Holy crap, I didn't expect someone to make a video about this! I always wanted to make to a video about my experience with gaming in the Middle East/Gulf States during the 5th gen era consoles with the PS1 up to current gens. For most of what you said, it's pretty accurate to what I remember although in Bahrain, gaming stores were scattered around the country. Playstation was and still is the dominant console in the market with Xbox well below in 2nd place and Nintendo barely exists although the latter two are slowly fading popularity. I recall that everyone had modded PS1/2s because A) it meant games are cheap and B) some people thought buying video games are waste of money. Most pirated games came in bags with terrible low quality cover arts and poor quality discs. Some games had missing FMVs and soundtracks while others discs had "3 in 1" games like 3 different Crash Bandicoot games or Soul Caliber and Tekken in a single disc. I remember PES and GTA San Andreas being heavily bootlegged, former with local translations and real teams while the latter had crap like "superman" and texture mods. My first ever taste of PC gaming experience was me playing Counter Strike 1.6 against other class mates during classes. 😂 Regarding how gaming in the Arab world is nowadays, gamers are somewhat more diverse nowadays in terms of what they play (everything from TLOU, Resident Evil, Red Dead to Forza, FIFA, Nier Automata and so on..) although kids these days mainly play Fortnite and PUBG. However, don't expect the majority to play "Anime" Titles that aren't Dragon Ball, JoJo or other "mainstream" Shonen games so no some fancy and obscure JRPGs. I seen some people getting into PCs, Nintendo Switch and Xbox's but still not as common as Sony fans. One major change is the support of Arabic languages and even Middle Eastern Servers for some games now. I believe it's mainly because we started to buy legit copies so I guess that's a plus thing. The biggest change however is how players are accepting the idea of paying shit ton of money for special editions, DLC's, Microtransactions and Loot Boxes. Remember paying half a dinar for a game and how anything above that is too much? Nowadays paying $100+ for a single game is acceptable somehow. :(
Hehe, I heard stories of playing Counter Strike at school from many people in my country (Ukraine, Eastern Europe). Although my own first gaming experience was a demo of Quake III and then the one and only Warcraft III. People really try to get legal game copies nowadays. This was totally different ~10-15 years ago. There were whole markets selling illegal game copies in creative covers. "3 in 1" were common, too xD Plus, torrents - one of the most popular reasons to have internet back then. Good times, I guess? xD I wish all regions will get hogh quality representation in games one day. As well as great localisation on a regular basis. Swahili, Hindi, Tamil, Turkish, etc. totally deserve attention.
Out of usa and Canada, average American don't know anything about what's going on in the other world, some of them Africa or Europe is a country for him, not a continent hhh , Dubai is a country not a city hhhh for example, you say to him name to me three countries in Europe for example you find type of them don't know hhh for example , the ancient Babylon for example in Italy for him hhhh (he don't know it's in Iraq for example), geography and a simple known question about history don't ask an average american hhh , you see hilarious answers especially in geography hhhh, -North African Tunisian here
exactly the same here in Turkey. whenever i went to buy a game and i found something not popular like an RPG or an anime game, the shopkeeper would be like: "hey why don't you buy (AAA title) instead?"
As soon as you said الرحاب I literally started flashbacking to memories that I didn't know existed. It's been so long since someone has mentioned that place. You my friend have earned a subscriber. I guess even the RUclips algorithm is right twice a day
Al ri7ab lost about 30-40% of it's stores and have been relegated to furniture and the such. Most of it due to online gaming and how easy it is to simply download a game with 5g speed rather than fret the big bucks visiting store after another. It still has it uses though.. if you wanted to fix screen there is a spot for that. or maybe find an obscure game like Lotr BfMe 2. but all in all, most of my friends who grew up on rehab days transitioned to PC gaming due to it's simplicity. Btw, great fucking video, love the funny commentary!
Maaaaaaaan I'm Egyptian and was born & raised in Kuwait and I KNEW you were gonna mention Rihab. The second you did my inner child sparked the dumbest goofiest smile the memoriessssssss of shopping ahhhhhhh
Rihab really takes me back. My first experience going there was to buy gamecube games, actually (yes I was that one kid who preferred nintendo games over playstation). But honestly I felt like nintendo games weren't as obscure as you made them out to be. The store I went to for gamecube/wii/ds games back in the day is literally in one of the photos in the video (game center). Of course nintendo wasn't as popular as Playstation, but the games were still very accessible. I really enjoyed your video, it's very well made. 👍
Man, I think we would have been great friends lol This was so nostalgic. Kinda needed it with all this virus debacle. On topic, some stores still overcharge for stuff, so you gotta hunt down for a specific price. It's kinda got easier to find stuff you want though which is great. Subscribed!
Daaamn I miss the days where I'd come back home to sift through 20 games and see what I'd enjoy playing or what I'd turn into ammo for a Frisbee war with my brother...
And to answer your question regarding the state of alrihab I think it lost its chaotic charm that you were taking about and turned into more of a every store is the same and everyone is selling the same shit for the same price. It's almost like they've made a pact or something. I'd often see the vendors popping from store to store asking their friends if they have what I'm looking for or for example one dude just sent a message to a whatsapp group and someone else just waltzed in and brought the game to us. Most of the people I know just switched to digital downloads now and no one bothers to go there unless it's a hardware problem.
Ahlan bl habeeb! Last time I went to Al-Rihab was in 2019, most of the first 2 floors there are smartphones/tablets accessory stores.You can also find some stores that sale anime or gaming related collectables and antiques. But don’t be sad, because the basement still has 60+ store just like you remember. The basement became the hub for buying/selling used video games in Kuwait. Most of the people I know go there only to buy antiques and/or collectibles.
No mention of LAN cafes? My fondest memories of the Middle East was LAN gaming and spending hours playing Red Alert 2 and Counter Strike with my cousins.
I have roots in Iraqi Kurdistan but lives in Sweden. They have like how many games that u could only imagine in the bazaar. You walk a stair down and it's game and console Heaven. 360 Xbox one S/X, ps2, ps3, ps4, ps5 even pc games, well pretty much anything you want.. i recently bought my ps5 there when visiting
u can say the exact same thing about gaming in Egypt. the part about the X Box being almost non existent is so true, a lot of people didn't even know that other consoles exist and till this day no one actually use it at all, it's all Sony here.
This was exactly the same experience at Egypt and why I consider the PS2 the greatest piece of tech ever created, but now I own a switch and actually like the games that Nintendo puts out, since I don't like the direction of gaming in general nowadays with the movie like games or toxic online gaming, Nintendo still makes me feel like I own a PS2.
Aaaah the MW2 days. That was THE SHIT. Great vid btw. I don’t know about Al Rihab a lot now but I do know that my 12-14 year old cousins go there for some GTA V hacking haha. As for the older cousins they went there once or twice to look for Pepsi Man and Tarzan for the PS1. But now old games are mostly sold by instagram accounts. And I know a couple of people who still go there to the gaming lounges for some Counterstrike and some other PC games.
I rarely comment on videos, but while PlayStation was definitely more popular, N64 and Gamecube games were pretty easy to find in most stores (especially in Game Center which was photographed a few times in your video). And it really wasn't hard to find the niche games. It feels like you're talking about your experience within your friends rather than being accurate.
As a Syrian, that was really relatable (Although al rihab and oniline billing never existed due to sanctions and stuff so it was all obscure stores and piracy, i bet its more rare to find a ps4 or 5 that wasnt modded with HEN 😂) and also i have an Xbox 360 slim that even i dont know how i found it sale, yup its THIS rare...
