Game Development Giant

As he was writing, Jester suddenly thought of something, and then he laughed a little suddenly. This was a not-so-authentic trap he had prepared for Nintendo, but he was not sure whether it could be done. . Because the key to this matter does not lie with him.

So, Jester picked up the phone on the side and dialed the hardware R\u0026D department. After a few seconds, the call was connected.

I'm looking for Naka Yuji. Jester said simply after the call was connected.

Jester hung up the phone after a few minutes. He didn't talk much. You could tell from his tone that Naka Yuji's tone was very urgent now. It was obvious that he was very busy because his home computer also had an eight-bit CPU. Although the architecture uses an upgraded version of 6502, which is much better in performance than the castrated version of FC 6502, it is still an eight-bit CPU in essence, so it is still very difficult to build a simulator based on this.

To be precise, if Jester were to do it, this would be impossible.

However, Jester heard Yuji Naka's tone, as if he had found a very clever way to solve this hardware problem, but he was not sure whether it could succeed, and Yuji Naka was also verifying it.

Jester plans to use an emulator to trick Nintendo at the CES show, but he also knows that what really determines the outcome of the next generation of consoles is the quality of the games. Just relying on this kind of sneaky trick, he may be able to achieve temporary success. advantage, but will eventually lose. But Jester had to do this, because if Nintendo released it at the same time as itself, then they would be able to take the lead simply by relying on the number of games.

After all, Nintendo has been planning this for a full year and a half.

The three armies cannot seize ambition. This time, Jester intends to seize Nintendo's opponent's ambition.

Moreover, Jester also consulted his barrister about what he wanted to do, and the answer he got was that it was definitely an infringement. If he went to court, he would lose, but he could drag out the lawsuit for a long time. , say three to five years.

After receiving this answer, Jester felt relieved. Even if he lost the lawsuit three to five years later, he would only have to lose some money. But by that time, the overall situation had already been decided, and his home computer might already have far more advantages. It has surpassed Nintendo's market share, and the outcome of the lawsuit is no longer relevant.

The games prepared for the launch are definitely sufficient and adequate, covering all types, including puzzle sketches, action clearance, shooting beat-em-up, flight shooting, sports, etc.

But now his company's design team basically has its own tasks, and it is certainly not realistic to recruit people temporarily. After all, it is already the end of October, and he will soon officially announce his home console at the CES show, and at the same time, he will also When announcing the first game, in order to give players a positive impression, they will inevitably provide a large number of game trials. This is a naked and direct confrontation with Nintendo. Not to mention that the quality of temporary recruitment cannot be guaranteed at all, even if it is The level is good, but if you let some brand-new people with no experience in game production make games, the quality cannot be guaranteed. After all, the video game industry has already experienced a cold winter, and the release of a bad game on home game consoles will have a huge impact on players' enthusiasm for purchasing.

Therefore, for Jester now, he can only suppress himself internally.

After all, this era is a barbaric era of electronic games. Many games are just innovations in gameplay. In fact, their quality is not very high. Moreover, Jester’s current launch games already have high-quality game finales, and there is no shortage of arcade games. To increase the popularity of transplanted works after big sales, what is missing is some products that complement the game type.

Of course, for the sake of your company's reputation, you definitely can't do it casually.

Although he had the idea of ​​​​making a competitive racing game, Jester decided to give up temporarily after thinking about it for a long time, because he wanted to make a high-level racing game, even in this era, especially if it cannot be made by Nintendo. Compared with the similar F1 Racing, it requires a lot of effort to refine, but what I lack most now is time.

After much deliberation, Jester decided to let his team make two simpler ones first.

One is a sports game that I thought of before that relies on the speed and accuracy of button presses to control characters. It is mainly track and field sports. This type of game basically only requires a simple judgment program and a few not-so-complex images. , plus a scoring system is enough, and the playability is not low. It seems that in Jester's impression, Namco launched a similar sports game game in 1986 called world-class- track-meet, the sales volume is not bad, the total sales volume exceeds 3 million, and it is also in the top 20 in the historical sales volume of FC games.

It is worth mentioning that this is also the first game in the world equipped with a dancing mat. Of course, this is not a dancing game, but a somatosensory game. Jester also has to admire Nintendo designers on this point. With their imagination, they designed many FC/NES-specific somatosensory equipment for their games in the 1980s to give players an experience, although things like rob, somatosensory gloves, and voice-controlled helmets have become out-and-out The failure caused Lao Ren's image to plummet in the eyes of fans, but these things still provided Nintendo with a lot of technical accumulation in the field of motion sensing, allowing them to take the lead in developing a real motion sensing game console in the future, and once again dominate the next era. Made an indelible contribution.

