When the plane landed at Osaka Itami Airport, night had already fallen, and in order to adjust the time difference as soon as possible, Zhang Lexing and his entourage found a hotel not far from the airport to rest for the night. Early the next morning, Zhang Lexing and his entourage did not care about admiring the scenery of Osaka and Kyoto, and drove directly to Nintendo's headquarters in Kamitoba-Hodate-cho, Minami-ku, Kyoto.

After breaking new ground with FC consoles, Nintendo began to show its tough side in front of third-party game manufacturers with the emergence of a large number of Nintendo Hon's platinum titles (games with sales of more than one million). Under the banner of controlling the quality of games, in fact, it also includes the consideration of controlling profits, Nintendo began to establish a strict management system for third-party game manufacturers, in addition to Namco (Namco), Hudson (Hudson), KF-Panda, Taito (Taidong), Konami (Konami), In addition to Jeleco and Capcom, other third-party game manufacturers must accept Nintendo's strict royalty system, not only the game content must be inspected by Nintendo, but also limit each manufacturer to only three games in a year, game cartridges are generally all entrusted to Nintendo to produce and sell on their behalf, if the third-party software vendor intends to produce game cartridges on their own, they must also pay a large amount of licensing fees to Nintendo. The majority of small and medium-sized game manufacturers complained bitterly, but they were helpless, and in order to be able to share the scraps from the big cake of FC games, they had to grit their teeth and accept Nintendo's mandatory requirements.

When the FC dedicated disk drive system (FDS) was launched, Nintendo had basically dominated the home game console market, so it intensified the new overlord clause, stipulating that all original games developed on FDS Nintendo must own half of the copyright, such an absurd system came out, game manufacturers in an uproar. Except for some weak and forced small manufacturers to die for FDS, only Jeleco among the seven major game manufacturers has invested more efforts, Capcom, Konami, KF-Panda and Taito are just taken by Nintendo's strong and false snakes, while Hudson and Namco, the two veterans, have clearly boycotted Nintendo and fully supported NEC's PC-E system as a counter. However, these are still undercurrents under the water, and on the surface, the Nintendo family seems to be a harmonious mess.

After several years of development, KF-Panda has developed from a studio of more than 20 people to a professional game development company with more than 200 people, and most of the games launched over the years have reached the platinum sales level, which is also a great contribution to the promotion and popularization of Nintendo's red and white consoles. So when Zhang Lexing and others came to Nintendo's headquarters, they were warmly welcomed at the gate, and the specifications were very high - the welcoming team was led by Yamauchi himself, of course, this is also because Zhang Lexing made an appointment before coming.

As an important partner of Nintendo, Yamauchi Pu enthusiastically led Zhang Lexing and his entourage to visit the first development department (R&D1) led by Yokoi Junhei, the second development department (R&D2) led by Masayuki Uemura, the third development department (R&D3) led by Genhiro Takeda, and the newly established fourth development department (R&D4) led by Shigeru Miyamoto. When passing through the second development department, Zhang Lexing noticed that a young man happened to come out of it, and the expression on his face was a little depressed. The young man saw that Yamauchi Pu was leading the guests on the tour, said hello, and then slipped away quickly.

"President Yamauchi, is this person from Nintendo?" asked Zhang Lexing curiously.

"No, he's a Sony employee, and he's here to sell their company's floppy drive. Hmph, we Nintendo have it ourselves, so why use someone else's. Yamauchi Pu said contemptuously, his tone full of disdain.

Zhang Lexing shrugged his shoulders when he heard this, in fact, he didn't look down on Nintendo's weird special floppy drive at all, obviously he already had a 3.5-inch floppy disk with a maximum capacity of 12Mb (that is, the kind of 1.44MB floppy disk, which was popular for a long time in the nineties), and the data reading speed could be as high as 3000Kb/s, but Nintendo was unwilling to use it, so it had to develop it itself. Development is development.,But the things made are much worse than others.,The maximum capacity is only one-sixth of others.,The maximum data reading speed is only one-tenth of others.,Such a garbage thing is still a treasure for Nintendo.。 Looking at the distant back of the young man from Sony, Zhang Lexing suddenly had a feeling that maybe in the near future, there would be an opportunity to deal with him.

After the visit, everyone came to the conference room on the third floor to sit down with the guests, Yamauchi Pu waved his hand, and soon someone brought exquisite refreshments. At the suggestion of Yamauchi Pu, everyone started together, swept away the refreshments on the table, and the next time for the meeting came.

"President Yamauchi, is the FDS sales good here?" Zhang Lexing opened his mouth first.

Yamauchi Pu said with a smile: "Hehe, thanks to Mr. Zhang, the sales are not bad, the "Super Mario 2" launched by your company this time is not a small credit, it would be better if you could make a few more masterpieces on FDS." ”

"President Yamauchi, with all due respect, this FDS system looks good and seems to be able to solve problems such as the soaring cost of semiconductors required for cassettes and the small capacity of the cassette ROM itself, which is difficult to manufacture, but it ......," said Zhang.

