Game Development Giant

And from Hisao Oguchi's tone, you can hear his envy of Mars Entertainment's method of replacing old ones with new ones, but this is not something he can learn from.

In fact, Hisao Oguchi feels that his biggest advantage over Mars Entertainment may be that he is in a chasing position and does not need to care about the opinions of others, including the media. In other words, no matter what good marketing methods Mars Entertainment uses Having achieved enviable results, he can copy them all.

But Mars Entertainment cannot do that, because he is the leader in the industry, and even if he wants to do it, he must not do it so obviously.

We don't have as large a player base as Mars Entertainment. At the meeting, some people expressed the same view as Hisao Oguchi, and even said with the same regret, This is really a unique opportunity. Advantage.

But Hisao Oguchi immediately shifted his attention to the game called Super Balotelli Racing among the first games released at the same time as Dreambox 2. He had previously worked in Game and Player. I have seen reviews of this game in two gaming magazines.

At that time, he thought it was because Mars Entertainment took public relations fees. This was not an anecdote in the industry. Many game companies would publish advertisements in game magazines, and the prices were relatively high, just to have their games mentioned in game magazines. Show mercy when talking.

And for games that are highly praised, it doesn't mean that they won't appear, but that the wrong person will appear.

If a game produced by Jester himself, or a master producer like Mark Saini or Sid Meier, could receive such an evaluation, then Hisao Oguchi would not be surprised at all, because Hisao Oguchi himself is a A very good game designer who once served as Suzuki Yu's deputy.

He deeply understands producers like Yu Suzuki. What kind of shocking works can be produced.

For example, when Yu Suzuki completed Hang-on, it also aroused admiration in the industry. Even Jester did not hesitate to send people to participate in the entire process at the expense of developing a million-selling home console game for Sega himself. The development of this game.

At that time, he was in the development team of Hang-on led by Yu Suzuki and experienced all this personally.

It can even be said unceremoniously that Mars Entertainment’s ability to compete with Sega in the North American market in large-scale arcades is inseparable from this extremely critical development experience. Now Mars Entertainment’s five large-scale arcades There are almost all core personnel in the development team of the somatosensory arcade machine. They all stood out from those who were sent to Sega at that time.

Of course, Sega's arcade game development team can break away from the arcade development mentality so quickly and successfully enter the rhythm of home console game development. This is also the same as when Jester generously asked Suzuki Yu to lead people at Mars Entertainment. The experience of game development at the headquarters is inseparable. The development energy during that time really taught Sega a lot.

Hisao Oguchi was in another development team at the time and did not participate in the development experience of Mars Entertainment, which she deeply regretted.

At that time, Hisao Oguchi was very familiar with Naka Yuji. His previous works can only be said to have some spirituality, but more importantly, it is because of Mars Entertainment's strong development technology, which is strictly for eight-bit computers. Through incredible programming and art skills, in some places, effects that can only be achieved on a 16-bit machine are achieved.

As for the design of the game, they are both RPG games. Hisao Oguchi feels that Yuji Naka’s “Phantasy Star” is good in every aspect, whether it’s plot or playability. There is a big gap between them and Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is also a Japanese development team of Mars Entertainment. Even compared to Dragon Quest with Yuji Tsui, who has an extremely bad relationship due to several head-to-head confrontations. obvious.

On the contrary, the man named Hideo Kojima, who has been completely silent since he made a Metal Gear, was even more interested in Hisao Oguchi's speech. He even felt that Hisao Oguchi was from Mars Entertainment. Among so many Japanese producers, he is one of the most talented and talented.

There was even a time when Hisao Oguchi felt that it was because Hideo Kojima had offended Jester or other Mars Entertainment executives for some reason and was put in cold storage, so he suggested this matter to Yu Suzuki several times. I hope Yu Suzuki can contact Hideo Kojima, because judging from the style reflected in the game Metal Gear, Hideo Kojima's game style is indeed very consistent with Sega's hardcore style.

