Rebirth 86: I use games to kick open the door to the world

Come October, Squirrel Wars is on pace to hit the million-seller mark.

The initial sales of Mega Man have reached 300,000.

It reached the early sales volume of previous Contra in its first week.

In the follow-up, Mega Man's momentum has not diminished at all.

Mega Man is the first video game to tell the story of the relationship between humans and computers.

It just so happens that there is a wave of computer development happening recently.

Especially in the United States, some people have begun to advocate that computers will surpass humans in the future, and may even rule humans.

As a game about the relationship between artificial intelligence and humans, Rock Man has become the focus of many people's attention.

At the same time, this game also has a very famous difficulty curve, and different players have different experiences when playing it.

The ability to independently choose the target to attack gives this game an extraordinary experience.

With the combination of difficulty and plot, Mega Man immediately became the darling of October.

At the same time, there is another reason why Mega Man attracted widespread attention in the first place.

The comic work Astro Boy was born in the 1950s and is the work of the famous comic master Osamu Tezuka.

This work was very popular at the time and has remained popular even in the past ten years.

For a period of time, this was even a top national work, with a very wide audience at home and abroad.

Especially in the early 1980s, Astro Boy also went through a round of animation remakes. The new colorful pictures gave Astro Boy a new image and brought the work back to its peak popularity.

However, such a work has never been released as a game, which has become a regret in the hearts of many people.

They all wanted to see with their own eyes a flexible robot that could appear on a gaming platform and let people take control of Astro Boy's adventures.

This is even more exciting than watching cartoons.

However, this regret gradually disappeared with the appearance of Rock Man.

In the market, I don’t know who was the first to spread the news that this was a game version of Astro Boy. Astro Boy fans who had never played games before noticed this game.

Among them was a thirty-year-old adult.

He is past the age where he can indulge in video games casually.

But when he was still young, he clearly remembered the excitement he felt when he saw Astro Boy for the first time.

At that time, Astro Boy was only a black and white cartoon.

And that also became this person's first opportunity to understand the world.

In the animation, he felt Astro Boy's tenacity and indomitable temperament, as well as Astro Boy's handsome transformation.

When he was a child, he had imagined countless times what it would be like to become an Astro Boy.

Use your own strength to save the world.

However, as time goes by, his dream gradually fades away.

It was on this day that he saw a promotional advertisement for Mega Man.

This promotional ad is not official.

It's a billboard at the door of an independent video game store.

‘The popular game Mega Man is on sale! A game where you can personally experience robot battles, a game where you can personally experience characters like Astro Boy! ’

The thirty-year-old adult held a briefcase in his hand and stared at the billboard in a daze.

Iron-walled Astro Boy.

The dusty memories were reawakened.

At the same time, he also noticed the image on the billboard.

A boy wearing blue armor-like clothing.

One hand can also release the cannonball.

This image is really similar to Astro Boy.

It's hard not to wonder if this is a game that's completely imitating Astro Boy.

"Hello, I want to ask about this Astro Boy game."

A thirty-year-old middle-aged man walked to the door of the video game store.

"Hello sir, this is not an Astro Boy game, this game is called Mega Man, but I can assure you that you will definitely be able to experience the same atmosphere as Astro Boy."

This clerk was trying his best to promote the Mega Man game.

At this point, Mega Man has been on sale for two weeks.

The sales of Mega Man are gradually decreasing, and this store clerk obviously wants to get rid of these games as soon as possible, so as not to occupy resources in the store.

So he came up with the idea of ​​using the same Astro Boy game as a publicity stunt.

Unexpectedly, the effect was not bad.

There have been a lot of inquiries recently.

"Okay, how much does this game cost?"

"It only costs 4,500 yen, which is a very good deal. If you want to buy a game console, you can get a discount!"

"I have a game console, and I want this game."

Four thousand five hundred yen, which is nothing to the adults in front of me.

The most indispensable thing in Japan now is money.

All kinds of hot money are whitewashing the entire society.

He even heard that in big cities like Tokyo, you have to hold a 10,000 yen bill in your hand to take a taxi.

He took out the money from his pocket and happily bought this Astro Boy game.

"Okay sir, this is your game! By the way, sir, if you think this game is fun, you can recommend it to your friends."

"Yeah, I will."

The adult took the Mega Man cassette and left the store, then turned and walked toward home.

"Hehe, another copy was sold!"

The clerk was very proud.

Then he added a brand new headline to the billboard.

‘Rockman, the same game as Astro Boy, is now on sale and will be sold out soon, so hurry up if you want to buy it! ’

In the afternoon, sales of Mega Man cassettes increased again, and more people came to inquire than in the morning.

The siphon effect brought about by Astro Boy seems to be stronger than imagined.

A few days later, other stores seemed to have discovered such a business opportunity, so they followed suit one after another, labeling Rock Man as Astro Boy's game of the same name, and sales began to increase again.

However, this publicity campaign did not last long.

Because this kind of behavior is to gain popularity, it can also be regarded as a kind of infringement.

The copyright owner of Astro Boy quickly protested, and these stores had no choice but to remove their promotional slogans.

However, although the promotional slogan has been removed, the name of the same game as Astro Boy has begun to spread among the public.

Copyright owners can restrict those stores from infringing and gaining popularity, but they cannot stop ordinary people from discussing.

As a result, Mega Man's sales reached one million after the first month, making it a veritable best-seller.

And a month later, daily sales are still increasing, and the popularity has not weakened at all.

This made the copyright parties who originally owned the copyright of Astro Boy silent.

Are games so profitable?

Damn it, if I had known that I would have entered the venue early, I was actually beaten to the spot by Mega Man!