If NES won the battle against children and housewives...
NovaBox appeals to everyone from young to old.
This style is practically made for the North America 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.
Amidst this fierce competition, a new contender suddenly emerged.
Or perhaps it's a return of an old hero.
Atari launched the Atar 7800, touted as a next-generation smartphone, in Chicago, the second-largest city in the America 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 completely shut down.
"Lin, you're right! You're right! I was so stupid, so very stupid..."
Meyer abandoned the idea of contacting Lin Lixin by phone and drove there 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.
Yes!
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, on the other hand, uses a built-in light sensor to determine whether it has hit its 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 field of view.
If 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 slight 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 the performance-intensive recognition and encoding/decoding processes that are necessary with light guns.
It also avoids the biggest drawback of light guns—insensitivity.
Zapper is definitely a product whose advertising and actual experience differ greatly.
In many cases, to use it normally, you need to hold it tightly against the screen, 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 hands 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 terms 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 perceptions.
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, the genius, get so many ingenious 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 indeed 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 lighthearted game like " Super Mario " than have them running around the living room yelling and shooting at others with a toy gun.
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 own " Triforce ".
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 reverse course and come back to doing 2D?
As the world's first and only game developer to master pseudo-3D technology, Sam believes that GAMENOVA should seize this opportunity to further expand its advantage.
Wouldn't it be better to make a 3D version of Contra or 1942 than to blindly focus on making 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 due to the NovaBox 'Triforce of the Gods superior performance, the graphics design could be closer to A Link to the Past.
A 3D open-world RPG is simply beyond the capabilities of current processors.
Piling up more material won't help.
Even if the performance could handle it, the floppy disk's capacity would definitely be insufficient 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.
"For games, gameplay is paramount; graphics and visuals are merely a bonus, not the deciding factor."
This is a detailed map design draft, with the words "(Table Mode)" specially marked in the upper right corner.
"What we're going to make is an [open-world role-playing action -Adventure game]."