On May 12th, the second day of the E3 exhibition, Zhang Lexing led the E3 delegation to the West Hall of the Convention and Exhibition Center. The brightest stars here are the established game companies Nintendo and Sega, as well as the newcomer to the gaming industry, Sony, whose booths are coincidentally arranged in a short distance where they can see each other, and the staff of the three companies are doing their best to attract visitors.

Sony, with its deep pockets, set up the largest booth and put up a large display board with huge letters that said, "More than 160 game developers are currently developing PS games, and the total number of games under development has reached more than 200", although I don't know what the quality of the final game is, but the two numbers alone are already very eye-catching. In order to show, or rather show off the powerful 3D performance of the PS game console, Sony put out a total of more than 30 PS game consoles and supporting display equipment (TV or projection), and the games used to show off were Namco's last year's game "Ridge Racing" and the newly transplanted "Iron Fist" from the arcade.

Sony's means are not only these, the president of SCEA, who is in charge of the PS game business, also announced that the PS game console will be sold for $299 in the United States, which can be said to be surprisingly cheap, not only lower than the 3DO's high price of $549 after several price cuts, but even $100 lower than the estimated price of the SS (Saturn) console just announced by Sega. From the point of view of the attractiveness of the price, Sony's move can be said to be a complete victory, coupled with a fairly perfect game picture, the PS game console immediately became the most popular product in the entire exhibition.

The bigger surprise was still to come, when superstar Michael Jackson appeared at the Sony booth, it immediately detonated the audience, a large crowd flocked to the Sony booth like a tide, and the exhibition organizer IDSA had to arrange a large number of security guards to come to the Sony booth to maintain order. The popularity of Sony's booth completely overwhelmed his two rivals, Nintendo and Sega, and even until the end of the show, Sony's booth remained super popular.

Sega's booth was just across from Sony, which was a little smaller than that, and nearly 30 SS game consoles, known as "2D Extreme Hardware", were displayed on projectors for visitors to try out. Sega now understands the importance of 3D games, and in order to show that the 3D performance of the SS console is not too weak, the focus of this display is "VR Warrior" and "Sleepwalking America" by Sega itself, which coincided with "Tekken" and "Ridge Racing" at Sony's booth.

The performance of the SS game console itself is not weak, it is officially called "epoch-making crystallization", with two 32-bit RISC processors as the main processor, and the sound processor uses the Motorola 68000 processor, that is, the main processor of the previous generation 16-bit game console, but unfortunately the 3D processor was forgotten when it was originally designed, and as a result, the SS game console has a super 2D picture, but if you want to display a 3D picture, the main processor must be used to assist in the calculation, and the result is compared to the PS game console. This is evident from the comparison between VR Warrior and Tekken, both of which are arcade portions, and Tekken's graphics are significantly better than those of VR Warrior. Although the staff was shouting hard and the ShowGirls were working hard, the queue in front of the Sony booth was much longer than in front of the Sega booth.

When Zhang Lexing turned to the Sega booth, he happened to see an acquaintance, Thomas Karinske, CEO of Sega North America, who was looking at Sony's booth with a worried eyebrow.

In fact, before Sony announced the price of the North American version of the PS game console at $299, Thomas Kalinsk had already received rumors, in order to compete with Sony, he also suggested to the Japanese headquarters that the price of the North American version of the SS game console should also be set at $299, but the guys who are not old-fashioned and completely in the North American market actually said "In order to leave room for price reduction in the future, the price of the North American version of the SS game console must be set at $399", don't they understand, If according to this uncompetitive price and the birth defect of the SS game console (lack of 3D performance), it is impossible to compete with Sony, so he even reported the matter directly to the president of the Japanese headquarters, Hayao Nakayama, but unfortunately it backfired, and the president of Hayao Nakayama, who had always trusted him before, actually scolded him this time, and the proposal to reduce the price was naturally gone.

On the second day of the E3 exhibition, Sony officially announced the price of the North American version of the PS game console, and sure enough, it was $299, and the price of the Sega SS game console at $399 suddenly became extremely embarrassing. But this just made Thomas Karinske a little discouraged, although the market is a little difficult to do, but it is not completely impossible, although the boss does not trust himself before, but it is not without a turnaround, but the next news he heard made him completely devastated.

Just now, Thomas Karinske overheard a supervisor from the Japanese headquarters talking about something, and the gang at the headquarters came up with a new idea. When the SS game console was first launched in Japan, it sold 170,000 units in one day, which was much higher than the 100,000 first-day sales of Sony PS when it was listed, but I didn't expect that Sony, which is now lagging behind, gradually has a tendency to catch up, so the people at the Japanese headquarters think that the reason for this is because Sega's support for SS game consoles is not enough, Sony only needs to support PS game consoles, while Sega has to support both 16-bit and 32-bit game consoles, so they came up with a clever plan, Terminate the 16-bit platform and all of its upgrade plans.

