game trailblazer

Chapter 364 NGC Coming Out of the Mountain
In the meeting room of the Nintendo headquarters in Kamitoba Hokotachi, Minami District, RB Kyoto...

With the help of the staff, Konno Hideki carefully connected an NGC to the large-screen TV in the conference room, and then took out a special 8cm Mini-DVD from his pocket. His team worked hard for nearly nine months—the finished version of "Louis's Haunted House". In order to get this Mini-DVD, he also spent a lot of thought, borrowing a special recorder, and borrowing a special DVD Record CD.The reason for this trouble is entirely because NGC uses Mini-DVD media with a strong ability to resist piracy to store games. This 8cm Mini-DVD is smaller than ordinary DVD discs, and the corresponding capacity has also shrunk to 1.5GB. However, for Konno Hideki, who has been working on the largest 64MB cassette of the N64 game console for a long time, 1.5GB is already a loose and unimaginable number.

Today is about two weeks before NGC is officially put on the shelves, but for Konno Hideki, today is a very critical day, which is related to whether "Louis' Haunted House", which condenses everyone's hard work, can be recognized by the company's top management , Can enter the online suppression process as scheduled, so Konno Hideki dare not be careless at all.

Turn on the power of the machine, put the Mini-DVD into the CD drive, and with the prompt that it is being read on the screen, Hideki Konno turns around and looks at the senior executives sitting in the conference room with a sincere expression on his face. He said with a smile: "Hi everyone, I am Hideki Konno from the Information Development Division, and the game I'm showing you today is "Louis' Haunted House"..."

There was a sound of a slight collision between the teacup and the lid, and the high-level executives with different complexions all turned their attention to the changing pictures on the big-screen TV.Although he has watched it many times, Hiroshi Yamauchi still looks at the TV screen habitually. If it was the time when the red and white machines were brilliant, or even the era when the N64 mainframe was first launched a few years ago, he would not have to bother at all, just say In a word, there is no decision that cannot be implemented.But it’s different now. After the fiasco of VRBoy and the strong rise of the DreamBox128 game console, Hiroshi Yamauchi’s voice in Nintendo is not as authoritative as before. Many decisions must be supported by other shareholders, even in games. The decision to go public was vaguely influenced by shareholder representatives, that's why there was this superfluous internal game promotion meeting.

Louis on the TV screen was holding a vacuum cleaner and screaming at a ghost. Yamauchi Hiroshi had already withdrawn his eyes from the TV screen, and by the way scanned the expressions on the faces of the high-level executives. Everyone looked relatively relaxed. , the last worry in his heart was finally let go, and it seemed that "Luiyi's Haunted House" should be able to pass.

Gently exhaling, Hiroshi Yamauchi felt tired for no reason. The situation of Nintendo in the past few years has not been as rosy as it seems on the surface. Whether it is the GameBoy that has returned to the light, or the N64 that is fading away, although the profits brought Not a lot, but it also put Nintendo in a rather embarrassing situation. GameBoy games were profitable, especially the Pokémon series that made the GameBoy great again, but that kind of good stuff just didn't sit in Nintendo's hands, and the GameBoy's outdated specs couldn't last long. The sales of N64 games are not bad, but the number is too small, and basically all of them are developed by Nintendo itself, which is very abnormal for a game platform.

Hiroshi Yamauchi saw this and made changes, such as the GBA that is planned to be launched this year, such as the CD media on NGC, all of which are to change the current embarrassing situation of Nintendo, but whether it will be effective or not, to be honest, he has no idea Absolutely sure, but it’s impossible not to do this, otherwise Nintendo will have to watch others conquer the city, but they can only guard the smaller and smaller territory to remember the past.If the situation develops to a certain stage, Hiroshi Yamauchi believes that those shareholders will definitely not be as quiet as they are now, and maybe their days at Nintendo may come to an end.

There was a burst of applause, which awakened Hiroshi Yamauchi who was in deep thought. He looked up at Konno Hideki who was giving a demonstration, and found that the smile on the other party's face was obviously brighter than before. He turned his head to look at the surrounding high-level people , and found that these people were smiling brightly while applauding hard, he breathed a sigh of relief again, it seemed that "Louis's Haunted House" had really passed the test, so he smiled reassuringly, and then clapped his hands.

Two weeks later, the Empire State Building Ballroom in New York, USA...

Standing in front of the speech booth, Satoru Iwata looked at the crowd of media reporters and guests under the stage, and couldn't help feeling a little more complacent.Satoru Iwata, who was born in Hokkaido, did not become a fisherman drifting at sea like his ancestors did. He has been fond of games since he was very young, but at first he studied more about how to use electronic components to create interesting games. Later, it was gradually transferred to computers, which were still emerging technologies at that time.In order to satisfy his hobbies, Satoru Iwata deliberately chose computer science as a major when he was studying at Tokyo University. After graduation, he was lucky enough to enter the famous HAL Research Institute and truly entered the game industry.

