Game Development Giant

Jester turned his attention to the last item, the home computer.

This is also the thing that he is least worried about, and it is also his biggest asset in competing for world supremacy in the future.

Atari is currently undergoing a major layoff. The new boss, Jack Trammell, wants to transform Atari into a computer company. This has long caused dissatisfaction among a large number of employees in the company, especially those involved in the development of vcs7200. Hardware engineers are extremely angry about it.

What Trammell did was almost equivalent to destroying their child with his own hands!

The vcs7200 is actually one of the best home consoles of this era. In a home game console ranking by the famous gaming website Ign, the vcs7200 and FC were jointly listed among the ten most powerful consoles in history.

If you use a lot of money to seduce them at this time and let them continue to develop a brand new home console that is not inferior to, or even surpasses the vcs7200, to prove to Trammell, you are wrong.

Presumably those Atari hardware R\u0026D elites will flock to it, enough to get a large number of the best hardware engineers of this era.

It is also enough to develop a home game console that is not inferior to FC.

Besides, he still has the memory of Sega's MS console in his mind, Jester thought with some relief.

Sega Master-Sysyem, or Sega MS for short, is an excellent eight-bit console. In terms of performance, MS has a crushing advantage over FC. To give an inappropriate example, it’s like PS4’s 1080p over XBO. Same as 720p.

Although this home console was released in 1986, Sega released a new MD (mega-drive) console just two years later, which is the famous Sega fifth generation. However, this is not because the MS is not good enough, but because Nintendo is in the FC. The advantages established above were too strong, and Sega had to enter the era of 16-bit consoles in advance to compete with Nintendo.

In his previous life, Jester had a Sega MS console at home. Later, when he grew up, he also studied the architecture inside it out of curiosity. Of course, he also studied FC. Although he is not very proficient, if he now has a large number of With the help of hardware R\u0026D elites, it is not difficult to produce a home machine that is not inferior to FC in terms of performance before the end of the year.

Moreover, the function of fc is not very powerful in this era.

As for the game, Jester frowned.

He does want to make a super marathon, because this game is the key to victory in the eight-bit era, but to make his own console version, he has to wait at least until the development of the console is halfway through, and basically all the parameters are clear.

He has many options for other games.

But until his console can really explode in sales, not many powerful game companies will make games for his platform.

Therefore, in the early stage, he can only rely on him, or his own company.

During this period of time, which could be a few months or half a year, he must produce a sufficient number of classic games.

Super Horse is one, Contra is one, Sandman is one, Green Corps is one...

Jester wrote one game name after another on the stationery. If he felt it was inappropriate, he would cross it out.

Jester continued writing for nearly fifteen minutes before stopping.

Six, this is the number of launch games he has set for himself. Two of them must be able to create a sensation, and four must be a little less popular, but they must also be fun.

From now on, two to three new games will be released every month, one of which will be the finale.

Therefore, I can no longer put all the most classic ones into the starting lineup from the beginning. This is not beneficial to squeezing the remaining value, and it is also very unwise.

"Super Mario" and "Contra" are Jester's first two masterpieces that can cause a sensation. As for Sandman Snake, Green Corps, Red Fortress, etc., although they are good enough, Can't be considered a starter.

The founder of modern video games, "Super Mario", which created all the game rules, and "Contra", which is known as the textbook of scrolling board-clearing games, these two games were enough to detonate his console sales.

When the number of his consoles is large enough, those third-party game manufacturers and talented independent game studios will flock to him.

And he can be sure that if he can release his console in early 1985, Nintendo will definitely not be his opponent, at least in the North American market.

By the time they belatedly arrived with their nes in October, the North American market had already been almost occupied by themselves, and they had played "Super Horse" and "Contra" which were landmarks in the history of video games. After the scrolling games of sexual status, who is still interested in their still-frame games such as "Donkey Kong" and "Mario Brothers"?

Come on, it’s all about scrolling games now.

As for their Super Mario, Jester smiled nonchalantly. If he dared to sue, he would sue, and he would win without a doubt.

You said you developed it independently? You are a liar! Didn’t you see that Mars Entertainment was released half a year ago? And the similarities between you are so high. If you say you didn’t copy it, who are you kidding?

If Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto want to be ruined, Jester doesn't mind giving them a ride.

As for counterattacking the Japanese market?

Jester smiled, not to mention the world-famous "Super Mario", he also had in his hands what would later be known as the three major Japanese RPGs.

Even if there is not enough time and we cannot make three models, even if we can only make two models, even if the Japanese continue to support local companies, they will be able to capture a lot of market share.

Moreover, whether it is this era or the future era, the home field of home consoles will always be North America. Whoever can dominate North America will dominate the world.

