Reborn Tokyo Golden Age.

Chapter 376 Fate
That's right, besides Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo, there is another game company that also wants to enter the field of home game consoles.

That company is Sega, a game company that has participated in most of the events in the history of video game art, but has repeatedly failed.

Although the current Sega game headquarters is in Neon, its founders are actually three Americans.

Before the war, he was in the slot machine business in the United States. In the 50s, with the promulgation of the "Gambling Device Transportation Act" in the United States, all states stopped the slot machine business one after another.

There is no way, Sega, which makes a living on this, can only move its headquarters to Neon and start providing slot machine services for the Japanese and American troops stationed in Japan.

However, although it withdrew from the United States, because it continued to provide related services to the Japanese and American troops stationed in Japan, Sega was settled by the American government in the 60s.

So after a series of bankruptcy and reorganization, Rosen established a new SEGA in 65: Sega Corporation.

After nearly 20 years of development, Sega can rank among the top three in the arcade field, whether it is Beimi or Neon.

Revenue last year alone amounted to $3.5 million, or a profit of 875 billion yen.

With such a strong ability to attract money, Sega is naturally unwilling to limit its business to the arcade field.

Last year, Sega decided internally to start the computer game and home game console business. After all, the expansion of capital is instinctive.

Especially in the Beimi market a few years ago, Atari made a lot of money, which made Sega coveted for a long time.

So after nearly a year of development, Sega's SG-1000 is ready to go.

However, due to the treacherous turmoil in the Beimi video game market at this time, Sega is now very controversial about SG-1000.

Last Christmas, Yada took 5 weeks to develop the "explosive" game "ET", but it gave a solid blow to the majority of game lovers.

Taking advantage of Spielberg's films, Warner announced in a high-profile early on that Atari had obtained the game development authorization of "ET".

From the very beginning, this game has attracted media attention, after all, this IP is too famous.

With Warner's overwhelming publicity, retailers placed orders as high as 400 million copies before the game was released.

However, it turns out that no matter how loud the blow was at the beginning, the harder the fall will be.

Atari's "ET" was indeed recognized as a pile of answers after the players tasted it.

If a game developed in 5 weeks can be an excellent work, then hell.

So at the beginning of the new year, a storm has blown in Beimi.

As the first home game console to bear the brunt, its reputation at the moment can be said to be notorious.

Players angrily hated all home game consoles, which directly caused the Beimi game console market to plummet.

Also because of this public opinion environment, Sega's internal expectations for SG-1000 are very contradictory at this time.

One faction firmly believes that the situation of Beimi and Neon is different and cannot be generalized.

One faction is full of worries, and they are even considering whether to cancel the release of SG-1000.

Most of the stalwarts are the Neon local faction headed by Nakayama Hayao. They know the habits of the Neon people very well and think that the impact of Beimi will not affect the local market.

At this time, Nihong didn't even have an exchange-type home game console, so how could it be affected by Beimi.

The retreat faction is the American people headed by Rosen.

They are used to looking at the global market from Beimi's perspective, thinking that home game consoles will not be popular with neon people.

In the end, Hayao Nakayama, as the vice president, forcibly secured the listing plan of SG-1000 by himself.

And in order not to fall behind, he directly set the release date of Sega's SG-1000 on the same day as Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo's home game consoles.

It has to be said that this move has a very obvious sniping meaning.

But Hayao Nakayama doesn't care about this at all. In his mind, Sega is worthy of anyone in the field of video games.

Even because he was dissatisfied with Rosen's retreat on the home console, he was already quietly brewing the old tradition of Neon Man, and decided to take the next step.

Changes within Sega were also building up, but the release of the SG-1000 was a given.

So the public soon discovered that the neon streets seemed to be full of advertisements for home game consoles overnight.

Shirakawa Electric, Nintendo, Sega, everyone was dazzled.

Major media, especially computer-related newspapers and magazines, are as lively as Chinese New Year.

Neon has three home game consoles at once, who will benefit the most?
Of course, game lovers as consumers.

Only when there is competition can there be progress, and the ultimate beneficiaries must be those who pay for game consoles.

And these games or computer journals also analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the three game consoles one by one from the perspective of the public.

After all, it will be released in about a month, and some basic parameters have also been disclosed by the three companies through the cooperative media.

For example, the first thing to be compared is the CPU chip used by the three home game consoles.

Shirakawa Electric's SIC8089A, Nintendo's Ricoh2A03, and Sega's Z80.

They are all 8-bit chips, and they are theoretically at the same level in terms of computing power.

