Game Development Giant

"The Legend of Zelda" is a great game. Even in Jester's opinion, there is no doubt about this. He also knows that the sales of this game are very hot in the history he is familiar with. The total sales volume is in the top ten in history, and this game in Miyamoto Shigeru's history is even comparable to the ultramarathon that is unlikely to reappear in this world.

In later generations, it became one of the three treasures of Nintendo. Whether it is the Japanese game circle or the European and American game circles, the Zelda series is highly praised.

But Jester still didn't expect that this game would cause such a craze once it was released.

Just after "Famitsu" published an article introducing "The Legend of Zelda" in the name of a great game, Japanese players, especially, began to look forward to this game and tested it for nearly a month. Following the final modifications, Nintendo conducted simultaneous promotions in Japan and the United States during this month.

Towards the end of June, "The Legend of Zelda" was officially released.

It is worth mentioning that this is the first time in the gaming industry that the same game has been released in Japan and the United States at the same time. Previously, whether it was Atari, Mars Entertainment or Nintendo, one of the versions was released first. Look at this game. The sales volume was good and it was very popular among players, so a version in another language was released. Compared to Japan, even in the early morning, the sales activities of "The Legend of Zelda" were extremely popular, and even the Tokyo police had to dispatch police forces to maintain security at the scene. However, in the United States, even in Times Square, which has the largest flow of people, it is still At the best time in the morning, Nintendo’s “Legend of Zelda” press conference was also very good.

It cannot be said that there are few people. Although the coverage of NES is only a fraction of that of Dreambox, there are also many people who like Nintendo games, especially Western fantasy-style RPGs, which is one of the favorite game types of European and American players. , and even more so, it can attract many people who are not originally Nintendo gamers to participate.

But it cannot be said that there are many people. Compared with the press conference of "Dawn" held by Mars Entertainment not long ago, this is still an arcade game. Players can only conduct a simple trial after the press conference and cannot purchase it directly. But even if In this way, the number of people attending the meeting was beyond Jester's expectation. Even though the New York police were brought in to maintain order, it still caused congestion and blockage in Times Square. It's just like the classic theory 'ロコミ' mentioned by Mr. Yamauchi. The word "口" here is a Chinese character, which means mouth, and "コミ" is the abbreviation of "munition", which roughly means "hearsay", or it can be understood as the meaning of "gossip".

This is a very classic effect in the gaming industry. It was first proposed by Hiroshi Yamauchi, the head of Nintendo. Everyone should know that all effects related to social phenomena are different from scientific effects. Scientific phenomenon effects It is obtained through experiments and then calculated through precise numerical formulas, but the social effect is not like this.

It's not that precise, it's just something that happens habitually when conditions are met.

‘ロコミ’ means that some excellent works were not noticed by the world when they were first released, but as time goes by, players’ good reputation gradually makes them popular. The more classic ones include "Resident Evil I" on PS, "Pokemon Red/Green" on GB, "Taiko Master" on PS2 and "Wario Maker" on GBA.

However, as far as Jester knows, the first game to trigger this effect on a large scale was the game "Final Fantasy" that brought Square back to life, also known as "FF".

In the history that Jester experienced, after the successful completion of "Final Fantasy", Square Enix devoted all its efforts to bomb advertising in audio-visual media such as TV and magazines, although it only sold less than 100,000 in the first week of its launch on December 18. This cassette, but the high quality of the game triggered the "ロコミ" effect spread by players word of mouth. In the end, the sales volume of this game reached an astonishing 520,000 copies. Although it is still not comparable to "dq ii" that debuted in the same year, it is enough to make the game more popular. The dying square came back to life.

This is a living example of ‘ロコミ’.

Of course, in fact, speaking of its essence, Jester's "American Tris", which was a copycat of "Tetris", also relied on this effect to become a big seller.

