Next-Generation Storm Rises Again (4,000 words)

Nakayama Takuya watched the engineers outline the character's detection range with wireframes on another computer, he deeply understood the tediousness of this job.

"You've worked hard." He patted Yu Suzuki on the shoulder. "I remember a few months ago, some people couldn't even find their way around."

This teasing remark caused a slight, unnatural softening on Yu Suzuki's serious face.

He didn't turn around, but just snorted in response.

The more helpless we were back then, the stronger our sense of accomplishment is now.

Only they themselves can truly understand the feeling of groping in the dark and finally lighting a lamp with their own hands.

"September, or at the latest October," Yu Suzuki stated with a firm timeline, "The first complete, playable version will definitely be available."

"Very good." Takuya nodded, very satisfied with the progress.

Developing a 3D game from scratch presents challenges and obstacles far beyond what outsiders can imagine.

There were no mature engines, no universal tools, and even the most basic theories had to be figured out on our own.

It was thanks to his "Heavenly Eye" that he pointed out Fujitsu's shortcut and brought in motion capture technology from Hollywood that this almost impossible task had a timeline for realization.

Otherwise, if the artists had to manually keyframe each polygon one by one, it would take forever to achieve such smooth, lifelike motion.

After leaving Yu Suzuki's development team, Nakayama Takuya turned into the nearby Hook development team.

Before even entering, a series of crisp sounds of clashing swords and exaggerated explosions rang out, interspersed with occasional excited screams.

Pushing open the door, the scene inside was completely different from the quiet atmosphere at Yu Suzuki's place; it was bustling with activity, like a festival celebration.

Ono, the person in charge, Ono eyes and was the first to spot him. He immediately rushed over like a little hunting dog eager for praise, his face beaming with undisguised excitement.

"Executive! Come quick!"

Without a word, he dragged Takuya to a brand-new System32 arcade machine. On the screen, Peter Pan was engaged in a fierce battle with Hook on the deck.

When Peter Pan cleaved the pirate into the water with his sword, the splashing water on the surface was no longer the monotonous few pixels on System16, but rather presented a layered, translucent wave effect that was extremely realistic.

"See that?! The splash! And the lighting! System32's capabilities are simply monstrous!" Ono excitedly pointed at the screen. "We've also added brand-new entrance animations for each boss, guaranteed to be even more spectacular than a movie!"

The other group members gathered around, excitedly showing off their work.

"Not bad." Takuya looked at the magnificent visuals on the screen, far surpassing his memories of his past life, and nodded in satisfaction. "It seems everyone is very enthusiastic about going to United States."

He looked around and said half-jokingly, "Don't forget to practice your English in your spare time, and improve your accent. Otherwise, it'll be embarrassing if Mr. Spielberg doesn't understand you when you meet him."

"Ha ha ha ha!"

The entire development team burst into good-natured laughter, instantly Panasonic the tense work atmosphere.

Morale is no longer an issue.

After leaving the Hook team, Takuya strolled towards the Arcade Group Five at the other end of the corridor.

In contrast, the development room for Metal Slug was unusually quiet.

There was no rousing music, no excited discussion, only the soft tapping of keyboards and mice.

Everyone was staring intently at their screens, their expressions extremely focused.

Takuya spotted Uchida Minoru immediately.

He was crammed in front of a monitor with a pixel artist, arguing heatedly over a minor detail.

Takuya quietly approached, only to hear Uchida Minoru pointing at a tiny enemy soldier figure being blown away on the screen, his tone leaving no room for argument.

"No! That roll is wrong!"

"Team Leader Uchida, this is already the twelfth version—" The artist's expression was one of great pain.

"Wrong is wrong!" Uchida Minoru's voice wasn't loud, but it was firm and decisive. "The enemy was thrown back by the shockwave of the shell; their body should have stiffened for a moment before they lost their balance and tumbled! What you're doing now is too light and airy, like they slipped and fell! And the look of terror on his face, make his eyes bulge out two pixels! Yes, that's the feeling of his soul flying out of his body!"

The artist was on the verge of tears, and could only resign himself to picking up the mouse and starting to modify those few pixels.