However, although they are all 8-bit machines, there is a gap between them.

The first is Sega's Z80 chip, which is the most widely used chip in 8-bit machines of the current era, and it is also the most familiar to the public.

Both Sega and Nintendo's arcade machines use this chip, which is why Sega's SG-1000 chose this chip.

Because of familiarity, but also because Sega's home console games are basically transplanted from its arcade games.

Nintendo's Ricoh 2A03 is actually the Ricoh MOS 6502.

The reason why Nintendo chose it was purely because Ricoh opened it at a lower price.

Z80和MOS6502这两款芯片它们的寻址能力都是64K，不过在主频上前者略高达到了3.58MHz，后者却不到1.8MHz.
But in the addressing speed of the register, the cycle of Z80 is longer than MOS6502.

In layman's terms, these two chips have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Whoever performs well depends on the programming ability of the game developer.

After all, the same configuration, if the optimization level is different, then the performance of the game will be very different.

Therefore, the media disagreed with each other about Nintendo's FC and Sega's SG-1000.

As for the SIC8089A used by Shirakawa Electric's FES, the media are somewhat uncertain.

With the expansion of SIC in the neon chip market, everyone has already understood this chip design company.

According to the parameters released by SIC8089A, many of its data are actually very powerful.

For example, the main frequency of 5.5MHz far exceeds that of Z80 and MOS6502.

The addressing of the register can reach 1M, which is not an order of magnitude parameter at all with the 64K of the other two.

However, this can only prove that SIC8089A is excellent in hardware parameters. As for whether it can fully exert its performance, it depends on the ability of the game designer.

Unlike the widespread use of Z80 and MOS6502, everyone has a good idea of ​​their performance.

But SIC8089A, as a chip that has just come out, has yet to verify its performance.

Therefore, for the general public, the CPU parameters of these three game consoles have their own merits, and the FES of Shirakawa Electric is slightly better in terms of hardware parameters.

After comparing the core CPU parameters, the media turned their attention to the appearance of these game consoles.

Unexpectedly, the game consoles of Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo are both a long box about 20 centimeters long.

Of course, there are differences in details between each other. Shirakawa Electric's shape is round and compact, while Nintendo's is sharp and angular.

In addition, in terms of color matching, the former is blue and white, and the latter is red and white.

Obviously, their color matching logic is based on the color of their own logo as a reference.

This is interesting.

From appearance to color matching, it seems like a fateful duel between the two.

Many magazines climaxed instantly after discovering this.

Because in Neon, the word "fate" is almost interspersed in the entire history and culture of Neon.

It has the longest history of the monarchy in the world. It has not changed dynasties since ancient times, and the people who inherit the throne are always the people of the royal family.

From this point, we can get a glimpse of Neon's identification with blood relationship, which corresponds to another identification with fatalism.

After this kind of culture penetrates into the bones, cultural creation will be automatically brought in.

This will also make everyone feel that this is like the existence of natural laws, and there is no thought of refuting it.

For example, in "Digimon", the 8 selected children, and the heroine selected by Kirin in "The Twelve Kingdoms".

There is also the destiny entanglement between Naruto and Sasuke in "Naruto", which even lasted for many lives.

This kind of fatalism in literature and cartoon creation is the most direct impression of "fate" by Neon people.

So when the outside media inadvertently discovered that Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo's game consoles were so coincidentally full of correspondence, the word "fate" popped up in the minds of the public in an instant.

The launch date is on the same day, and the appearance is so targeted.

So many coincidences put together, that is fate.

As a result, many magazines published Shirakawa Electric's Nintendo game consoles on the same page and compared them.

Not to mention, when these two game consoles are put together, there is really a bit of a specious similarity.

And the public also very appropriately called the competition between the two as "the fateful red and blue duel".

As for the forgotten Sega console, it's honestly a bit out of place with the first two.

Because Sega's SG-1000 is too big, the combination of Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo's game consoles is about the same length as it.

Big means bulky, and bulky means backward, so Sega's SG-1000 was ruthlessly ignored by the media.

From the perspective of publicity, among the three game consoles, Shirakawa Electric and Nintendo are slightly better.

However, unlike the turmoil outside, Bai Chuanfeng's eyes are not on the upcoming home game console.

Because this month, another product of Baichuan Electric is about to debut.

That is the CD-ROM that caused a sensation at the briefing last year, and it is about to officially meet with the public.

This so-called product of the technological revolution in the storage industry has finally entered the commercial stage after more than half a year of running-in.

(End of this chapter)