Game Development Giant

This game is a masterpiece of dataeast on home consoles. It can almost be regarded as the highest achievement of RPG in the eight-bit era. The most noteworthy thing is that it is also a game that has been adapted from countless dq or ff games at the time. A game that has its own unique style, blazing its way through other popular works.

In other words, this is not a work that follows the trend, it is a sincere work that breaks away from the old stereotypes and is full of personal style, creativity, unbridled fantasy and men's romance.

This company has not officially started developing TV console games yet. As far as Jester knows, ast is a company that mainly develops arcade games. It also produces their own arcade motherboards, the world's first plug-in card Replaceable motherboards were manufactured and produced by them, but this did not become mainstream in the subsequent years.

This is a game company with a very personal style and color. In the Japanese game industry, there is even a unique term 'deo-game' to describe this type of game that is too personal. This is the full name of dataeast, the abbreviation of dataeast-, but This legendary company had been closed down for a long time in the world before Jester traveled through it. Only some older players may have heard of it.

In fact, Jester is not too familiar with this company, and has only heard a little bit about their glory in the arcade market. He only knows that they and Sega were the first arcade companies to establish branches in the United States, and for them The classic games produced, with the possible exception of "Juggernaut" with a disappointing ending, are "Dragon Ninja", a double-player action beat 'em up game that was released a few years later. Every successful game company, every great game. Those great designers are indispensable, whether it is AST or "Heavy Soldiers".

Among the Three Musketeers of AST, Hiroshi Miyaoka may be the most famous. Jester doesn’t know if this outstanding playwright and a Waseda University dropout has joined AST now, but thinking of the other person’s experience, he once wrote a script As an assistant, he participated in the script creation of "Dragon Quest", and later continued to serve as a script assistant for "Dragon Quest 2" and "Dragon Quest 3". It seems that he has not officially joined yet. After all, the current "Dragon Quest" may still be in Yuji Tsui's mind.

Jester is not very clear about the situation of Takatsuki Yamamoto, the original artist of "Heavy Gear". He is the least famous among the three Musketeers of Dataeast. In addition to being a game artist, he is also a cartoonist, but Jester Sturt is not a comic book lover, at least he cannot introduce those comic artists as thoroughly as he knows about games. This has nothing to do with Kadokura Satoshi's level. As a disciple of the great musician Saegashira Akira, he naturally has extremely strong abilities. Needless to say, just the soundtrack in "Jeopardy" can make Jester give a very high score. .

Although "Juggernaut" is very successful in terms of reputation, it can only be said to be moderate in terms of sales. Whether it is the first part or the second part on SF, the first part only sold 150,000 copies. , this has nothing to do with the quality of the game. Even the sales of some shoddy imitations of DQ and FF are much higher than this figure.

As for the second part, although it is better than the first part in terms of plot and system. But it only sold 280,000 copies, such a number. For the most outstanding RPG game in the hottest period of RPG, it is unacceptable.

Jester thought about the failure of "Heavy Duty" in terms of sales. It seemed that it was not just due to rush to work. A small part of the content in the game was crude. It was also not just due to the fact that it was released too late and there was no dq and follow-up. ff has accumulated huge popularity in the past.

In Jester's opinion, the style of "Heavy Soldier" is very weird. This has nothing to do with the weird style of Dataeast. This game can even be said to be one of the few Dataeast games that is slightly normal. It's because of the weird harmony between his theme, his painting style, and the plot.

If Chinese cooking wants to be done well, it pays attention to the blend of five flavors, and the salty flavor takes the lead in the blend of five flavors. In fact, everything is inseparable from its origin, and the same is true for all things, such as the production of the game-"Heavy Arms" "Any aspect in "" is taken individually, whether it is the picture, music, plot or system and game creativity, it is extremely outstanding. Even to be honest, it is almost perfect in the eight-bit computer era, but all of these are combined If all the things are brought together to form "Heavy Soldier", the look and feel will not be so pleasant.

It may be Jester's own fault, because this game is too niche even in the eyes of domestic players, so he has not had in-depth discussions about this game with others, but Jester feels that although This is a sci-fi and western-style game that claims to be mechanical, apocalyptic, and mecha-rich. However, if you exclude all other fancy things and look at the essence of this game, in fact, this is still a standard Japanese-style plot. style game.

The Japanese style is incompatible with science fiction.

Whether it's the plot, the style of painting, or anything else, it all seems a little nondescript because it's too Japanese--as we all know, Europeans and Americans like science fiction, but if you use a painting style that is too Japanese to deal with science fiction content and add a pure If a Japanese story is used as a plot, then it will be unfair on both sides.

Because Europeans and Americans who like science fiction can accept Western fantasy-style games with Japanese plots and Japanese paintings, but it is difficult to accept such science fiction-style games. In their understanding, the style of science fiction games should be hardcore from beginning to end. , similar to "Saman Luo Snake", similar to "Contra".

At this time, the Japanese did not have much interest in science fiction themes.

In the field of games, games that neither please the Japanese nor the Europeans and Americans have no future. In other words, they are niche.

Of course, the combination of the two makes players in another region ecstatic. This is the players in the mainland. Players in the mainland prefer the Japanese style of painting and plot, and are also full of interest in science fiction, plus a hint of finality. The tragic atmosphere of failure, so "Heavy Robot" is almost synonymous with perfection in the eyes of mainland players.

He is a hero who appeared at an untimely time. In their eyes, the failure of this game has nothing to do with itself, but is just because he was born a few years late - similar to what Xiang Yu said before committing suicide in Wujiang River. It is not a crime of war.

But is it really so?

Jester originally thought so, but after time travel and rebirth, and after such a long period of game development, he discovered that this may be partly the reason, but it is not entirely the same, as Hiroshi Yamauchi said. It's the same word-of-mouth effect. Even if an excellent game doesn't go well at first, word-of-mouth can still attract the vast majority of players to buy it. There are many examples of this.

If the first part of "Heavy Soldiers" above f is because it was at the end of f, then what about the second part? This is a work on SF, and it is not the last work of SF. However, although the sales volume of 280,000 copies has almost doubled compared to the first one, is this an achievement worth bragging about? .

It takes a lot of courage for the owner of a game company to learn from a game that failed in its original history, at least a game that failed in terms of sales, because if you can't find the right game failure point, then it is possible to fail in this world.

Today's Jester or Mars Entertainment is no longer a company that cannot bear failure. Even if it fails for a while, the impact on the company may be minimal. After all, the games that the company is developing at the same time do not know about this one. What does the failure of this game mean? Which company doesn't have one or two failed games? Even Blizzard Entertainment, which is known as the best product produced by Blizzard in later generations, still made half-finished products like Diablo 3 to deceive people until the first expansion pack. The finished game?

However, the taste of failure is uncomfortable, even if it is equally well-received and not popular. In Jester's eyes, not being popular means that only a small group of people are willing to spend money to consume your game. If a game designer's If the work can only satisfy a small group of people, then the game designer will be close to the death of his gaming career.

So, now the question is, how should this game of romance for men and fantasy of mechas be modified to be more in line with the habits of Europeans and Americans and be widely accepted by them?

this is a problem.