This news is a bolt from the blue for Thomas Karlinsk, Sega's 16-bit Genesis host (the American version of the MD console) is actually far from the end of its life at this time, and the Genesis host can be booming for at least two or three years. Unfortunately, the people at this headquarters don't see it that way, in their eyes, the Sega 16-bit game console is simply a stumbling block on the road to the success of the SS game console, as long as it is moved, the SS game console will definitely succeed. According to the director, the termination of the 16-bit platform will begin in two or three months. Thomas Karinske was completely disappointed, he no longer worried about Sega, because as soon as this brainless order was carried out, it would be a catastrophe for Sega North America, and he only had to worry about his future.

"Tom, I didn't expect you to come here in person." A somewhat familiar voice came from the side.

When Thomas Kalinsk was worried, he suddenly heard someone calling him, so he looked in the direction from which the voice came, and it turned out to be Zhang Lexing, who had dealt with him before. Although he failed to compete with Minoru Arakawa in the handheld game, he later found the field on the Genesis console, and Thomas Karinske, who was in a good mood, didn't take the handheld matter to heart anymore.

"Zhang, you haven't come in person." Thomas Karinske will not underestimate the person in front of him now, although he has not read the issue of "Forbes", but the fact that the Chinese won the title of the richest man in the world has long been turned upside down by various newspapers, and he will inevitably see it even if he doesn't pay attention to it.

"Tom, you don't seem to be in a good mood?"

Thomas Kalinsk observed and found that he didn't pay attention to himself, so he took two steps out and said to Zhang Lexing in a low voice: "Oh...... Mr. Zhang, I wonder if your invitation was still valid back then? ”

"Of course it works, this is my latest contact number, Tom you can call this number at any time if you want to come." Zhang Lexing took out a business card and handed it over.

Thomas Karinske took the business card, carefully put it away, and thanked him: "Thank you, Mr. Zhang, I will contact you after the matter I have in hand is completed." ”

"Okay, I'm here for you." After speaking, Zhang Lexing led the E3 delegation to continue to visit other booths.

After getting Zhang Lexing's promise, Thomas Karinske had a bottom in his heart and no worries, so he decided to work hard one last time, and after the exhibition, he went to the Japanese headquarters to say again, he must stop the action of terminating the 16-bit platform, and must not let a piece of the country he worked so hard to put into flowing water so easily. It's just that Thomas Karinsk didn't think about what he would bring to himself this time, maybe he thought of it, but he didn't care anymore.

Leaving Sega's booth, Zhang Lexing took the E3 delegation around several nearby booths, and then came to the Nintendo booth not far away.

Nintendo's booth was a little shabby compared with Sony and Sega, not because Nintendo had no money, but because it couldn't come up with too many attractive dry goods. Half of the booth was still a bit outdated Super Nintendo (SFC) games, and the other half was a slightly spooky display of VRBoy and related games.

VRBoy is actually very avant-garde in terms of design ideas, the imaging technology used is the latest research results launched by a laboratory of Keio University in Japan in 1993, and its technical principle is to superimpose the same image in both eyes at the same time into a three-dimensional image space composed of dots and lines, theoretically it is possible to realize the "virtual world", but limited by the current technical strength, can only use red liquid crystal display single color.

The VRBoy on the playtable is a typical red-and-black body, consisting of a head-mounted binocular body and a gamepad. There weren't many people queuing up in front of the trial table, so Zhang Lexing also went to join in the fun, planning to see this legendary game console. After waiting for twenty minutes, the last person in front of him also walked away, Zhang Lexing sat down on the chair in front of the trial table, and then put his face in front of VRBoy's fuselage, and a red and black world appeared in front of Zhang Lexing's eyes.

The game running on VRBoy is "Mario Tennis", Mario, Beekey and other characters swing the tennis ball in the three-dimensional world, when the tennis ball is hit by the opponent over the net, it seems to be like flying in front of you, very three-dimensional, but the monotonous red eyes are still a little uncomfortable after looking at it for a long time.

The legendary 64-bit console that Nintendo vowed to exhibit has been postponed, and players will have to wait until November to see the look, and as for the release, it will definitely be next year. In addition, Nintendo's booth was left with a group of hotly dressed (measured by 1995 standards) beautiful girls dancing vigorously and hotly, although it also attracted a lot of onlookers, but compared with Sony and Sega, it seemed much more lonely.

