Game Development Giant

The outside world said that Jester had a falling out with Jobs over matters at Pixar Studio, which is why this happened.

But the problem is, not to mention that Jobs had actually left Apple at that time and was kicked out by Apple like a lost dog. The birth time of "Minesweeper" was also earlier than the time when he had a falling out with Jobs over Pixar animation. Things started much earlier.

But even so, even the simplest game "Minesweeper" did not appear on Apple.

Thinking of this, a dialog box appeared on the computer screen. In this dialog box, you need to enter an account and a password. This is also the function of the card given by the staff when entering the venue. Moreover, here The card also specifically states that each account will receive twenty minutes of game time.

After twenty minutes of gaming, regardless of whether the game is finished or not, the time is over, the game will automatically exit, and the account will be frozen until tomorrow.

In other words, during these two days of Mars Carnival, each player, this may not be accurate, but to be precise, each card has only two opportunities to play for twenty minutes each time. This can be regarded as It's an improvement. It's much better than last year, when some people could occupy a machine for several hours.

I had learned about "Age of Empires" before through fragments of information in some magazines, not to mention that Harrison had heard about the content of this game from his colleagues.

The essence of this game is the battle. It seems that this is also the game system that Jester mainly wants to study in the past two years. It seems that in Jester’s view, player battle will become the mainstream and development direction of Lailai games. , last year's "Quake" was like this, and this year's "Age of Empires" is like this.

Harrison said with some regret that "Quake 2" has once again been delayed.

It seems that because John Carmack, the producer of "Quake 2", has too high requirements for the game, the game has been postponed twice this year. It was originally said to be during the carnival. It is definitely possible to meet players, but in previous interviews, John Carmack or others from Mars Entertainment regretfully stated that "Quake 2" has been sent back to re-production because it did not reach the level they expected. .

It is said that during Jester's speech later, he will say something about "Quake 2".

You know, there are countless current players who are waiting for news about this game.

If you take a quick look at "Age of Empires", you will feel that it is similar to "Civilization". But after entering the game, I discovered that these are two completely different games. Except that they are both borrowed from some ancient countries or city-states, there is basically no similarity between the two.

Harrison knew the game well enough that he didn't initially enter Versus mode, even though he knew it was the core of the game.

He clicked on the second option, which was script mode.

According to his colleague, in this game mode. Players can operate some historical kings or famous generals, and participate in some major moments in history or some battles that changed history. However, perhaps because it is a trial version, there are not many options for players to choose from in this scenario mode. That’s too much.

There are only three scripts to choose from. The first scenario is about Hannibal, the commander of Carthage. He once raped and annihilated nearly 100,000 Roman main forces in one battle. The Battle of Cannae was called an impossible battle by Western military strategists. This time, players are going to have to Become Hannibal. Complete a Battle of Cannae.

The second script, which Harrison was not familiar with, was a script from a country on the other side of the Pacific that could not be named without being censored. It was about a famous general named Xiang Yu. A battle in which he commanded 30,000 cavalry to defeat his opponent's 600,000-strong army was known as the Battle of Pengcheng in history. However, in Harrison's opinion, this was basically a boast. He absolutely did not believe that there was such a military force in the world. A battle that can be won despite huge disparities.

The third script is Genghis Khan's battle to destroy Khwarezm.

After much deliberation, Harrison chose the first script he was most familiar with, Hannibal's Battle of Cannae.

at the same time.

In addition to reporters from various media who entered the venue in advance, there were also representatives of members of the World Electronics Association invited by Jester. After Hayao Nakayama held a discussion meeting on game classification three days ago, because Japan has Things needed him to deal with, so he returned in a hurry.

But Kutaragi Ken didn't have anything important to do recently, so he stayed.

The main reason for staying was to see with his own eyes what the Mars Entertainment Carnival was like. He had read the information before and knew that the first Mars Entertainment Carnival was very successful, but seeing it in black and white was different from seeing such people with his own eyes. The long snake and the bustling crowd are completely different things.

