Game Development Giant

When Shigeru Miyamoto came to the company in the morning, he still felt that the atmosphere was a bit depressing. Looking at the serious expressions on the faces of his colleagues around him, he couldn't get excited himself.

Although several days have passed since the trial sale in New York, except for the high sales volume on the first day of the trial sale, the sales volume in the remaining days can only be called average, far behind the trial sale of Mars Entertainment. Sales invitation.

According to the information obtained by the company, in just a few days, the first batch of nearly 200,000 invitations to the two flagship stores of this rival company was sold out.

Moreover, the suspension of sales after only selling 200,000 copies made many players who arrived a few days late due to delays were particularly angry, because Mars Entertainment previously promoted that they had prepared a total of 500,000 invitations, and this They only sold 200,000 copies at one time and then stopped selling them. This made them feel that they had been deceived.

Mars Entertainment also gave its own explanation for this. Before planning this event, they completely underestimated the enthusiasm of players to buy. They originally thought that these invitations would be impossible to sell out because they owned 500,000 Dreambox units. I plan to keep selling until the official release quantity.

Although the official release date has not yet been determined, there will definitely be a gap of several months. But because the players' enthusiasm for buying was so intense, they found that if they did not temporarily stop the sale, they would face a flood of buyers on the day of the trial sale. And after Carly knew about these things , first consulted her logistics team, and after getting the answer that it was impossible for them to complete the nationwide distribution task on the day of the official trial sale, she drove directly to Mars Entertainment and had a meeting with Jester. Interview.

As a result of the interview, Jester had to make a compromise and divide the trial sale invitations into two batches, with the first batch only having 200,000 copies. The remaining 300,000 copies of the second batch will be released half a month after the trial sale, and we sincerely apologize to the players for this.

As soon as this news was sent out, it once again stimulated the already weakened buying enthusiasm. Even on the day when the news came out, which was the third day after the invitations were released, the number of purchases of the trial sale invitations actually exceeded the number on the third day. The number of 70,000 in one day reached 80,000, and the first batch of 200,000 invitations were also sold out at the same time.

Just after the players expressed their dissatisfaction with Mars Entertainment, Jester personally came to the sales point in Los Angeles and made an apology statement to appease the players. The 200,000 invitations sold before suddenly started to increase in price in a jaw-dropping way. The invitation letter was originally sold for only one hundred and twenty US dollars. After just one day, the price rose to two hundred US dollars, and it was even worthless.

Moreover, it seems that players don't care about invitations even if the price has increased to the same price as a complete home game console. As long as there are invitations worth two hundred dollars on the market, someone will buy them immediately. .

Shigeru Miyamoto was a little stunned when he heard the news. The price of invitations was still rising, precisely because of hearing the news. For the first time, he was not optimistic about Nintendo's prospects in the United States.

Compared with the number of fans, they are far behind their opponents.

However, he is the head of Nintendo's Information Development Department and Nintendo's ace designer, so naturally he cannot show his frustration. Because this will infect one's subordinates, it is a taboo in a R\u0026D team. Yesterday, President Yamauchi called him to the president's office to talk privately for two hours. There was a lot of content, but the most important thing was that he needed to make a game that could compete with Mars Entertainment.

For Nintendo. Naturally, there are many ways to get consoles that have not yet been officially released by Mars Entertainment. After all, due to the cost and the fact that Jester has not yet built its own production base, it is through Sega's relationship that it found those that were previously established for the Pokemon pet machine. Partners to help OEM.

And Nintendo. In the field of electronic processing in Japan, there is naturally no shortage of contacts and methods. Some of them have ways to get dreambox consoles and burned games.

To be honest, Shigeru Miyamoto greatly admires the designers of Mars Entertainment, and he also likes their games very much, especially every game produced by Jester Lee, the founder of Mars Entertainment. Miyamoto Shigeru has conducted painstaking research.

In his heart, he really wanted to make a side-scrolling game. He had even constructed a basic prototype framework for this game in his mind - a fantasy style, cartoon characters, and characters. We chose Mario, an amiable and easily identifiable plumber, and the story chose an old-fashioned but both Chinese and Western story of a knight defeating a dragon and saving a princess.

And according to his experience, this game must be very interesting to make. At least the sales volume will not be lower than "Mario Brothers". You must know that "Mario Brothers" is currently the best-selling game on FC. So far , a total of nearly 1.6 million copies have been sold.

But the problem is that before Shigeru Miyamoto officially started the level design of this game, which he privately called "Mario Brothers 2", his intelligence research and development headquarters got a prototype of the Mars Entertainment Dreambox.