I used to buy a shit ton of those cheap pirated games when i was a kid, but a part of my now is actually happy that we are buying more legit copies. Some games started to offer the arabic language in its options, and middle eastern servers too. This would have never happened if people pirated ps3 and ps4 games, because companies won't have a reason to accommodate people who pirate their games. We are paying more, but at least we are getting something in return from the developers. Oh and by the way, al rihab is still alive and functioning, but i'm no longer invested in its game market a lot, so i don't know if it's doing better or worse than before. I only go their to either buy old/used games, or to go to one of those (relatively new) card game shops they have their. There is no need to buy new games from their, because buying them online costs the same, and you don't have to leave your house (one exception are extremely large games like red dead redemption 2; downloading this big ass game with slow internet would take me a week XD)
Rihab is still going strong tbh, the majority of the stores remain open and it seems significantly easier to get more niche games. My entire childhood revolved around the sorts of games that you would've described as super niche based on the standards you gave in this video (i never really got into the dudebro stuff as it never appealed to me as a kid, and even now i don't go any further into that realm than GTA and COD once in a while), yet even back around 2010 ish i pretty much NEVER failed to find at least one dude selling what i was looking for. My visits usually centred around a specific 3 or 4 shops (i'm terrible at arabic so i cannot recall the names) and the sellers there who'd recognise me from being a recurring customer, but even then, just walking around the other places in there, while perhaps some of the childhood magic has sliiiiiiiightly decreased, remains fun and mesmerising to this day. It's truly and without a doubt whatsoever, a one-of-a-kind place, and I really hope it continues to survive. It just seems to expand like an underground labyrinth the deeper you go; like some sort of digital alice in wonderland type stuff. That place and the other countless bootleg ps2 game sellers from a few years earlier than that absolutely made my childhood. Spending the amount of money you'd pay for just ONE ps2/3 game anywhere else in the world, but leaving with a bag full of 15 discs in those terrible quality plastic folders is a magical experience you really can't get anywhere else. Nothing beat running home with excitement to put in some dodgy, brittle, scratched up disc branded with "Spyro 3: إكستريم باور ديلوكس إصدار فيفا" (or whatever other hilarious, nonsensical off-brand phrases they'd slap onto things to grab the attention of kids) is something i'm glad to have experienced; I basically feel bad for my friends in other countries who grew up with a very normal, uneventful gaming experience compared to the madness that you'd have in kuwait. This video was awesome; felt like I was reciting my own childhood to myself in a mirror, subscribing for sure, awesome work!
In Saudi Arabia i remember distinctly grabbing modded variations of San Andrias from those pirated stores. Like they'd have regular GTA : SA but then they'd have stuff like in a bunny costume and other wackier versions. it was super dumb. also games costed $10 riyal there 😭
The stores are still there, but not active as the glory days. I still go there. but I now just buy games online. I remember back in 2017, I wanted to get Dark souls 1 for my ps3, but I can’t download from the ps store, so I had to resort to go to rihab, and ask every damn store for it. It took me an hour, I asked more than a hundred stores for it, until this dude found it for me, a used version for 11 KD ( 35 dollars). Ironically, a year after that the remastered edition came out for the ps4 😂
Pretty much the same thing in saudi and the ps1.2 game ware 10sr. but when the 360 and ps3 time came the 360 copped games was 15sr. the 360 had some sistem that can block copies so they soled a cd that you can run it before running the game. as we owned both consoles I can conform the 360 dudes are rare + the gold thing didn't help.
on the point of pc gaming, yes it weren't common in the sense of people having pcs at their homes, but it was popular in internet cafes "counters" as we called them based on the only game i played there which is counter strike, and IC only became more popular after WoW dropped, the IC were filled to the brim of escaped school students who wasted their grades one gaming (it was worth it)
It's interesting that this is almost exactly the gaming experience here in Brasil in the same period. Like pretty much exactly the same. Everyone had 3 or 4 different san andreas hacks(GTA Rio de Janeiro, and GTA São Paulo), everyone had a naruto/dragonball fighting game, shooter games were very popular (i remember everyone talking about black but didn't know what halo was until like 2009) the big difference might be that Futebol, or soccer as a US weirdo would call it, was pretty much the biggest genre of game, with some PES hacks ( BOMBA patch being the classic one) still being sold to this day, and also that computer games, usually in the form of older games, or counter strike and similar games in Lan houses were very popular aswell. Also while a sizable amount of people ended up getting PS3's the 360 actually got pretty deceently popular because of it's ease of piracy, with a lot of gaming stores becoming "legit" but still carrying pirated games. Also, especially early on in the ps4/xone era PC's got pretty popular because of piracy, cause 8th gen games were bloody expensive, although steam certainly diminshed the amount of piracy in the pc, it ended up making it a even more popular as a platform. Although really, game pirating is a long held tradition here, you can still find brand new SEGA master system clones being sold around.
7:55 Well, that's another thing I can relate to despite not even being arabic, Spanish speaking countries LOVE soccer, especially Mexico (and Brazil too from what I've heard), though I was never into it.
Omg that's really accurate my man! Especially in Lebanon, u don't need to pay 30$ for a game, just like 10,000 L.L for 40 games lol . Ofc some of my PS2 collections comes from bootleg Brazilian markets but irdc:v P.S: also the ds part is also really accurate imo, i got like a Ds with 3 fully pirated cartridges with like each one has like 200 games fr💀( although the games are actually dope and they don't crash tbh)
nah i had the original xbox and it was way more widespread than you think. yes it was less popular than the ps2 (obviously), but i don't remember having trouble finding their games from any of the stores.
This is kinda like the Mexican gaming experience. Just go to one of the nasty markets and you can find a ton of PS2 bootleggery and DS flash cartridges
The nintendo part hits home for us balkanoids too, Nintendo had 0 presence due to the fact PS1 and PS2 (also PC) Piracy was cheap and easy as hell to do. No stores had N64s or Gamecubes during those gens. So when i finally got an ADSL net connection in 2007 and was introduced to youtube and the websites like screwattack, GT and what not and saw it was 90% content about people being nostalgic about the N64 , it was a bit of a confusing experience for me, since i never even heard of there being an N64 till 2007, most folk thought Nintendo just stopped existing after the Super NES in the home console market and only did Gameboys and nothing else anymore for like two whole generaitons. In general this whole video was pretty close to how it was in the Balkans too, some differences I'd mention is PC gaming here was huge and not just Playstation and the X360 actually got a presence here. People here valued piracy far more than brand loyalty, so when PS3 hit with its awful high price and lack of piracy , it actually caused the Xbox 360 to become a thing in my country of Croatia, where a lot if not most switched fully to xbox because you could pirate games on it and people didn't give a rats ass about getting XBL bans because no one cared about the online service at all, if they wanted to do online gaming, they'd rather do it on a PC still, especially since XBL asked for a monthly sub which was an extra big no no in our market.
I’m glad you started talking about this, because I grew up with this stuff too! I remember going to electronic stores in towns of Lebanon and finding so many bootleg products, like cheap modded versions of games and fake windows installation discs. I first watched your spacetoon video and now this, I really love these types of videos, it reminds me of how it feels to be an Arab. I hope to see more videos like these.
I was young I had tones pirated game disc, most electronics store in Lebanon sold pirated games When I switched from console gaming (PS3, Xbox 360) to PC gaming I found it hard to get physical legit copies of PC games. I only start getting legit PC games when got introduced to steam.
I used to go there as a kid and get some games for my psp. I remember vice city, the dragon ball z and Naruto games, and the wrestling games were the shit back then. Also, contrary to most of my friends, I had an Xbox 360 and I would get all my games from there too. Although I made the switch to the ps4 a few years later. This place has so much fucking memories. I still go to this day if I need smth.
Btw the wii also had pirated games i also have most of the games and people in rihab would mod ps3 and xbox 360 too, not alot of people i know played the gamecube but i did and a couple of my friends and cousins
Never went to rihab but i got some used games for the ps3 and ps4 from the bazaar in fahaheel. With the ps5 moving to digital games tho, rihab will definitley die.
I'd argue that you could still find niche JRPGs in Al-Rihab but mostly depends on the store. Some stores sell only niche Japanese video games, ones that aren't even localized! I got my P5 vanilla copy from there btw. We have Xcite, Jareer bookstore and other electronic stores that sell video games but Sony is still in the lead. Also buying games online is a lot more accessible and cheaper which also contributed to decrease in the sale of physical copies of games here-
Now I understand why Sony games starting from the PS4, they made Arabic dubs of their games in a studio in the UAE. Sony just knew they had a market and they can get more on their side.
