Looking at the fighting game genre as a whole, Virtua Fighter's frame rate is actually one of the shorter ones.
Its performance aspect is not that important.
In particular, the integration of numerous real-world martial arts styles makes the movements appear very skillful and powerful.
Of course, the truly decisive factor is probably its groundbreaking 3D fighting style.
Instead of using rotoscoped frame-by-frame animation for combat, the game now utilizes skeletal animation directly from 3D models.
In this way, from a visual perspective, players can naturally receive a higher level of information.
But this is certainly not without its drawbacks.
The fact that fighting games have remained 2D to this day doesn't necessarily mean they can't be made in 3D.
Especially with the increasing popularity of graphics accelerator cards and OpenGL graphics libraries from Gamenova.
Sega's " Virtua Fighter " and Namco's " Tekken " once sparked a wave of 3D fighting games around the world.
Several manufacturers with quick eyes and hands acted first to grab the crabs.
Games like " Soul Edge " and " Star Gladiator " have achieved considerable success. Their performance seems to definitively prove that the 3D transformation is a viable path.
But once manufacturers flocked in, they discovered it was an extremely deceptive trap.
Naturally, the two major publishers of fighting games back then were among them.
Capcom and SNK.
Capcom Bitch definitely suffered the most.
Seeing that others have successfully implemented 3D graphics, Capcom Bitch, the leading company in fighting games, naturally doesn't want to fall behind.
So, in 1996, they launched the Street Fighter EX project.
The result is self-evident.
With the 3D capabilities of this era, Capcom Bitch simply doesn't have the ability to 3D render its many well-designed characters.
The version that was forcibly created is extremely... unacceptable in terms of its shape.
Coupled with the fact that the core gameplay remained almost entirely unchanged after the 3D transformation, except for SuperCancel, the entire Street Fighter EX series failed to meet Capcom Bitch's commercial expectations.
The following year's Street Fighter III also failed to replicate its success. Suddenly, the entire fighting game market seemed to have died.
Especially after Capcom Bitch achieved repeated successes in other areas such as Biohazard, Capcom Bitch's development focus gradually shifted away from fighting games.
If Capcom Bitch is like this, then SNK's bunch of idiots are even more so.
Given SNK's style of doing things, they naturally developed a dedicated 3D substrate, NeoGeoHyper64, early on.
As the name suggests, it's a typical 64-bit arcade board.
Standard configuration includes a 64-bit RISC processor, 4MB of RAM, and 64MB + 128MB of video memory.
It's in the SNK style, a typical heavy-duty board with an incredibly luxurious configuration.
This configuration naturally led to the development of several visually appealing 3D fighting games.
But the results were equally dismal.
The stiff animations and ugly models resulting from 3D rendering make the drawbacks of 3D rendering increasingly apparent.
And so the tide receded.
In the end, everyone realized that apart from Sega's * Virtua Fighter * and Namco's * Tekken *, which initially created great success, very few companies actually survived. Especially after 1995, only Tecmo, an outsider, remained!
An unremarkable programmer named Tomonobu Itagaki develops an unremarkable game at Tecmo's newly established, unremarkable teamninja studio.
Dead or Alive
As it turns out, arousal is always the primary driving force.
When Dead or Alive was first created, the game mechanics were very primitive.
After all, neither Tomonobu Itagaki, who was just starting out, nor Tecmo had any experience in developing fighting games.
But they made a very important decision.
No matter what, the model has to look good!
Even if it means sacrificing bodily functions, the breasts must be able to bounce!
This unwavering pursuit of art allowed Tecmo to survive in the 3D fighting battle royale genre.
They are still alive and well.
Even today, Marie Rose remains a regular in the 3D scene, and for many, she's just as beloved as Tifa. This absurd and contrasting ending has finally made manufacturers realize just how disastrous this seemingly sweet new path of 3D animation really is.
Especially after Sega collapsed, Virtua Fighter was also taken down with it.
In the end, only " Tekken " remained as the spiritual successor, still carrying the banner.
Oh, and of course, there's " Dead or Alive," which never goes out of business.
If you remove the label of "world's first 3D fighting game" from " Virtua Fighter ", it actually has quite a few shortcomings.
It has all the problems you'd expect from a 3D fighting game.
But it did one thing right.
It's not just an old fighting game ported into 3D.
It is a completely new IP.
From the very beginning of the project, Yu Suzuki treated it as a 3D game.
Street Fighter EX failed because everyone who's actually played Street Fighter II knows how high a mountain Street Fighter II is in the fighting game genre.
The same principle applies to SNK's several 3D works.
They can't let go of their existing intellectual property and hope to leverage that property to boost popularity and increase sales.
But this reluctance to let go had the opposite effect.
The more you see these works in 2D, the more obvious the stiffness becomes after they've been forcibly converted to 3D.
