It’s a little known fact that internal estimates of piracy levels in China during the NES days saw sales of pirated Famicom goods exceed official Japanese sales. It’s no wonder that the Mario-powered Kyoto outfit has snubbed its neighbour for so long.

But with the invention of the Internet and high-powered encryption routines, Nintendo has decided to release a console, named the iQue, a TV game wherein adopters get a Flash memory card to download software at certain retail outlets.

The machine, which ships to China next week, will come bundled with demo versions of Zelda 64: Ocarina of Time (10 hours), Mario 64 (7 hours), Wave Race (1 hour) and Star Fox (1 hour)

All games will available in full on day one.