Game Development Giant

But whether UCLa comes or not sends this ultimatum letter, Jester is planning to return to the United States. Originally, he planned to go to Manchester to watch a Manchester United game. Just recently, Jester asked someone to check the English League schedule. There was a Manchester derby this weekend, but now this unexpected situation has completely disrupted it. It blocked his schedule and made it difficult for Jester to have time to see it.

However, Manchester United is not a strong team now. The person who is most important to Manchester United's future reconstruction is still coaching Aberdeen, so Jester is not so eager. In the end, he had to make a decision. He gave up this time for the time being. If you have the opportunity to watch a Manchester United game, wait until that person has time to come back when he coaches Manchester United.

"What? You want to return to China for this reason." Claudia was surprised when she heard Jester's reason for returning to China. She was surprised at first, and then smiled indifferently, "If you are willing , I can help you contact Oxford, and you can transfer to another school. Oxford is not as strict with students like you who have successfully started a business during your student days as it is with famous schools in the United States."

Jester was quite excited after hearing this. In fact, this was the boast he had made during the interview, in order to show that he was different from others. But now he found that this boast was not easy to brag about, and he also regretted it a bit. , so he just thought for a while and shook his head: "I think I'd better drop out of school. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Now I understand." This sentence made Claudia, an Englishman, listen to She was a little confused, and there was confusion on her face: "What kind of fish... bear's paw..."

Jester just smiled. He couldn't explain this in detail. I was afraid that the other party wouldn't understand it, so he had to say a few perfunctory words: "This is an old saying. It's normal that you don't understand. You just need to know The meaning of this sentence is that it is difficult to have both of the good things.”

However, the negotiations have reached the final stage, and the market research in the UK has been completed. Jester's market research team has previously left the UK for the European continent to start market research across Europe, so there is not much here. If you need Jester, you only need to return to the UK to sign the cooperation agreement after the formal negotiation.

Claudia has great energy in London. Although she has been kicked out of the house by her father, Jester can still see that she is connected with many old aristocrats in London. For example, this time, she came from a Christo's baron lent a small private jet.

And Jester once again expressed his gratitude.

This is the first time that Jester has come to UCL in this world. This is a university that he liked very much when he was still Li Ming. Not only because it has the most beautiful campus in the United States, but also because it has the most beautiful campus in the United States. The university will be the mecca for all game designers in later generations. Countless top designers in later generations graduated from here.

Anyone who is interested in working in the game development industry is proud to study at UCL. In later generations, UCL’s status in the game industry will be basically equivalent to the University of Southern California and movies. Of course, in this world of video games, In the barbaric era, UCLa did not have such a lofty status in the game development industry.

And Jester also knows that, possibly because of his own reasons, UCLA will become even more famous in the field of game design in future generations.

Just after getting off the plane, Jester didn't even take a break, so he asked Carly to find a car to drive him quickly to UCL, and then went straight to the principal's office.

Jester has been in the limelight in the United States in recent months. Titles such as the youngest billionaire, the fastest-growing company in Silicon Valley, and a genius game designer who hopes to revive the video game industry have been given to him as if they were free of charge. hanging on his head, so he is very famous in UCL.

Fortunately, what he does is mainly during the summer vacation, otherwise his reputation will definitely be even higher.

Jester was just walking quickly through the UCL campus, and there were many people he didn't know saying hello to him, and these people called his name enthusiastically, but Jester couldn't shout it out at all. Their names, but he couldn't ignore them.

Fortunately, the place where Jester got off the bus was very close to the principal's building, so this journey was not a waste of time. He had asked Carly to contact the principal of UCL before, and the reply he got was that he would be there before the sun goes down. Everyone will be here, Jester can come with confidence.

Just like that, Jester walked into the principal's office with a little bit of anxiety.

And when Jester left two hours later, there was no regret on his face, but there was no ecstasy either, just an expression similar to relief.

In the end, Jester chose to drop out of school. This was completely different from what he said in previous interviews. He still became one of those people like Jobs and Gates, a dropout who failed to do what he said. I am the extraordinary one.

In fact, it is easy to understand if you think about it. I am just an ordinary person. How can I have such great ability to do things that no one else can do.

When leaving, the president of UCLA gave a gift, which was a very exquisite ship model with the UCLA logo and his name on it. It was obviously made specially before, and UCLA also expected Jester. choice will be made.

This also moved Jester.

On the contrary, the president of UCL smiled nonchalantly: "No matter you never drop out of UCL, you will always be a UCL student."

Then, Jester, who had completely ended his student days, spent a day adjusting to his slightly disappointed mentality, and then returned to the intense and busy work for him.

Now for Mars Entertainment and Fengxing Publishing, these two companies that will form the foundation of his future game empire are at the most critical moment, and there is no room for him to relax. For the long term future of these two companies, His achievement depends on the CES exhibition at the end of the year. Defeating Nintendo and their European and American version of FC is his only choice now.

