game trailblazer

Chapter 60 Counterattack! 8VS16
Time flies like water, and it is the end of September in a blink of an eye.During this period of time, Nintendo’s publicity can be said to be unprecedentedly active. In addition to advocating the advent of the era of FC game super masterpieces (in fact, FC games using enhanced MMC3 or similar chips are about to be launched), they also revealed flashing and pretending to be mysterious. Some legendary technical details of Nintendo's next-generation console.

An industry interview with an F game magazine: "...Mr. Uemura, the second development department of Nintendo, revealed that his new console will adopt a multi-processor cooperative mode, but it is completely different from the dual-processor structure of Sega's upcoming new console. The number of servers will be more, and the performance of the host will be more powerful..."

Gossip circulating among players: "...Nintendo's new host uses 65C818 as the main processor, which is backward compatible with the Famicom console. The new console will be able to play the current Famicom games. You don't need to lose the old card when you buy a new console. what……"

An E game media industry starry sky: "... a staff member of Nintendo's development department revealed that the company's new host will support a resolution of up to 512×448 pixels, and can display 32768 colors. The same screen supports a maximum of 2048 colors, and can display high-definition, colorful images. The game screen of..."

Official news and gossip are flying all over the sky, people's expectations for Nintendo's new console are gradually rising, but Sega's president Hayao Nakayama is extremely depressed to find that the light of his new console seems to be snatched away by Nintendo's still-unknown console. If it weren't for the huge amount of money invested in the research and development of the new console, Hayao Nakayama would have wished to cancel it immediately.All this began to enter the climax stage with the arrival of October.

Sunday, October 10rd...

After a long warm-up, the much-anticipated masterpiece "Super Mario 3" began to be officially sold through retail stores. In order to attract attention, Nintendo also held a grand on-site signing ceremony.

As the first gun to check and balance Sega, "Super Mario 3" is quite well-made.The game capacity has reached a new peak in the FC era, with a full 3Mb (about 384K bytes), which is almost equivalent to more than 16 times the capacity of early works.What is more attractive is the use of the MMC3 performance enhancement chip. For the majority of players, they have often seen text introductions about FC game performance enhancement chips in newspapers and magazines in the past two years. Knowing that it can greatly enhance the performance of FC games, But I have never had the chance to see the real face, and today the opportunity finally came.

The signing site was crowded with people, and several TVs played the game screen of "Super Mario 3" non-stop.The display content mainly includes the introduction of new systems such as the first large map screen, a variety of props to choose from, various mini-games, and innovative diagonal scrolls. Mario uses various transformations to pass through different obstacles. , even including some exquisite music in the game.

……

Soon a new Mario craze came again, in vogue.Although the sales volume of this game in the first week only reached 92 copies, the "Super Mario" series has a long-selling tradition. Sure enough, "Super Mario 3" has been firmly occupying the top of the game sales list for the next few weeks. It is surprising that this position has been maintained for more than 32 weeks. Of course, these are things for later.

With the listing of "Super Mario 3", Nintendo's game sales list in the second half of the year began to reveal its glory.In order to block Sega's new host, Nintendo released more than ten masterpieces using MMC3 or similar chips, including "Ghana Fighter" and "Red Shadow Warrior" brought by KF-Panda.In addition, there are more than 2 ordinary FC games. These games are mainly excellent works that have worked hard on connotation and gameplay. Among them, Square’s “Final Fantasy [-]” and Tianzhiyuan’s “FC Cube” are quite eye-catching.

Enduring the intensive bombardment by Nintendo, Sega's new console was finally put on the shelves on October 10th and officially sold, with the promotional slogan "Game Console of the Next Era".Sega's new host is called MegaDrive. It has a pure black body, and the most striking thing is the word "29BIT" on the front with golden light.

In order to show the powerful strength of its mainframe, and of course to break out of Nintendo's siege, Sega also set up several arcade machines running the popular game "Beastmaster" at the sales site, and the other side is also running "Beastmaster" Under the watchful eyes of many journalists and players, the MD host showed a game quality comparable to that of arcade machines.Sega, having learned from previous failures, did not stick to the tradition of "only using the company's game software on its own console" this time, and began to accept third-party game developers to develop games for itself.

The first games that Sega is preparing for this time are "Project Thunder" and "Space Harry 2".It's a pity that the game pays too much attention to the picture effect and ignores the actual playability of the game. Although it has attracted many players to try it out, after a long time, most of them return to the FC console.

The biggest blow to Sega during this period was a game display screen circulated at Nintendo's internal meeting. This is a realistic mech action shooting game.During the display, there were many action elements of realistic mechs, such as sprinting and gliding, jumping assisted by jetpacks, live ammunition shooting, close combat, thick armor shields, and so on. Combat scenes such as high-speed flight shooting when equipped with a jetpack, combat in a weightless state, and atmospheric entry warfare.The picture is exquisite and the soundtrack is exciting, which brings out the powerful performance of the next-generation console.

