Late April.
This ultimate carnival, spanning all sectors of the entertainment industry, has finally officially begun.
Besides the amazing new concept of "playing music on a handheld console," the arcade aspect of Beat Hazard also naturally caught the attention of players.
Along with it, a new term emerged: " Photosensitive Epilepsy ".
According to Gamenova's public statement, this is a problem that is very easily triggered by video games.
Even Sam, a high-ranking executive at Gamenova, was diagnosed with the disease after this project was completed.
It's unbelievable that playing a game could land you in the hospital...
Henry thought so.
But sometimes, fate just likes to play tricks.
He reached out and groped along the wall, turning on a row of switches.
The room was instantly brightly lit, with rows of fluorescent lights illuminating the entire area.
Unfortunately, Henry discovered during a recent trial that he also had some mild symptoms. Although it didn't reach the level of convulsions or seizures, it did make him feel drowsy.
According to Gamenova, you should play the game in a well-lit environment if possible, and if you feel unwell, stop immediately and consult a doctor.
"Mr. Henry, here are all eight machines. Please take a look and inspect them."
The staff at Nova Arcade installed all the machines according to Henry's wishes.
After all, arcades are a mixed bag, and who knows what might happen, so Henry simply isolated the entire area and decorated it in the style of a nightclub.
This way, at least the people who want to play can have a good time without having to accommodate others.
"Okay, everything looks fine."
Henry nodded and began to examine them one by one.
"Huh? There aren't any expansion packs available for the initial release this time? Has it not been released yet? Can I pre-order some?"
He recalled the Rocksmith era, when new booster packs would appear almost every week.
Even now, his warehouse is still filled with a huge pile of replenishment packs.
It's safe to say that any rhythm game inevitably needs booster packs. Well... Patapon is an exception.
But a heavy-duty arcade machine like this will definitely be used.
"A booster pack? Oh, Mr. Henry, Beat Hazard doesn't have that feature; all the tracks are already built into the machine."
"All of them?"
Henry frowned, picked up the instruction manual, flipped through a few pages, and found the song list.
"Supernova albums, Metallica, Guns N' Roses... the lineup is impressive, but isn't the number of albums a bit too small?"
What's the most important thing for a rhythm game?
Putting aside factors like feel, gameplay, and graphics, it ultimately comes down to the music lineup.
Without a reliable music library, no matter how fancy the game is, it's all for nothing.
It's not that the original tracklist for " Beat Hazard " is bad.
On the contrary, the quality of its music is frighteningly high.
The problem is the quantity. It's too small.
Compared to the vast repertoire of Rocksmith, which practically swept across half of the rock music scene, Beat Hazard's repertoire is pitifully small.
This is not a good sign.
When players start to get tired of the current tracks and can't find any new songs to change things up, that's when the machine's lifespan will come to an end.
"If Mr. Henry is worried about the music library, you can rest assured."
The staff member explained with a smile.
They've heard this question countless times in the past few days.
He walked over to the machine and pointed to the coin slot.
"Mr. Henry, look at this. Just insert a game-formatted song card, and the game will read it and you can start playing immediately."
"Ha..."
Henry leaned closer to take a look, and sure enough, there was a cassette slot.
"Besides that, if you subscribe to our online service and the latest Nexus Pro modem, you can also enjoy fully online download services." "Online downloads? You mean... like those songs?"
Upon hearing this, Henry almost instantly recalled the commercial performance that had recently shocked the world.
Although he was not present at the scene, the news spread so widely that even those who were not there knew the details of what happened that day.
You can download a song to your computer just by visiting a website, isn't that scary?
"Yes, sir. However, players need to log in to their email account or insert GameNova All-in-One Card linked to their email address. As you know, not all songs are free."
"Oh, of course."
Henry nodded.
He had visited the game-record website many times before and had a general understanding of how to play there.
In short, besides the two completely free tracks, game-record also includes a large number of other albums.
However, if you want to download them, you can't just click to download them like the other two.
You must log in to your email account first.
Each song is priced like a record. If you don't pay, you can only listen to a small "sample".