In contrast, native design does not adhere to the principle that "traditional methods cannot be changed."
Anything unsuitable for 3D should be cut.
The button design is extremely clean, with only one joystick and three buttons for punching and kicking.
With the added prestige of being the "world's first 3D fighting game," Virtua Fighter achieved phenomenal sales.
Now, with the addition of Gamenova, they can use motion capture technology, which only gradually became widespread later, several generations ahead of schedule.
For a fighting game, especially a 3D fighting game, motion capture is practically like having a cheat code.
So, after several days of preliminary planning, the group boarded a flight back to California. Lin Lixin was also on the flight.
"I've already handed things over to Sam. We have a film studio in the Sacramento River Delta that can serve as a temporary office."
He gave Jackie a brief explanation.
With Gamenova joining and formalizing everything, while it's not certain that all members of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team will return, it shouldn't be a problem to bring back some of their loyal followers.
With a contractual guarantee, we can hire headhunters to recruit more top talents to join our team.
It won't be long before the new Jackie Chan Stunt Team is up and running.
"That's the situation. You need to coordinate with AM2 in real time regarding the footage you need to record. I need to resolve the issue with the Sega-Model 1 PCB."
Lin Lixin said, then got into the Corvette, floored the gas pedal, and disappeared from everyone's sight.
ASUS's headquarters are naturally not located in California.
But ROG's headquarters can be located there.
The new brand [ Republic of Gamers ], funded by Gamenova, has its temporary R&D center in the San Francisco Bay Area. After all, it's primarily a motherboard manufacturer.
Although the plan definitely includes creating a derivative hardware ecosystem for the ROG (Republic of Gamers) brand.
But at least for now, motherboards are our main business.
The peripheral issues are also being addressed by Thrustmaster, a joint venture with Lockheed and a number of automakers.
[rog-model1-extreme]
A cool eye-shaped logo is silkscreened on the green circuit board.
With the addition of Micro-Nova Semiconductor, it's clear that the integration level is now significantly higher than before.
Compared to the Cache386 board, which was full of chips, this Model 1 already shows a slight resemblance to modern motherboards.
"Lin, look, you can see the motherboard's real-time voltage directly through this LCD screen."
Xu placed a small LCD screen module connected by a ribbon cable in front of Lin Lixin and introduced it to him.
The other end of the cable was connected to a newly designed slot on the motherboard.
This means that the board already has basic voltage reading capabilities. It even supports output via GPIO.
This thing has huge potential.
Besides the influence of climate, another very important environmental factor affecting arcades is power supply.
The 1980s and 90s were not the post-millennium era.
These days, the power supply environment isn't necessarily very stable.
For those old green-skinned machines, it's not so bad, as they already have a very high level of security redundancy.
A slight voltage fluctuation or power outage simply means it takes a little time to restart.
However, for high-precision electronic systems, the impact of power supply can be very serious.
There's a rule in the PC building community.
You can't skimp on power supplies, no matter where you're trying to save money.
Cheap CPUs are mostly just low-quality tray CPUs; they can't run at their ideal speed.
A slightly less powerful RAM stick simply means its frequency can't be increased and its stability is a bit lower; at worst, it might cause a blue screen. A less powerful hard drive simply means you'll download fewer movies and games.
Heat dissipation? I can use it for a while even if I just smash a radish in the ground.
But if the power supply is faulty... that could really cause a lot of trouble.
This is especially true for arcades, which need to operate for extended periods.
Over time, the maintenance burden increases dramatically.
Although, to date, the warranties on all the hardware components are completely within acceptable limits.
But problems that can be solved now don't need to become time bombs for our future selves.
"We commissioned Ms. Vivian to design a voltage management module. Model 1 prioritizes power supply to the voltage management module and then supplies power to different chipsets separately."
Xu continued.
This design may seem to increase complexity, but it's definitely a boon for engineers.
This way, each power supply is relatively independent, and for relatively fragile chips, they can design local voltage regulation for them individually.
In the past, motherboards adopted a wait-and-see approach. But with voltage management, or VRM, they can design much more elegant solutions.
It's no longer a matter of the chip consuming as many chips as the power supply provides.
Instead, we only supply the amount of chips they need.
The main logic section requires 5V? Then generate a 5V voltage to supply it.
How much CPU, GPU, and RAM are needed...?
You can request these directly from the motherboard manufacturer.
Meanwhile, with the thermal sensors installed around the chip, the motherboard can also obtain real-time temperature information.
Once this model becomes widespread in the market...
The workload for future arcade maintenance personnel, and even PC maintenance personnel, will be greatly reduced.
At a glance, checking the motherboard error codes can eliminate more than half of the problems.
Looking at the temperature and voltage, we can eliminate most of them.
Good warranty.