Sega saw the display screen of this game through some relationships, and through the analysis of it, President Nakayama Hayabusa ambitiously emerged a very bad guess, "Could it be that Nintendo's new console is really much better than ours?".Feeling a little depressed, President Zhongshan wished he could catch his researchers, give them a left, right, up and down, 360-degree ear scraper, and then ask them if they used the company's research expenses to pick up girls, why are they doing research and development? Yes, what Nintendo came up with must be stronger. Of course, these thoughts can only be circling in his own mind, and he can't really say them out, so he is even more depressed.

The sales of the MD console, which Sega placed high hopes on, in the RB market has been turbulent, and it has not been able to exceed 100 million units.However, Lao Yamauchi did not expect that the launch of the US version of MD (Genesis) soon after would bring a heavy blow to his Nintendo.

……

While Nintendo is busy setting up obstacles for Sega, the preparations for the Tianzhiyuan Shanghai Research Institute have finally begun.Li Haisheng, the Hong Kong man that Zhang Lexing entrusted to him before, was actually from Shanghai before. It was only after graduating from university that he came to Hong Kong to settle down by chance. He has lived well in Hong Kong for the past few years. He plans to return home and invest tens of thousands of dollars to start a production. The factory of black and white TV sets and plush toys has been selected. It is a street factory near Yu Garden.Although Li Haisheng's trip was delayed due to the unexpected outbreak of hepatitis A, he finally went to Shanghai.

I haven't been back to Shanghai for a long time, and Li Haisheng feels that this city is a little strange. Fortunately, the streets have not changed much, and he can still find the place to go based on his own memory.This time Li Haisheng came back with a lot of arrangements, in addition to investing and setting up a factory, the former old school reunion is also one of them.As the most promising of the group of students, Li Haisheng decided to take care of it. He heard that there was a new Jin Jiang Hotel that had just completed construction and opened in a very good environment, so he decided on the location of the class reunion.

On the day of the class reunion, there were quite a few people who came. It turned out that almost [-]% to [-]% of the students in the class came.Among the classmates who came, Li Haisheng also found a female classmate who had a good relationship with him before. He remembered that this female classmate was called Cao Xinyu, but now she looks very haggard. I guess the past few years have not been smooth.

Li Haisheng apologized to the classmate at his table, and walked over to exchange greetings with Cao Xinyu, after all, they were former classmates.After this conversation, I found out that Cao Xinyu has lived an extraordinary life in recent years. After graduation, she first worked in a pharmaceutical factory in Qinghai for a few years, then was lucky enough to be admitted to a graduate student, and went on to study for a Ph.D. in a research institute in Fujian.It's a pity that the child was sent to live with his grandparents in Shanghai shortly after his birth, and the family could only get together briefly during the Spring Festival.This year, when the child reached the age of high school, Cao Xinyu was unwilling to be separated like this, so she took a leave of absence and came to Shanghai with her husband.

But what Cao Xinyu didn't expect was that without a formal Shanghai household registration, it was impossible to find a formal job, and the two of them became jobless all at once.Finally, Cao Xinyu plucked up the courage to go to sea and fight hard, but was tricked again, and all the hard-earned money was swallowed up by the affiliated unit. As a result, Cao Xinyu and her husband can only rely on odd jobs to make ends meet.

Li Haisheng didn't expect an intellectual like her to live in such a predicament after returning to Shanghai, and he couldn't help feeling sorry for her.At this time, he thought of what Zhang Lexing had asked him to do, and went to Shanghai to set up a research institute to study some things related to computers (mainly because Li Haisheng didn't figure out what a learning machine was).Li Haisheng couldn't help but think in his heart. Anyway, the research institute needs to hire someone, so it's better to take care of his classmates than to take care of others. Moreover, Cao Xinyu seems to know something about computers, so it might be successful if he recommends it.

Thinking of this, Li Haisheng explained the situation: "Cao Xinyu, there is a big boss from Hong Kong who wants to set up a research institute in Shanghai. He asked me to come here to find a place and find someone by the way. I haven't figured out what the research is specifically. But it should be related to computers. If you know more about computers, you can try it. If it works, at least the family’s livelihood will not be worrying.”

"As for the salary, at least that's the amount." Li Haisheng stretched out four fingers while talking.

"Forty?" Cao Xinyu asked carefully.

"No, at least four hundred." Li Haisheng stretched out four fingers and gestured again.

"Four hundred!" Cao Xinyu was ecstatic when she heard such a good thing, and immediately nodded and agreed to go to the interview.

Not long after receiving the news reported by Li Haisheng, Zhang Lexing immediately arranged for someone to go over to verify the situation.Unexpectedly, Cao Xinyu's professional skills are really solid, especially proficient in computer software and hardware, which is exactly the kind of talent Zhang Lexing needs.Soon a small-scale research institute was established on Shanghai Yuyuan Old Street. The name of the research institute was Tianzhiyuan (Shanghai) Institute of Technology.Immediately afterwards, a batch of materials and equipment related to learning machines arrived, and the second research institute of learning machines began to officially operate, and the time slowly came to 1989.

(End of this chapter)