Arakawa looked at the slightly deserted booth, especially VRBoy, which was less popular, and couldn't help but feel a bitterness in his heart. In fact, according to his thoughts, there is no need to engage in any transitional 32-bit hosts, and it is enough to directly develop 64-bit hosts, but his father-in-law has too much trust in the old guy Yokoi Junhei, even if everyone is against this weird VRBoy plan, but with Yamauchi's support, Yokoi's development plan was still passed. Okay, now VRBoy is made, but the monochrome red and black picture is enough to scare off a lot of people, and then look at the live trial, you can figure it out with your toes, this machine must be pounced.

VRBoy pounced.,But Arakawa Minoru had high hopes for the N64 and had to postpone the release due to development problems.,Postpone it.,But at the beginning, his father-in-law Yamauchi insisted on using the card to store the game.,Instead of the disc he was optimistic about.,Waiting for the news to be announced.,Immediately wanted to poke the hornet's nest.,Opposed by many companies interested in developing games for Nintendo.,Even many of them were the most staunch allies before.。 Minoru Arakawa knows that this time it's a big problem.,The game console is not afraid of poor performance.,I'm afraid that no one will develop games on it.,If the N64 is really abandoned by everyone.,The consequences can be imagined.。 He now thinks about what can be done to make the N64 competitive with the cartridge as a storage medium, because he thinks too hard to find that Zhang Lexing came to Nintendo's booth, nor does he notice Zhang Lexing leaving after trying out VRBoy.

After leaving the Nintendo booth, Zhang Lexing and the E3 delegation gathered together and went to the next booth together. After a while, Zhang Lexing and the E3 delegation came to the joint booth of Dongfang Electronic Entertainment Co., Ltd., where the works of Tianzhiyuan, Creative Workshop, Maxis and other companies were displayed, and there were also independent booths of Capcom and Konami next to them.

In the joint booth, the largest scale of the Heavenly Garden, the games on display are mainly on the Super Nintendo and GameBoy handhelds, in addition to the display of two PS games, one is "Gran Turismo", this game plan game has been licensed by dozens of world-renowned car manufacturers such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, etc., and the appearance, engine sound, and performance of each car in the game are completely based on the data collected by the real car, reflecting the details of each car, but due to the development progress problemOnly one game animation can be played at this exhibition. The other is the basically completed "Pro Evolution Soccer", which supports a controller with an analogue stick, which can already be tried on the spot, and its real game atmosphere attracts many people to line up.

Maxis' place is not very large, and the games on display are still the traditional "simulation xx". The workshop is showing the latest demo version of "Legend of Blackstone" that has been ported to the KylinWindows95 platform, as well as the latest result of Ken Silverman's 3D engine group, Build3D, which is a true 3D engine with real-time lighting, skeletal animation system, model animation system, physics, collision detection, rendering engine, polygon models, animation, and particle effects. With a low level of complexity, it can run smoothly on the latest Pentium computers.

Originally, Zhang Lexing also planned to ask Ren Haoqiang's real-time strategy game "Three Kingdoms" to participate in the E3 exhibition, but unfortunately their group encountered the problem of numerical balance in the development process, due to lack of experience, the pre-design left loopholes, the bottom of the entire game had to be overturned and restarted, and "Three Kingdoms" was too late to catch up with E3.

In order to show the effect of "Legend of Blackstone" and the Build3D engine, the workshop put out a total of eight of the latest Pentium computers, at first there were only four computers running "Legend of Blackstone", but I didn't expect the charm of "Legend of Blackstone" to be so great, the queue of people to try the game was endless, and finally I had to adjust the computer showing the Build3D engine to three units, only to ease down a little, in fact, the Build3D engine is not unattended, It's just that because there are too few places to control the verified version of the game made with the Build3D engine, there are basically only onlookers.

The long trial queue in front of the creative workshop booth attracted the envy of the representatives of the game companies in the E3 visiting group, and their confidence was also improved, at least in their opinion, the level of domestic companies seems to be relatively strong, and there are also not much gap with foreign companies, if the game developer conference in the second half of the year can really carry out technical exchanges, it will definitely have a great role in promoting their companies.

On May 13th, the third day of the E3 exhibition, Zhang Lexing led the members of the E3 delegation to the Kentia Hall and Petri Hall, not only to see the booths of small game companies in the Kentia Hall, but also to see the former game industry giant Atari in the Petrian Hall, as well as their mysterious Jaguar 64-bit game console, and of course, their pitiful number of games, the first E3 is slowly coming to an end......

www.Welcome book friends to come and read, the latest, fastest, and hottest serialized works are all here!