Hah nice I'm a Lebanese Armenian that lived in Kuwait till 2014 before moving to Canada. The stuff like Rihab blew people's minds or that Kuwaitis liked Shonen Anime a lot (mostly cause everything sexual was like censored lol). In Lebanon less censorship to none at all, BUT the interests were akin to Kuwait's.
What about language barrier for ps1 or 2 etc..where they all I English, German,French,Italian or Spanish. Because I have never seen any other languages for these games
For now I only go for al rehab for buying and selling used games, and you'll find good deals for them , Also alot of kids go there to get prepaid cards since there partets won't allow them to use credit cards
Are non-pirated games sold in a dedicated video game store in the Middle East like GameStop or an equivalent? Would it be possible to get an actually legitimate copy of something like Pokemon in the DS era?
Also Pokemon was really popular in Kuwait, but was like the only Gameboy game students owned. I remember my first game being Pokemon Ruby with a Treecko, but it may have been a pirated copy LOL. As for COD, IIRC Kuwait was a very pro America country after the gulf war, so there was this sentiment that THEY were the Arabs not getting shot at, but the cursed Saddam or Bin Laden. I also returned to Kuwait in 2020, Rehab was still going. It has a curry/ramen shop now, lots of anime and manga copy and figures (nothing sexual obviously), board games and lots of stuff for Nintendo/Switch.
This might be 2 years late but Rn الرحاب shops is dying slowly because of pricing reasons people now have internet and can just buy the game at the ps store, some shops turned into anime figure shops and others still running and selling ps5 for 300kwd, Most people in kuwait at least are buying pcs or trying nintendo switch /xbox, Because of the new gen people switching from ps4 to xbox/pc mostly because of the ps5 pricing and how cheap xbox gamepass is
I remember having to buy multiple r4 flash carts because the firmware was literally set to self destruct after a while which was a pretty scummy thing to do. Psp piracy was also extremely prominent to the point where I have literally never touched a umd disc in my life.
agree with most of your points, though i do want to put my opinion on the ''most cod games had you shot arabs'' part, it's mostly the same as what you say in this video, but also it was that most arab soldiers/terrorist in these games look like any other generic soldier you see in the other factions of the game but with a outfit design, also fps shooters like cod in my opinion was the closest middle easterners got to use guns freely, it was basically a an infinite amount of weapons ready for you to have fun with your friends.
I remember going to Saudia Arabia to visit my relatives and for some reason I thought it was a good idea that I bring my slim ps2 over from the u.s but I forgot to get the games I had for it, so I decided to buy a couple from a small store not very far from my aunts house and I remember old games like DragonBall z budokai 3 and tenkaichi 3 along with gta san andreas and call of duty 2 being on shelves for about $5 each and I kid you not almost everytime I bought something I prayed that the game would work or the guy doesn't rip me off by telling me it works then I find out that he's trying to rip me off, it was always a risk
Bro in Palestine I remember nothing about any PlayStation 2 or 1 being sold, the first time I heard about PlayStation was in 2010 when hacking PS3/Xbox 360 was so accessible, I mean it's not that I never heard of PlayStation before 2010, it was just too overpriced and nobody dared to sell something in a non existent market, Most gaming was done on PCs or literally 4th generation consoles or below, I remember seeing bootleg gameboys being sold locally and had shitty games like Tetris or worse. The first handheld gaming experience I had was with a Nokia 3310, I actually spent tens of hours playing Snake 2, and then in 2010 I got my first phone which was a Sony Ericsson k800i, I could actually run 3D Java games, I remember playing golf and tennis 🎾, it could do 3G so I watched RUclips, listened to music... etc, However in 2013 I got my first ever smartphone, it was a Samsung Young Dous or something, But I didn't game on it because it was so underpowered with next to nothing in terms of internal memory, In 2014 I bought a PC and since then I'm a PC gamer and I never considered a console, But 2 years ago I was in a thrift store and bought a PS2 for literally $2.5, but sent like $30 for it's accessories, And bought games for it, they were bootleg but trust me I searched everywhere for legit copies and couldn't find a place for legit PS2 games, Heck I'm grateful I could find an 8MB memory card, I bought it for $22 because the seller knew how obscure they are, I agreed to pay that much because it was a legitimate one, So yeah now I can play games and save hahaha Oh and last year I got a Nintendo DS Lite for free so I bought charger, stylus and R4 Gold flash card to put ROMs in it, Because AliExpress doesn't sell legit DS games, and even when I find legit DS games they sell for like $20 bucks, I thought it's not worth it to be a good person so let's pirate and go to hell lmao Anyway I actually like the Nintendo DS Lite, I take it with me to college and my colleagues get weirded out by it and start to ask questions, I'm actually amazed that they're amazed, Like it's a 2006 handheld console yet it amazes them that it has touch support and 2 screens also the design is surprisingly timeless like a Porsche! Anyway I subscribed to your channel and I hope you get million of subscribers and views because you are honestly underrated, and I know it's the worst time to be Arab/Muslim (in life not in general because I know being a Muslim is always great no matter what timeline because we believe in hereafter).
Bruh what do you mean nintnedo is one of the most popular consoles in the middle east every Arab gamer usally had either a nintnedo system or a playstation or played pc but a lot of people were nostalgic for n64 and sees and Gameboy which was widely avibe in the middle east in the 90s a lot of arsbic families had them a long side sony
Just some thoughts on your video: You're not the first guy who's made a video about the Al-Rehab complex, this is a documentary about it (in Arabic) from 2016 ruclips.net/video/nzTeRamhUxY/видео.html&feature=emb_logo Here are my thoughts in my best summation- 1. Video games have existed in Kuwait since at least the late seventies, hard to believe but it's true, the Atari 2600 came out then it was available to buy albeit not in Rehab, Rehab came to be known as a "gaming-bizzare" in the late 80's / early 90's when the relevant consoles and games at the time were sold there, full price, legitimate copies and all- meaning that Rehab did not transition into selling legitimate games with the blu-ray era, it reverted to it; a cyclical process really. 2. You heavily skimmed over PC gaming in Kuwait, it's such an (absurdly enough) complex topic that you could make a separate video about it entirely, you're probably too young to be knowledgeable about the topic, but the first instances of game-piracy in Kuwait was not with the PS1 or PS2 days, rather it started with pirated floppy discs of games in the DOS format that you could buy in Burj al Abyad in Salmiya, a place that sold games earlier than Al-Rehab, it's the predecessor of Al-Rehab in a lot of ways. Anyway, PC game lounges existed in Kuwait as early as 1989, with a brief hiatus during the gulf war, they came back in the late 90's and early 2000's with games such as Warcraft, and counter-strike which were massively popular in Kuwait with PC gaming cafes all over the country, but mostly concentrated in Salmiya and Hawally. 3. You did not mention arcade gaming cabinets. Back to the topic of Burj al Abyad, the early 90's saw arcades in Kuwait as well, the most popular and most well known one being in Marina mall, "game works", later "game-whizz" existed up until the 2010's, prior to that Burj al Abyad had a very dedicated fan-base of arcade gamers, I bring this up because in Kuwait, the gaming competition was intense, you had PC gaming, arcades, different markets for games in general, Rehab became a monopoly in the 2010's, and up until now, was the only place you could go to for gaming. (here is an article about arcade gaming in Kuwait from 2010 kotaku.com/a-look-inside-the-arcade-scene-of-kuwait-5537315 4. You skimmed over Al-Rehabs legacy and decline. the Al-Rehab complex is a shell its former self, now a place of nostalgic pop-culture peddling more than anything else. Vape-shops, anime (manga) and comic book shops have taken much of the real-estate of the building, the amount of shops that sell games, though still there, are shirking by the year, as the whole world including Kuwait has transitioned into online purchases rather than buying physical copies, as such, the Rehab complex is losing business and former customers who have moved on from gaming entirely. 5. Lastly it's important to mention that the phenomenon of "gaming-bizzares" is not unique to Kuwait, they existed all over the Arab-gulf and to as far away as places like Brazil, even Cuba has a video game black market, though the rehab complex did have that touch of character to it that is mostly lost in this day and age. Overall good video, but next time do your research thoroughly about a topic before going on with editing, I'm a new subscriber and curious to see what kind of videos you put out next. Good luck.
