Game Development Giant

Did Inafune Keiji really say that?

Jester was not moved at all after hearing Kenzo Shikimoto's words. He just chuckled and said: If the launch platform of the next Mega Man game is confirmed to be Dreambox 2, I hope that Mr. Keiji Inafune will be able to launch it on Dreambox 2. I will come to the United States in the short term, and I hope that I can have an overall understanding of the functions of Dreambox 2 with him, which will make it easier for him to design a perfect game.

no problem.

At this point, since Kenzo Harimoto has decided that at least in the early days of the 16-bit computer era, he will still stand unswervingly on the side of Mars Entertainment, then naturally he will not accept Jester's proposal. The reason for rejection is that better understanding the performance of the console with the help of hardware developers can indeed provide a lot of convenience for game development.

Finally, Jester chatted casually with Kenzo Shikimoto for a few more words, and the two hung up the phone. Although neither of them said anything about Sony or Ken Kutaragi, this conversation was enough for both parties to understand each other. Each has their own attitude towards each other. There are some things that can only be understood but cannot be expressed in words.

Speaking of Keiji Inafune, Jester still has great ideas, but poaching Capcom is not an easy task.

Keiji Inafune is a designer that Jester is very optimistic about.

If he hadn't been a step too late, this action game master who has become famous now and will definitely become famous in the future will definitely have joined the Mars Entertainment camp.

But speaking of it, Keiji Inafune's grades in school were not good, but he was very talented in game design. He once got good results in a game design competition, but because of his grades, he could not Enter a school like the University of Tokyo or Osaka Institute of Technology to further your studies.

In the end, he managed to get into a vocational design school in Osaka. The company that Keiji Inafune originally wanted to go to was his first exposure to games. I fell in love with Konami, which is the famous K club. However, Kobe's Wavelet has never hired people with less than a college degree. In addition, due to geographical reasons, Inafune Keiji finally joined the company, which was on the rise at the time. , Capcom is constantly promoting talent in an eclectic way.

Speaking of it, it was also luck. Keiji Inafune, a beginner who had just graduated from a technical high school and had little experience, had just joined Capcom, and he was lucky enough to join the Mega Man development team of Fujiwara Takuro at that time. You know, Fujiwara Takuro was at that time. He is a leading figure within Capcom. He had become famous in the gaming industry with Makai Village, and there were as many as 100 people who wanted to join his development team. Being able to join as a newcomer was a very rare opportunity for Keiji Inafune. Experienced.

Although Jester is interested in Inafune Keiji, Capcom is still a collaborator with him now. It is not a normal thing to blatantly poach the collaborator's corner. Now for Kenzo Inafune, dreambox2's The platform is indispensable, even if you really do it. The most he can do is knock out his teeth and swallow blood without saying anything, but once things change later, he doesn't even need to experience any setbacks. As long as any similar home console platform company like Sony can compete with itself, then it will definitely leave itself without hesitation and join the other side's camp.

But then again. Even if I really want to have a good relationship with Capcom and want to maintain this cooperation, based on the experience of later generations. Is Capcom, known as a bitch, willing to maintain a relationship with you? Sony treated Capcom very well at the beginning, but how did Capcom treat Sony?

These are all things that will happen in the future. Jester doesn’t want to think too much, so he just thinks about it and passes it by. We will talk about the future things later. At least for now, as long as he shows good performance in terms of the share of the platform. Strong, then Capcom is extremely loyal.

Now that the new console has been successfully launched, Jester is also considering whether he should release a game for the console platform as soon as possible to boost sales. After all, console games will be the mainstream of the future gaming industry for at least thirty years. He always You can't just immerse yourself in the side business of PC games. Doing so is too unprofessional.

But for the moment, Jester really didn't have any particularly good ideas. He didn't know what kind of game would be most suitable for a 16-bit platform.

Sonic is a game that Sega used to sweep the world, especially in Europe, to the point where it can be compared with Mario. Jester has already told all the game ideas to the people who came to the United States before and wanted to report their work. Naka Yuji listened.

And this game is also the real name of Yuji Naka. After experiencing the development of Super Balotelli Racing, Yuji Naka completely fell in love with this simple, cheerful but extremely fun game type, and Sonic is exactly such a game.

Even the gameplay is unprecedentedly simple. If the player wants, he can even keep pressing the forward direction key to complete the game.

And this time Jester's task for Yuji Naka was not only to develop Sonic as a game on the Dreambox 2 platform, but also to create a castrated version of Gameboy, because Gameboy still uses eight figures. CPU, so in terms of game performance, it is definitely far inferior to the current 16-bit Dreambox 2.

Moreover, Jester personally does not like this kind of game design that lacks challenge. He comes from a later generation and has a feeling for exquisite niche games that is difficult to describe in words, because at that time, the materialistic people In the gaming environment, gamers who can still stick to their inner ideals and develop niche games that will inevitably not have very high sales are very admirable.

Just like Jester has quoted the founder of Cairo Software in several internal meetings as to why he insists on making niche games, if 100,000 people like our games, then enough.

However, he admires these people, but he may be interested in making niche games once or twice, but if he does it too much, it will become boring. After all, he is not that kind of person. A pure game developer, he is now more like a businessman.

He prefers those masterpieces, which can earn a lot of money and reputation once they are released.

He didn't think this was a shortcoming. In fact, his original dream was to revitalize the video game industry. As a video game enthusiast, he had an ambition born out of seeing the decline of the video game market at that time. But in fact, On, even if he does nothing, Nintendo will accomplish this goal.

He has also done it to make the best games. Many of the games he produced have caused a sensation in the industry and have had a great impact on many developers. They have greatly broadened their horizons and ideas in game development. Whether it's Fire Emblem, Heavy Soldiers or the recent Quake, he is not the producer himself, but there are countless games for which he provides creativity and ideas.

You can know all this from the fact that countless young Americans now use themselves as their idols to join the field of game development.

For Jester now, his game development has become more deviated from the premise of developing games that he is interested in. He is now making games that are becoming more and more utilitarian. However, some things are just their nature and it is difficult to do so. What has changed is that Jester personally dislikes the world view of GTA, but if the current functional conditions permit, then he will definitely make GTA without hesitation.

Because the sales volume of this game is really too high.

This kind of temptation, Jester asked himself, he couldn't resist at all. Jester was thinking about whether there are any games on the 16-bit machine that he should go all out to develop. To be honest, compared to the 8-bit machine, The pioneering era of bit computers basically laid the foundation for 90% of the game types of later generations. Compared with the era of 32-bit computers, when 3D games were just born and established countless 3D game rules, the era of 16-bit computers is more like a Those who are the best between the two have no shortage of fine works, but they lack masterpieces that will leave a lasting name in history.

If I have to describe it once, the entire 16-bit computer era was a calm era. After the 8-bit computer had already made almost all game developers compete with their brains and developed almost all game types, On 16-bit machines, because the functions have not achieved a revolutionary change, some ideas that can only exist in the buds of many game designers cannot be realized.

This is why the 3D revolution in gaming started on the PC.

Jester thought about it, and it seemed that whether it was SFC or Sega MD, in the original history, it was difficult to find a game that fully met his preferences. Indeed, in terms of quality, Contra on MD can be It is said to be the best game in the history of this series, but so what?

His influence in later generations is far behind. Compared with Contra on MD, it can only be described as crude, and the two games on FC.

This is a question of influence.

Jester, who couldn't think of an answer, pulled out a folder. This was a survey report he asked the survey company to do regularly to analyze what kind of games current players like. Sometimes when there is no clear goal, Jester will always Take it out and look at it for a while to get some inspiration. (To be continued...)