Import gaming website Play-Asia is having a grand sale to celebrate the Chinese new year (Feb 18). Not only are a ton of games on sale for great prices, but place an order between February 6th and February 28th on any item marked with a piggy bank icon and you're automatically entered in a drawing to win an Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, DS and more! Be warned that most games are for Japanese consoles and in Japanese, so import newbies should do some research before taking the plunge (see below). As a rule, any Nintendo DS or Game Boy Advance game is region-free, meaning you can buy and play games from anywhere in the world on any system. The Wii and GameCube need special 3rd-party accessories to play foreign games.

If you want to familiarize yourself with the Japanese language, Basic Japanese for Import Gamers is a good place to start. The forums over at NTSC-UK are usually packed with importers advising others on games that are language friendly. Also, GameSpot's guide to importing is a good starter resource for import newbies.



Here are a few highlights from the Play-Asia sale:

• Densetsu no Stafi 2 (GBA - $14.90) An amazing platformer game never released overseas. No knowledge of Japanese is required.
• Mother 3 (GBA - $29.90) - The third and final game in the Mother (Earthbound) series. no U.S. release is planned, but fan translations are well underway, and if you want to use the English patch, you should own a copy of the game.
• bit Generations games (Boundish, Coloris, Dialhex, Digidrive, Dotstream, Orbital, Soundvoyager) (GBA - $14.95) - A series of remarkably simple but stylish games with no Japanese text whatsoever. Highly recommended, and finally at a respectable price.