Rebirth Tokyo 1986

Chapter 180 Street Fighter
After returning to Japan, Masato Takeshita once again lived a leisurely life.

Occasionally, he would look at the company reports prepared by the secretary and assistant, but more often, he would take Sister Quanshui out for a trip, or play games with the company at home.

Time quickly came to December, and Masato Takeshita looked at Lin Qingqian who was wrapped tightly.

"As expected of Qing Qian-san, you value health more than beauty."

Lin Qingqian said naturally: "Isn't this natural? Your body is your own. There is no need to sacrifice your health for beauty."

She really doesn't understand the thinking of Japanese women.

While looking down on Japanese men, he used the 4-wallet trick.

On the other hand, she tries hard to show off her beauty and wears very thin clothes even in winter.

Many girls even have bare legs, which is simply unreasonable.

"Indeed, that's why many Japanese are seriously ill."

Japan is one of the countries with a relatively serious rheumatic disease problem, but it has not learned any lesson.

If it were China, there wouldn't be so many women doing bare-leg actions in the cold winter.

However, this behavior of committing a crime even though one knows it is wrong is not unique to Japan; it is a common trait of all human beings.

A typical example is the group that likes to eat raw meat.

Although we know that eating raw meat can easily lead to parasite infection, many people still eat it.

Of course, Japan is also a hard-hit area for people who eat raw meat.

Many well-known Japanese dishes feature various types of raw meat.

This may be related to the fact that Japan is surrounded by the sea.

People living by the sea prefer to eat sashimi compared to those living in inland areas.

China is no exception. Coastal areas such as Lingnan have the habit of eating raw seafood.

People in coastal areas know about parasites and still like to eat raw seafood, and people in inland areas are no less so.

The most famous are the various mushrooms in southern Yunnan.

Many people know that eating mushrooms such as the green onion can easily cause poisoning, but they still choose to try them without getting tired of it.

After sorting out the documents, Masato Takeshita stopped chatting.

"Let's go, let's go to Xinghai Game today."

"understand!"

After arriving at Xinghai Game by car, Masato Takeshita first exchanged greetings with Rogers, and then told him the main purpose of his visit today.

“The company needs to set up an arcade department and a PC department as soon as possible. The arcade department, in particular, will be a focus of our efforts.”

Although wars broke out occasionally after World War II, they were relatively limited in scale.

Most human beings, especially those in developed countries in Europe and America, live in a peaceful and stable environment.

As the old saying goes, keeping warm will make you think about sex.

When life is abundant and stable, human beings' spiritual needs will naturally increase day by day.

Movies, television, songs, comedies, etc. have all experienced a big boom as a result.

The more stimulating the game is, the more demand there is.

Therefore, both consoles and arcade machines are currently in a stage of rapid development.

Console games are very profitable, and arcade games are not bad either.

It can even be said that both console games and arcade games are currently in the early stages of development, with a blue ocean ahead.

As for PC games, development is slower.

This is mainly related to the lagging development of the operating system.

Graphical operating systems had just appeared and the mouse was not yet a standard feature of computers, so PC games naturally could not develop.

In a few years, when the graphical operating system matures, it will be the time for PC games to show their prowess.

Masato Takeshita's establishment of a PC gaming department is a precautionary measure.

"Understood. I will complete the establishment of the department as soon as possible."

"Well, hurry up." Takeshita Masato grumbled again, then changed the subject and asked, "How is the negotiation with Capcom going?"

"Capcom is happy to transfer the copyright of Street Fighter and is also happy for Takashi Nishiyama and others to come to our company."

"Street Fighter" did not make any splash in Japan, and Capcom lost a lot of money.

Now that there is an opportunity to recoup some of its losses, Capcom is naturally happy to see it.

As for Takashi Nishiyama joining the Star Ocean game, Capcom is also happy to see it.

Compared to StarCraft Games which is far away in Tokyo, SNK which is close at hand is the fatal threat.

"Well, complete the signing as soon as possible."

"Don't worry, it can definitely be completed this week."

"That's good."

Masato Takeshita already had a plan for the arcade game in mind, and now he just had to wait for the developers to be in place.

He wants to personally open the glorious era of arcade games - the fighting game era.

