuck.
The most enjoyable design idea is in Meishan. After getting the demon-revealing mirror, every villager starts to look suspicious, and you cannot resist flashing the mirror at them. The monkey spirit leader of the Seven Monsters summoning Sun Wukong is a stretch; my feeling is that it exists purely to introduce the somersault cloud item. The penultimate boss, Daji, was definitely drawn with effort. The final King Zhou looks odd, like a cheap New Year print. Game cleared. Everyone went home to their mothers.
Game screenshots:
