Time flies quickly, and in a blink of an eye, it's time for summer vacation, and the students who have finished the final exams can't say that they can't hold hands and look at each other with tears in their eyes. Most of them are like cheerful foals, having fun in the prairie called Liberty.

There are two big news in the video game industry, with sales of game watches and electronic pet consoles exceeding one million in succession. Of course, although they are all more than one million, Ren Hell's game watch, because it is the first, is far more powerful than the video game league. The video game league, on the other hand, has been in decline lately, so despite the sales of more than one million, the overall atmosphere of the company is still not good.

As soon as the news of the sales exceeded one million, Ren Hell took advantage of the victory and placed several advertisements for game watches on TV stations affiliated with the Japan Television Federation. Strive to continue the concept of gaming watches in the hearts of the people and achieve better sales performance.

If nothing else, the gaming watch is the best-selling product of the year. This is another industry that Ren Hell has entered after the rental industry and the hotel industry, but the game industry is different from the first two and has not entered a loss-making situation. It has only been a few months of development, and such gratifying results have been achieved. Such achievements also made Yamauchi firm in his determination to be a "fun industry". He decided to focus his company's strategy on the video game industry.

Shigeru Miyamoto, a young man who has just graduated, has recently risen steadily from miscellaneous work. The reason for his rise to prominence is simply the success of Donkey Kong in the United States. The Yankees on the other side of the ocean seem to like this game very much, and the arcade machine that has been built on this game has sold 1,000 units, and the follow-up orders are also coming back, and the Japanese side has begun to expedite production, ready to be shipped on the ship quickly.

Shigeru Miyamoto still feels a little inexplicable about his success, he doesn't feel that he has done anything, why the sales of the arcade machine are staggering. It wasn't until he got several American arcade machine samples that he knew why the "Donkey Kong" he led his team to produce stood out.

It's not that he's too good, it's that the video games on American arcades are too bad. Most arcade games in the United States have no background, they are all pure black, and the player controls the person who has no characteristics, which is a pixel depicted matchman.

And Donkey Kong is beautiful compared to these games that seem to have a problem with the graphics at first glance. That's right, it's exquisite. The protagonist's uncle in suspenders, the gorilla who throws the bucket, and the princess waiting for rescue all seem to be vivid, and they are more expressive than those stickmen.

Of course, "Space Invaders" and "Pac-Man", which are very popular in Japan, are still very popular, but these two arcade machines are not produced by the video game league, although in the United States, where the copyright system is relatively sound, the video game league can receive royalties.

And these copyright fees have to be given to Lin Yan according to a certain portion, which will not be a too comfortable experience after all.

Under Ren Hell's propaganda offensive, the video game league quickly reacted, and TV commercials of the same scale soon spread throughout the entire Japan Television League.

Speaking of Japanese TV stations, it can also be called a relatively strange existence. Because, they rarely have a TV station that can cover the whole of Japan. It's all a small TV station. If a program wants to cover the whole of Japan, it can only be broadcast by all TV stations to achieve the goal of covering Japan.

And this is the purpose of the birth of the TV Alliance, to broadcast programs uniformly, so as to enhance the overall influence.

Video games can be said to be changing people's lives little by little, and everyone is enjoying this feeling. Whether it is a housewife or a student, they all experience the experience brought by "new technology".

In fact, it is said that it is new technology, but in fact, whether it is an electronic pet machine or a game watch, the technology used is not very new. It's like the recent miniaturization of color screens, which have been developed, but no one plans to put them in a portable handheld. In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, although the new technology is new, its cost is also very matching with its newness. Expensive, very expensive. Even if mass production is realized, the price can be lowered, and the final price is not something that ordinary consumers can afford.

Recently, within Ren Hell and the Video Game League, there was a summary of portable game consoles at meetings. Everyone summarized why such a machine can be successful, and what are the specific reasons for its success.

After careful research, everyone came to a conclusion that was not conclusive. It's video games, which are essentially "cheap entertainment" in a sense. Its cheapness is not only reflected in its price, but also in its requirements for space.

This portable video game handheld can be played anytime, anywhere. You can play on the subway, at home, almost anytime, anywhere.

This theory doesn't seem to apply to video game arcades, but when they summed it up, both found a potentially lucrative new frontier, and that was home consoles.

Ren Hell made the decision to develop a home console back a few months ago. When video game arcades first came out. Whether Yamauchi is conservative or whatever, his vision for video games is really surprising. Don't look at this old guy who doesn't play video games, but he seems to be able to see them better than anyone who plays them.

During these months, Ren Hell under his control absorbed a large number of young people and specialized in the research and development of video game consoles and video games. In Yamauchi's own words, video games belong to young people, and young people's things should be developed by young people. He rarely gets involved in the specifics of video game console development. Because he felt that an old man like himself was not fit to meddle in the affairs of young people. Older people will always have their own persistence, and it is difficult for fixed thinking to accept emerging things. The consequences of such an imposition of interference would certainly be very bad.

The home game console R&D department, headed by Yokoi Junhei, is also quite difficult, because there has never been a home game console before. A lot of things, I don't know how to start. For example, the input devices that are in the closest contact with the player. Home consoles have little to no way to adopt the joystick design of video game arcades.