"No way, we at Nintendo produce the best. Before Zhang Lexing finished speaking, Yamauchi Pu couldn't help but interject, and the expression on his face looked very dissatisfied.

"I'm not taking my word for it, Nintendo's FDS has a maximum capacity of only 2Mb, which seems to meet the current needs, but it has slow data reading speeds and easy damage to disks, which can give players a bad impression of the quality of our products. And according to the information provided by our own commercial research agency, the current cost, capacity and manufacturing difficulties encountered by the cassette will be solved soon, and the time is estimated to be by the end of next year at the latest, and by that time, this kind of capacity can not be up to the bottom, and the ultra-slow read speed of the FDS may no longer have room to survive. Zhang Lexing took a sip of tea and continued: "The more important reason is that the function of the FC (NES) game console has basically been used to the limit by our company, and there are many creative ideas that cannot be expressed due to the limited function. To this end, our company began to develop chips that enhance the performance of FC hosts last year, and has recently made breakthroughs. ”

"Oh, there's such a thing. Yamauchi kept his body up, with an expression of disbelief on his face.

"That's right, if this chip that enhances the performance of the FC console is installed on the cassette, it will be able to show the game picture and sound effects that surpass the FC function, and the new game "Super Mario 3" that our company is currently developing will use this enhanced chip, and this time I also specially brought a Demo (demo) cartridge, President Yamauchi is interested in taking a look?" Zhang Lexing took out a special black cassette from the briefcase brought by the entourage and handed it over, which was one of his trump cards in this negotiation.

Yamauchi Pu took the cassette and looked at it carefully, and then arranged for someone to send an FC game console. After the game console and TV were connected, Yamauchi Pu took the cassette to the game console, plugged in the cassette, turned it on, and planned to experience it himself. Accompanied by a burst of music that is more elaborate than ordinary FC games, the picture of the demo version of "Super Mario 3" far exceeding that of ordinary FC games appeared on TV, and Yamauchi's attention was immediately captivated.

"Super Mario 3 will feature eight huge worlds, and we've introduced an innovative megamap system that allows players to choose and challenge themselves on the map instead of the straight line of what they used to be. The game offers a variety of items that bring a lot of new ideas, especially the various special abilities that Mario's various animal coats can provide, which adds endless fun to the game. Zhang Lexing came to Yamauchi's side to introduce the design idea of "Super Mario 3", "At present, this demo version only includes a part of the two worlds, but I have already experienced the design concept of the game. ”

The miraculous performance of the demo cassette made Yamauchi Pu a little excited, and he couldn't help but ask Zhang Lexing: "Mr. Zhang, I don't know if the cost of this chip is high, and when will the energy be produced?"

"Well, the cost is still a bit high because it's still in the trial production stage, and the cost is about 8,000 yen. Zhang Lexing replied.

"It's a shame it's so high. Yamauchi's eyes dimmed suddenly.

"However, according to the calculations of our company's hardware engineers, if we improve the production line to improve the output and yield of the product, I believe that the cost will soon be able to be controlled to less than 4,000 yen, and of course this has a lot to do with the batch size. Zhang Lexing released a piece of good news.

"Oh, that's not bad, I don't know when Mr. Zhang's company is going to improve the production line, when will there be finished products?" Yamauchi Pu suddenly became active.

"I plan to build a factory in Asia, the location is initially selected in Hong Kong, and I plan to start building a factory early next year, and it is estimated that it should be able to be put into production by the end of next year. Zhang Lexing said.

"We have always been a good partner, and I hope that Mr. Zhang will support Nintendo in this regard. Yamauchi bowed and said sincerely.

"No problem, President Yamauchi. I actually need Nintendo's help," Zhang Lexing said with a smile: "Now the production cost of game cartridges has been rising, which has seriously affected the profit of game development. I'm planning to build a game cartridge assembly plant in China, where the labor cost is very low, and it should reduce the production cost of game cartridges to a certain extent. I wonder if President Yamauchi has any extra game cartridge assembly lines on hand?"

Yamauchi Pu thought for a while and said, "This problem is not big, we can help." ”

"President Yamauchi, I have one more idea that may make you a little embarrassed. Zhang Lexing said.

"It's okay, Mr. Zhang, please speak. Yamauchi made a gesture of please, and continued to think about how much opportunity and space the FC function enhancement chip could bring to Nintendo.

"I hope Nintendo will transfer the FC patent in China to me. Zhang Lexing said the main purpose of this visit.

Yamauchi's pupils shrank sharply, and he roared angrily: "No, absolutely not! The patent of the FC game console is absolutely impossible to transfer. ”

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