Game Development Giant

Chivalric sentiment.

This is a feeling shared by every Chinese.

For domestic game players, it is impossible to say that they are not interested in such feelings.

But...

But how difficult is it to make something that perfectly reflects this feeling? Even Jester, who knows the direction of games in the next twenty years, has only vaguely seen the shadow of this sentiment in "Shenmue".

In the 1980s, the Kowloon Walled City, the world of dragons and snakes, the black-talking green forest heroes, the green dragon, white tiger, Suzaku and Xuanwu organized conspiracy, does this semi-fictional history look like Hong Kong Kung Fu movies at their peak, Qian Xiaohao's 1982 "City" The opening sequence of "People Who Come Out of the Walled City" is a very authentic recording of grassroots life in the walled city, which is a rare life experience today.

Coupled with the Kung Fu journey of Tai Chi Master, who takes risks to learn skills, solve puzzles and make friends, there are very few games and movies nowadays.

In terms of action, it is also very original.

Tony Jaa's fights are also extremely exciting. The only movies that you won't get tired of after watching them dozens of times are "Fist of Heroes", "Drunken Master 2", "New Dragon Inn", "Tai Chi Zhang Sanfeng", "Plan A" and so on.

The picture itself of "Shenmue" has a style, old, but elegant, which is in perfect harmony with the martial arts sentiment it promotes.

Emotional works give people a fuller sense of touch and long-term satisfaction in addition to basic audio-visual entertainment. Of course, "Shenmue" also sacrifices a lot of fun for this kind of light emotion, such as not being able to start fights on the street and so on. Sexual behavior may be one of the reasons for failure.

If you have played "Yakuza" and "Roguelikes", you may think that their fighting systems are very good. Of course, but to say that the combat feeling reaches the level of fist-to-bone combat like that of Yuan Heping's martial arts director's movies, it may not be enough. , among the many games that Jester has played, if you don’t consider the actions of the action game Tianzun Ka bitch.

Probably only Namco’s King’s Landing. There are only a few titles such as "Ninja Dragon" by "Take Off the Pants Demon".

And "Shenmue", which was completely born out of "VR Warrior", is naturally one of them. Compared with "Yakuza", the blow feels very realistic and realistic. When hit, there will be obvious shock instead of hands and feet passing through the opponent's body.

Since there will be problems with the 3D perspective, you have to either make left-right battles like "Tekken" or "VR Warrior", or learn "Kingdom" for multi-player battles. This may also be a problem that the sequel of "Shenmue" will face. There are other opinions. The charm of fighting can be better reflected by splitting moves than by pursuing long consecutive skills. After all, masters only use three or five moves. The joy of fighting is the result of long-term practice.

Where is the realism of the fighting system reflected?

That is an authentic restoration of real boxing, or you can call it Chinese martial arts fighting - this is not the kind of illusory and fancy fists and embroidered kicks, but real fighting.

If you have ever been shocked by the scene in "The Grandmaster" where Zhang Zhen directly opens the door and elbows and fucks Xiao Shenyang without any help, then you should watch Shenmue.

It can be said that this is the RPG work with the best restoration of Bajiquan at present.

Why do we have to limit it to one RPG work?

Because there is also Akira Yuki in "VR Warrior" who has the same mother and blood as "Shenmue".

Wen has Taiji to stabilize the world, and Wu has Baji to stabilize the world. These two martial arts theories are extensive and profound. Take the elbow push as an example. It is a short strike in itself. It is not used unless it is close to the body. It can be used to directly run over and knock the long-distance target away. That's nonsense.

To maximize the lethality, double the relative speed of each other at the moment of killing, use your strongest to hit the other's weakest, and use your elbow to hit the weakest point. At the same time, Baji pays attention to cross strength. It means reasonable skeletal support to ensure that energy is concentrated at the point of force application. Comparing it to the Huang Tianlou scene in "Shenmue 2", Ryo used the force of the bullfight's collision to push his elbow from the outside, and at the same time straightened his other hand to maintain a cross. The boss's posture when he was hit is also more reasonable.

Secondly, the scenes and customs, the tranquility and delicacy of Yokosuka, the neon lights of Hong Kong, the scattered terrain, the antique courtyards, the morality and dangers everywhere, make you feel like you are in a martial arts world.

These game features that should be our own are now basically invisible in our own game works.

Moreover, the purely oriental music in the game is difficult to hear in top-tier big-budget games.

