Game Development Giant

In addition to the secret competition between Mars Entertainment and Nintendo, other game manufacturers are not idle, especially the software developers under Nintendo.

For example, K Club, known as Kobe's Wavelet, launched the world's first fighting game "Kung Fu". Although many of the designs in this game are rough and clumsy, and the movements are also very childish and low-level, but The extraordinary fun brought by fighting games has triggered a craze to a certain extent. Not only has this game sold like crazy in Japan, but even in the United States, it has also increased the market share of NES to a certain extent.

Jester had always wanted to let Mark Saini's team develop "Avengers". Based on previous experience, the plan to develop an excellent fighting game was still on paper, even though they were working on "Avengers". There is a fighting level designed in "Avengers", but making a real fighting game is different from just making a fighting level. The difficulty between the two cannot be justified.

What worries Jester the most is Capcom’s strong performance during this period. Among Nintendo’s six major software developers, Jester’s biggest worry is not Namco, which is now the leader, haha For veteran developers like Desen, what he is really worried about is K-corporation, which is like Capcom, which is currently insignificant and has no outstanding performance in home consoles. Fortunately, except for the porting of "194" to F but poor sales, these arcade games have just been released. Capcom seems to have no plans to port it to f, which has also caused dissatisfaction from Nintendo. They have also used various methods to put pressure on Capcom.

But Capcom's arcade results are outstanding. The pressure on Nintendo is somewhat counterproductive.

Jester looked at the names of these games, "Demon World Village". He is deeply impressed by the four games produced by Capcom: "Red Dead Redemption", "Space Warrior" and "Battlefield Wolf". Each one has its own characteristics, which fully demonstrates Capcom's passion for games. Design understanding and extraordinary ability.

Although Jester often calls Capcom a bitch, he has great admiration for this company's ability in game development. Since its birth, this company has been at the forefront of the industry, whether it is among Japanese manufacturers. The heyday of the * decade. Two thousand years after Japanese manufacturers were completely destroyed by European and American manufacturers, Capcom has always been one of the cornerstones for Japanese manufacturers to maintain their last honor and dignity. But what disgusts Jester the most is their belief that they will always focus on money, and there is no love for the hard work that a game designer should have.

However, now, this creed of being greedy for money has brought an unexpected joy to Jester, and he can't help but look at this creed that he hated so much before, and it becomes extremely pleasing to his eyes. Those who are good to me will do good. . This sentence is indeed true.

Because just an hour ago, he received a strange phone call from the front desk. The person on the other end of the phone called himself Kenzo Shikimoto. Identity is the president of Capcom Japan Co., Ltd.

In fact, there is no need for the other party to introduce himself in such detail. Jester naturally knows who Kenzo Shikimoto is.

A request from a software developer under Nintendo to meet with Nintendo's biggest enemy, in Jester's eyes, has something different, both familiar and strange. It seems to be full of... He understood the style of later Capcom.

betray.

Then, Jester agreed to the other party's request without hesitation, and he agreed to meet.

Kenzo Shikimoto has arrived in the United States. He flew to Canada via Aomori on the pretext of going to Hokkaido for vacation, and then took a flight from Canada to California. The reason for doing this is that he wanted to hide it from Nintendo's eyes and ears.

He is a speculator. Kenzo Shirimoto himself does not deny this. As a speculator, he will not put all his chips in one basket, just like he will not really put all his chips in one basket before he reaches an agreement with Jester. I have a falling out with Nintendo.

In the eyes of Kenzo Senmoto, he was just pursuing interests, and there was no question of betrayal or betrayal at all.

Just like the reason why he founded Capcom and insisted on recruiting dismissed game developers with high salaries during the impact of Atari in 1983, it was not because he was truly compassionate and compassionate, but because He takes a fancy to the amazing benefits contained in the video game industry.

As for Capcom being able to grow bigger and have such a scale, Kenzo Shigemoto would really have to thank Atari for its impact, if it hadn't been for the one in 1983 that completely shuffled the entire game industry from beginning to end. If there is a disaster, then Kobe's Kobe, also known as K Company, will not be able to lay off more than a quarter of its employees, and as a new company, it will not have the opportunity to recruit people like Okamoto Yoshiki, Fujiwara Tokuro, and Funamizu Noritaka. Industry elite.