A week passed quickly, and Rogers successfully acquired all the copyrights of Street Fighter from Capcom, and poached Takashi Nishiyama's team.

"Welcome, welcome. I really like the Street Fighter you developed, so I repeatedly asked President Rogers to poach you guys when he bought the copyright for the game. After all, developers are more important than games."

As we all know, there are three fathers of Street Fighter.

The general manager was Yoshiki Okamoto, the first chief designer was Takashi Nishiyama, and the second chief designer was Ryo Nishitani.

The first Street Fighter pioneered the basic design of fighting games. The second Street Fighter, based on the first, directly promoted the fighting game and became a culmination of all the games.

"President Takeshita, you are joking. I am just a loser now."

For Takashi Nishiyama now, although "Street Fighter" is his own hard work, it also represents a shame.

Because this game, which took so much effort on his part, had very few sales.

So when faced with Masato Takeshita's compliment, I felt embarrassed to accept it.

"No, I think Street Fighter is a very successful game. The reason why it's not popular now is mainly because it lacks an opportunity."

"I plan to sell the game to the United States. I think Americans will like it."

Although Street Fighter has design flaws and requires you to judge the force pattern of your punches and kicks based on the strength of the blows, it doesn't matter. The Japanese can't stand it, but the Americans can accept it.

This will not only quickly recover the costs of purchasing copyrights and poaching talents, but also increase the confidence of people like Takashi Nishiyama.

After all, at the moment, Nishiyama Takashi and others are still losers.

The failure of Street Fighter was the main reason why Takashi Nishiyama left Capcom in his previous life.

Takashi Nishiyama likes fighting games and hopes to continue to create a new era of fighting.

Capcom, due to the failure of Street Fighter, did not want Takashi Nishiyama to continue working on this area and wanted him to make a side-scrolling game.

This is also human nature.

After all, compared to the failed fighting games, Takashi Nishiyama had already proved his strength in side-scrolling games as early as 1984.

He is the producer of the well-known horizontal scrolling game - "Jackie Chan Challenges".

Now that Masato Takeshita has intervened, although the relationship between the two has not broken down, it cannot change Nishiyama Takashi's current state of loss.

"Well, I hope the president can achieve his wish." Nishiyama Takashi did not have any hope in his heart, and his tone was a little reluctant.

After a simple welcome ceremony, Masato Takeshita brought Rogers, Takashi Nishiyama and others to the company's newly established arcade department.

In fact, although it is called an arcade department, this place is more like an arcade game hall.

Half of the room is filled with the most popular games on the market, as well as arcade games that Masato Takeshita and Rogers find interesting.

This includes "Street Fighter", which has low sales in Japan.

“This game is really good. If the balance can be adjusted, and more moves and actions can be designed for each character, and the mode of punching and kicking based on strength can be changed to a button mode of light punch, light kick, heavy punch, and heavy kick, it will definitely set off the entire arcade market.”

The worst thing about Street Fighter is the way punches and kicks are determined by the power of buttons, and the second worst thing is the game balance.

Because the game was poorly balanced, Capcom lost the first championship of the Street Fighter competition.

The winning player angrily criticized Capcom and said he didn't want the championship.

Because the winning player didn't think this was a fighting game at all.

You can win the championship by just launching a wave. Is there any game worse than this?

Therefore, Masato Takeshita directly emphasized the importance of balance, hoping that people like Nishiyama Takashi would pay attention to it.

"Button, button, designed as a button?"

Nishiyama Takashi understood what Takeshita Masato meant, but he was more concerned about pressing the buttons now.

He instantly caught the inspiration and couldn't wait to make new attempts on Street Fighter.

Change it to a button, it's so simple, why didn't I think of it?
When he thought about how to punch and kick based on the strength, his face turned a little red.

This operation mode is too stupid and should not be designed like this.

Everyone is playing a game, not really fighting.

Using punches and kicks based on strength will only make the arcade owner and players feel annoyed.

The "bang bang bang" sound of the machine hitting the target is enough to make people stay away from this machine.

"That's right. Besides being a button, the health bar design isn't very good either."

“The health bars shouldn’t be stacked up and down, they should be placed relatively at the top, and the time when the game ends should be placed in the middle.”

