Saturday, September 17.

Tokyo, Akihabara.

Directly across from the central exit of Akihabara Station on the JR Line, the 31-story landmark "Akihabara Building".

(There are three main types of subways in Tokyo, JR is the state-run Nippon Railway, and there are also local subways in Toei, as well as private railways.) The JR line has the highest social welfare attributes, and you can buy a monthly or daily pass. ）

It is a huge podium with 7 floors at the bottom, which is composed of electrical stores, and the upper 24 floors are commercial centers for electrical after-sales maintenance, arcade halls, doll catching halls, and electrical company offices.

The podium has a business area of more than 28,000 square meters, which is equivalent to 4,000 square meters per floor, and there is no large-scale electrical appliance store in the entire Akihabara.

The video game industry has been in existence for four years, so now the entire seventh floor, and even most of the sixth floor, are occupied by game machine merchants, while the eighth and ninth floors are all arcade halls.

This is a microcosm of the cutting-edge market trends in the video game industry.

Early in the morning, Mikoto Shirai, a sleek and short-haired store manager in his thirties, dressed in a very professional suit, came to the store on the seventh floor of the Akihabara Building to inspect the opening work.

On the seventh floor of the entire Akihabara Building, her store occupies one-third of the area, nearly 1,500 square meters, which is very domineering.

Three and a half years ago, she was fortunate enough to meet Han Ting and became the manager of the first flagship experience store of Hanle video game arcade. Although she didn't have shares at that time, she just relied on her hard-working and marketing talent to become a store manager with a salary and commission.

However, relying on the conditions that Han Ting promised her in the early days of "every time she pulls a new arcade owner customer, she will give a 2% performance commission on the first batch of shipment sales", Shirai Mikoto took the opportunity to make pigs fly, and in more than half a year, she earned tens of millions of yen in commissions, and made her first pot of gold at the age of 25.

After having the capital, Shirai Mikoto saw the future of following Hanle/Tian Kun and decided to open a flagship store at her own expense, getting rid of the identity of "employee", but always hugged Tian Kun's thigh.

During this period, she was also confused, feeling that her capital and ability were not enough. It also caught up with the contraction of Tiankun's arcade business layout and allowed Nintendo's copycat to expand.

Fortunately, she struggled to look very beautiful, and somehow attracted an employee with a little money at home, graduated from Tokyo University, and had the right ability.

In three years, it has become one of the largest game console dealers in Akihabara. can be on an equal footing with the shop of the former overlord of Akihabara, Takasa Hayato - Takasa Jun is not weak, he is a predecessor who has been operating in Akihabara for many years, and he has also caught up with the profiteering period of opening an arcade hall, but he is not dedicated to the Tiankun brand, so the benefits and growth rate are not as good as Shirai Mikoto.

"Didn't you say it yesterday, put together all the counters over there, and cover the entire façade with the largest huge posters of Gu Sang, Arnold and Stallone!

"Here, and here, all put on the trial machine, quickly put the queuing pile and isolation belt before opening the door for a while, and assign a clerk to each trial machine to maintain order, to ensure that the trial player dies and has to be replaced, and it is not allowed to be reopened. If you see it, you will induce them to buy it. The TV next to it used videotapes to show the climactic clips of "First Blood" and "The Terminator". ”

Mikoto Shirai is as serious as she was when she first became the store manager three years ago, and she has done her best in all aspects of this wave of pilots.

A few days ago, Tiankun gave very large publicity support to the old dealers, not only set up a higher level of sales task rebates, but also set up the top few awards for dealers' shipments every month, and also gave a free trial of the prototype.

Each dealer received a free bonus of game consoles, with the only requirement that the machines be used for demo play to seduce potential elementary school students.

I don't know if this trick will be useful in other places for the time being, but in Tokyo, where rich children are gathered, in Akihabara, it should be immediate.

Shirai Mikoto is betting on her family's future on the road of following Tian Kun. She is very confident that she will overshadow Gao Shajun this time, and achieve the first place in Tokyo in the performance of her store and win the big award.

Today is Saturday, and over the weekend, Akihabara has seen its peak in crowds as always, with the scum houses starting to haunt just after 9 a.m., and the arcade halls on the two floors above will be full before noon.

The first group of elementary and junior high school students who visited Akihabara quickly discovered the anomaly here:

"Eh, didn't this floor originally sell game consoles? Why are people still playing now? It's also spending money, who plays this kind of small machine, of course it's an arcade machine, and the shocking sound effects, the atmosphere is different!"

Of course, this kind of sour remark will be raised by the people who travel with you: "You say it's boring? It's boring that there are so many people queuing up, go over and take a look!"

"I said, it turns out that I don't want money to play in vain. But won't the bosses of the upstairs arcade resist this kind of smashing the scene?"

