There is a place where classic chinese cars can live forever – where that might be you ask? Videogames! Today we will look into some of the games that feature classic chinese vehicles.
Cars featured:
– Beijing – BJ212, BJ212A, BJ2020
– Chery – Fengyun
– Dongfeng – CA71, EQ2081
– Hongqi – CA770
– Jiefang – CA10B, CA30A
– Shanghai – SH760A, SH1020SP
– Zhonghua – CHB6401TA
First game i would like to mention is Road to Guangdong. I have followed this game ever since it got announced in 2019. It is avaliable on PC, PS4 and Switch.
The main car as you can see is a good old Shanghai SH760A, nicknamed “Sandi” in the game. Your task is to go around Guangdong visiting your relatives, and try to mantain the car along the way.
The game has very nice aesthetics. It was not recieved well at launch because its precedessor “Jalopy” was more complex, but i think its still worth checking out when you wanna have a peaceful drive trough 1990s China.
Second game i would like to mention is the original Spintires. The base game got released in 2014, but the part we are mostly interested in is the last expansion to the game – China Adventure from 2020.
The gist of the game is in transporting logs trough muddy terrain with trucks. You can made various modifications to the trucks to make that quest easier. The China Adventure DLC saw addition of rice bags delivery and steel pipes delivery.
Apart from the two new maps, the game saw addition of 3 new chinese trucks, which we are mostly interested in.
Going from right to left, we have Jiefang CA-10B, that bears the name B-CA10 in the game. It is not very good, given that it is rear wheel drive. But at less muddy areas it gets the job done.
Next up is Dongfeng EQ2081, named C-EQ2081 in the game. It is better in+ offroad sections, given that all wheel drive can be turned on. The dealbreaker for me is the fact it is incredibly top heavy, so it likes to topple over. However, when playing on extreme difficulty on the China Adventure DLC maps, you will have to use it – its the only chinese truck that can have a crane equipped.
Saving the best for last, its the Jiefang CA-30A, named B-CA30 in game. It does not suffer from being top heavy, so it can go trough anything.
Sadly the game is not avaliable since 2021, so this expansion is especially hard to come by due to its short lifespan after release.
Truck Life is a game developed by chinese studio Wow! and was released in 2020. The game premise is similar to the ATS/ETS games, you take a role of a truck driver and deliver goods all across China.
It features once again the legendary Jiefang truck among other, more modern trucks. This time it is an interesting mix of CA-30 chassis (3 axles) and CA-10 cab (round fenders)
Another videogame I would like to mention is Assetto Corsa. That might sound strange, this racing simulator did not get any chinese cars.
Well yes, but thanks to its active community a person going by the name Snapu has made a beautiful model of the legendary Zhonghua CHB6401TA from scratch! It can be downloaded from here. It goes without saying that it looks absolutely stunning.
One of the older games from this list is Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, released in 2005 for Xbox and PS2.
It takes place on Korean peninsula, so on top of being one of the few games featuring various (not-licenced) vehicles from North Korea, it also has the timeless chinese classic – Beijing offroader.
Named as BJ2020 Scout in-game, the car is based on BJ2020VAJ with canvas top styled similarly to BJ2020SAJ and is used by the People’s Liberation Army
The oldest game with a chinese car I found so far is named Söldner: Secret Wars. It is from 2004, and given it is a war game, it is obvious that some variant of the trusty BJ212 will be in the game.
And the variant that made it in is the original BJ212A from 1960s!
For a 2005 game the car is quite accurately made, apart from the camouflage. As far as i know, BJ212s were made only in a plain green color.
Rear is bit inaccurate, but still alright. Probably to avoid the licencing fees, although I doubt the german developers would get into any trouble, it is named BJ-212 in game after all.
Apart from the different tarp, the biggest change seems to be horizontal taillights.
On 12th September 2023, a downloadable content for a videogame Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 has released, simply called “China”
This was a big surprise to me, as i dont follow that game too closely. Luckilly one of my friends has immediately notified me about it. It features 4 cars, 3 of whom have not been seen in a videogame beforehand to my knowledge!
First of the cars is called “Jueyuan Qianfeng”. Our readers will instantly recognise this car as a pretty faithful recreation of the 1958 Dongfeng CA71.
Next up is a “Yunbao Yilong”, no relation to the real Yunbao car company which was taking part in the 1990s Guandong car-“building”shenanigans.
This particular car is based on the Shanghai pickup, specifically the 1991 SH1020SP Dual-cab bodystyle featured in an earlier article. The only shame is, that the wonderful 1990s style graphics from the original arent making a comeback. You cant have everything i suppose…
The next two cars are a little bit less daring – Car with a name “Longteng Fuyuan” is clearly based upon early model Hongqi CA770. If you are wondering about the wheels being all the same, the game shares alot of the more “generic”resources inbetween cars, making it easier to interchange parts. I dont have the engine specs yet, but that info should be avaliable to me in the future. It will be interesting to see, if the creators followed the correct specs or went with engines that were close enough.
And last but not least, “Zhonghua Xiongying” is the ingame name of the trusty Beijing BJ212. This seems to be the original version from 1960s-1980s. Tail lights look a little bit goofy, but still passable. Car features two mirrors which i am not 100% sure when that became a feature on the real car (most likely someplace in the early to mid 1980s).
I have to really applaud the creators of the cars. as none are even licenced yet with the limited resources on western internet, they’ve been able to follow the designs pretty closely.
The oldest (questionable) game i found so far with a (questionably) chinese car is an advertisement flash game found on the website of Chery in mid 00s, sources seem to suggest it was released in 2004. It basically revolves around crash testing then-current Chery Fengyun, and is very basic in the gameplay department.
Too bad that the car itself doesnt really look too close to the real thing. They had to run pictures in the background to sell you on the idea it is really that car, together with Chery badge slapped onto the car. Some more effort was at least made in the interior department.
Do you know of any other classic chinese cars in videogames? Let us know
in the comments!
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