This kind of oriental style is soul-stirring, light and elegant. Imagine being able to hear songs like "Mohu Luojia", "This is Life" and "Streaming Light" from Tsui Hark's "Green Snake" in a game. "Flying", "Thinking"... Such a god-level soundtrack, what kind of feeling should it feel?

For Jester, that was something that made it harder for him to control his emotions than hearing Hans.'s explosive soundtrack at the end of the season in cod6.

"Shenmue" is not only the originator of sandbox games, but its OST is also the originator of "game music and movie soundtracks". In the era of "Shenmue", there were only two game soundtracks in the world that reached the level of "movie". One is "Shenmue" and the other is "Silent Hill".

The soundtracks for both are Japanese.

Look at these names.

Osamu Yoshitoshi, Yuzo Koko, Tsuyoshi Yanagawa, Ri Murata, Kameji Inouchi, Nobuhiko Kashihara, Hayato Matsuo, Toshiyuki Watanabe...

Almost all of them are composed by Japanese national-level composers. The orchestral version of "Shenmue Music" performed by the Kanagawa Fiber Symphony Orchestra also includes the erhu performance of Master Jia Pengfang. It can even be said that this is a piece composed with life and soul, blood and passion. The high-end game soundtrack came out in 1999 and was astonishing.

There are so many things worth remembering in "Shenmue".

However, memories can only be memories.

Jester sighed. Now his mind was a little confused and he couldn't concentrate. He simply threw the pen aside and stopped some of his ideas for the new game.

However, the main body of the game has been almost thought out, and making a game fuller is not something that can happen overnight.

The most important thing now is the carnival. After all, even if I want to start the research and development plan for this game, it will not be until after New Year's Day this year.

At this time.

Jester received a very strange phone call.

It's not that the person calling is weird, but the content on the phone.

The call was from the sales department.

They said that they had just received a somewhat strange order. The order was placed by the Pentagon, and the requested goods were their handheld game console Gameboy. The sales department did not understand why the Pentagon wanted these handheld game consoles. If there were hundreds or more of them, They wouldn't be surprised if there were one or two thousand units. After all, it was almost the end of the year and they might be pre-ordered Christmas gifts.

However, they booked 300,000 units in one go.

And it is required to be delivered before mid-December. Of course, the sales of gameboy have been very good, so there is no problem in production.

Three hundred thousand units is not an unacceptable number for Gameboy. In fact, according to the current inventory of Gameboy, the Pentagon's order can be completed in early November. In fact, the European branch requests every month There are more than just this number of orders.

However, this order was provided by the Pentagon after all.

Therefore, the sales department still called Jester and told Jester about the situation of this unusual order.

After receiving the call, Jester was silent for a while. After a moment of confusion, he thanked the person in the sales department on the phone, said a few words of encouragement, and then hung up the phone.

He did forget something before.

After all, he has been busy playing games during this period, and almost all his experiences have been put into it. He even spends very little time with Claudia, let alone paying attention to other things. In fact, In the past few months, he had really not paid attention to anything other than gaming news, until today, when he received this call.

When he heard the Pentagon's order for the Gameboy handheld console worth 300,000 yuan, Jester had some reaction.

Next year, something big that will shock the world will happen soon, and it will be at the beginning of the year.

Of course, it was not the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The disintegration of the Soviet Union was not at the beginning of the year, but the Gulf War. The Gulf War that broke out in January next year taught the whole world a lesson on how modern wars should be fought.

In Jester's memory.

During the Gulf War, the Pentagon did order a large number of gameboys from Nintendo and distributed them to soldiers participating in the war to relieve their loneliness. At the time, he viewed it as a fun thing, but what he didn't expect was that, It turned out that this matter really fell on him.

However, for Jester, becoming the protagonist in the story he had read before was not the most important thing.

He picked up the phone and called his assistant.

"I will sort it out, starting from July, to the current affairs section of the New York Times and the Washington Post, and then send it to my office."

After getting a reply from his assistant to get it done right away, Jester hung up the phone.

Jester's assistant moved very quickly. Within twenty minutes, he delivered hundreds of thick newspapers to him.

A company like Mars Entertainment, in addition to ordering a large number of newspapers and periodicals in its own field, also requires several subscriptions to major newspapers such as the New York Times. It doesn't matter whether you read them or not, but you must have them. .

Just in case you can't find it when you need it.

After getting this thick stack of hundreds of newspapers, Jester asked the main force to go out first, and then he read through them one by one. (To be continued...)