In the earliest version of Street Fighter, the health bar was designed in parallel.

Although both are located in the upper center of the screen, one is below and one is above, which is far less reasonable than one on the left and one on the right as in later generations.

It doesn't look very comfortable.

"Makes sense."

As Masato Takeshita explained, Takashi Nishiyama became more and more confident in his ideas, and a fiery light flashed in his eyes.

He now can't wait to engage in a new round of research and development.

"This is my design idea for Street Fighter 2. Take a look. If possible, I hope you can design a better Street Fighter game according to this plan."

“Fighting against other people is fun, and I’m very optimistic about the future of fighting games.”

Whether now or in the future, games involving human versus human players are the most popular.

In later generations, the game mainly involves confrontation between people.

Whether it is LOL, DOTA2, CS:GO, Valorant on PC; Pokémon, Mario Kart, GTA, Call of Duty on console; or Honor of Kings, Game for Peace on mobile...

They are the most popular games on the platform and always occupy a dominant position in the market.

The Internet is not very developed now, so online battles are not possible. Arcade machines are the best platform for human-to-human battles.

Among arcade games, only fighting games emphasize confrontation between people, which perfectly fits the human nature of liking to compete.

Fighting games should also take the throne of arcade machines.

"Yes, please rest assured, President."

Nishiyama Takashi was obsessed with the development of a new game, while Takeshita Masato took Lin Qingqian and Rogers back to the president's office.

"I didn't expect the president to have such a deep understanding of the game Street Fighter."

Masato Takeshita waved his hand at Rogers and said, "I am just talking on paper. We still need developers to implement it. But I think I have a pretty good understanding of the game."

"I am a senior game fan. Besides work, my favorite thing is to play games at home and in the company. After playing a lot, I naturally have the direction to modify the game."

Interest is the best teacher. Many developers of classic games are game fans.

Planners who don’t play games will never be able to develop fun games.

"The president's game design is not just a simple modification. Including games like Snowman Brothers, the president's ability in game design is definitely top-notch in the industry."

Rogers now admires his president even more.

With such strong game design capabilities, the company is bound to achieve greater success.

Just by listening to the description, he felt the urge to play the new Street Fighter game.

You should know that the last game that was also interesting just by hearing the description was "Soviet Tribe", which has now sold more than 400 million copies and its sales are still increasing.

"Well, if you praise me again, I'll be proud."

Masato Takeshita tried his best to control his smug expression, and then gave a serious instruction with firm belief.

"We directly translated the content of the Street Fighter game motherboard we bought into English, and then quickly sent it to the United States. There is a big market for similar games in the United States."

A karate fighting game with few moves can be popular in the United States.

Although Street Fighter is a bit clunky to operate and lacks balance, it is definitely more attractive to Americans.

This has been proven in the previous life, so we naturally have to speed up our pace in this life.

Speaking of which, there is a very interesting story about Street Fighter.

After Street Fighter became popular in the United States, sellers there immediately urged Capcom to produce a more complete second-generation Street Fighter.

It turned out that Capcom heard it wrong and thought that the United States wanted an RPG game, so it designed the famous "Street Fighter".

It can be said that without this misunderstanding, a generation of well-known horizontal scrolling game might not have appeared at all.

"Understood, I'll get it done as soon as possible."

As the price for acquiring Street Fighter, Capcom directly forced all the unsold Street Fighter boards to StarCraft Games at a discount.

Although Star Ocean Games seemed reluctant on the surface, they were actually very happy inside.

This is all money, and it’s cheaper than producing it yourself.

Unfortunately, you can only get this kind of bargain once.

Even if there is a similar opportunity in the future, the other party will probably be alert.

But it doesn’t matter, you can still use a pseudonym.

The two discussed in the office for almost two hours.

The discussion ended only when Masato Takeshita felt hungry.

"It's time to eat. Let's go and welcome Xishan Sang and the others."

If Nishiyama Takashi hadn't been so obsessed, they shouldn't have been assigned any work today.

Now the excitement is almost over and it's time to start the party.

Rogers nodded in agreement, "Indeed, we can't let the company appear disrespectful."

(End of this chapter)