Jester also feels that his company should accumulate technology in this area in advance. Otherwise, he does not want to give Nintendo a chance to make a comeback in the future after defeating Nintendo now. Moreover, it is not uncommon for such a somatosensory device to be released in this era. Collar money tools, such as Nintendo's light gun. Although this was the standard feature when the US version of NES was released, it costs money to buy a special game card. However, the sales volume of the light gun game Duck Shooting is as high as two Eighteen million copies, which is higher than the sales volume of Super Mario Bros. 3. On the FC platform, it is second only to Super Mario.

In Jester's eyes, this is all about grabbing money, and this new thing is very useful for boosting the sales of game consoles. After all, game consoles with a light gun or without it, in the eyes of some players, The moment you carry a light gun, you become taller.

However, it will definitely not be available at the beginning of the release. After all, our own hardware R\u0026D personnel do not have that much energy.

Then there is a sports game that is similar to Baseball released by Nintendo on the FC. It needs to be specific to specific events. However, Jester does not plan to release the same Baseball as Nintendo, because based on the current hardware system , he can’t do anything good by making the same game, and in this way, he can compete with Nintendo.

Besides baseball, football is the most popular thing in the United States. As for basketball? This thing is still an unpopular sport in the United States, let alone football.

But the reason why baseball can be done is because to a large extent, this sport only requires players to hit the ball and catch the ball most of the time. In other words, the CPU only needs to process static most of the time. This is the biggest difference between them and football and rugby. Therefore, such a game is easy to make and can be made more realistic. Of course, it is equivalent to this era.

But other sports games…

Jester thought about it, and found that no matter whether it was rugby, basketball or football, it did not meet this requirement. Moreover, he had also played football games on FC. The roughness was beyond words, and the sales were not high. He was not I really want to do it, but even if he does it, the quality of the game will be ruined by Baseball. Without him, it will just be functional limitations.

It’s not that these games are not being made, it’s that they cannot be made to compete with Nintendo’s “Baseball”, but they can enrich the game types in post-production, and at the same time accumulate technology for such games.

Then, Jester began to think about the best-selling sports games of this era.

Except for Baseball, in his impression, the sales volume of sports games on FC/NES is actually very good. Although it is not outstanding, it is not bad either.

For example, several games named directly after games by Nintendo, such as Tennis, Ice Hockey, and Volleyball, have sold more than two million copies. However, this issue is a matter of opinion for Jester. In his In my eyes, the reason why Nintendo's several sports games are able to sell well is purely because they occupy a high share of the FC platform.

Some players have no choice but to buy Nintendo sports games.

Because few players buy other game consoles specifically to play sports games, and there are no sports games with such appeal in this era, but there are many players who like sports games. Although in this era Sports games are too crude, but the problem is that players of this era have never seen sports games that are not crude.

Finally, after Jester wrote down all the sports games that he remembered that had been released on FC, he found that he had really forgotten a game called Baseball that was not inferior to Nintendo in terms of quality, and even outsold Nintendo in terms of sales. A sports game that is better than Baseball.

Because this sport is so niche in China, when Jester played it, the American version was played in China, and it was in English. Plus, he didn’t know anything about the rules of the sport, so he didn’t play it at all. No fun, so not very impressive.

But later when Jester was studying the history of FC games, he read some articles introducing sports games, and they all spoke highly of this game.

The playability is great. This is the evaluation of this game by those articles, including some star players from major European and American websites. In this era, when it is impossible to win with the graphics, the playability is almost like a game. The only criterion for survival.

This sports game also continues Nintendo's naming rules for sports games. It does not have too fancy naming like EA's **, it is a simple name of the sport, which is simple and clear for people to know at a glance. What kind of game is this? This is also the principle that Jester follows in naming the game. He will never try to make things mysterious.

This game is . The sales volume on FC has exceeded 4 million. It is one of the only 11 games on FC with a total sales volume of more than 4 million. It is also the only sports game. The swing in it The image of hitting the ball is exactly Mario. As for why Mario was used? It’s not that they want to borrow Mario’s fame. Mario wasn’t very famous when this game was released. This is entirely because Nintendo wants to cut corners. In this era, as far as sports games are concerned, this game is in terms of quality. It is impeccable, even when Jester was watching the video of James the God of Flames, professional trolls like James the God of Flames praised this game.

If I can capture the audience of ball games when I launch my own game at the beginning of next year, by the time Nintendo comes up with another idea, the overall situation will have been decided. The most important reason why I chose this game is that it is easy to make. Only by making a simple game can we make it in a short time and ensure the quality of the game.

Next, is my next highlight, Saraman Snake.