On the eve of Atari's collapse in 1982, Atari was able to achieve annual sales in the video game market of more than 3 billion US dollars by his own efforts.

Among them, the net profit is at least half. A game costs fifty US dollars. How much is the production cost?

There is only one programmer, no artist, no musician, and one programmer is responsible for all the work. If it is slow, it will be made a game in a month, and the fast deterioration will be completed within two weeks.

And all this requires is a programmer's salary of thousands of dollars.

It will take another month to make cassettes in the factory. Although the cost will be dozens or hundreds of times the salary of program employees, it is still a small head, and the real big head is advertising investment. From shopping malls to TV, the overwhelming amount of advertisements is so dense that it makes people unable to breathe.

Atari's managers believe that good games are not as good as good advertising, and good content is not as good as good celebrity endorsements.

The same is true for the film and television market in China decades later.

Too much attention to the game itself and too much attention to advertising will result in overdrawing the player's patience. In the end, the player votes with his feet and refuses the junk game until it finally collapses.

As a hot spot, the electronic game industry, which attracts capital investment, has fallen into silence.

It was not until a few years later that Nintendo in Japan took the premium system as the cornerstone, focused on game quality, and entered the US market, which rekindled the players' love for electronic games, rather than using playing electronic games as a shame.

However, although Nintendo's highly centralized system is conducive to supervision of game quality, it is too strict for American manufacturers.

After several attempts, American game manufacturers began to contact Sega, an industry from Japan.

And just as everyone is working hard for home game consoles, handheld consoles are a market that most people have not paid attention to.

Nick resigned from Parkinson Trading Company. He did not start his own business. He felt that he was not the kind of person who could start his own business and did not have the courage.

So he became the general manager of Wanhu North American Branch.

The main product currently in charge of Wanhu North American branch is handheld machine.

Because Broadbond, the arcade is responsible for the agency, while the home computer games use Sega's own distribution channels.

Wanhu's Tetris handheld machine has good sales on the West Coast, but the market on the West Coast is still too small. Nick wants to sell the Tetris handheld machine to the whole of the United States and even Canada.

The R&D department of Wanhu China has developed the Tetris handheld machine to almost the extreme.

Games on the cube machine can not only fall from top to bottom, but also float from bottom to top.

Is this a reversal enough?

not enough!

After each block falls, the existing stacked blocks will move to the left or right, achieving a certain sense of scroll effect on a limited screen.

Um……

If you think the game is too difficult, the cube machine even has the concept of props. The blocks are piled up too high? Let's have a bomb.

"boom!!!!!!!!"

The reason is that the existing dot matrix screen has completely achieved the explosive effect.

In addition, although it is a little troublesome, you can replace the cassette.

"Snake Eats" is also a classic game on the cube machine.

A square head, a square brain, a square body is a snake composed of square blocks. Every time a square egg is swallowed, the body will increase by one square. When the snake body reaches a certain length, it will successfully enter the next level.

In addition to speeding up the next level, it will also increase the "walls" of various shapes to increase the difficulty of the game. It is also a classic game that can kill time.

Using limited elements, by formulating different rules, "number of" gameplay can emerge. This is the so-called "emergence theory".

"Shooting Blocks" is also a popular game on the block machine. Its prototype is a shooting game. Various blocks slowly fall from the top of the screen, press the left or right to move the turret. Press the attack key to shoot the block, fill the gaps in the falling blocks, and this row of blocks will disappear.

The game "Tank War" is probably the Tetris machine of Wanhu, and the first one developed is not the Tetris game.

The tank inside represents itself in the shape of a "convex" shape, while the local tank is directly below the "convex" and there is a block missing.

The up, down, left and right are responsible for moving, attacking keys.

Eliminate all enemy tanks to pass the level.

Local tanks can also move at will, while local tank bullets can touch each other and offset the bullets on their own.

"Table Pong" is a "tribute" to Atari's classic game "pong".

For the electronic game industry, "copying" the core gameplay is never considered copying. Can't I just say that if you have a shooting game?

joke!

If you have a shooting game a, I can have a shooting game b, but if I have a game a that is not only similar to the spirit but also looks like a son from the inside out, then it would be considered a copy.

Copying art design, copying names, and copying music is all considered copying, but copying core ideas is not considered copying.

The most basic element of the handheld console "Tetris" is just a large LCD pixel block. With this appearance, if there is an arcade, it is only a pure black square to form the game, so it can only be said that there is something wrong with their heads.

Therefore, in addition to "Tank War" and "Table Pong", there are many games with the core gameplay of "plagiarism" on Tetris handheld consoles.

For example, in "Space Frog", the space frog has no meaning to say good times in the fragrance of rice flowers, and it means reading a poem. Similar to "Space Invaders" in Namco's "Little Bee", the prototype of "Space Invaders", which is the enemy moving left and right in the sky, and below is a spaceship controlled by the player to destroy these alien monsters.

"Racing Car", the movement of intermittent "--------------" lines on both sides of the screen to express the sense of speed. The cars inside are all in the shape of "earth" and only have two lanes. There are several versions of this game, one version is to compete with computer players, and the other version is to control the car to avoid obstacles.

"Slot Machine" is the favorite gambling (harmony) game machine for the old man who quit gambling.

The gameplay is that the player presses the arrow key to press the size or color, and presses the attack key to bet.

"3-10" is small, "11-18" is large, and the three are the same color.

If you buy medium and large, you can increase by 100 points, and if you buy medium and the same color, you can increase by 500 points.

As the levels increase, the chance of winning decreases and the difficulty of the game increases.

"Both and Touch" uses up, down, left and right to control the direction, so that the player's own blocks match the opponent's three blocks. After adjustment, press the attack key to win.

In the game, the descent block changes in the middle, and as the level increases, the speed of the descent and frequency of the change will also become faster.

"Frog Crossing the River" is another poetic game, which is basically the same as the game of the same name launched by Konami on arcades and red and white machines. However, Kanami's "Frog Crossing the River" is in Japanese, and the frog Crossing the River from Wanhu Square Machine is in English, which is considered a small game of a slight move.

The gameplay is that the player controls the frog, that is, the black dot, avoid obstacles in the river, and from one end of the river to the other end of the river.

"Fighting the Devil" is basically the same as "Fighting the Gopher", which tests the player's reaction ability. The screen is divided into four parts. Players must use the fastest speed, press the up and down left and right keys to select, and press the attack key to explode.

"Boxing", the picture is a floor plan of a boxing ring. Because it is a large particle of dot matrix screen, the abstraction of a game requires players to exert extraordinary imagination.

The two boxers stand face to face, and the boxers are represented by four-frame horizontal blocks.

The squares at both ends of the horizontal will be swung when pressing the attack key, representing two fists.

Players must dodge their opponent's attacks and attack their opponents.

"Pushing Box", this game is only available on the latest block machine, because it needs blocks of different grayscales to indicate the position that needs to be pushed, with the box itself.

It's also a classic game.

If Tetris handheld consoles are only these games, Nick may not choose to resign from Parkinson and join Wanhu.

The reason he joined Wanhu is because the Tetris game console has a revolutionary online function in addition to its backlight!

Originally, the machine could only be played by one person, but others watched it.

And now there are social attributes.

Why do arcade games become popular? Why do home game consoles become popular?

Multiplayer games are a must-have.

Social is king!
Chapter completed!