At that time, Satoru Iwata’s biggest dream was to create a popular game by himself. After working as a programmer at the HAL Research Institute for many years, his psychology gradually changed. With the understanding of the game industry, he found that if only the program As a member, most of the time you can only dance according to the instructions of others, and it is very difficult to realize your dreams.So Iwata Satoshi began to try a new way out, and soon the opportunity came to him. Under the bewitching of others, Masahiro Tanimura, the president of the HAL Research Institute, tried to salvage a fortune from the futures market, but unexpectedly lost a large sum of money Inwardly, the HAL Research Institute was on the verge of bankruptcy.Taking this opportunity, Satoru Iwata became the new president of the HAL Research Institute, and brought the HAL Research Institute back from the brink of bankruptcy within a few years, successfully turning the red letters on the report into black letters, which attracted Hiroshi Yamauchi's attention .

Satoru Iwata, who jumped to Nintendo, was appointed by Hiroshi Yamauchi as the director of the planning department, responsible for planning Nintendo's global strategy. Not long after, he received orders from Hiroshi Yamauchi to come to the North American branch and began to pave the way for NGC's strategic secrets.Relying on Iwata Satoshi's skills and the support behind Hiroshi Yamauchi, he quickly took over Arakawa Minoru without bloodshed, and won the authority of the North American branch, so there was today's new product launch.

"Hello, everyone, I'm Satoru Iwata from Nintendo. I'm very glad that everyone is here today..." Satoru Iwata, who was very interested, spoke a little broken English, with the usual smile and high spirits of RB people on his face .After a few words of politeness, Satoru Iwata stretched out his hand and pulled off the red silk cloth covering a table beside him, revealing the purple machine covered by the red cloth, and then pointed with his finger and said, "The era of dolphins has come..."

Just like a signal, with Satoru Iwata pulling the red cloth, the whole of North America was boiling, and many game stores that had prepared in advance opened their doors at the same time, and began to welcome the crazy influx of game enthusiasts, who lived in Buffalo City's Wells Reed is one of them.

Wells Reid is not an old gamer. He has been obsessed with game consoles since the N64 era, which is why he still misses NGC.Originally, Wells Reid didn't expect to get the NGC game console before the RB players. Although DreamBox128 set a precedent for global simultaneous sales, after all, Nintendo is an RB company. From the previous practice, the RB game company They always consider the overseas market after satisfying their own domestic market first, but this time it is different. Nintendo unexpectedly started to focus on the North American market.

Wells Reid couldn't figure out what caused Nintendo to make such a decision, but this is undoubtedly good news for him, at least he doesn't have to envy the RB players on the other side of the ocean online.In order to get the long-awaited NGC earlier, Wells Reed got up early to queue up. In fact, if he wants to, someone will definitely sell NGC on Ebay after a while. He just needs to be comfortable. If you stay at home and swipe your card, pay through PayPal, you can stay at home quietly and wait for NGC to deliver the goods to your door, but it will take a while after all.

There are many wonderful games on the N64 game console, and they are the kind of games that are more suitable for adults like Wells Reed. For example, "007 Goldeneye" has made him addicted to it for a long time, and it has also brought him a lot. pleasure.Now that the N64 has been upgraded to a more advanced NGC game console, Wells Reed thinks that he should be able to find a game that suits him, and it is the kind of game that has been greatly improved in all aspects.

When Wells Reed took over the NGC game console handed over from the clerk, and when he got the paper bag containing the first game "Louig's Haunted Mansion", his heart was filled with hope.If it was replaced by the previous "Super Mario" and the like, maybe Wells Reed would have to consider whether to make a move immediately, but the word "haunted house" made him very excited, and it was obvious that this was definitely not Mario. It was a bouncing, young game, and for a moment he even thought of a zombie-fighting game produced by a company called RB.

"NGC seems to be quite solid... This may be a very exciting game..." On the way home, Wells Reed fiddled with the steering wheel of the car while thinking about the game on the back seat. NGC game console and the first game.

He parked his car downstairs and took the elevator upstairs to get home. After taking off his coat, Wells Reed couldn't wait to unpack the NGC game console, took out the NGC and connected it to the entertainment room Then he took out "Louie's Haunted House" from the paper bag and stuffed the small disc into the NGC game console, then he went outside and opened the refrigerator to get a can of Coke and came back, drinking while waiting for the game screen Appear.

Press the gamepad a few times according to the prompts on the screen, accompanied by a somewhat tense music, a silly bearded man wearing a green hat appeared in the middle of the game screen, and the surroundings looked like the legendary haunted house .Wells Reid frowned slightly, which was a little different from his imagination, but there was no better choice for the time being, except for "Louie's Haunted House", he didn't like the other two first-time games just by their names .

"It seems that we can only make do with it..." Wells Reed sighed, and threw the Coke in his hand on the coffee table beside him, then picked up the NGC game controller and began to explore the haunted house...

(End of this chapter)