Chapter Forty-Seven: The Legend of the Hungry Wolf
There is a game company that was established in 1978 in Osaka, and its name is Shin Tsumoto Planning. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info
Not long after the company was founded, it began to make video games in line with the trend of "Space Invaders".
The first game, Yamato Battleship, was also a Space Invaders-like shooter.
Perhaps because of the timely follow-up, or because of good luck, or maybe it was really good, the company's first video game work was loved by players, which caused huge attention in the video game market.
However, due to the difficulty of hand-making and making games, the following year, in 1979, the new project launched two more shooting games.
However, by 1980, the number of games planned and produced by the new project had reached seven.
In the intervening years, due to the unprecedented popularity of Space Invaders, countless companies have poured into the video game industry.
Under the big wave, the new project that can insist on launching several games and have a certain guarantee of game quality has received wide attention from players, and every time a game is launched, it can make players run to tell each other.
The project began to expand gradually, and the number of people in the sales department and game production department increased day by day.
However, as time passed, Nintendo's "Donkey Kong" became popular in the United States and was resold again.
Action games, in which characters are the objects of player control, are gradually beginning to replace the wave of shooters caused by Space Invaders.
Due to the fact that the product line was too simple, the project only produced shooting games, and its revenue plummeted.
When you are poor, you think about change, and when you encounter a crisis, you think of change.
The project began to experiment with the development of other game genres, from light gun shooters, to action games, to gambling (harmony) games such as pachinko, and the product line is rich and chaotic to the extreme.
At the beginning of 1986, in order to have a younger image and get rid of the baggage of the past, they changed their name.
The name was changed to "SNK" after the first letter of the romanized "Shin-Nihon-Kikaku" of the "New Storybook Project".
However, the overly confusing product line and name change did not make SNK's situation any better. Expansion frenzy can be useful in times of rapid growth, but the huge financial burden can be overwhelming when the company is sluggish.
The lifetime employment system is one of the basic systems of the company. SNK, which is quite honest, does not engage in any labor dispatch, and all employees are almost lifelong employees, which is difficult for the company and it is difficult to dismiss.
SNK is gradually falling into a quagmire, financial crisis, and a crisis of player trust have left SNK's top management anxious.
A low-level employee, in order to save SNK, takes a huge risk and makes an action game called "Athena".
coincided with the hot serialization of the "Saint Seiya" manga, a game in which players manipulated Athena wielding a long sword and slaying demons, which actually became a lifesaver for SNK.
The self-developed new sound chip used in the product also provides superior sound quality far beyond that of contemporaneous arcade machines.
The emphasis on sound quality and picture quality has become the basic point that SNK has always adhered to.
Taking advantage of "Athena", SNK has launched the action game Fury.
The game borrows elements from Metal Gear Solid, which was a hit in the MSX at Konami, with Player 1 playing Clarke, Player 2 playing the orange color of Ralph, and the commander who keeps introducing the background and missions between the two is Hadilan.
Maybe it's because players are interested in military themes, or maybe SNK is addicted to making military-themed games.
After Fury, they made a new military-themed action game, Cuban War.
The first player of this game was a famous figure of his time, Che Guevara, and the second player was Castro.
The story of two people with a strong spirit of resistance, who together defeated those in power who oppressed the people and established a socialist (harmonious) state.
The game had a similar style to most of the games of the time, with bright colors and a lot of elements.
Rainforests, bullets, bombs, enemy soldiers, tanks, trenches, or moving or stationary elements paint a spectacular battle scene.
This game is also the first game in the history of video games to introduce a "vehicle" system.
Don't look at the games of the future, driving a car is commonplace, but it was quite groundbreaking at the time.
In addition, thanks to the experience of making shooters for several years, SNK is very proficient in the determination of bullets and the arrangement of enemy routes.
"Cuban War", as a military-themed action shooter, survived tenaciously in the arcade.
Several quite successful games, the supported SNK did not fall, and SNK was hungry for the next game.
Finally, in 1987, they saw the popularity of the reliable Street Fighter in the United States.
The reason for this is that it turns out that American players like to fight each other between players, and SNK feels that this is a new opportunity.
With their previous experience in making shooting games and action games, compared with Wan Hu, who crossed the river by feeling the stones, although they were also in the river, they could directly take the technical experience they had accumulated before into a small boat, and reach the other side at a speed far faster than wading across the river by feeling the stones.
In this case, after they dug up some of Capcom's game producers, and even Ryuji Nishiyama, one of the main creators, they began to make games quickly.
Their idea of making a new fighting game is similar to the way they made the company's first game "Yamato Battleship", which is to seize the gap and make a game to occupy the gap in the market.
Therefore, "The Legend of the Hungry Wolf", which was produced in a hurry, can see many problems. There is a lack of polish, and many designs have not been carefully thought out.
For example, the design of the buttons for punch and foot throwing is not quite in line with the intuition and habits of most players. And the deliberately unconventional multi-line combat system is not so magical, it was chicken ribs at the beginning, and after players are familiar with this game, this mode is even more chicken ribs.
Within three hours of "The Legend of the Hungry Wolf" entering the arcade hall, Wanhu got an arcade machine of "The Legend of the Hungry Wolf".
Takahashi played "The Legend of the Hungry Wolf" and didn't speak, and the people around him were quite worried.
It took about five minutes for Takahashi to come back to his senses, he looked at the many employees around him who were trying to figure out his thoughts, and squeezed out a smile, "Our game is still being made according to the original plan." ”