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

When the time comes to December, it has already entered the most favorite time to spend money in Europe and the United States.

As a country that likes to imitate the West, Japan also likes to consume like crazy during this time period.

The sales of video games are also rising at this time.

At this time, these game manufacturers are also the happiest.

Some game companies even directly announced that the entire company would have a collective holiday this month, and then use the money earned to spend as much as they want.

Go travel, go play, in short, just have fun as soon as possible.

NGS, as the leader in the video game industry at this time, naturally makes the most money.

By the end of the year, the market share of NGS in Japan and North America was officially announced to reach more than 90%.

This is extremely close to a monopoly position.

Originally, Sega had always wanted to break ranks with NGS.

However, the quality of the works on its own game consoles is worrying. The performance of the game consoles is good, but the quality of the games has not been improved. It can only linger in a small part of Europe and has never been able to enter the mainstream market.

Sega tried its best to break through the moat of NGS, which really left Sega helpless.

As for Zuo Zhen in China, he is leading his team into the final development and testing of the game. Zuo Zhen is not very clear about overseas matters.

The last time I contacted Nakamura Akira was half a month ago. Nakamura Akira told him that the sales of Mega Man and Squirrel Wars both exceeded one million.

All the money earned has been deposited into Zuozhen's overseas account and can be transferred into the country through the Administration of Foreign Exchange at any time.

More than two months ago, Zuo Zhen's teacher Zhan Weishan told Zuo Zhen that several leaders from the capital came to ask for information about Zuo Zhen, which made Zhan Weishan nervous for a while.

He thought Zuo Zhen had done something great.

But after these people came to the school to investigate, they disappeared again without even seeing Zuo Zhen, leaving Zhan Weishan confused.

Zuo Zhen was somewhat expecting this, mostly because of his foreign exchange matters.

Being able to frequently transfer large amounts of overseas funds from overseas, and being a college student, it is hard not to attract attention.

Especially in this era when domestic foreign exchange is still very scarce, it is even more special.

However, Zuo Zhen was surprised that the other party didn't take the initiative to look for him.

Are you planning to observe yourself?

Still want to do something?

But that doesn't matter. Right now, I still have to finish the game first.

"Squirrel Wars 2 has brand-new effects this time. First of all, the most important thing is that there are more interactions between the two squirrels, and then there are more details in the plot. At the same time, the most important thing is that the enemy's combat mode will be more changeable, becoming more It was a little harder before, but it’s more fun.”

At the door of the computer room, Zuo Zhen stood in front of a blackboard and explained the development content of the latest game to the people in front of him.

Although my latest game cannot be logged into NGS yet, isn't it already December?

In addition, I have been really bored recently, so I might as well take advantage of this time to develop some games.

This time, Zuo Zhen chose to develop a sequel to Squirrel War.

Compared with the first work, the second work has been better optimized in various details.

The previous Squirrel War was created by myself and Yu Mengchen together.

Coupled with time constraints and the performance limitations of NGS game consoles at the time, I was unable to realize more ideas.

But next year, Akira Nakamura promised himself that he will add a production line for special cassettes, and will also consider giving priority to producing cassettes for himself.

Then you can do more things by yourself.

In the early days, due to the insufficient performance of game consoles such as NGS, in order to make the game perform better, sometimes it was necessary to start tampering with the cassette itself.

The game console is a fixed product. If it is upgraded casually, it will be very unfair to previous users.

But if you optimize it on the cassette, you won't have this problem.

The previous Fire Emblem itself was due to the insufficient functions of NGS and the need to enhance the effect on the cassette. That was why NGS finally refused to produce the cassette and promised to produce it again next year.

Of course, the cost of such a cassette will be higher, and the price when sold will also be higher.

But now that he has become famous, he no longer has to worry about the price being too high and not being able to sell.

This time the squirrel war is to better optimize the screen, and then strengthen the character's movements.

The first game only had very simple throwing and jumping functions.

The second work, Zuo Zhen, adds some additional gameplay based on the original work.

This gameplay was also inspired by Zuo Zhen’s Super Mario, which he played later.

He also remembered that a possession-like system started to appear after Super Mario III.

This allows the protagonist Super Mario to sometimes have the ability to fly, and sometimes have the ability to super jump.

With different abilities, the experience of different levels will be completely different.

This time Zuo Zhen put this creative inspiration directly into Squirrel Wars 2, giving Squirrel Wars 2 a magical change from beginning to end.

The two squirrels will have different abilities.

If two players play together, the abilities of the two squirrels can also provide different coordination methods when fighting the BOSS.

Zuo Zhen even plans to add the combined ultimate skill of the two characters to the game.

However, because the function is really not allowed, this functional gameplay can only be temporarily abandoned, while retaining some of the most essential gameplay.

There is no need to abandon the remaining gameplay functions completely, as they can still be used in the future.

When the performance of game consoles improves, some unachievable gameplay can be realized.

As Squirrel Wars 2 became more and more complete, Zuo Zhen discovered that he might be able to do more than just transfer the well-known games from his previous life.

In fact, he can also transfer all the game development concepts from his previous life, which is more meaningful than simply transferring the game itself.

After figuring this out, Zuo Zhen led the team non-stop to develop the next game.

The name of the next game is: Double Dragon.

This is also a two-player adventure game.

But this time, this adventure game is no longer about fighting monsters, science fiction enemies, or cartoon enemies, but opponents that are similar to real humans.

This game is also one of Zuo Zhen’s childhood memories, and it is also a small series of works that Zuo Zhen wants to make most.

The biggest feature of Double Dragon should be the new axial combat gameplay.

Contra, Squirrel Wars, and Mega Man are all very traditional side-scrolling adventure games.

This game only has X and Y axes, and you only need to move up, down, left, and right.

But the Double Dragon has a brand new axis, the Z axis.

This adds a whole new experience to the game.