The first generation of Tiankun company's game console was launched in 1983, according to the 5~7 year round of hardware upgrade cycle, the second generation of products was launched in the summer of 88, which is really a bit hasty.

After all, strictly calculated, the first day of the two generations of products on the market, only five years and two months apart, belongs to the old machine has not been used up, can not be replaced, the new machine will come up.

Historically, Nintendo's original aircraft Fc was first released, such as today's Kun's machine, which was released in the fourth quarter of 83. The second-generation sFc of Nintendo's machine was only sold in 1990, and this rhythm is better, with a gap of seven years.

However, the original time and space of the Sega company, the original aircraft SG-1000 was released two months earlier than Nintendo's Fc, and the second-generation aircraft, the 16-bit mD Roar Roar was launched in 88, which is similar to the rhythm of the Tiankun. However, Sega sold it so much because they failed miserably in the competition in the 8-bit era, so they were in a hurry to upgrade to the 16-bit era to regain the situation-

In fact, Sega's 16-bit mD was historically a 10mhZ frequency Motorola 68000cPu, which is why it was launched at this point in time. For example, today's second-generation Kun console, in the future, the performance of the finished product will be very close to the historical Sega mD game console.

However, Gu Biao obviously had an absolute advantage in the 8-bit era, but he still launched the second-generation machine in five years and a few months, and he also had his difficulties.

First of all, he also knows that if this wave of market in 88 does not occupy it, it will not be good if there is some turmoil in the international market trade and the outlet is missed. Therefore, it is better to make less money and be prepared for danger in times of peace.

Secondly, since the historical Sega is in a weak state, it will choose to let the first generation of machines be pushed two years less and hurry into the second generation. Then today's Nintendo, it may not be like this-

From the perspective of strength and weakness, Gu Biao now occupies the status of Nintendo in history, which is even more awesome than Nintendo in the same period. Today's Nintendo, however, occupies Sega's weak position in history and is eager to change.

In addition, as soon as the semi-upgraded version of the Tiankun and the learning machine with the archive function were launched last year, Nintendo was forced to make a desperate bet directly on the development of a 16-bit machine. Even Gu Biao's half-clawed news channels in this book show that Nintendo has a move.

{It's not a commercial espionage, Gu Biao never does those indiscriminate espionage acts, but just looks for legitimate "qingren" people, such as Nintendo's departed personnel spying}

In this case, there is nothing wrong with Gu Biao's rhythm, which belongs to "we are forced to take up arms", rather than his own belligerent waste.

It is said that when World War I broke out a hundred years ago, the six major belligerents gave mobilization speeches with surprisingly unanimous titles, all of which were "We are forced to take up arms." There is no need to delve into who was forced and who was not.

……

Because it is a continuation of the previous generation of cPu architecture, Gu Biao has not worried about whether the hardware department can be produced smoothly.

Those should all be basic operations, and it's nothing good to sit down6.

However, after in-depth understanding of Schulhoff, Gu Biao also noticed that the main difficulty of the current R&D department lies in the early testing of a large number of proposed first games-

Because these games were to be sold together in the summer of 1988 and when the console was released. This means that they will not be able to get the internal engineering prototype for actual testing until at least March or April next year.

In the general microelectronics industry, things like game consoles are completely finalized three or four months before the official mass production, and then leave some time for the structure to be optimized, and a month for the stress test, plus a small batch of test streams, the rhythm is about the same.

And the debugging stage of the game, if compressed to three months before the launch, it will definitely not be enough, according to Tiankun's quality control, how can it be left for half a year. {Debugging is not a test, it is a step earlier than testing}

Therefore, from now on, until March and April next year, the software department and external friends are facing the problem of lack of actual machine debugging environment, and they can only write a few blind things out of thin air.

"How have you solved this problem so far?" Gu Biao asked.

Schulhoff: "We used the arcade machine of Sega, a friend of the company, and adjusted the logic circuit a little, and simulated it into a real machine of the future according to our instruction set and interface, so that the friend could adjust it first. In this way, after the actual machine comes out, it is good to fine-tune and transplant it, and you can chase the time difference back.

Sega has already launched a batch of new arcade games this year, using two 1985 versions of the 6mhZ frequency Motorola 68000 cPu, which allocates processing power for each game from the bottom up, which can roughly reach the performance of next year's single-chip 10mhZ cPu version.

What we want is that after Sega tested the waters this year, the games that became popular in the arcade market, we all bought the adaptation rights according to the previous strategic cooperation agreement, and then ported them. This way we have our initial fundamentals. ”

Gu Biao nodded, feeling that Shulhoff's thinking was very correct, and it was also a cliché.