This is some very interesting information, and I'm happy you shared it. A lot of this is indeed new to me! However, like I said at the beginning of this video, it wasn't intended to be some highly rigorous essay, but merely sharing my own experiences with people who might not be familiar with the landscape of gaming in Kuwait, or for younger Arabs who weren't aware of how things used to be. And I mention that I only lived there from 2003-2011, so the PS2/PS3 era is really what was within the scope of what I could speak of with some degree of confidence. Still, I very much appreciate your detailed perspective. Perhaps I'll make a follow-up video in the future expanding on this idea. Thank you!
Are you aware of any video games made in the middle east? Some that come to my mind are Jenin: Road of Heroes - بطال جنين Legend of Zord - أسطورة زورد Aboo haded - أبو حديد Chipper - קסם התות 2: המשאלה הקסומה I don't know or find any games made in Kuwait but then again I never went there
What do you mean by "memories"? Okay bare with me because I have a lot to share: First of all: Location: Jordan; Amman. Second: Consoles: PS1/2/3 and PC, don't have a PS4 but my pirate friend talks to me about it a lot. Third: Environment: in the PS1/2 era, pirated games would cost 1 Jordanian Dinar, which is around half a Kuwaiti Dinar, PS3 games TO THIS DAY can be pirated and installed (no CD/DVD/BlueRay disks) for 1-3 Jordanian Dinars depending on how big the games files are through external storage devices which the games were pirated already on. PS4's case is the same as PS3 although it took a way longer time (I think pirating for PS4 kicked off around 2018-2020), dunno about the prices tho for PS4, and some people manage (yes, present) to play some PS3 and PS4 games ONLINE! THE NO-NO! THE IMPOSSIBLE NOW POSSIBLE! In some places you can invite a bunch of friends and RENT a PS3 (in the past) for a few hours and currently its mostly PS4 with the biggest consumers being FIFA/PES/Fortnite (you cannot use your account most of the time) About PC games, network cafes LOVED CS1.6, GTA San Andreas, GTA Vice City and with time, DotA 2. Haven't been to one in a long time, so no idea what is currently there beside DotA 2. Fourth and last: Personal Experience (optional you can just scroll): PS1: The real deal. R.I.P Road Rash/Rush who cares about what the name actually was, RIP in بطاطا Twisted Metal. PS2: Ace Combat is fun. Final Fantasy 12 is so fun. Naruto 2+3 and Naruto Shippuden 4+5 SO FUN! Tekken 5, 1v1 me + the campaign was a nice touch. MidNightClub 3 Remix was so fun. PS3: Even at 12 years old I felt as if there was something exceptionally wrong with how the game influences the view of Arabs and Muslims in CoD BO2. Games that are so fun: Infamous 2 (too good), Prototype 2, Assassin's Creed: Rogue, Dark Souls 1 (prepare to die edition), Minecraft, Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, Devil May Cry 4, Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Final Fantasy 13 PART TWO (would prefer FF 12 tho). Games that I can remember so they deserve to be mentioned: Naurto ultimate ninja storm part who cares (i hated the game so much even tho i finished it rofl, its so bad.), Smurfs 2, Hitman Absolution, GTAV, WWE'+FIFA'+PES' memories are associated with broken friendships, there are many more but I just can't remember. PC (past): Warcraft 3 was pirate-able and can be played online somehow, some people managed to use their Internet Routers as a full local network thing that relied on IP address idk, the result was friends playing GTA mods together, if you are a friend from Jordan: around 100 ping, a friend from Palestine: Allah knows how high the ping is. Generals was pirate-able (to this day) and there are ways to play it online (to this day), and a note about Generals, when I played it (age was in the range of 5-10) I was able to tell that the GLA team was a stereotype for Arabs, they do not say that they are Arabs, but come on: First: NO ELECTRICITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, THE WHOLE ARMY FORCES AND BUILDING DIDN'T RELY ON ANY ELECTRIC SYSTEMS! ZERO! It was a huge advantage for the team while simultaneously being a huge insult for Arabs. Second: They looked like Arabs (they just did) in one way or the other. Third: so many NEW stereotypes: Arab workers are treated like shit (also the only team whose construction unit isn't a huge vehicle, just a man with no shoes saying he is hungry), underground tunnels to move vehicles/tanks and infantry ( *COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH* Iraq *COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH* ), there was a team who relied on uhh... umm... uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....................... suicidal bombers, the airplanes of that team didn't have rockets, literally a huge flying bomb, buildings were filled with explosions (ally buildings, if someone attacks, BOOM!), and many more. Fourth: Things that idk if they are actually intended or not: the teams required way too much game knowledge, GLA armies have the least amount of resources and 1v1 power, and relied heavily on strategy and having one million IQ, also they are the only teams that have a sniper, not a usual sniper, one that can snipe the people inside their own vehicles and then he uses the vehicle and uses it for his own team (if you steal a construction vehicle, you basically have a new army becau... bla bla bla...). The GLA teams added so much to the game as a strategic option and as an idea, the execution for that idea though resulted in a huge insult to many.
Hit your friend with sticks?? Really dude get your stone throwing game up.. also srsly cause of the ripoff ps2 games i feel the Middle East is still more loyal to Sony ps till today… lan shops existed in the middle east I use to play in lans mostly c&c and counter strike 1.3/4
I mean sonh is the most popular console in the middle east tied with Nintendo also that stuff about nintnedo wasn't true they were popular way back to the snes and Gameboy here in the middle east nintedo and Sony has been the number one brand for gaming here also pc but that stuff about nintnedo was its was very popular heck most stores had more nintnedo than Sony games its just xbox thay can't sell
I remember Arab kids use to buy copies of games from street sellers for 3 dollars long ago while American kids buy them for $60 . Haha …and they think they have it all !
Same as my Iraq experience just one different we hacked the shit out x box 360 it’s games were sold for half a dollar and the ps3 the hacked the memory card and put like 50 games in it it cost about 15 dollars
Holy crap, I didn't expect someone to make a video about this! I always wanted to make to a video about my experience with gaming in the Middle East/Gulf States during the 5th gen era consoles with the PS1 up to current gens.
For most of what you said, it's pretty accurate to what I remember although in Bahrain, gaming stores were scattered around the country. Playstation was and still is the dominant console in the market with Xbox well below in 2nd place and Nintendo barely exists although the latter two are slowly fading popularity.
I recall that everyone had modded PS1/2s because A) it meant games are cheap and B) some people thought buying video games are waste of money.
Most pirated games came in bags with terrible low quality cover arts and poor quality discs. Some games had missing FMVs and soundtracks while others discs had "3 in 1" games like 3 different Crash Bandicoot games or Soul Caliber and Tekken in a single disc.
I remember PES and GTA San Andreas being heavily bootlegged, former with local translations and real teams while the latter had crap like "superman" and texture mods.
My first ever taste of PC gaming experience was me playing Counter Strike 1.6 against other class mates during classes. 😂
Regarding how gaming in the Arab world is nowadays, gamers are somewhat more diverse nowadays in terms of what they play (everything from TLOU, Resident Evil, Red Dead to Forza, FIFA, Nier Automata and so on..) although kids these days mainly play Fortnite and PUBG. However, don't expect the majority to play "Anime" Titles that aren't Dragon Ball, JoJo or other "mainstream" Shonen games so no some fancy and obscure JRPGs. I seen some people getting into PCs, Nintendo Switch and Xbox's but still not as common as Sony fans. One major change is the support of Arabic languages and even Middle Eastern Servers for some games now. I believe it's mainly because we started to buy legit copies so I guess that's a plus thing.
The biggest change however is how players are accepting the idea of paying shit ton of money for special editions, DLC's, Microtransactions and Loot Boxes. Remember paying half a dinar for a game and how anything above that is too much? Nowadays paying $100+ for a single game is acceptable somehow. :(
Hehe, I heard stories of playing Counter Strike at school from many people in my country (Ukraine, Eastern Europe).
Although my own first gaming experience was a demo of Quake III and then the one and only Warcraft III.