This is the consensus in the industry.

but……

Jester continued to write on the letter paper. These games would have to wait until the parameters of his home machine were basically determined before he could start developing them. It was impossible for him to do it now even if he wanted to.

But if you create a game company by yourself, it is impossible for the company to rely solely on its own "American Cube" to make a living.

With so many employees recruited, hardware R\u0026D personnel have their own jobs, and software R\u0026D personnel must also have their own tasks.

Jester didn't have much choice. Before his own console was released, he could only make money by making interesting and fun arcade games.

As for PC games? Jester thought for a moment and shook his head. Although he told John Carmack about the idea of ​​minesweeping in advance, it was just a way for him to win over Carmack, a genius. Moreover, after the emergence of 3D technology, Previously, games on PC were not very competitive with console games, and the market was pitifully small.

And even if PC enters the 3D era, consoles will immediately follow suit. In the field of games, the gap between PCs and dedicated game consoles is really too big.

At least until 1988, Jester had no plans to enter the PC gaming industry in a big way.

Without him, the performance of the PC just doesn't allow it.

To put it bluntly, no one has even completed smooth scroll movement on the PC. It was not until John Carmack more than four years later that he technically overcame this difficulty.

Jester, who was a fan of Carmack at the time, knew how to solve the biggest difficulty in designing games on PC, 'smooth scroll movement', otherwise he would not have wanted to do ultramarathon on PC from the beginning, but the problem is, Why did he do this?

Before, it was because he didn't have the conditions and didn't realize that he wanted to make a supermarathon on the PC first, but now that he realizes it, why would he still do it?

Let PCs and game consoles compete for the market?

How could Jester do such a thing of destroying one's roots?

What game is that?

Jester was thinking hard. First of all, the team he recruited is a new team after all. Highly difficult games are definitely not suitable. He should first play some simple but interesting games to get familiar with his colleagues and build up a tacit understanding. Then you can move on to higher levels of difficulty.

Therefore, some scroll games were cut off without mercy by Jester.

It's not that these games aren't good enough, or that they can't be made, it's just that they're not suitable.

That leaves only still images.

The so-called still picture means that the background of the game is fixed, such as the "American Cube" previously made by Jester. In contrast, scrolling means that as the characters move, the background of the picture will follow. The scrolling is as smooth as a scroll, such as "Super Horse".

And scrolling left and right is called horizontal scrolling, and scrolling up and down is called vertical scrolling.

Don't look at the fact that this technology is very inconspicuous. Starting from Atari's pong in 1974, it was considered the first real arcade machine, and it continued until 1980, when Atari's best designer Eugene Jarvis Only then did they solve the problem of smooth scrolling of the background screen in the arcade and create an epoch-making game - "Defender".

And Eugene Jarvis himself won the GDC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 for this achievement.

Perhaps most people have never heard of his name, but he is the fifth designer to receive this honor, which shows his high status.

The previous four are all famous names in the history of games: Will Wright in the first year, the father of The Sims, Yuji Naka in the second year, the father of Sonic, Gunpei Yokoi in the third year, the god of hardware, In the fourth year, Mark Saini, Jester's younger brother, and the one he won later, if you are a fan of DND or Western role-playing games, you will definitely have heard of his name, nicknamed ' Lord of Britain's Richard Garrett, the designer of Ultima and the founder of Virgin(s).

"Still picture..."

Jester frowned. Japan is the authority on this type of game, especially Nintendo. Back then, their "Donkey Kong" was popular in the United States. With this arcade game alone, they made 125 million in one year. Millions of dollars.

Even now, "Donkey Kong" is the most popular arcade game in the United States.

Which one should I choose to fight "Donkey Kong"?

"Gold Digger"? "bomb-man"?

Jester shook his head, not because these two games are not good, they are enough to compete with "Donkey Kong", but because both games were released this year, as for whether they are released now Jester didn't know, but he knew that even if Hudson hadn't been released, their level of completion was already very high. Making these two models would obviously lead to a collision.

After these two were eliminated, Jester continued to think about it. To be honest, he didn't play too many still-image games, especially games like "Donkey Kong."

"Snowman brothers?"

After about ten minutes, Jester saw a small snowman decoration on the table. He suddenly thought of this East Asian project that was first released on the arcade platform in the 1990s and later ported to FC. Game, then, his eyebrows instantly stretched.

Snowman Brothers is known as the pinnacle of the still-screen puzzle game. It pioneered the Snowman puzzle mode and had a great influence on many later games, such as Rainbow Island and Vacuum Cleaner. This game was used to compete with Shigeru Miyamoto in game design. The "Donkey Kong" from its immature stage was more than adequate.

After writing the name "Snowman Brothers" on the paper, Jester breathed a sigh of relief and his expression became a little more relaxed.

The next game he is working on is "Snow Brothers".