Every time a home game console is replaced, the first game source that should be stared at is the popular arcade machine in the past few years. Because the arcade machine has advantages in terms of size, energy consumption, and hardware selection, it must be better than the home machine in the same period. The home machine was transplanted two or three years later than the arcade machine, and it is still very competitive.

As for the concept of "dual-core", Gu Biao was also a little surprised when he first heard it, and after listening to the technician's explanation, he realized that this thing was completely different from the "dual-core" of Intel cPu in later generations.

First of all, this is not a cPu with two cores, but two cPus are directly installed.

At the same time, this treatment is often used in arcade machines. Because arcades are all about one game and even the most similar games with one motherboard, not home consoles, one motherboard is suitable for all games.

Therefore, it is relatively easy to use two cPus in the arcade, and pre-write the computing power allocation algorithm and interface instruction set, and specify what content is processed in a certain cPu.

However, when two cPu are used together, the efficiency is definitely not as good as simply adding the main frequency computing power, basically two 6mhZ is equivalent to a 10mhZ one.

……

Therefore, according to Schulhoff's cooperation ideas, the first thing Gu Biao saw in the R&D department was the debugging of a large number of Sega transplanted arcade games.

Schulhoff pointed to a fighting game test machine with a tough interface, and explained: "This is called "Street Fighter", the latest arcade game to be launched this year, and it is the sales champion of Sega this year, and we promised to give Sega 8% of the cassette sales revenue commission in the future, in exchange for the right to transplant and adapt the home machine."

This price is still far below the market price, but who made us sign a long-term strategic cooperation a few years ago to give up the arcade business and the home machine business, David Rosen did not dare to go back. ”

If you just give licensing, 8% of the sales revenue is relatively low, but it is not very low, because after all, it is 8% of the total price, not 8% of the net profit. However, if you change companies, this price will definitely not be able to be taken.

The reason why Sega did not dare to resist was because when the exchange strategic cooperation was signed a few years ago, Gu Biao promised to give up the arcade market from now on.

Now if Sega thinks that it is cheap and wants to raise the price, and provokes Gu Biao to return to the arcade market as a revenge, it will be more than worth the loss. So even if Sega felt that he was being squeezed by Gu Biao, he could only endure it.

At the same time, Schulhoff was also afraid that Gu Fu would blame him for not being able to do things, so he hurriedly chased after the explanation and emphasized, saying that only annual sales champions like "Street Fighter" have this treatment, and other portions that are not champions will only be given up to 6%, and there will be 5%.

Gu Biao nodded, and repeatedly praised Schulhoff for controlling production costs.

"Street Fighter, it's good, I played it this year. Gu Biao stroked the thick testing machine and sat down to rub it himself.

"Boss, you are really born to know, the new games are so powerful, I have never rubbed these tricks out, they are all from the test engineers. "Schulhoff patted the sycophants just right,

"Then you should be able to ...... these ones here Criticize it. This one is called "Kung Fu 2", and it is a sequel to the rudimentary fighting game on the original home console three years ago.

And this and this, "Double Dragon", "Famous General", "Dinosaur Kombat", "Mecha Kombat", many of them are the products of the same set of kernel code, the art and move rules, and the upgrade item textures, anyway, the graphics and sound effects are as beautiful as possible, fully exerting the performance of the next generation of cPu and other chips.

In addition to these that don't need to borrow the original iP, we also came out with the kernel source code, bought a few adaptation rights iP, adapted two or three side-scrolling combat games with beautiful graphics, and also added some collection elements and upgraded save elements, with the play of the home console's save function.

This is called "Tomahawk", iP is not very valuable, it is the action movie "Barbarian Conan" eight years ago as the background, but although the movie itself was not popular at the time, but because the protagonist in the film is played by Schwarzenegger, so since you and Mr. Cameron cultivated Schwarzenegger fire, even with these early characters iP has become popular. After all, this is Schwarzenegger's only image of a classical brutal warrior, and with our Western magic style, I believe it will perform well.

There is also this one called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", which has a practical core similar to "Double Dragon", but a lot of things have been added, and the art is focused on redoing all of them. You may not watch cartoons, but we have investigated, this cartoon is one of the hottest animations in the United States in the past two years, and it will definitely catch young users. ”

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is an American comic book produced in 1984, and the animation has been delayed for several years, so now it is just a fresh hit, and Schulhoff's description is no problem.

"The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can do it, so why aren't there Transformers?" Gu Ao couldn't help but complain, and then felt that he seemed to be a little too talkative.

Transformers, iP, does not seem to have any big-name game works in history......

Later, the 21st century entered the 3D era, and after Paramount Pictures made a live-action movie version of Transformers, some game companies watched live-action movies a little bit and followed the trend to make a robot fighting game to gain popularity, but I haven't heard of how good the sales are.

Maybe Transformers aren't suitable for making games.