People really try to get legal game copies nowadays. This was totally different ~10-15 years ago. There were whole markets selling illegal game copies in creative covers. "3 in 1" were common, too xD
Plus, torrents - one of the most popular reasons to have internet back then.
Good times, I guess? xD
I wish all regions will get hogh quality representation in games one day. As well as great localisation on a regular basis.
Swahili, Hindi, Tamil, Turkish, etc. totally deserve attention.
Please make a video on these bootleg games. 😢
When I first went to the US I swear there was that guy who thought we didn't have electricity in Egypt it was funny.
Out of usa and Canada, average American don't know anything about what's going on in the other world, some of them Africa or Europe is a country for him, not a continent hhh , Dubai is a country not a city hhhh for example, you say to him name to me three countries in Europe for example you find type of them don't know hhh for example , the ancient Babylon for example in Italy for him hhhh (he don't know it's in Iraq for example), geography and a simple known question about history don't ask an average american hhh , you see hilarious answers especially in geography hhhh,
-North African Tunisian here
Lmao I remember taking my ps3 to al rihab to mod mw2, got all perks and skins.
exactly the same here in Turkey. whenever i went to buy a game and i found something not popular like an RPG or an anime game, the shopkeeper would be like: "hey why don't you buy (AAA title) instead?"
Are RPGs and Asian anime-styled games popular in Turkey?
Greetings from Ukraine! 🇺🇦❤️🇹🇷
@@Oleksa-Derevianchenkoofc it is 💀
As soon as you said الرحاب I literally started flashbacking to memories that I didn't know existed. It's been so long since someone has mentioned that place. You my friend have earned a subscriber. I guess even the RUclips algorithm is right twice a day
Al ri7ab lost about 30-40% of it's stores and have been relegated to furniture and the such. Most of it due to online gaming and how easy it is to simply download a game with 5g speed rather than fret the big bucks visiting store after another. It still has it uses though.. if you wanted to fix screen there is a spot for that. or maybe find an obscure game like Lotr BfMe 2. but all in all, most of my friends who grew up on rehab days transitioned to PC gaming due to it's simplicity. Btw, great fucking video, love the funny commentary!
There were always some furniture stores especially chandelier stores but they did increase later on
@@LeekyKale once they moved upstairs you know it's a new generation.
Maaaaaaaan I'm Egyptian and was born & raised in Kuwait and I KNEW you were gonna mention Rihab. The second you did my inner child sparked the dumbest goofiest smile the memoriessssssss of shopping ahhhhhhh
Rihab really takes me back. My first experience going there was to buy gamecube games, actually (yes I was that one kid who preferred nintendo games over playstation). But honestly I felt like nintendo games weren't as obscure as you made them out to be. The store I went to for gamecube/wii/ds games back in the day is literally in one of the photos in the video (game center). Of course nintendo wasn't as popular as Playstation, but the games were still very accessible. I really enjoyed your video, it's very well made. 👍
Man, I think we would have been great friends lol
This was so nostalgic. Kinda needed it with all this virus debacle.
On topic, some stores still overcharge for stuff, so you gotta hunt down for a specific price. It's kinda got easier to find stuff you want though which is great.
Subscribed!
Daaamn I miss the days where I'd come back home to sift through 20 games and see what I'd enjoy playing or what I'd turn into ammo for a Frisbee war with my brother...
And to answer your question regarding the state of alrihab I think it lost its chaotic charm that you were taking about and turned into more of a every store is the same and everyone is selling the same shit for the same price. It's almost like they've made a pact or something. I'd often see the vendors popping from store to store asking their friends if they have what I'm looking for or for example one dude just sent a message to a whatsapp group and someone else just waltzed in and brought the game to us. Most of the people I know just switched to digital downloads now and no one bothers to go there unless it's a hardware problem.
Ahlan bl habeeb!
Last time I went to Al-Rihab was in 2019, most of the first 2 floors there are smartphones/tablets accessory stores.You can also find some stores that sale anime or gaming related collectables and antiques.
But don’t be sad, because the basement still has 60+ store just like you remember. The basement became the hub for buying/selling used video games in Kuwait.
Most of the people I know go there only to buy antiques and/or collectibles.
No mention of LAN cafes? My fondest memories of the Middle East was LAN gaming and spending hours playing Red Alert 2 and Counter Strike with my cousins.
I have roots in Iraqi Kurdistan but lives in Sweden. They have like how many games that u could only imagine in the bazaar. You walk a stair down and it's game and console Heaven. 360 Xbox one S/X, ps2, ps3, ps4, ps5 even pc games, well pretty much anything you want.. i recently bought my ps5 there when visiting
Learned something new today, loved the video!
u can say the exact same thing about gaming in Egypt.
the part about the X Box being almost non existent is so true, a lot of people didn't even know that other consoles exist and till this day no one actually use it at all, it's all Sony here.
That's why in Egypt anything video game related is automatically referred to as "Playstation" even if the console is an xbox console
This was exactly the same experience at Egypt and why I consider the PS2 the greatest piece of tech ever created, but now I own a switch and actually like the games that Nintendo puts out, since I don't like the direction of gaming in general nowadays with the movie like games or toxic online gaming, Nintendo still makes me feel like I own a PS2.
Aaaah the MW2 days. That was THE SHIT. Great vid btw.
I don’t know about Al Rihab a lot now but I do know that my 12-14 year old cousins go there for some GTA V hacking haha.
As for the older cousins they went there once or twice to look for Pepsi Man and Tarzan for the PS1. But now old games are mostly sold by instagram accounts.
And I know a couple of people who still go there to the gaming lounges for some Counterstrike and some other PC games.
I rarely comment on videos, but while PlayStation was definitely more popular, N64 and Gamecube games were pretty easy to find in most stores (especially in Game Center which was photographed a few times in your video).
And it really wasn't hard to find the niche games. It feels like you're talking about your experience within your friends rather than being accurate.
As a Syrian, that was really relatable (Although al rihab and oniline billing never existed due to sanctions and stuff so it was all obscure stores and piracy, i bet its more rare to find a ps4 or 5 that wasnt modded with HEN 😂) and also i have an Xbox 360 slim that even i dont know how i found it sale, yup its THIS rare...
I may make a vid regarding Al-Rihab Center, when it opens after the Quarantine is over of course...
It’s open right now
H3 Alnakkas Wait, for real?
Ahmad Salem yeah you just need to wear a mask
H3 Alnakkas huh, aight. I’ll inform my father and see if I could record something...
I used to buy a shit ton of those cheap pirated games when i was a kid, but a part of my now is actually happy that we are buying more legit copies. Some games started to offer the arabic language in its options, and middle eastern servers too. This would have never happened if people pirated ps3 and ps4 games, because companies won't have a reason to accommodate people who pirate their games. We are paying more, but at least we are getting something in return from the developers.
Oh and by the way, al rihab is still alive and functioning, but i'm no longer invested in its game market a lot, so i don't know if it's doing better or worse than before. I only go their to either buy old/used games, or to go to one of those (relatively new) card game shops they have their. There is no need to buy new games from their, because buying them online costs the same, and you don't have to leave your house (one exception are extremely large games like red dead redemption 2; downloading this big ass game with slow internet would take me a week XD)
Rihab is still going strong tbh, the majority of the stores remain open and it seems significantly easier to get more niche games. My entire childhood revolved around the sorts of games that you would've described as super niche based on the standards you gave in this video (i never really got into the dudebro stuff as it never appealed to me as a kid, and even now i don't go any further into that realm than GTA and COD once in a while), yet even back around 2010 ish i pretty much NEVER failed to find at least one dude selling what i was looking for. My visits usually centred around a specific 3 or 4 shops (i'm terrible at arabic so i cannot recall the names) and the sellers there who'd recognise me from being a recurring customer, but even then, just walking around the other places in there, while perhaps some of the childhood magic has sliiiiiiiightly decreased, remains fun and mesmerising to this day. It's truly and without a doubt whatsoever, a one-of-a-kind place, and I really hope it continues to survive. It just seems to expand like an underground labyrinth the deeper you go; like some sort of digital alice in wonderland type stuff. That place and the other countless bootleg ps2 game sellers from a few years earlier than that absolutely made my childhood.
