Article by XIANEASE
We don’t talk about it very often, but we have a couple of big gamers on the Xianease staff. Sometimes (especially in the winter!) the best thing to do in your spare time is to just curl up and explore a virtual world. But if you’ve played through all your games, picking up new ones might be troublesome. For example, if you bought a Mainland China PS4, you’re pretty much relegated to buying physical copies of games, which these days will run you 300RMB (likely more); alternatively, maybe your foreign Pro or Gold account isn’t working quite right, so your access to digital downloads disappears. If you aren’t opposed to buying game discs, then you still have to contend with a collection of games that you probably won’t have space for when it’s finally time to go home, which means you’ll have to try like hell to sell them for a much depreciated value. We did a little digging, and found a place that might have solved this issue, for the price of two brand new games. This one’s for you, you gamer goblin homebodies. Hope it helps.
My next theory was a bit…sexier. Overcome by the sensuality of the color red, I began to imagine a collective of people having Eyes Wide Shut-style parties, stripped down to naught but birthday suits and plague masks,
WHERE DO I GO?
First, you’ll need to go to Yanta North Road and find Bai Nao Hui, which is a big electronics market just across from the Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology. There’s a McDonalds in the same building, you can’t miss it. From there, head into the first floor and, next to the McDonalds, you should find Ai Ken Games (艾肯平板电玩). Easy peasy.
SO WHAT’S THE DEAL?
In a nutshell, you pay for a membership with these guys and then you’re off to the races. Here’s how that works: you’ll pay for the membership, and an additional deposit (so that, for example, if you love a game so much that you run away with it to Thailand, they can recoup the cost). There are three levels: first there’s the half-year membership, which costs 480 RMB (180 + 300 deposit); the full-year, which costs 600 RMB (300 + 300 deposit); and the lifetime membership, which costs 699 RMB (499 + 200 deposit, unclear whether lifetime refers to the lifetime of the user, the seller, the console or the heat death of the universe).
During that time, you can take any secondhand game of the dozens they have in stock and exchange it for a different one when you’re finished. If a new game has just come out and you just HAVE to play it, they also will let you walk out with a copy, provided that you pay an additional unboxing fee (~30RMB).
If you’re finished with the service, you can bring the member card and any games you still have back and recoup your deposit.
Ai Ken Dian Wan
Address: 1F – 1B05A, Bai Nao Hui, 68 Yanta Road.
西安雁塔路68号鲁家村 百脑汇1楼1B05A 艾肯平板电玩(麦当劳旁边,南边扶梯口)
Phone: (029) 8555 0700
Hours: 9:00am-6:30pm