Jester, who returned to the company, immediately held a research and development meeting that he had not held for a long time. He wanted to understand the details of every game currently under development by the company in a short period of time.

What surprised Jester the most was that the development of Mark Cerny's "Avengers" was quite smooth. After adopting the new scroll engine, many of the troubles that had troubled them before were solved. Therefore, the speed was actually higher than that of the latecomers, and the production of the game has already entered a new stage. In the final stage, according to Mark Saini, it will definitely be completed by the end of next month, that is, by the end of November. Even with the time for testing and debugging, it is not an impossible task to be officially completed before the end of the year.

This is an unexpected surprise for Jester. After Mark Cerney proposed to redo the work, he had expected that it would be completed in the first or even second quarter of next year. If "Avengers" can be completed by the end of the year After all, the second batch of games after the release of your home console can use the "Avengers" motherboard as the main product. After all, if the "Avengers" motherboard is used as the first game, it will too much affect the sales of the arcade machine.

If it is regarded as the main game of the second batch, then firstly, "Avengers" has already become famous through the arcade version, which will help the sales of home consoles without affecting the arcades. The second is to transplant the arcade version of "Avengers" into a home machine version, so castration is also necessary, which is not conducive to the establishment of the reputation of the game "Avengers".

In the eyes of many outsiders, Mars Entertainment is now just a game development company that relies on its own support, because all of the company's current best-selling games, even the Pokémon electronic pet machine, are all originated from its own creativity.

Although "Avengers", which has nothing to do with him, has shone in the recent two player trial sessions, making Mark Cerny's name ringing in the ears of many players, after all, "Avengers" is a game that has not yet been released. Officially released game.

But Jester is not too worried, because he knows that these people in his company will definitely shine in the future.

The research and development of his company's home console has entered the final debugging stage. According to Marcus, the prototype can be officially launched in up to a month. However, now that all the hardware parameters have been determined, games based on his own console The initial research and development can also officially start.

The design team led by Will Wright, which they called Extreme, also began their first formal game development since the founding of this research and development team.

Because they participated in the entire development process of the home console, the entire team knew the performance of the home game console that was about to be officially launched, so the development process was quite smooth.

The game "Balotelli's Adventures in Another World" was planned by Jester, so during this period of time, in order to ensure that this home console game that he values ​​the most cannot be missed, Jester Sturt needed to pay attention throughout, and with Super Mario in his mind as a reference, he could ensure that the game would not stray too far from the core of the genre.

After all, this was a game he had high hopes for.

The news from Dabili and Sid Meier from the "Dawn" design team is not very optimistic this time. Although they have just completed the production of explosion special effects, they also obtained two Caps through the channels of the Japanese branch. Sora's base board for "1942" which was released just a few days ago.

"1942" is the work of Capcom's ace producer Yoshiki Okamoto. He was hired heavily from Konami by Capcom's boss Kenzo Tsujimoto. Yoshiki Okamoto is very good at making flying games.

This is a very excellent air combat game. After trying it out, this is also the common view of everyone in the Origin R\u0026D team led by Dabbili. After trying out this game from Capcom, the development team of "Dawn" Everyone in the team felt like they were bearing a heavy burden.

This game puts a lot of pressure on them.

After all, they have been working hard for nearly two months, and apart from creating an explosion effect that is almost perfect for this era, they have not achieved any further results, even though they know that "Dawn" is based on the setting and The content is much richer than "1942".

But this is only on paper, and they don't know if they can do it better than "1942".

And according to news from Japan, Capcom's "1942" has just been released, coupled with their overwhelming publicity before, and the quality of this game is indeed excellent, it caused a sensation on the day of its release. The 8,000 baseboards that Capcom conservatively prepared were almost sold out, and in the arcades where "1942" was purchased, other games almost lost their competitiveness, even those from Mars Entertainment.

Sega has just sent news that in the past few days since the release of "1942", the sales of the four arcade machines that they let Sega represent have basically shown a straight-line downward trend.

Jester also knows that the current electronic game industry has entered the early stage of renaissance. It is no longer possible to dominate the market with simple, low-level games. In the future, there will be a large number of outstanding game blowouts, and later games will become mainstream. , it must be a large-scale game like horizontal scrolling or vertical scrolling.

However, Jester still has to comfort his R\u0026D team to prevent them from losing confidence in the project they are developing. After all, Jester knows that whether a team has confidence in the project is extremely important to the final success of the project. .

"You don't need to worry about how other people's games are doing. We have had many discussions before. Yes, "1942" is good. The music, color, composition, feel, etc. are all excellent, but any of our Xiangdu is better than them!"