In a hotel in Los Angeles, holding a glass of red wine and thinking about the next meeting with Jester, Kenzo Shikimoto has never been so anxious as he is now. Even the complete falling out with Yoshihiko Takado did not make him anxious. After experiencing this feeling, he knew that every step he took now was like dancing on a knife's edge, between Nintendo and Mars Entertainment, the two major gaming giants spanning Japan and the United States. If he made a wrong step, he and himself might suffer. Capcom is beyond redemption.

At this time, he couldn't help but think of his original intention of entering the gaming industry.

For Kenzo Shikimoto, although he is not a pure Osaka native, he has spent more than half of his life in his forties in Osaka. He himself feels a bit like Yokomori Masashi in the novel. The character of the standard Osaka people described is like that-old-fashioned and cunning by nature, always likes to put on a high profile that is incompatible with the people around them, although they are greedy for money, but occasionally they will unexpectedly do some earth-shattering righteous deeds. .

Just like when he stopped doing civil engineering business and resolutely devoted himself to the video game industry.

Kenzo Shikimoto's academic qualifications are not high, and his age does not allow him to have a detailed understanding of video games. What made him determined to enter the video game industry was a newspaper from the "Asahi Shimbun". With the eye-catching title of "Genius Boy Gets a Thousand Dollars", it was reported that a young college student named Tomohiro Nisikado received a huge bonus of tens of millions of yen from the publisher Taito for successfully developing "Space Invaders". In the same period, A "Nikkei Shimbun" published that Teto Corporation predicted that this year's net profit will increase more than ten times year-on-year due to the nationwide popularity of "Space Invaders".

What really touched his heart was a front-page headline from the "Osaka Shimbun" in Osaka where he was based. This report stated that due to the unprecedented popularity of "Space Invaders", there was a serious shortage of 1 yen coins on the market. The province had to announce an emergency minting of new coins to put on the market.

Kenzo Shikimoto admitted that he knew nothing about this thing called video games at the time, but these numerous reports did arouse his curiosity, so he decided to explore it himself. The so-called thing was called " What the hell is the game Space Invaders?

With great difficulty, he found the arcade in the basement of a store on the corner of the street.

Since Japan's electronic game industry had just developed at that time and no specialized industry association had yet been established, most general arcades had harsh environments and a mixed bag of good and bad people. The noisy and mixed scene really surprised Kenzo Kenzo, who arrived for the first time.

What greeted us was a turbid smell of tobacco and sweat. Many people were sitting or standing in a space of less than a hundred square meters. These people were roughly between 1 and 4 years old. Among them are unemployed vagabonds with disheveled hair and ragged clothes, as well as white-collar workers in suits and leather shoes with a reserved attitude.

Almost all of the dozen or so consoles in the arcade are the same game. Players control airplanes to dodge back and forth between obstacles and wait for opportunities to shoot down incoming alien flying saucers. From time to time, accompanied by monotonous electronic sounds, bursts of exaggerated exclamations came from the crowd. Both players and bystanders were so selfless, and coins kept falling into the coin hole with a clanging sound. Kenzo Senmoto stood quietly in a corner and watched all this, and the extremely boiling scene made his heart beat.

He seemed to see money flowing like water.

Capcom was not a company that Kenzo Kenzo directly founded from the beginning. Regarding his grudges with the first game company he founded, Kenzo Kenzo doesn’t want to look back on it now and share it with other people who entered the game industry. People are different. Kenzo Senmoto doesn't have any deep feelings for video games. The reason why he got into it was just because he saw the business opportunities hidden in this industry, which were astonishingly big.

That's why in 1983, when the entire video game industry was facing the threat of Atari's impact, he did something that was laughed at as a shelter for Kobe Wavelet.

Is he stupid? Of course not. There is no doubt that Kenzo Shikimoto is a shrewd entrepreneur. It is precisely because of his shrewdness that he dared to make a desperate move, both before and now.

Thinking back to everything in his past, Kenzo Senmoto drank all the wine in his hand. Then he looked at the time. It was almost time to make an appointment with Jester, so he went to the mirror to straighten his appearance, and then There was a look of confidence on his face.

He believes that he can convince Jester because he knows the biggest shortcoming behind the current seemingly strong Mars Entertainment.