And now, when "The Legend of Zelda" meets all the conditions for the formation of the "Roman Effect", coupled with Nintendo's confidence in it and its best efforts to promote it, then the sales of "The Legend of Zelda" will also be It happened just like in history.

Twenty years later, Minoru Arakawa, who was the head of Nintendo of America at the time, was interviewed. When recalling the most classic and fiercest era of competition in the history of video games, he said with some emotion: "At that time, our product NES had just begun. When we entered the North American market, because our competitors were so powerful, few of our games could compete with them, so sales grew very slowly, and our market share was not even a quarter of our competitors. In this case, although we are constantly encouraging ourselves and motivating ourselves, and believe that we can definitely turn around, facing the gap in share, employees' sense of defeat is inevitable. .”

Arakawa actually felt nostalgic when he recalled this period of history. Although he was later kicked out of Nintendo by his father-in-law because of his failure to make decisions on certain matters, he could not avoid his father-in-law in the video game industry no matter what. A character full of respect.

After finishing this paragraph, he took a sip of water to moisten his throat, and then continued: "At that time, my father-in-law, Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi, kept calling me overseas and kept telling me about the model that Miyamoto is making now. How good the game is, it makes me believe that we can turn around. I worked hard in that situation. No matter how hard I tried at the beginning, the increase in sales was very weak. No matter how much advertising, especially for us selling game consoles For me, without a good game, everything is in vain, but after the official release of "The Legend of Zelda", everything became incredible."

Arakawa Minoru's tone became a little amazed, and he even had an incredible look in his eyes. The silver bar suddenly rose a little: "In the first week, the sales volume can only be said to be average. Although various game magazines or media, TV programs rated our game very highly. Even "Game", which is closely related to Mars Entertainment, rated our game a high score of 39 points and said that our game This game is a game that has created a new era for this type of game, but our platform share is too small. Even if everyone with NES buys a copy, the sales volume will not be good."

Mentioning this period, during the few glorious years in the confrontation between Nintendo and Mars Entertainment, Arakawa was very excited, because when future generations look back on this period of history, Nintendo really lived too hard. Surrendered.

"I remember clearly at the time that "The Legend of Zelda" was at two extremes in Japan and the United States. As soon as our game was launched in Japan, it was very strongly sought after by players, and nearly 100,000 copies were sold in the first week. Four hundred thousand copies, you know, this is a very, very incredible result, but it is not the case in the United States. When I heard the Japanese data, I didn’t even dare to tell the truth to my father-in-law. I had to I doubled this number and told it to my father-in-law - at that time I said it was 120,000 copies. In fact, it was less than 60,000 copies. At that time, I was thinking that this time it was truly a success in the Japanese market. Failed."…

Saying that, Minoru Arakawa laughed, "But beyond my expectation, just a week later, the sales of "The Legend of Zelda" suddenly started to explode without any warning. You know, we were not special at the time. Increase the promotion of "The Legend of Zelda" because we have done our best to promote this game before. At that time, "The Legend of Zelda" could be seen in major cities in North America, even small and medium-sized cities, everywhere. "The Legend of Zelda" posters, and as for TV commercials, they are shown every day on major TV networks."

"We only sold a total of 60,000 copies in the first week, but by just over half of the second week, all the 400,000 cassette sets we prepared in North America were sold out. I had to call Japan to ask them Deliver the goods immediately. At that time, the Japanese didn’t quite believe it. They said that the last time your nes reported total sales to the headquarters was only 500,000 units, how come 400,000 units are now sold out so quickly?”

Arakawa Minoru smiled and continued: "I realized at this time that not only our new game "The Legend of Zelda", but also our NES suddenly started to sell like crazy. In less than a week, In that time, we actually sold more than 200,000 units. You must know that we had not sold more than 500,000 units in the previous six months. Once the news came back to Japan, I later heard my father-in-law say to his secretary that he was always serious. Mr. Yamauchi was so excited that he burst into tears like a child."