But once you've purchased it, you can log in to game-record and play it on any browser.
As for the payment mechanism, it's actually not a complicated process.
Simply draft an email to the partner bank, specifying the purchase item, and the bank will automatically send a receipt after processing the transfer and synchronize the information with gamenova.
It should take a maximum of three days for the user's account to unlock the corresponding song.
Essentially, it's just the original telephone banking system.
After the rapid popularization of email, Gamenova and several partner banks upgraded it to an email version.
To be honest, it's not very user-friendly.
Whether it's the inherent flaws in portability or the complexity of operation, it's like taking off your pants to fart compared to traditional record stores.
But it certainly offered fans another possibility beyond records.
Besides, Gamenova is currently releasing game-specification music cartridges featuring various artists under the Game label.
It's more like a bold attempt by Gamenova to explore the feasibility of digital music. Let's return our attention to the arcade.
Henry pondered the connections between these things carefully, and suddenly realized something very frightening.
If I'm not mistaken... the repertoire of " Beat Hazard " is anything but shallow...
In terms of potential, its future is even broader than that of " Rocksmith ".
Because its music library... is real-time and connected to the internet.
As long as Gamenova updates the music library on Game-Record, it will be synchronized here in real time.
The songs that users buy can not only be listened to by themselves, but can also be used on these arcade machines!
That's scary.
As long as the game's lineup of signed artists continues to expand...
Its potential is limitless.
"Mr. Henry, here is our price list. Rest assured, internet service is entirely optional. If you do not wish to renew, you can cancel at any time without any additional fees."
"What are you babbling about? Pack them all up!"
Although routers didn't exist at that time, thanks to ADSL technology, the eight arcade machines didn't actually need to be allocated eight telephone lines.
To enable eight machines to access the internet simultaneously, ADSL has already solved this problem natively.
One of the staff members, dressed clearly as an engineer, started leading a group of people to tinker with the wiring.
First, a hub was used to split a cable from the arcade's telephone line.
Thanks to ADSL's new frequency division technology, internet communication no longer needs to occupy telephone lines.
Even if you pull a thread from the telephone line, you won't have to choose between online and communication as you used to.
There's no need to rely on phone calls to transmit game signals like with previous alternatives.
It's worth noting that Gamenova had already solved the call problem a long time ago with a specially designed modem.
The principle is simply to use the communication link to transmit signals together.
However, its shortcomings are far too obvious.
That's because it's expensive! Long-distance calls literally cost money every second.
Playing a game can easily lead to hours-long phone conversations; even the wealthiest person can't withstand that kind of ordeal.
For this reason, although online multiplayer has been developing for a long time, it is still not a widespread phenomenon.
Only some games with very small amounts of data can be played in this way, albeit with some difficulty.
For games like Civilization that involve a lot of data exchange, it's actually the fan-made pbem mods from the Workshop that are more popular.
Now everything is resolved.
We're not going to use your crappy phone lines anymore. It's just 3kHz, let whoever wants to play with it have it. I'm going to play with the high-frequency ones.
Engineers used a hub to collect all the arcade machines' wiring together, and then connected it via a special modem.
This little gadget can automatically assign IP addresses to these arcade machines and forward data.
In a sense, it was actually the prototype of a router.
Once the staff had finished configuring the network, the installation was finally complete.
Payment and receipt completed seamlessly. "Buzz--"
As the machine was powered on, a deep, resonant sound emanated from the subwoofers.
The Gamenova logo appears, followed by the Game Records logo.
[Game record]
[A pioneer in digital music since 1990]
It seems that Gamenova intends to go all the way down the digital music path.
Henry tried it out and inserted his bank card.
Sure enough, after a short loading period, the game displayed all the online tracks.
Just like on the website, selecting it will even play a preview clip.
He was quite certain that the machine did not have those songs on it.
To play these games, even if you've already unlocked them, you still need to download them to the arcade machine first.
That means all of this is actually obtained entirely online! This... this is fucking cool.
Today, people are used to seeing text, and even pictures, and seeing others share their lives on World Wide Web.
But hearing music online?
That was truly the first time in history.