Spending the amount of money you'd pay for just ONE ps2/3 game anywhere else in the world, but leaving with a bag full of 15 discs in those terrible quality plastic folders is a magical experience you really can't get anywhere else. Nothing beat running home with excitement to put in some dodgy, brittle, scratched up disc branded with "Spyro 3: إكستريم باور ديلوكس إصدار فيفا" (or whatever other hilarious, nonsensical off-brand phrases they'd slap onto things to grab the attention of kids) is something i'm glad to have experienced; I basically feel bad for my friends in other countries who grew up with a very normal, uneventful gaming experience compared to the madness that you'd have in kuwait. This video was awesome; felt like I was reciting my own childhood to myself in a mirror, subscribing for sure, awesome work!
Least Furry Kuwati
Damn this sums it up pretty perfectly, who knew sony would benefit so hard from having the crappiest security
In Saudi Arabia i remember distinctly grabbing modded variations of San Andrias from those pirated stores. Like they'd have regular GTA : SA but then they'd have stuff like in a bunny costume and other wackier versions. it was super dumb. also games costed $10 riyal there 😭
Finding Devil May Cry and God Of War must have been a pain in the ass in Egypt we had Game Valley
At 5:05 I also used to keep my ps2 games in a case like that (still have that case and my ps2 laying under the bed), anyways great vid man
The stores are still there, but not active as the glory days. I still go there. but I now just buy games online. I remember back in 2017, I wanted to get Dark souls 1 for my ps3, but I can’t download from the ps store, so I had to resort to go to rihab, and ask every damn store for it. It took me an hour, I asked more than a hundred stores for it, until this dude found it for me, a used version for 11 KD ( 35 dollars). Ironically, a year after that the remastered edition came out for the ps4 😂
Pretty much the same thing in saudi and the ps1.2 game ware 10sr.
but when the 360 and ps3 time came the 360 copped games was 15sr.
the 360 had some sistem that can block copies so they soled a cd that you can run it before running the game.
as we owned both consoles I can conform the 360 dudes are rare + the gold thing didn't help.
on the point of pc gaming, yes it weren't common in the sense of people having pcs at their homes, but it was popular in internet cafes "counters" as we called them based on the only game i played there which is counter strike, and IC only became more popular after WoW dropped, the IC were filled to the brim of escaped school students who wasted their grades one gaming (it was worth it)
Nice to see a fellow Arab on here, I run my own (lower quality) channel from Iraq. Kuwait's troublesome neighbour.
It's interesting that this is almost exactly the gaming experience here in Brasil in the same period. Like pretty much exactly the same. Everyone had 3 or 4 different san andreas hacks(GTA Rio de Janeiro, and GTA São Paulo), everyone had a naruto/dragonball fighting game, shooter games were very popular (i remember everyone talking about black but didn't know what halo was until like 2009) the big difference might be that Futebol, or soccer as a US weirdo would call it, was pretty much the biggest genre of game, with some PES hacks ( BOMBA patch being the classic one) still being sold to this day, and also that computer games, usually in the form of older games, or counter strike and similar games in Lan houses were very popular aswell. Also while a sizable amount of people ended up getting PS3's the 360 actually got pretty deceently popular because of it's ease of piracy, with a lot of gaming stores becoming "legit" but still carrying pirated games. Also, especially early on in the ps4/xone era PC's got pretty popular because of piracy, cause 8th gen games were bloody expensive, although steam certainly diminshed the amount of piracy in the pc, it ended up making it a even more popular as a platform. Although really, game pirating is a long held tradition here, you can still find brand new SEGA master system clones being sold around.
I live in Kuwait and near Rihab and the quality has improved
Im an Egyptian gamer here and honstely most stuff you said here also applied here in Egypt
elserag mall missed these days
@@sheriftantawy8931 also boustan
I disagree on the Nintendo 64 part, the stores had most of the games, me and my friends were playing N64 non stop.
7:55 Well, that's another thing I can relate to despite not even being arabic, Spanish speaking countries LOVE soccer, especially Mexico (and Brazil too from what I've heard), though I was never into it.
Brother i left Kuwait 3months ago now gaming way different arab play only fifa nowadays
haggling the price of a game from 20kd to 18kd is like winning the fucking lottery
Omg that's really accurate my man! Especially in Lebanon, u don't need to pay 30$ for a game, just like 10,000 L.L for 40 games lol .
Ofc some of my PS2 collections comes from bootleg Brazilian markets but irdc:v
P.S: also the ds part is also really accurate imo, i got like a Ds with 3 fully pirated cartridges with like each one has like 200 games fr💀( although the games are actually dope and they don't crash tbh)
This guy described PS1-PS2 ERA gamming in the middle east perfectly XD
nah i had the original xbox and it was way more widespread than you think. yes it was less popular than the ps2 (obviously), but i don't remember having trouble finding their games from any of the stores.
This is kinda like the Mexican gaming experience. Just go to one of the nasty markets and you can find a ton of PS2 bootleggery and DS flash cartridges
The nintendo part hits home for us balkanoids too, Nintendo had 0 presence due to the fact PS1 and PS2 (also PC) Piracy was cheap and easy as hell to do. No stores had N64s or Gamecubes during those gens.
So when i finally got an ADSL net connection in 2007 and was introduced to youtube and the websites like screwattack, GT and what not and saw it was 90% content about people being nostalgic about the N64 , it was a bit of a confusing experience for me, since i never even heard of there being an N64 till 2007, most folk thought Nintendo just stopped existing after the Super NES in the home console market and only did Gameboys and nothing else anymore for like two whole generaitons.
In general this whole video was pretty close to how it was in the Balkans too, some differences I'd mention is PC gaming here was huge and not just Playstation and the X360 actually got a presence here. People here valued piracy far more than brand loyalty, so when PS3 hit with its awful high price and lack of piracy , it actually caused the Xbox 360 to become a thing in my country of Croatia, where a lot if not most switched fully to xbox because you could pirate games on it and people didn't give a rats ass about getting XBL bans because no one cared about the online service at all, if they wanted to do online gaming, they'd rather do it on a PC still, especially since XBL asked for a monthly sub which was an extra big no no in our market.
Nuh uh
I’m glad you started talking about this, because I grew up with this stuff too! I remember going to electronic stores in towns of Lebanon and finding so many bootleg products, like cheap modded versions of games and fake windows installation discs. I first watched your spacetoon video and now this, I really love these types of videos, it reminds me of how it feels to be an Arab. I hope to see more videos like these.
I remember when I was playing Uncharted 3 for the first time, I was like "Why is this guy just reciting the items on the food menu?"
I was young I had tones pirated game disc, most electronics store in Lebanon sold pirated games
When I switched from console gaming (PS3, Xbox 360) to PC gaming I found it hard to get physical legit copies of PC games. I only start getting legit PC games when got introduced to steam.
I got my Wii modded there and got 200+ games
I used to go there as a kid and get some games for my psp. I remember vice city, the dragon ball z and Naruto games, and the wrestling games were the shit back then. Also, contrary to most of my friends, I had an Xbox 360 and I would get all my games from there too. Although I made the switch to the ps4 a few years later. This place has so much fucking memories. I still go to this day if I need smth.
Btw the wii also had pirated games i also have most of the games and people in rihab would mod ps3 and xbox 360 too, not alot of people i know played the gamecube but i did and a couple of my friends and cousins
cheers from kuwait
Never went to rihab but i got some used games for the ps3 and ps4 from the bazaar in fahaheel. With the ps5 moving to digital games tho, rihab will definitley die.
I'd argue that you could still find niche JRPGs in Al-Rihab but mostly depends on the store. Some stores sell only niche Japanese video games, ones that aren't even localized! I got my P5 vanilla copy from there btw. We have Xcite, Jareer bookstore and other electronic stores that sell video games but Sony is still in the lead. Also buying games online is a lot more accessible and cheaper which also contributed to decrease in the sale of physical copies of games here-
oh you are a Kuwaiti too i had the same experience
ALSO HOW DID I NOT FIND THIS CHANNEL BEFORE
same xD
What about games made in the ME?