“Our game has a much more powerful game base than Capcom, and has twice the color processing capabilities as theirs. Our explosion effect was hand-drawn after spending two full months drawing tens of thousands of color pictures. No one in the world can do a better job than us in this regard, and we will also have complete plot novels, optional aircraft, and freely matched aircraft firepower. This is not as playable as "1942" It’s comparable to a game that, in my opinion, is still very crude.”

As he spoke, Jester's tone also became stern, and he yelled at Dabbili angrily: "I'm very surprised, why do you worry about the gap between such a game in any aspect compared to the game you are making? s things?"

Sean Dabili and Sid Meier both blushed when Jester said it, and with the authority Jester had established in the company, they didn't dare to tell the difference.

In fact, it is precisely because Jester made the main framework and content of this game so huge that it became extremely difficult to actually produce them. At this point, Dabbili is deeply convinced. He has experienced it, especially the system of self-selected firepower matching proposed by Jester in the settings. He was very much in favor of it at the time, but now that he has actually done it, he feels that this system has difficulties in compatibility.

Jester's tone also softened, and he said frankly to Dabbili and Sid Meier, the two actual producers of the "Dawn" game: "The most terrifying thing about making a game is the process of making it. They have lost their enthusiasm for it, and a group of people without enthusiasm come together to make a game that they don’t even like. So you can imagine, even if this game is really produced, will anyone like it?"

Finally, Jester also used a famous quote from Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" as the beginning of his excitement.

"Failure is not terrible. What is terrible is failure without fighting spirit. No one is born to make a good game. I just made the settings for this game and then handed it all over to you. In other words, You are equivalent to half of the producers of this game. If you still can’t be confident in this project again, then I think it’s better to end the project immediately.”

This made Dabbili and Sid Meier even more shocked. After Jester finished speaking, the two men once again assured Jester with red eyes as if they had been injected with chicken blood. "Dawn" must be completed, and it must completely surpass Capcom's "1942".

In fact, there is another not-so-good thing about "1942". Jester just got the news from Carly, but he didn't say it out loud. He didn't want to continue to give Dabbili and Sid Meier more trouble at this time. pressure.

Atari, which has announced its return to the video game industry, has been linked to Capcom.

The target is of course "1942", which is currently in the limelight in Japan. This is something that Jester is not familiar with in the history. Of course, in the history he is familiar with, there is no such thing as Atari's announcement in 1984. After quitting the video game industry, he announced his return a few months later.

He knows that these are all changes that have occurred due to the wings of his little butterfly. Of course, he can no longer be regarded as a little butterfly, and the entire history of video games will definitely follow him and his Mars Entertainment. Intrusion and change beyond recognition.

For example, Mars Entertainment's "Final Fantasy" vs. Enix's "Dragon Quest", who is the real national RPG? Such headlines will inevitably appear on the headlines of many media outlets in Japan in the near future.

He didn't know if Atari could get the agency rights for the American version of "1942" from Capcom, but it was inevitable that this game would enter North America. Jester couldn't remember the real history of this game. When was the American version released? But he knew that based on Capcom’s behavior, they would not let go of the American market.

By that time, my own "Dawn" will be facing off against their "1942".

If his "Dawn" is produced according to the original idea, then he does not need to be afraid of "1942". After all, "Dawn" is far ahead of "1942" in terms of game system. One is in the mature stage of vertical scroll shooting games. works, and "1942" is only a work in the early stages of this type of game, which is not yet perfect.

And Jester remembers that "1942" was also transplanted to an FC version, but because the transplant was too hasty, the transplant was not successful. The music was quite rough, and the number of frames per second was only half of the arcade version, so in later generations Many players had some criticisms of this game. It was not until 1988 that the sequel to "1942", "1943: The Battle of Midway", was released to wash away this shame.

Flight shooting games are definitely a genre that Jester will dabble in on his home console. "Dawn" is different from "Avengers" because its content is too large. It is impossible to transplant it to an eight-bit game console. Yes, if the transplant was performed by force, the castration would be horrific. Rather than ruining the reputation for a small amount of money, in Jester's eyes, it would be better not to undergo a transplant.

So if you ask yourself to make a flying game that can be run on your own home console, how will you make it?

Jester was inspired by many games played by later generations, but due to hardware limitations, some things are impossible to complete on current home machines. Even things like "Dawn" that can be done on current arcade machines are still very difficult. It was difficult to complete on a home computer. In the end, after much deliberation, he decided that it would be more reliable to choose a game that had achieved great success on eight-bit computers as a reference prototype for comparative design.

After all, in terms of real skills, these producers who have left their names in history have a much better understanding of the game design of this era than the plagiarism themselves.

It is not difficult to choose the best flight shooting game on an eight-bit machine. Although there are dozens of such games on FC, if you ask any player who knows something about FC, they They will tell you without hesitation which is the best flight shooting game.

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