Takuya stood behind them, looking at the tiny chibi-style figure on the screen, no bigger than a fingernail. With the artist's modifications, the figure's blasted-away posture and expression became increasingly comical and ridiculous, full of dark humor.

He didn't make a sound to disturb them.

Uchida Minoru finally noticed Takuya behind him. He turned around, adjusted his glasses, and his eyes behind the lenses remained sharp.

"Special Affairs."

"I was just passing by." Takuya's gaze shifted from the screen to Uchida Minoru, a face etched with exhaustion yet brimming with excitement. "What are you guys doing—"

"Debugging the death animations," Uchida Minoru replied succinctly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "The details you mentioned, Executive Director," we are implementing them one by one. From being hit by a bullet, to being blown away by a shell, to being burned by flames, we plan to design three to five different animations for each way of dying, presenting different death animations according to the way the player is killed, to ensure that the player sees a different feedback every time."

He paused, then added, "It takes time, but the results will be excellent."

The last weight on Takuya's heart was finally lifted.

This is exactly what he wanted!

It is this extreme obsession with seemingly useless details that is the soul of Metal Slug!

He patted Uchida Minoru's shoulder forcefully, and all his unspoken words were ultimately reduced to a single sentence.

I look forward to your work.

As Takuya left the Development Department, he breathed a long sigh of relief, his heart filled with boundless pride.

Virtua Fighter, Hook, and Metal Slug —three sharp swords capable of tearing the market apart—are ready to be unleashed. With the planned King of Fighters, Sega's arcade dominance in the 90s is just around the corner.

Kyoto, Nintendo Headquarters.

Masayuki Uemura looked at the sales report on the table. The curve representing SFC hardware sales was rising slowly and steadily.

There was a knock on the office door, and a subordinate from the Marketing Department walked in, a forced smile on his face.

"Minister, Capcom's Final Fight for the Super Famicom was released last week, selling 80,000 copies in its first week. The market response has been quite good."

"Not bad?" Masayuki Uemura picked up the report, his eyes scraping across the paper like knives. "The Mega Drive version was released months before ours! Players were already saturated! What about the other games?"

"Konami's Sunset Riders has also been released, and it's received very high praise----"

"Will the MD version be released simultaneously?" Masayuki Uemura interrupted him coldly.

"----yes."

The single word "yes" was like a slap in the face, leaving Masayuki Uemura's cheek burning with pain.

His gaze fell on a game cartridge on the corner of the table; it was a sample that Taito had just delivered.

"<Space Fighter Gaiden>----" Masayuki Uemura picked up the cartridge, stroking the cover, "If I remember correctly, this game was sold on the Mega Drive for a long time last year, right? Now they've ported the Mega Drive game to our Super Famicom?"

"Yes, Taito's president, Nishida, said this is a sincere remake," a gift specially prepared for Super Famicom (SFC) players.

"Gift?"

Masayuki Uemura repeated the word in a low voice, a grotesque smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

This is hardly a gift.

This is clearly just a ploy to boost SFC sales!

They're treating Nintendo Famicom like a beggar scavenging Sega's leftovers!

Those guys who used to grovel before President Yamauchi now dare to treat them like this.

These insignificant ported games had a negligible impact on SFC sales, but they felt like needles pricking the hearts of every Nintendo executive.

Masayuki Uemura waved his hand, signaling his subordinate to leave.

He was the only one left in the office, and he leaned back wearily in his chair.

Masayuki Uemura's eyes held only a cold, resolute look.

Instead of relying on those opportunistic opportunists, you should rely on yourself.

He grabbed the phone and quickly pressed a few numbers on the dial pad.

The moment the call connected, he almost blurted it out.

"Miyamoto-kun? I'm Uemura."

When will your "Triforce of the Gods" be completed?

Within Sony, the development of the SFC-CD project is progressing rapidly.

The support engineers who returned from Sega brought back not only the technical report completed by Sega-CD, but also invaluable practical experience and a complete set of optimization solutions that had been thoroughly tested and verified.

These elements were transferred to the development of SFC-CD without any changes, and many of the technical bottlenecks that had previously plagued the team were resolved.