When he entered the venue before, he had seen with his own eyes the long queue in front of the Anaheim Convention Center. It was really an eye-opener for him.

To be honest, even on the morning when their PS was launched, there was no such grand occasion.

Moreover, as far as he knew, people started queuing up three days before the opening of Mars Entertainment's carnival. Even before yesterday, there were more than a hundred people in the queue. Although Kutaragi Ken had previously known that Mars Entertainment was in North America, has a great influence among players, but now he has a very deep understanding of how influential Mars Entertainment is.

Best of all, it's not just North America.

Kutaragi even saw some Europeans and even Japanese.

Jester was preparing for the opening speech that would be waiting for a while, so he did not accompany Kutaragi Ken and his group, and Kutaragi Ken and his group were not together, but in twos and threes, dispersed throughout the venue to visit, you know. The Anaheim Convention Center is very large, large enough to accommodate tens of thousands of people for gatherings.

Just for this Mars Entertainment Carnival, more than 20,000 tickets were sold.

After a while, Kutaragi Ken moved to an exhibition area that was not the main promotion area of ​​this carnival. This was the Gameboy exhibition area. Last year, Gameboy and "Quake" were the absolute protagonists, but the sales of Gameboy have been tightening and stable recently. , and there are not enough competitors, so Mars Entertainment itself does not pay too much attention to gameboy.

In the absence of sufficient competitors, Mars Entertainment will not invest too much in this area.

However, Kutaragi Ken knows that this definitely does not mean that Jester is not optimistic about handheld mobile phones. You must know that Nintendo promised to compete for home console platforms, but it proposed that they can carry out research and development of handheld mobile phone platforms. Originally, Jester was He didn't agree, but after Nintendo's insistence, he reluctantly agreed.

Palm phone, this is what Jester has carried forward.

Before GameBoy, no one could have imagined that such a small thing would have such a large potential audience, and Jester's game design idea of ​​fragmented time is regarded as a golden rule by many designers.

Not only Nintendo, but also Sega is also very interested in handheld mobile phones.

However, it seems that Sega has very high requirements for handheld phones. They have been promoting the development of handheld phones for a long time, but they still have not come up with a finished product. This makes Kutaragi Ken find it a bit incredible, because he himself makes hardware. , he knew that handheld phones like Gameboy were actually not difficult to develop.

If left to Sony, it might take less than a few months to produce a product that can be commercialized.

And Sega has been immersed in game consoles for so many years. It is impossible that it has been more than a year now and has not come up with a reliable product. However, Kutaragi Ken remembered a piece of information he had seen. It seems that Sega does not want Following Mars Entertainment, what they want is to completely change the pattern of handheld mobile phones.

In other words, they are developing a new handheld console that has great advantages in all aspects compared to Mars Entertainment's gameboy.

As an elite who has been in the field of hardware development for decades, Kutaragi Ken is also thinking about it. If he is asked to design a brand new handheld console and completely break Gameboy's monopoly on the current handheld console platform, he should How to design.

While casually looking at several Gameboy games ready for release, I looked at the Gameboy handheld console on the display stand.

An idea couldn't help but emerge from Kutaragi Ken's mind.

It is undeniable that gameboy is indeed an excellent piece of hardware. Perhaps its biggest advantage is its stability. It is said that the failure rate is very low. There is also a widely circulated story about the development of gameboy in the industry. It is said that the finished product of gameboy is being developed. After that, the first thing Jester did before testing the performance of the gameboy was to throw the gameboy directly from the second-floor window.

Then, someone picked up the dropped gameboy and conducted a performance test.

This ensures that the failure rate of Gameboy is very, very low. This is what Kutaragi Ken admires very much, because he himself is engaged in hardware, so he knows how difficult it is to achieve this.

But gameboy has many shortcomings.

Even in the eyes of Kutaragi Ken, a man with rich experience in hardware development, Gameboy has many more shortcomings than its advantages. (To be continued...)