In Iraq we had and still have the Kuwait Boulevard that acts like a Video Game Bazar, Ironically
Now I understand why Sony games starting from the PS4, they made Arabic dubs of their games in a studio in the UAE. Sony just knew they had a market and they can get more on their side.
Hah nice I'm a Lebanese Armenian that lived in Kuwait till 2014 before moving to Canada. The stuff like Rihab blew people's minds or that Kuwaitis liked Shonen Anime a lot (mostly cause everything sexual was like censored lol). In Lebanon less censorship to none at all, BUT the interests were akin to Kuwait's.
What about language barrier for ps1 or 2 etc..where they all I English, German,French,Italian or Spanish.
Because I have never seen any other languages for these games
Here in iraq, the Xbox 360 completely won the console race because it was easier to get its pirated games for less than 1$.
you earned a sub! keep it up!
Very interesting!
We used to buy ps2 games for like 0.5$ here in lebanon
childhood
Fantastic video
For now I only go for al rehab for buying and selling used games, and you'll find good deals for them , Also alot of kids go there to get prepaid cards since there partets won't allow them to use credit cards
Someone once asked me if there where hospitals in the middle east…
Are non-pirated games sold in a dedicated video game store in the Middle East like GameStop or an equivalent? Would it be possible to get an actually legitimate copy of something like Pokemon in the DS era?
It's possible but very hard
At least in saudi arabia
Somebody buy me a ticket to the mid east
Lek shaaaaa great video
Also Pokemon was really popular in Kuwait, but was like the only Gameboy game students owned. I remember my first game being Pokemon Ruby with a Treecko, but it may have been a pirated copy LOL. As for COD, IIRC Kuwait was a very pro America country after the gulf war, so there was this sentiment that THEY were the Arabs not getting shot at, but the cursed Saddam or Bin Laden.
I also returned to Kuwait in 2020, Rehab was still going. It has a curry/ramen shop now, lots of anime and manga copy and figures (nothing sexual obviously), board games and lots of stuff for Nintendo/Switch.
This might be 2 years late but Rn الرحاب shops is dying slowly because of pricing reasons people now have internet and can just buy the game at the ps store, some shops turned into anime figure shops and others still running and selling ps5 for 300kwd, Most people in kuwait at least are buying pcs or trying nintendo switch /xbox, Because of the new gen people switching from ps4 to xbox/pc mostly because of the ps5 pricing and how cheap xbox gamepass is
I remember having to buy multiple r4 flash carts because the firmware was literally set to self destruct after a while which was a pretty scummy thing to do. Psp piracy was also extremely prominent to the point where I have literally never touched a umd disc in my life.
same experience in the UAE... i am pretty much sure we all had the same thing in the arab world
agree with most of your points, though i do want to put my opinion on the ''most cod games had you shot arabs'' part, it's mostly the same as what you say in this video, but also it was that most arab soldiers/terrorist in these games look like any other generic soldier you see in the other factions of the game but with a outfit design, also fps shooters like cod in my opinion was the closest middle easterners got to use guns freely, it was basically a an infinite amount of weapons ready for you to have fun with your friends.
I remember going to Saudia Arabia to visit my relatives and for some reason I thought it was a good idea that I bring my slim ps2 over from the u.s but I forgot to get the games I had for it, so I decided to buy a couple from a small store not very far from my aunts house and I remember old games like DragonBall z budokai 3 and tenkaichi 3 along with gta san andreas and call of duty 2 being on shelves for about $5 each and I kid you not almost everytime I bought something I prayed that the game would work or the guy doesn't rip me off by telling me it works then I find out that he's trying to rip me off, it was always a risk
out of curiosity, are u saudi or a expat?
@@CaptCool88 I'm Saudi
@@Milty2001 Oh I’ve never seen a Saudi raised abroad so that’s why I asked
Bro in Palestine I remember nothing about any PlayStation 2 or 1 being sold, the first time I heard about PlayStation was in 2010 when hacking PS3/Xbox 360 was so accessible, I mean it's not that I never heard of PlayStation before 2010, it was just too overpriced and nobody dared to sell something in a non existent market, Most gaming was done on PCs or literally 4th generation consoles or below, I remember seeing bootleg gameboys being sold locally and had shitty games like Tetris or worse.
The first handheld gaming experience I had was with a Nokia 3310, I actually spent tens of hours playing Snake 2, and then in 2010 I got my first phone which was a Sony Ericsson k800i, I could actually run 3D Java games, I remember playing golf and tennis 🎾, it could do 3G so I watched RUclips, listened to music... etc, However in 2013 I got my first ever smartphone, it was a Samsung Young Dous or something, But I didn't game on it because it was so underpowered with next to nothing in terms of internal memory, In 2014 I bought a PC and since then I'm a PC gamer and I never considered a console, But 2 years ago I was in a thrift store and bought a PS2 for literally $2.5, but sent like $30 for it's accessories, And bought games for it, they were bootleg but trust me I searched everywhere for legit copies and couldn't find a place for legit PS2 games, Heck I'm grateful I could find an 8MB memory card, I bought it for $22 because the seller knew how obscure they are, I agreed to pay that much because it was a legitimate one, So yeah now I can play games and save hahaha
Oh and last year I got a Nintendo DS Lite for free so I bought charger, stylus and R4 Gold flash card to put ROMs in it, Because AliExpress doesn't sell legit DS games, and even when I find legit DS games they sell for like $20 bucks, I thought it's not worth it to be a good person so let's pirate and go to hell lmao
Anyway I actually like the Nintendo DS Lite, I take it with me to college and my colleagues get weirded out by it and start to ask questions, I'm actually amazed that they're amazed, Like it's a 2006 handheld console yet it amazes them that it has touch support and 2 screens also the design is surprisingly timeless like a Porsche!
Anyway I subscribed to your channel and I hope you get million of subscribers and views because you are honestly underrated, and I know it's the worst time to be Arab/Muslim (in life not in general because I know being a Muslim is always great no matter what timeline because we believe in hereafter).
This shit was pretty accurate. Nice video
Bruh what do you mean nintnedo is one of the most popular consoles in the middle east every Arab gamer usally had either a nintnedo system or a playstation or played pc but a lot of people were nostalgic for n64 and sees and Gameboy which was widely avibe in the middle east in the 90s a lot of arsbic families had them a long side sony
Just some thoughts on your video:
You're not the first guy who's made a video about the Al-Rehab complex, this is a documentary about it (in Arabic) from 2016 ruclips.net/video/nzTeRamhUxY/видео.html&feature=emb_logo
Here are my thoughts in my best summation-
1. Video games have existed in Kuwait since at least the late seventies, hard to believe but it's true, the Atari 2600 came out then it was available to buy albeit not in Rehab, Rehab came to be known as a "gaming-bizzare" in the late 80's / early 90's when the relevant consoles and games at the time were sold there, full price, legitimate copies and all- meaning that Rehab did not transition into selling legitimate games with the blu-ray era, it reverted to it; a cyclical process really.
2. You heavily skimmed over PC gaming in Kuwait, it's such an (absurdly enough) complex topic that you could make a separate video about it entirely, you're probably too young to be knowledgeable about the topic, but the first instances of game-piracy in Kuwait was not with the PS1 or PS2 days, rather it started with pirated floppy discs of games in the DOS format that you could buy in Burj al Abyad in Salmiya, a place that sold games earlier than Al-Rehab, it's the predecessor of Al-Rehab in a lot of ways. Anyway, PC game lounges existed in Kuwait as early as 1989, with a brief hiatus during the gulf war, they came back in the late 90's and early 2000's with games such as Warcraft, and counter-strike which were massively popular in Kuwait with PC gaming cafes all over the country, but mostly concentrated in Salmiya and Hawally.
