game trailblazer

Chapter 34 Nintendo's second episode

In the morning, Zhang Lexing woke up from his sleep, sat on the bed in a daze for a while, then got out of bed, changed into sportswear, went outside and started jogging along the usual route.Running, Zhang Lexing remembered that not long ago he had invested a sum of money in a small company in Toronto, Canada, but there was no new news. He didn't know what was going on now, so Zhang Lexing decided to call and ask when he was going to work.

After running home, it was still early, and Zhang Lexing started to prepare breakfast for two - toast, ham, fried eggs and milk.When Zhang Lexing put the prepared breakfast on the table, Yang Xinxin just appeared on the stairs, wearing black silk pajamas, and walked downstairs slowly.

"Breakfast is ready, let's eat first." Zhang Lexing greeted.

"Yeah." Yang Xinxin nodded, walked gracefully to the table and sat down, picked up the knife and fork and began to wipe out the food on the table.

Zhang Lexing took a sip of milk and said, "Sister Xin, I called from Hong Kong yesterday, asking when you have time to go back."

Yang Xinxin's expression changed, and she frantically cut the ham on the plate with the knife in her hand. Zhang Lexing sighed and didn't speak anymore. The atmosphere at the table suddenly became a little awkward.

After bullying the ham who couldn't fight back for a while, Yang Xinxin didn't seem to calm down. She stood up with a bang, turned around and ran upstairs, only saying "I'm full, I have to go to work."

Zhang Lexing had no choice but to quickly finish his breakfast, and then began to pack the tableware.Before she finished her work, Yang Xinxin had already changed her clothes and ran down the stairs. She said, "I have something to deal with in the company, so I'll be leaving first." Before Zhang Lexing could recover, Yang Xinxin disappeared in the hallway .

Arriving at the garage, Yang Xinxin quickly started the car and drove out. At this moment, a mournful cry came from the house: "Are there any mistakes? There are no taxis here!"

……

It wasn't until an hour later that Zhang Lexing came to the company, which was half an hour later than usual. Fortunately, he kept exercising regularly, otherwise today would be an confession.After returning to his office and sitting down, Zhang Lexing remembered the small company in Canada again, so he picked up the handset and dialed a number, and after a few rings, the call was connected.

"Boss, good morning." Anderson's greeting came from the microphone.

"Good morning. Anderson, how's that little company we invested in last month?"

"Is it the company that plans to produce graphics cards?"

"That's right, we invested 90 in the past."

"Well, I learned about it recently. He Guoyuan, who applied for investment at the beginning, has already established a company with his partners. The company's name is Array Technologies Inc. In order to save money, they found an old parking lot in Toronto to build a factory. They are currently developing their own products - graphics processing chips using ASIC technology, and their potential customers will include IBM and other PC manufacturers who need graphics cards."

"This company should have good development potential, and we need their graphics processing technology, help me pay more attention."

Putting down the phone, Zhang Lexing thought about it for a while: "Well, the processor and graphics chip are available, and there will be a sound processing chip, but it's still early, and I will go to Singapore in two years. Well, there are only these Not yet, I still lack design experience, maybe I can go to Nintendo to find a way..."

Just as he was thinking, the secretary's voice came from outside the door, "Boss, your phone is on the second line."

Zhang Lexing responded casually, then pressed the button on the table and picked up the phone receiver.

The excited voice of Benjamin, the director of Blue Dragon Studio, came from the receiver: "Boss, our experiment is successful, come and take a look."

"Experiment? What experiment?" Zhang Lexing looked confused, but listening to Benjamin's voice shouldn't be a bad thing, so let's go and have a look.

When Zhang Lexing came to the Blue Dragon studio, he finally saw what the experiment Benjamin was talking about, and it had to start a year ago.

Since KF-Panda formally stepped into Nintendo game development, Zhang Lexing took advantage of his convenience to collect some FC games for his own PC game studio (later Blue Dragon Studio) as a reference. Compared with the PC games at that time, FC games are like heaven and the other is underground. FC games have colorful animations, beautiful sounds, and lifelike game characters, while PC games are as simple as Atari. Antiques from before their time.

After playing FC games, the designers of Blue Dragon Studio are always thinking about how to realize the effects of FC games on the PC. Of course, due to the limitations of PC hardware, the music and sound effects of the game are inherently not good. The designers The target of the breakthrough was selected on the game screen.It's a pity that PCs at that time were still dominated by CGA graphics cards. With low resolution and only four colors available, designers quickly gave up.

Last year, IBM's latest PC/AT machine was launched, which is a faster choice for business users. For the designers of Blue Dragon Studio, the EGA graphics card on the PC/AT is rekindled. As they hoped, the FC game replication plan was reopened.In fact, Zhang Lexing knew about this matter at the time, but there was no news for a long time, and he gradually forgot about it. Unexpectedly, after a year, there was finally a result.

"Boss, take a look, this is the game Commander Keen we made with the latest technology." Benjamin said excitedly, pointing to an IBM-PC/AT machine.