"I didn't see such a long queue, I guess the impatient people will still go upstairs to pay for it, and it won't affect much business. ”

The elementary school students pointed their fingers, and those who had money at home and didn't want to spend their weekend time were willing to spend it, so they looked at it for a while and continued to go upstairs to play the arcade.

Especially those "really rich second generation", in fact, they have Atari 2600 game consoles at home for several years, most of them are 80 years after the boom of the arcade industry, they know that there is a game console, and immediately chop a Atari 2600.

It's just that I found out later,The game effect of the home machine is really much worse than the arcade machine.,There is no picture to the picture.,There is no sound effect to the sound effect.,The atmosphere is not shocking at all.。 That's why I let the Atari 2600 be thrown away at home to eat ashes, and I continue to pay for the arcade on weekends.

At this moment, it is not surprising that these people, based on inertial thinking, looked down on the Tiankun home machine that showed the trial at first.

However, as the time gradually passed noon, the arcade stalls had to go downstairs to eat. The arcade hall is not an Internet café, no one can occupy a seat to eat lunch, and the owner is afraid of affecting the business, and will not allow takeaway in the store.

When those senior arcade poisoners went downstairs, they couldn't help but be surprised to see that there were still a lot of people in line at the Shirai Electric Store on the 7th floor.

In particular, a few celebrities who have been mixed up in the Akihabara arcade circle in recent years and are known as masters are actually playing free games.

In Tokyo, especially in Tokyo, after the first two or three years of development, a subculture has developed in places like game halls where "the strongest masters can play games without spending money, and can still make money".

Because the arcade hall of this book was developed from the "pachinko" and other electronic gaming machines like pachinko and slot machines, the gambling nature was originally very heavy. It is very common for two people in the arcade hall to bet on who is awesome, and the winner does not pay or even make a lottery. Once you have built a reputation in the neighborhood arcade circle, there is also an appearance fee for being challenged.

This is probably the first esports and semi-professional gamer.

And such a person still needs to play free games, which can't help but make other players strange.

"Wow, look!**Sang has reached the seventh level! The big robot boss with flying saucers turned out to be defeated like this!"

"It's worthy of being a man who dominates Akihabara, and the first shooting game you play can be so powerful. ”

"It's like seeing the ultimate fortress of Skynet. After watching "Terminator", I always wondered what the AI boss of the future world would look like. ”

Tiankun Entertainment's first-party "Future Soldier", the tube card design is not much different from the "Contra" in another time and space, but the tube card with obvious "alien" elements in the last level has been completely replaced and changed to robot style.

As for the other levels in "Contra" that have no aliens, you say that those enemies are "alien puppet army" or "bionic robots controlled by Skynet", that makes sense.

The shape of the final boss has changed from the alien heart monster of "Contra" to the shape similar to "Noah" on "Heavy Loader", which looks very suitable for the embodiment of "Skynet".

It's a pity that the challenger, known as the "man who dominates Akihabara", was secretly stuffed with a red envelope by the manager of Shirai Mikoto.

When he finally killed the final boss, he released water without any traces, pretending to "don't understand the attack method of the ultimate boss", and was killed by surprise.

The screen is black, and all the onlookers can't see how the boss fights and whether there is a hidden level behind.

All the onlookers were seduced and itched.

"Please keep order! Because there are more people in line, and each person will have to be replaced if he dies. The female clerk who maintained order began to chase people away and pushed away the master who had secretly taken the red envelope in advance.

The people behind were still unsatisfied, and some of them expressed their willingness to give up their queuing opportunities in exchange for the master to play again, but they were stopped by the store:

"The sign says, it's forbidden to rehearse on behalf of others, and you're doing this to harm the interests of the other players in the back of the line, is your level stronger than the gentleman just now? You might go up and die after two minutes of play, and he won't die until he plays for half an hour, wouldn't allowing the exchange to make the players behind you wait for an extra 28 minutes." ”

The reason of the store is so bright and righteous, and there is no way for people who want to rub the gods to see the customs clearance.

There was finally something in the queue that couldn't hold back: "Don't line up! Don't look at it! Store manager, take a Tiankun PC, and the "Future Soldier" cartridge! It's so annoying to watch these idiots die here!"

Rich people choose to buy one directly and go home to rub it.

They've hammered it out: this game is absolutely worthwhile, and it's a first-party exclusive to home consoles, and it can't be played on arcades.

Soon, the rich second generation who came downstairs to prepare for lunch, when they passed by, stopped to watch a little, and also joined the ranks of buying, buying, buying.

Chop your hands early and be cool!

"It turns out that behind the Amilica blockbusters such as "Terminator" and "First Blood", there is also the capital of our yellow race, which is really glorious. The promotion of this game is too unauthentic, I knew that I could control Arnold and Stallone, what is 40,000 yen!"