Welcome to Canto in Games!

Last Update

This website is a personal project of mine where I try to document the use of real Cantonese both spoken and written in video games! Cantonese is a Chinese language predominantly used in Southeast China, Hong Kong, Macao as well as a significant portion of overseas Chinese.

Though according to latest estimates, Cantonese has about 80 Million speakers (comparable to German speakers or Francophones) there is only very sparse representation of it in media outside of Hong Kong, this is especially true with video games. This is further exacerbated by the fact that over the years Cantonese has been increasingly pushed aside for Mandarin in all matters official within China. Nowadays, if Chinese is even featured in video games, it is almost entirely the Mandarin variant of Chinese, not Cantonese. This fact has also been lamented in a Eurogamer article a couple years back

This is one of the reasons which why I find it important to create interest in Cantonese and make learning it as accessible as possible through the use of video games. I try to showcase appearances in Western games, that you too may have played before, and provide accurate translations as well as additional cultural commentary wherever necessary. Go right ahead an select a game from the list below or on the Games page ;-)

Existing pages

• Cyberpunk 2077 (WIP 60%)
• Grand Theft Auto III (2001) (WIP 5%)
• True Crime: New York City (2004) (WIP 10%)

Games pages planned so far:

• Super Street Fighter II (1991)
• Heart of China (1991)
• Inspector Gadget: Mission 1 – Global Terror! (1992)
• Outrunners (1993)
• Tekken 2 (1995)
• Virtua Fighter 3 (1996)
• Kowloon's Gate (1997)
• Tekken 3 (1997)
• Tekken Tag Tournament (1999)
• Test Drive 6 (1999)
• Strider 2 (1999)
• Fear Effect (2000)
• Deus Ex (2000)
• Shenmue II (2001)
• 007: Agent Under Fire (2001)
• Solider of Fortune II: Double Helix (2002)
• Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon (2002)
• Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions (2002)
• Project Gotham Racing 2 (2003)
• Jet Li: Rise to Honor (2004)
• Hitman: Contracts (2004)
• Gran Turismo 4 (2004)
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005)
• Perfect Dark: Zero (2005)
• Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (2006)
• Stranglehold (2007)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)
• Lost Horizon (2010)
• Mafia 2 (2010)
• Kung Fu Rider (2010)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)
• Sleeping Dogs (2012)
• Resident Evil 6 (2012)
• Hitman: Absolution (2012)
• Grid 2 (2013)
• Shadowrun: Hong Kong (2015)
• Watch Dogs 2 (2016)
• Red Dead Redemption II (2018)
• 港詭實錄ParanormalHK (2020)