Because, home game consoles are relatively strict for the space requirements of all devices. However, the joystick structure of video game arcades is difficult to miniaturize. The structure of the joystick is eight vertical reeds, closely arranged together, and the joystick in the middle is used to transmit operating signals to the circuit board by touching the reeds.

One of the more interesting things is that the direction of the arcade stick's trigger is the opposite direction of the actual operation. This is easy to understand, imagine that one end of a chopstick is broken to the right by the player, and the other half must be to the left.

Yokoi Junhei is a very thoughtful person, otherwise he wouldn't be able to come up with a game watch, such a powerful idea. He started with the operating structure of the gaming watch, and finally designed a boxy tablet controller. The arrow keys of the controller,The use of the cross arrow keys that appeared on the game watch,Although the comfort level of this arrow key and the arcade stick,There is a lot of difference,But it can also be operated normally。

When it comes to gamepads alone, it's not just the size that needs to be considered. Also consider the context in which it will be used. Most Japanese homes are traditional Japanese-style rooms. A Japanese-style room is a room with tatami mats and no chairs.

In such a room, the TV is usually placed on a small TV stand, and the home game machine is naturally placed on a tatami mat. In addition to the lack of tall chairs, Japanese-style rooms also have a common feature, that is, they are cramped. The size of the room is relatively small.

At this time, including the home game console itself, as well as the controller, there is a possibility of being stepped on at any time. Therefore, the handle should be designed to be relatively stable to ensure that it will not be damaged in the trampling accident.

And the reason why you can't use an arcade stick is also for this reason. Imagine a little. When a family member accidentally steps on the handle with a protruding joystick. The better result is that the handle is damaged, and the bad result is that the person is injured by the protrusion of the joystick.

After talking about the use environment, it is time for the industrial design. The injection molding process of this era is not so backward, and it is not that it cannot manufacture curved structures. However, based on cost considerations, the most standardized rectangle is still used, and there is no too redundant structure.

However, although the problem of the controller has been solved, the specific internal structure of the home game console, and the ability of the inside of Hell are relatively limited, and it is not possible to complete all the designs with their own design level.

At this time, it is necessary to carry out technical cooperation with foreign factories.

Of course, the structure of the home console has already been determined. It's basically the base board of an arcade machine. However, it can't be like an arcade machine, or a gaming watch, where there is only one game on a machine. So, he had to be able to change the game. So how do you implement this technology?

After a long period of thinking, Junhei Yokoi and the technical team led by him finally solved this problem more properly. That is to separate the game from the home console itself in the form of readable memory. That is, the hardware and software of the home console are separated. A home console is one thing, and the carrier of the game is another. This idea is most likely to be realized at the current state of the art.

There is no impermeable wall in the world, Japan says that it is bigger than the United Kingdom, but it is not as big as imagined, and soon the news that the video game alliance and Ren Hell are going to develop a home game console will spread all over the circle.

Even, Haruka Kishimoto's "Game Pass" also published such rumors in the form of grapevine.

After players got this news, they were much more excited than industry insiders. Because of the sentence "Game Pass", you can play arcade games at home, which makes many players collectively high-tide.

This is something that people can't imagine later, and what an amazing experience it is to be able to play games that can only be played in arcade halls at home and on their own TV. I don't have to flip coins again and again, the machine is mine, I can play all the time, play all the time, and don't have to spend a penny again.

Of course, when home consoles do come out, most people will feel like they're just delusional. There are many home appliance companies in Japan, and the introduction of personal computers seems to be "high-end". But that is also a "high" price, which really discourages many people who are interested in enjoying high-tech. In the end, the market was tepid, and it seemed to be high and low.

As a result, after the concept of home game consoles was introduced, many home appliance manufacturers were eye-catching. They didn't plan to make a home game console, but they planned to make a cheap computer according to the concept of a home game console. It's as good as the concept of home game consoles, with only one console, and the display that comes with the computer is eliminated, but the console is connected directly to the TV. This time, the cost was reduced by at least 20,000 yen, and then the memory and other aspects were reduced step by step. Although the performance was already a bit of a hurry, it was even more unbearable, but the price was cut by more than four-fifths, so the cheap version of the personal computer was put on the counter in the form of a home learning machine and entered the market. The technical capabilities of traditional home appliance manufacturers are far more mature than those of emerging video game manufacturers, and they have brought home learning machines into the market before they hit the market.

However, although it entered the market early, the sales volume is not too good. Because, the learning machine is inevitably a little too boring, and the most interesting thing is to write some small programs by yourself according to the manual. Or, learn the Chiba Group's typing game and launch a bit of a typing game on a cheap version of your PC.

Speaking of Lin Yan's operating system, it is also a fragrance that blooms inside the wall and outside the wall. Although computers are also sold in Japan, they are still like a desert compared to the relatively mature computer market in the United States.

American computers, the most productive tools, although indeed useful, but to a certain extent, its dark operating interface, people to learn, there are really some costs. And, although several office software exist, it is not so user-friendly. At least, with Lin Yan, the reference to the future office software, the office software that makes full use of the current functions is much weaker.

Lin Yan's operating system and the office software embedded in it quickly became popular. The bundling of typing games has also solved the big problem of many companies and training employees, and has been well received. (To be continued.) )