"The Legend of Zelda" is a great game, and even in Jester's opinion, there is no doubt that this game has sold very hot in the history he was originally familiar with, with the top ten sales in FC in history. This game is even comparable to the Super Horse, which is unlikely to be reproduced in this world.

In later generations, he became one of the three treasures of Nintendo's family. Whether in the Japanese game circle or the European and American game circles, he highly praised the Zelda series.

But Jester still did not expect that once this game was released, it caused such a frenzy.

Just after "Famitong" published an article titled "The Legend of Zelda", especially Japanese players, they began to dream of this game. After nearly a month of testing and final modifications, Nintendo also made synchronous promotions in Japan and the United States during this month.

When it was almost the end of June, "The Legend of Zelda" was officially released.

It is worth mentioning that this is the first time that the same game has been released in Japan and the United States at the same time. Before, whether it was Atari, Mars Entertainment or Nintendo, one of the versions was first released. Seeing that the game had good sales and was very popular with players, it released another language version.

This time, Nintendo was obviously full of confidence in this game. It was held in Japan and the United States at the same time on the release date. Due to the time difference and Nintendo needs to deepen the intimacy of North American players for them, the release in the United States will be during the day, while the release in Japan will only be at night.

Compared with Japan in the early morning, the release of "The Legend of Zelda" was extremely popular, and even the Tokyo police had to mobilize police forces to maintain public order at the scene. However, in the United States, although it is in Times Square with the most traffic, it is still at the best time in the morning. Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda" press conference is also very evident.

It cannot be said that there are few people. Although the coverage rate of Nes is only one-percent of Dreambox, there are many people who like Nintendo games, especially the Western Fantasy-style RPG, which is one of the most popular game types for European and American players, can attract many people who are not Nintendo game players to participate.

But it cannot be said that there are many people. Compared with the launch conference of "Dawn" which Mars Entertainment opened not long ago, this is still an arcade game. Players can only try it out after the press conference, and cannot buy it directly. But even so, the number of people attending the conference at that time was beyond Jester's expectations. Even though they were asked to maintain order, it still caused congestion and congestion in Times Square.

However, the reason why classics are classics means that they can be spread through word of mouth.

Just like the classic theory "中コミ" mentioned by the old man Yamauchi. The mouth is the Chinese character, which refers to the mouth. The koji is the abbreviation of communication, which roughly means hearsay, or it can be understood as a rumor.

This is a very classic effect in the gaming industry. It was first proposed by Nintendo's leader Hiroshi Yamauchi. Everyone should know that all effects related to social phenomena are different from those of scientific effects. The scientific phenomenon effect is obtained through experiments and then calculated through accurate numerical formulas, but the social effect is not the case.

It is not that precise, it is just a habitual thing that happens when the conditions are met.

‘中コミ’ means that some excellent works were not noticed by the world at the beginning of their release, but as time goes by, the players’ good reputation gradually became popular. More classic things such as “Resident Evil I” on PS, “Pokemon Red/Green” on GB, “Taiko Master” on PS2 and “Made in Wario” on GBA.

However, as far as Jester knows, the first game that triggered this effect on a large scale was the game "Final Fantasy", which brought Square's death back to life.

In the history that Jester experienced, after "Final Fantasy" was successfully completed, Square has devoted all his efforts to bombard the advertising campaign in audio-visual media such as TV and magazines. Although he sold less than 100,000 cartridges in the first week of the first release on December 18, the high quality of the game triggered the word-of-mouth of the players. In the end, the sales of this game reached an astonishing 520,000 copies. Although it still cannot be compared with "Dqii" that appeared in the same year, it is enough to bring the dying square back to life.

This is a living example of ‘中コミ’.

Of course, in fact, according to the essence, Jester's copycat "Tetris" "Tetris" was also able to sell well with this effect.

Now, when "The Legend of Zelda" meets all the conditions for forming the "中コミ effect", plus Nintendo's confidence in it and its efforts to promote it, the big sale of "The Legend of Zelda" happened just like in history.

Twenty years later, Arakawa, who was then the head of Nintendo in North America, was interviewed. When recalling the most classic and fiercest era in the history of electronic games, he said with some emotion: "When our product Nes first arrived in the North American market, because of the strong competitors, there were not many of our games that could be used in comparison with them, so sales grew very slowly, and the market share was not even one-quarter of our competitors. In this case, although we were constantly encouraging ourselves and constantly motivating ourselves, and believed that we could definitely make a comeback, but facing the gap in market share, the employee's sense of decline is inevitable."

Arakawa really remembers this history. Although he was later swept out of Nintendo by his father-in-law due to some decision-making failure, he was full of respect for his father-in-law, a character that he could never avoid in the electronic game industry.

After he finished this paragraph, he took a sip of water and moistened his throat, and continued to say, "At that time, my father-in-law, Mr. Yamauchi, kept calling me across the ocean, and kept telling me how great the game Miyamoto was doing now, making me believe we can definitely turn over. I worked hard in that situation. At the beginning, no matter how hard I tried, the sales increase was very weak. No matter how many advertisements were, especially for us to sell game consoles, it would be futile without a good game, but after the official release of "The Legend of Zelda", everything became incredible."

Mi Arakawa's tone became a little awkward, and even his eyes showed an incredible look. The silver bar suddenly rose a little: "In the first week, sales can only be said to be average. Although game magazines or media and TV programs have a very high evaluation of our game, even "Game", which has a close relationship with Mars Entertainment, also rated our game as a high score of 39 points, and said that our game is a game that has created a new era of a kind of game, but our platform occupies too little. Even if everyone with Nes buys one, the sales will not be good."

Speaking of this period, the glorious years of Nintendo and Mars Entertainment were a matter of only a few glorious years, Arakawa was also talking about it, because when future generations look back on this past history, Nintendo really lived too much.

"I remember clearly that "The Legend of Zelda" had two extremes in Japan and the United States. Once our game was launched in Japan, it was highly sought after by players. It sold nearly 400,000 copies in the first week. You know, this is a very, very unfathomable result, but it is not the case in the United States. When I heard the data from Japan, I didn't even dare to tell the truth to my father-in-law. I had to exaggerate this number and tell my father-in-law twice. At that time, I said 120,000 copies. In fact, less than 60,000 copies. At that time, I was thinking that this time it really failed in the Japanese market."

As he said that, Miya Arakawa also laughed, "But beyond my expectations, just a week later, the sales of "The Legend of Zelda" suddenly began to explode, and there was no warning. You know, we did not particularly increase the promotion of "The Legend of Zelda" at that time, because we had done our best to promote this game before. At that time, the posters of "The Legend of Zelda" could be seen anywhere in major cities in North America, even small and medium-sized cities. As for TV advertisements, they were broadcast every day on major TV networks."

"We only sold 60,000 copies in the first week, but just over half of the second week, all the 400,000 cassettes we prepared in North America were sold out. I had to call Japan and ask them to deliver the goods immediately. At that time, Japan was not very convinced. They said that the total sales volume of your nes reported to the headquarters last time was only 500,000 units. Why are the 400,000 units sold so quickly now?"

Mina Arakawa smiled and continued, "I realized at this time that not only our new game "The Legend of Zelda", but even our Nes suddenly started a blowout hot sale. In less than a week, it sold more than 200,000 units. You know, we had not sold 500,000 units in the previous six months. As soon as the news came back to Japan, I later heard from my father-in-law that Mr. Yamauchi, who had always been serious, was so excited that he burst into tears like a child."
Chapter completed!