It was already a few days after the CES show. At that time, Miyamoto Shigeru was thinking that if they could get the prototype and do a hardware test before the CES show, then maybe Arakawa Minoru would not be interviewed. Sometimes he would make that kind of mistake, but he also knew that there was no use regretting it.

As soon as he got the prototype, he sent one to Gunpei Yokoi for colleagues in the hardware department to evaluate the hardware. He also led his subordinates in the intelligence development department to study the product that Mars Entertainment would officially release. Several games.

Although there are some innovations in those games transplanted from arcade machines, they have not yet caught the eye of Shigeru Miyamoto.

The console version of the game called "City of Battle" left a deep impression on Shigeru Miyamoto, especially the level editor system. He used this setting, which was several months earlier than this game, but when he thought about the other party's development date of this game, it was basically the same time as his own, which also gave him an understanding of the designer of this game. A feeling of sympathy and common understanding between heroes.

As for the racing game, it was a bit rough. It is not competitive at all compared to their Nintendo "F1 Racing". It is most likely because it was made in a hurry to rush the work, because based on his understanding of Mars Entertainment games, they will not release this kind of game unless it is for special reasons. level play.

This time Shigeru Miyamoto guessed wrong. Although Jester had planned to make a simple racing game by himself before, there was really not enough time, so he had to find a small game company to do OEM work. Although the production was rough A little off, but not too bad.

So Jester decided to adopt it before it was released.

The golf game called "Balotelli's Golf" and the sports game called "World Athletics" can only be regarded as average in Miyamoto's eyes. There were no big highlights, but there were no flaws either. When he saw this, he couldn't help but feel disappointed.

These so-called new games from Mars Entertainment did not give him the same sense of amazement he had when he first came into contact with their games.

It seems like any of Mars Entertainment's previous spirituality was lost in the creation of these games.

Especially when he played "American Cube" for the first time, he was amazed more than once by the ingenuity of the game's design and the designer's ingenuity in game understanding.

But when he tried the remaining two games, he was completely shocked.

What he felt was overwhelming talent that overwhelmed him.

"Salomander" is not the type of game he likes. This kind of game full of violent elements and scary graphics is not the concept he adheres to in game design. In Miyamoto Shigeru's heart, he has a childlike innocence. He hopes that the games he designs can bring kindness and beauty to everyone who plays his games. Touching this emotion is not just a vent of pleasure.

Despite this, it does not prevent him from judging from the perspective of a very good designer that this is a product with a very clear target group and very prominent features. The system is extremely novel and it is a very well-made game, but it only depends on Shigeru Miyamoto’s understanding of Japanese players. This game may not sell very well in Japan, but it may be very popular in the United States.

Shigeru Miyamoto even felt that it would be much better to make this game for an arcade machine than for a home machine. If he had to choose, he would definitely use the arcade machine as the first platform for a game of this style.

If Jester knew about it, he would definitely admire Miyamoto Shigeru's keen vision, because in real history, K Club first produced "Saloman Snake" on the arcade and then transplanted it to FC.

If "Salomancer" shocked Miyamoto, then when he played "Balotelli's Adventures in Another World" for the first time, his mind was completely unable to He continued to think, and his mind was all about the graphics, music, characters, attack methods, etc., and the graphics of the game gradually became the same as what he had just established in his mind. The game that started the game framework gradually overlapped.

The whole day after that, he passed the game called "Balotelli's Adventures in Another World" over and over again. He was eager to discover all the details and all the hidden elements in this game. , he was deeply addicted to it. In the end, Shigeru Miyamoto discovered that in every aspect, this game was exactly the same as the game he only had in his mind, which only had a general outline. It could even be said that it was even better. Much more outstanding.

If he were asked to produce it, he probably wouldn't be able to produce a game of this quality at all.

Moreover, this game is so consistent with his game concept.

It allows Shigeru Miyamoto to re-experience the simplest happiness, which is also his original intention of designing video games.

It wasn't until late at night that he reluctantly left the dreambox. Then he sighed and could only completely kill this game that had the same concept and had not yet been officially designed.

Then, Shigeru Miyamoto wrote a review of Mars Entertainment's first game overnight and prepared to hand it over to President Yamauchi after dawn.

Especially for the game "Balotelli's Adventures in Another World", he used the word "subversive" to describe it. In his review, he had both praise and criticism for other games, but when it came to "Balotelli's Adventures", he used the word "subversive" to describe it. Lotley's Adventures in Another World", apart from complimentary words, he did not use any other words with derogatory connotations. In his discussion, this will be a game that can be sold all over the world.

You must know that the cultural customs and people's preferences in each region are different. It is definitely not an easy thing to make a game sell well in all places. This requires a game to directly address the core of the game for players. . (.)