Of course, this is what Sony sees from within.

On Nintendo's side, the progress reports they received presented a completely different picture.

Ken Kutaragi personally oversaw the process, and every report submitted to Nintendo was detailed and professional, yet filled with various problems that required "further research" and "waiting for verification."

He even arranged for engineers to repackage some bugs that had already been resolved internally at Sony as "major technical challenges" and regularly "consult" and "report" to the two young men entrusted with important tasks by Masayuki Uemura.

The two poor young men were completely bewildered, spending their days digesting and learning those seemingly profound but actually already solved technical details, thinking they were really involved in the core of a cutting-edge project, and were moved to tears by Sony's "honesty" and "rigor" in every reply.

"They were asking us about the fundamental algorithms for optimizing CD-ROM optical head seek times just last week," an engineer reported, suppressing a smile. "We sent them a solution that was outdated three months ago, and they're studying it with great enthusiasm."

A strange yet joyful atmosphere permeated the entire PlayStation Development Department at Sony.

The real core resources had already been concentrated by Ken Kutaragi and fully invested in "PlayStation".

This machine is based on the SFC-CD, but its internals have been completely transformed.

It is no longer a peripheral device, but a complete and independent next-generation host.

Sony's engineers practically crammed things in, completely shattering the original design specifications of the SFC-CD.

"Double the working memory, add a dedicated coprocessor for geometry calculations next to the graphics processor, and for the audio—simplify the chip solution we use in professional recording studios and cram it in!"

Ken Kutaragi stood in front of the PlayStation booth, his eyes filled with the fervor of a creator.

This is no longer a powerful upgrade of the SFC-CD; it's a monster disguised as an SFC-CD!

This is the scene that greeted Ryoji Chubachi when he entered the laboratory.

He glanced at the 3D polygon demo running smoothly on the screen, then at the draft report on "stability of single-speed CD drives" written for Ren Gongjiu on the desk next to him, and couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Kutaragi, your Trojan Horse plan is going very well," Ryoji Chubachi patted him on the shoulder, "While you're feeding them milk and sharpening your knife."

"They were the ones who handed the knife to us," Ken Kutaragi grinned, revealing a set of white teeth. "And they even closed their eyes, completely ignoring our progress."

"Well said!" Ryoji Chubachi high spirits. "The board members of the hardware development team are very satisfied. This beast is beginning to take shape. Now, it's time to prepare its provisions."

His eyes became deep.

"Sega combines Takuya and Square, while Shigeru Miyamoto and Enix work together. Our PlayStation cannot just be an empty metal box."

Ken Kutaragi immediately understood what he meant, and his heart began to race uncontrollably.

"You mean--"

"That's right." Ryoji Chubachi's gaze swept over everyone present. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable authority. "Hardware development will continue, but the software department needs to get moving."

He paused, then spoke slowly and deliberately.

"We can't rely solely on third-party developers, otherwise we'll end up like Nintendo this year, where almost all the initial releases from third parties were ports, failing to provide a strong enough boost to console sales. Although our current PlayStation is directly compatible with Super Famicom cartridges and CDs, to attract a large number of mainstream players to buy our PlayStation, we still need PlayStation-exclusive games, like Mario for the Super Famicom and Sonic for the Mega Drive."

"Yes, then we'll need to build our own first-party game development team." Ken Kutaragi nodded in Ryoji Chubachi's view, but he still directly expressed his concerns. "However, we don't have any programmers with game development experience, or rather, producers."

Ryoji Chubachi chuckled twice, "Hmph, if we can't integrate ourselves, then let's poach some. Poaching some people from ' Sony's technology shouldn't be a problem. Let's start by finding those disgruntled deputies under the main producer."

"Well, we need to find some suitable options first. Before that, let's contact the major third-party game developers. They'll probably be happy to have another platform to release games," Ken Kutaragi proposed a new plan. "Let's start with Konami. A president as unpredictable as Kozuki Kagemasa should be a good starting point."

"Good idea, leave this to me. You continue to oversee the PlayStation's animation and maintenance work." Ryoji Chubachi accepted the external liaison work.

1