3. You did not mention arcade gaming cabinets. Back to the topic of Burj al Abyad, the early 90's saw arcades in Kuwait as well, the most popular and most well known one being in Marina mall, "game works", later "game-whizz" existed up until the 2010's, prior to that Burj al Abyad had a very dedicated fan-base of arcade gamers, I bring this up because in Kuwait, the gaming competition was intense, you had PC gaming, arcades, different markets for games in general, Rehab became a monopoly in the 2010's, and up until now, was the only place you could go to for gaming. (here is an article about arcade gaming in Kuwait from 2010 kotaku.com/a-look-inside-the-arcade-scene-of-kuwait-5537315
4. You skimmed over Al-Rehabs legacy and decline. the Al-Rehab complex is a shell its former self, now a place of nostalgic pop-culture peddling more than anything else. Vape-shops, anime (manga) and comic book shops have taken much of the real-estate of the building, the amount of shops that sell games, though still there, are shirking by the year, as the whole world including Kuwait has transitioned into online purchases rather than buying physical copies, as such, the Rehab complex is losing business and former customers who have moved on from gaming entirely.
5. Lastly it's important to mention that the phenomenon of "gaming-bizzares" is not unique to Kuwait, they existed all over the Arab-gulf and to as far away as places like Brazil, even Cuba has a video game black market, though the rehab complex did have that touch of character to it that is mostly lost in this day and age.
Overall good video, but next time do your research thoroughly about a topic before going on with editing, I'm a new subscriber and curious to see what kind of videos you put out next. Good luck.
This is some very interesting information, and I'm happy you shared it. A lot of this is indeed new to me!
However, like I said at the beginning of this video, it wasn't intended to be some highly rigorous essay, but merely sharing my own experiences with people who might not be familiar with the landscape of gaming in Kuwait, or for younger Arabs who weren't aware of how things used to be. And I mention that I only lived there from 2003-2011, so the PS2/PS3 era is really what was within the scope of what I could speak of with some degree of confidence.
Still, I very much appreciate your detailed perspective. Perhaps I'll make a follow-up video in the future expanding on this idea. Thank you!
gta san andreas spiderman edition was the goat
Are you aware of any video games made in the middle east? Some that come to my mind are
Jenin: Road of Heroes - بطال جنين
Legend of Zord - أسطورة زورد
Aboo haded - أبو حديد
Chipper - קסם התות 2: המשאלה הקסומה
I don't know or find any games made in Kuwait but then again I never went there
ain’t no way my man just put a hebrew game as “middle east” 💀💀💀
What do you mean by "memories"?
Okay bare with me because I have a lot to share:
First of all: Location:
Jordan; Amman.
Second:
Consoles: PS1/2/3 and PC, don't have a PS4 but my pirate friend talks to me about it a lot.
Third:
Environment: in the PS1/2 era, pirated games would cost 1 Jordanian Dinar, which is around half a Kuwaiti Dinar, PS3 games TO THIS DAY can be pirated and installed (no CD/DVD/BlueRay disks) for 1-3 Jordanian Dinars depending on how big the games files are through external storage devices which the games were pirated already on. PS4's case is the same as PS3 although it took a way longer time (I think pirating for PS4 kicked off around 2018-2020), dunno about the prices tho for PS4, and some people manage (yes, present) to play some PS3 and PS4 games ONLINE! THE NO-NO! THE IMPOSSIBLE NOW POSSIBLE! In some places you can invite a bunch of friends and RENT a PS3 (in the past) for a few hours and currently its mostly PS4 with the biggest consumers being FIFA/PES/Fortnite (you cannot use your account most of the time)
About PC games, network cafes LOVED CS1.6, GTA San Andreas, GTA Vice City and with time, DotA 2. Haven't been to one in a long time, so no idea what is currently there beside DotA 2.
Fourth and last: Personal Experience (optional you can just scroll):
PS1: The real deal. R.I.P Road Rash/Rush who cares about what the name actually was, RIP in بطاطا Twisted Metal.
PS2:
Ace Combat is fun. Final Fantasy 12 is so fun. Naruto 2+3 and Naruto Shippuden 4+5 SO FUN! Tekken 5, 1v1 me + the campaign was a nice touch. MidNightClub 3 Remix was so fun.
PS3:
Even at 12 years old I felt as if there was something exceptionally wrong with how the game influences the view of Arabs and Muslims in CoD BO2.
Games that are so fun:
Infamous 2 (too good), Prototype 2, Assassin's Creed: Rogue, Dark Souls 1 (prepare to die edition), Minecraft, Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, Devil May Cry 4, Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Final Fantasy 13 PART TWO (would prefer FF 12 tho).
Games that I can remember so they deserve to be mentioned:
Naurto ultimate ninja storm part who cares (i hated the game so much even tho i finished it rofl, its so bad.), Smurfs 2, Hitman Absolution, GTAV, WWE'+FIFA'+PES' memories are associated with broken friendships, there are many more but I just can't remember.
PC (past): Warcraft 3 was pirate-able and can be played online somehow, some people managed to use their Internet Routers as a full local network thing that relied on IP address idk, the result was friends playing GTA mods together, if you are a friend from Jordan: around 100 ping, a friend from Palestine: Allah knows how high the ping is.
Generals was pirate-able (to this day) and there are ways to play it online (to this day), and a note about Generals, when I played it (age was in the range of 5-10) I was able to tell that the GLA team was a stereotype for Arabs, they do not say that they are Arabs, but come on:
First: NO ELECTRICITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, THE WHOLE ARMY FORCES AND BUILDING DIDN'T RELY ON ANY ELECTRIC SYSTEMS! ZERO! It was a huge advantage for the team while simultaneously being a huge insult for Arabs.
Second: They looked like Arabs (they just did) in one way or the other.
Third: so many NEW stereotypes: Arab workers are treated like shit (also the only team whose construction unit isn't a huge vehicle, just a man with no shoes saying he is hungry), underground tunnels to move vehicles/tanks and infantry ( *COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH* Iraq *COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH* ), there was a team who relied on uhh... umm... uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....................... suicidal bombers, the airplanes of that team didn't have rockets, literally a huge flying bomb, buildings were filled with explosions (ally buildings, if someone attacks, BOOM!), and many more.
Fourth: Things that idk if they are actually intended or not: the teams required way too much game knowledge, GLA armies have the least amount of resources and 1v1 power, and relied heavily on strategy and having one million IQ, also they are the only teams that have a sniper, not a usual sniper, one that can snipe the people inside their own vehicles and then he uses the vehicle and uses it for his own team (if you steal a construction vehicle, you basically have a new army becau... bla bla bla...).
The GLA teams added so much to the game as a strategic option and as an idea, the execution for that idea though resulted in a huge insult to many.
Writing this was more nostalgic than the already nostalgic video, now I will go back to my PC Free-to-Play online competitive game.
Rihab is the hub of games in Middle East . Period
Hit your friend with sticks?? Really dude get your stone throwing game up.. also srsly cause of the ripoff ps2 games i feel the Middle East is still more loyal to Sony ps till today… lan shops existed in the middle east I use to play in lans mostly c&c and counter strike 1.3/4
I mean sonh is the most popular console in the middle east tied with Nintendo also that stuff about nintnedo wasn't true they were popular way back to the snes and Gameboy here in the middle east nintedo and Sony has been the number one brand for gaming here also pc but that stuff about nintnedo was its was very popular heck most stores had more nintnedo than Sony games its just xbox thay can't sell
Accurate
This is so Arabic, you can't make this up (even though this is one steak that got droned in Western seasoning...)
i remember, when i was in gaza me and my cousing would boot up plants vs zombies and take turns. good times
yooo halla kuwaiti lol
I remember Arab kids use to buy copies of games from street sellers for 3 dollars long ago while American kids buy them for $60 . Haha …and they think they have it all !
Ehh, rehab is still standing and selling banned games out in the public lol
Yo
Same as my Iraq experience just one different we hacked the shit out x box 360 it’s games were sold for half a dollar and the ps3 the hacked the memory card and put like 50 games in it it cost about 15 dollars
هذا يبدو رائع هههه
Ok
Lmao
You sound like an Arab Swegta 😂😂
Yoo i bought my ps3 and a copy of minecraft there 2:11
العراق والسعودية و إيران هذول الثلاثة الي منجد كان لهم لور وقت ال ps2 و ال 3 من ال dubs إلى نسخ الألعاب إلى تكريك الألعاب
Not so different from latinamerica.....