Zhang Lexing went up to take a closer look, and it was indeed different from the dull PC games before.Most of the early PC game screens were fixed, unlike FC game screens that had horizontal or vertical scrolling screens, which was also caused by machine hardware limitations. FC game consoles directly supported horizontal or vertical screen scrolling on the background image by hardware. However, if a PC wants to achieve the same effect, it can only be realized by repeatedly rewriting the content of the display mapping unit. The speed is super slow, and the smooth scrolling effect cannot be achieved at all.The game Zhang Lexing saw today was different. With the running of the green-haired game character, the game background outside the screen appeared smoothly. Although the effect was still a little different from that of the FC game, it was already good for PC games. It's a huge innovation.

"This game is very good, who developed this new technology?" Zhang Lexing was very happy.

Benjamin blushed a little, and said awkwardly, "Boss, he's not here."

"What's going on?" Zhang Lexing was a little anxious, how could such an important person not be here.

"Boss, in fact, this idea was thought up by a friend of mine. This kid just turned 15 this year, and he took a year off from school last year. He came here to play some time ago, and he came up with an adaptive update algorithm. The amount of image data that needs to be processed has been reduced, and on this basis we have completed the game. Now the kid should go back to school, so..." Benjamin explained.

Zhang Lexing couldn't help sighing: "It's incredible. I didn't expect this kid to be so powerful at such a young age. Benjamin, can you invite this kid to our studio in the future?"

Benjamin said embarrassingly, "I'm afraid it's not easy. I actually asked. This kid's family is in Kansas City, Missouri, and he doesn't want to travel so far. Maybe we can try again after graduating from college in a few years."

Zhang Lexing sighed and gave up.At this time, he still doesn't know how much the child he let go will achieve in the future. If he can know in advance, he believes that Zhang Lexing will tie him back even if he is tied.

……

Nintendo of America (NOA, NintendoOfAmerica) was only an office in New York at the beginning, relying on the efforts of Yamauchi’s son-in-law Arakawa Minoru, coupled with the joining of barrister Howard Lincoln and marketing genius Pete Mann, it slowly developed. Get on track and start growing.After relying on "Donkey Kong" to open up the North American market, NOA achieved sales of 1 million US dollars (about 2 billion yen) in just two years, completely gaining a firm foothold.This year is already the fifth year since the establishment of NOA, and the business is still pure arcade board sales. Although the profit is quite large, Arakawa has long been dissatisfied with this.Since the re-launch of FC game consoles in early 400, a huge profitable market has been created, which has made Arakawa coveted, and he intends to introduce FC game consoles to North America.

Hiroshi Yamauchi did not turn a blind eye to the North American market. As early as the year when the FC game console was first launched, he had a corresponding plan, hoping to sell the FC game console through Atari, which had not yet completely collapsed. The entanglement was divided into problems, and as a result, he lost his last lifebuoy, and Nintendo also lost confidence in developing the North American market.Two years have passed, and the home game console market in North America still shows no signs of recovery. Some experts even assert that the home game console market will not recover within 20 years.Nintendo is also hesitant about this, neither wanting to give up the huge North American market, but also worrying about rushing in and encountering Waterloo again.

Arakawa knew that it was his father-in-law who made the final decision at Nintendo, so he set the research target on Hiroshi Yamauchi.Relying on Arakawa's unremitting efforts, coupled with the father-in-law's willingness to cultivate his son-in-law, Nintendo finally agreed to launch the FC game console in North America.Considering the characteristics of the North American region, Nintendo redesigned the FC game console from a red and white game console to a "video recorder", adding a video output port, and the game cartridge is different, adding a few pins , the shape has become a bit like a video tape, and even the name of the game console has been changed to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES, Nintendo Entertainment System).

At the beginning of October, after careful preparations, NES first began to test the water in New York. Fifteen NES games were launched together. In addition to the popular "Super Mario" by RB, there was also "Searle" specially produced by KF-Panda for the North American market. Tales of Daredevil and Contra.In less than three months, NES achieved sales of 10 units in New York, and Nintendo's home game consoles also set foot on the North American continent and created a legend.

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Horizontal screen scrolling: A technology used by early games to realize the expansion of space, similar to a small window (this is the area that the user sees from the screen) moving on a pre-made large image (background image), often used in Flying shooting or action games, such as "Super Mario" is a typical horizontal scrolling game, the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth levels in "Contra" are horizontal scrolling, and the third level is horizontal scrolling. It is vertical scrolling.

CommanderKeen: A horizontal scrolling game imitating "Super Mario 3", which claims to be the first horizontal scrolling game on a PC, launched by John Carmack in 1990.

John Carmack: One of the founders of IDSoftware, known as the "No.1 father of shooting games", his classic works include Wolf3D (German Headquarters 3D), DOOM series (Destroyer), Quake series (Thor's Hammer), etc.

(End of this chapter)