nycdaug Chapter 53 Open World! Role-Playing! Action-Adventure
Chapter 53 Open World! Role-Playing! Action-Adventure
If NES won the battle against children and housewives...
NovaBox appeals to everyone from young to old.
This style is simply made for the North American gaming audience.
The competition between the two sides was on the table from the very beginning, like two floods surging from the east and west sides.
In the midst of this fierce competition, a new contender suddenly emerged.
Or rather, it's a return of old heroes.
Atari launched the Atar 7800, touted as a next-generation device, in Chicago, the second-largest city in the United States.
With a price tag of $140, it dominated the market from the very beginning, clearly positioning itself as a differentiated product targeting the lower-tier market, unlike the other two companies.
Can't afford the expensive NovaBox? Then buy our Atari instead.
then,
The shipment of NES and NovaBox has arrived.
Atari's backward compatibility was a joke; it didn't even cause a ripple before being kicked to the curb.
……
"Lin, you're right! You're right! I was so stupid, so very stupid..."
Meyer gave up on contacting him by phone and drove to find Lin Lixin himself, praising him profusely and obsequiously.
The performance of NovaBox after its official release was vastly different from that during the trial sales period.
He racked his brains but never imagined that Lin Lixin could suddenly produce a work like "Wolfenstein 3D".
It's still on an 8-bit machine!
His gaze passed over Lin Lixin and looked into the room.
Gerald and Sam were busy working on something at the workbench.
Noticing Meyer's gaze, Lin Lixin smiled and simply stepped aside to let Meyer in.
"Mr. Meyer, you've come at just the right time. The prototype of our first peripheral for NovaBox is almost ready."
"Peripherals?"
Meyer felt a nerve in his body connected to his fortune twitch, and he immediately perked up.
"Yes, I don't know if you've heard of the 'light gun' that Nintendo released last year?"
"Zapper? You guys are making your own light gun peripherals?"
Meyer immediately connected it to the newly released Wolfenstein 3D.
Right!
If a shooting game could be paired with peripherals like a light gun, I wonder how well it would sell!
Even something as simple as Nintendo's "Duck Hunt" can make Zapper sell so well.
"I guess so, but it's not optical positioning."
Lin Lixin nodded and picked up a simple plastic pistol model from the table.
Nintendo's Zapper light gun uses a very sophisticated positioning technology.
The moment the trigger is pulled, the game screen turns completely black, displaying only a white block at the target location.
The light gun uses a built-in light sensor to determine whether it has hit the target.
Lin Lixin connected the pistol to the NovaBox interface and inserted the Wolfenstein 3D cartridge.
As he twirled the pistol in his hand, the camera angle on the screen also shifted.
"We are using a horizontal accelerometer."
Wolfenstein 3D has a subtle difference from other shooting games.
Its shooting judgment is not determined by the aiming position, but by the viewpoint.
As long as the enemy is standing directly in front of you, you will be considered hit.
This gave Lin Lixin a little inspiration.
He could make a small modification to the concept of a light gun, turning it into a purely input device.
Their light gun is more like an alien-shaped handle, except with an added accelerometer.
The biggest advantage of doing this is that it doesn't require adding performance-intensive recognition and encoding/decoding processes like a light gun.
Moreover, it can avoid the biggest drawback of light guns—insensitivity.
Zapper is definitely a product whose advertising and actual experience differ greatly.
In many cases, you need to hold it tightly against the screen to use it properly, and many monitors are not even compatible with it.
After listening to Lin Lixin's explanation, Meyer took the light gun in surprise and played with it in his hand for a while.
After clearing the first level, Meyer fell into a long silence.
If using a gamepad to control the game still creates a slight disconnect in the sense of immersion, then this light gun completely eliminates the boundary between reality and virtuality.
Whenever Meyer thought he had gotten used to Lin Lixin's genius, he would suddenly pull out some products that could easily shatter his perception.
However, before he could fully process the news, Lin Lixin led him to the workbench and stopped in front of something else.
This is a floppy disk drive, except that it has a telephone line interface on the back.
"Wait, could this be...?"
"The floppy disk fax machine can be used to upload players' scores stored on game floppy disks to our GAMENOVA headquarters."
"Wait...What?"
Meyer felt as if Lin Lixin had punched him in the head, leaving him completely dazed.
Where does Lin Dashen get so many brilliant ideas?
Meyer came with the intention of thanking Lin Lixin and admitting his previous pessimism.
He took with him a prototype of a light gun and a floppy disk fax machine.
……
Although the combination of Wolfenstein 3D and light guns did cause a significant stir in the market.
Surprisingly, NES sales have been steadily increasing.
The reason is simple: housewives would much rather let their children play a light and refreshing game like "Ultramar" than have them holding a toy gun and yelling and shooting at others in the living room.
However, Lin Lixin was not so generous as to completely abandon this group of users.
In order to "clear" everyone's perception of GAMENOVA, he had long prepared his "Tri Force".
He divided this whitewashing plan into three parts.
A boy's adventure, a cozy countryside, and adorable pets.
The first of these trilogy is naturally The Legend of Zelda, which he has been preparing for a long time.
Sam looked at the map tiles on the screen, somewhat puzzled.
"Why did you revert to making 2D content again?"
As the world's first and only game developer to master pseudo-3D technology, GAMENOVA should seize this opportunity to further expand its advantages, in Sam's opinion.
Making a 3D version of Contra or 1942 is much better than blindly working on a new game.
Even if you're creating a new IP, you shouldn't regress to a 2D model.
"I'd like to do 3D."
Lin Lixin rubbed his temples. He had chosen the original Zelda game, but in terms of graphics design, thanks to the NovaBox's superior performance, it could be compared to A Link to the Past.
A 3D open-world RPG is simply beyond the capabilities of current processors.
No matter how much material you pile up, it's useless.
Even if the performance could handle it, the floppy disk's limited capacity would definitely not be enough to store it all.
"Sam, I've noticed you seem to be going a bit astray."
Lin Lixin unfolded a document and displayed it in front of Sam.
"When it comes to games, gameplay is the most important thing. Graphics and visuals are just a bonus, but they are definitely not the deciding factor."
This is a detailed map design draft, with the words "(Table Mode)" specially marked in the upper right corner of the map.
"What we're going to make is an open-world role-playing action-adventure game."