Copied, Used, and Modified

The Heterodox Circulations of Arcade Video Games through the Cheonggyecheon Electronics Market in 1990s Seoul

This article addresses the significance of heterogeneous distributions along with maintenance and repair in local arcade video game cultures and peripheral markets. Based on in-depth oral historical interviews with distributors and repairers at a game-distribution market in Seoul, it traces the multiple lives of arcade video games in original, copied, used, or modified forms through the market. These forms then interacted with a uniquely receptive culture of video games earlier, faster, and with greater popular support in South Korea than elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s, which is conceived as heterodox circulations. This research demonstrates how heterodox circulations based on integrated circuits of distribution, maintenance, and repair contributed to transforming the path and pace of the transnational circulation of the latest Japanese games, thus maintaining the global game industry and culture.