Suzuki Yu also had the same view as him, but the result of the contact was not so satisfactory.

The reply they got was very decisive. Even when Suzuki Yu went to work as a lobbyist in person, Kojima Hideo refused very decisively. Even Hisao Oguchi, who was accompanying him, could see that Kojima Hideo's reply , definitely not perfunctory, but an expression of his true inner thoughts.

Hisao Oguchi was very puzzled by this. He could clearly tell during the chat that Hideo Kojima still had great ideas about the design of the game. Even in his home, he was still hurting himself over the script of the game. It makes sense, but why is it that nearly four years have passed since his first work, and he has not yet started working on it for the second time.

This is not the strangest thing. The strangest thing is, why does Jester still have such faith in Hideo Kojima under such circumstances?

But for Naka Yuji, Hisao Oguchi has a completely different view. He does not deny that Naka Yuji is very talented, but his experience and experience are not as good as these people. This can be seen from his games. It is enough for a peerless genius to have just one Jester Lee. How could there be another one?

That's why he scoffed at the enthusiastic praise of Super Balotelli Racing in a gaming magazine, calling it a unique party game. He didn't think Yuji Naka could do it. To complete a work with such an evaluation, even if the original creative provider of this game was Jester.

The most important point, Hisao Oguchi has not really admitted, is that this work is based on Balotelli. The popularity of the game character Balotelli in the United States has reached an incredible level. Mars Entertainment even has plans to use this image as its representative image and build an amusement park.

You know, before this, this was an honor that only Mickey Mouse could possess.

Therefore, in the eyes of Hisao Oguchi, another reason why American magazines praised this game so much may be because of this, because this image is the most famous character in the entire American gaming industry, and he is born to lead There is a characteristic that is different from other game characters, so when reviewing this game, the editors of these reviews may involuntarily raise the evaluation of this game to a higher level.

Although he said this, Hisao Oguchi also knew that President Hayao Nakayama was currently in the headquarters and had just given a new task to several development teams, which was to give Sega the image of Balotelli based on Mars Entertainment. Design a game that can be used as an image spokesperson.

However, Hisao Oguchi is not optimistic about this plan, because the image of Balotelli can be so successful because he was brought to the right place by the right people at the right place. The right time, place and people are lacking. Only if it fails, will this image be born, which is unparalleled in the history of the game, at least so far.

Even in Hisao Oguchi's mind, such a game image would never have existed before, nor would it ever appear again in the future. No matter how impressive the subsequent game results were, or how huge the impact, it would not be possible for someone like Balotelli to be born again. Such an influential character.

At that time, just two days ago, when he got the drreambox2 console that had just been released and this game that was so praised that he didn't know where it was, he couldn't hold back his curiosity immediately. In my own office, I started to experience this game with several senior executives from the marketing department of Sega of North America.

Since the game claimed to be a party game from the beginning, Hisao Oguchi followed the gameplay exactly as advertised. Because the game console only had two controllers, another marketing executive could only Watching from the sidelines.

Originally, Hisao Oguchi played the game with a joking attitude, and then prepared to make fun of him, but after playing the game for just ten minutes, his demeanor became serious. He thought that he was an excellent game developer, and added A marketing executive who is extremely sensitive to the market looked at this game at the same time and found that this game is really excellent. He has almost included all the advantages that a party game should have. This is what he said It's not accurate enough. The only advantage of a party game is that it makes all game participants feel happy at the same time.

You know, the racing game is a very confrontational game, and it is very difficult for participants to experience happiness at the same time.

Moreover, in this game, Dreambox2 and the split-screen technology that perfectly matches this game made Hisao Oguchi’s eyes shine. This technology is not original to Mars Entertainment. In arcades, Sega has several game applications. to this technology.

But applying this technology to home use should be the first time in Hisao Oguchi’s memory. (To be continued...)