Jester turned his attention to the last item, the home machine.

This is also the one he doesn't worry about the least, and it is also his greatest capital to compete for the world in the future.

Atari is now laying off major employees. The new boss Jack Tramel is determined to transform Atari into a computer company, which has long caused dissatisfaction among a large number of employees in the company, especially those hardware engineers involved in the development of VCS7200, who are extremely angry with it.

What Tramel did was almost the same as destroying their children with his own hands!

VCS7200 is actually one of the best home consoles in this era. In the ranking of home consoles by IGN, a famous gaming website in later generations, VCS7200 and FC were included in the ranks of the ten most powerful hosts in history.

If you use a lot of money to lure them to continue to develop brand new home consoles that are not inferior to VCS7200, and even have to prove to Tramel that you are wrong.

I believe that those Atari's hardware research and development elites will flock to it, which is enough to allow themselves to gain a large number of the best hardware engineers of this era.

It is also enough to develop a home game console that is not inferior to FC.

Besides, there was also the memory of Sega's MS console in his mind, Jester thought about it with some ease.

Sega Master-Sysyem, referred to as Sega MS for short, is a very outstanding eight-bit host. In terms of performance, the advantages of MS over FC are crushing. To give an inappropriate example, just like the PS4's 1080P vs XBO's 720P.

Although this home console was released in 1986, and just two years later, Sega released the brand new MD (MEGA-DRIVE) console, which is the famous Sega fifth generation, this is not because the MS is not excellent enough, but because Ren Hell has too strong advantages in FC. Sega has to enter the era of sixteen consoles in advance to fight Ren Hell.

Jester's last family once had a Sega MS console. Later, when he became big, he also studied the architecture because of curiosity. Of course, he also studied FC. Although he was not very proficient, if he had a large number of hardware research and development elites, it would be difficult to make a home machine that was not inferior to FC in terms of functionality by the end of the year.

Moreover, the functions of FC are not very powerful in this era.

As for the game, Jester frowned.

He really has to do it because this game is the key to winning the eight-bit computer era, but to make your own console version, you have to wait at least halfway through the development of the console, and basically all the parameters are clear.

He has many choices for other games.

But until his console really hit sales, there will not be many powerful game companies that will make games for his platform.

Therefore, in the early stage, he could only rely on himself, or his own company.

This period of time may be several months or six months, and he must produce enough classic games.

Super Horse is a model, Conra is a model, Shamanro Snake is a model, Green Corps is a model...

Jester wrote one game name after another on the letter paper, and if it was inappropriate, he crossed it out.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for Jester to stop.

Six models, which are the number of first-time games he set for himself. There must be two of them that can cause a sensation in total. Four models are slightly worse, but they must also be fun.

Two to three new games will be released every month in the future, one of which is the finale.

Therefore, I cannot put all the most classics in the starting lineup from the beginning. It is also very unwise to do so without benefiting the surplus value.

"Super Mario" and "Contra" are two sensational masterpieces that Jace has made a specific start. As for the Sharmanro Snake, Green Corps, Red Fortress, etc., although they are excellent enough, they cannot be regarded as the starter.

The founder of modern electronic games, "Super Mario", which created all the rules of the game, and "Contra", which is known as the scroll-type clearing game textbook, these two games are enough to ignite his console sales.

When his consoles are large enough, those third-party game manufacturers and talented independent game studios will flock to him.

And he can be sure that if he could release his console in the early 1985, Ren Hell would definitely not be his opponent in the North American market at least.

When they came late with their NES in October, the North American market had already been almost occupied by themselves. After playing "Super Horse" and "Contra", which had an iconic status in the history of video games, who was still interested in their "Donkey Kong" and "Mario Brothers" and "Still-screen games?

Please, it’s the world of scroll games now.

As for their super Mario, Jester smiled indifferently. If he dared to give up, he would dare to sue him, and he would definitely win.

You said you developed it independently? You are cheating! I didn’t see that Mars Entertainment was released on sale half a year ago? And your similarity is so high, you said you didn’t copy it, who are you cheating?

If Ren Hell and Miyamoto Shigeru want to be ruined, Jester wouldn't mind sending them away.

As for counterattacking the Japanese market?

Jester smiled, not to mention the popular "Super Mario", he also has a game that is known as the three major Japanese RPGs in his later generations.

Even if you don’t have enough time and can’t make three models, even if you can only make two models, even if the Japanese support local companies, they can still gain a lot of share.

Moreover, whether it is this era or the future era, the home game of home computers will always be North America. Whoever can dominate North America will dominate the world.

This is an industry consensus.

but……

Jester continued to write on the letter paper. These games have to be developed until the parameters of his home computer are basically determined before they can be developed. Now even if you want to do it, it is impossible.

But if you create a game company yourself, it is impossible for the company to make a living by relying solely on this "American Cube".

With so many employees recruited, hardware R&D personnel have their own jobs, and software R&D must also have their own tasks.

Jester doesn’t have many choices. Before his console is released, he can only make money by making interesting and fun arcade games.

As for PC games? Jester thought for a moment and shook his head. Although he told me about the idea of ​​mine-sweeping in advance and asked John Carmack to do it, that was just a means for him to win over Carmack, the genius. Moreover, before the emergence of 3D technology, games on PC were not much competitive with console games, and the market was pitiful.

And even if the PC enters the 3D era, the console will follow up immediately. In the field of gaming, the gap between PC and dedicated gaming consoles is too big.

At least eighty-eight years ago, Jester did not intend to enter the PC gaming industry in a large scale.

There is nothing else, the PC's functions are not allowed.

To put it bluntly, even the smooth reel movement on a PC has not been completed yet. It was not until more than four years later that John Carmack technically overcomes this difficulty.

As a Carmack fan back then, Jester knew how to solve the biggest difficulty in designing games on PC, "smooth scroll movement", otherwise he would not have wanted to do Super Horse on PC now at the beginning, but the question is, why did he do this?

Before, I wanted to do Super Horse on PC because I had no conditions and didn’t realize it, but now I realize it, why does he still do this?

Let PCs compete with gaming consoles for the market?

How could Jester do such a self-destructive thing?

What game do you do?

Jester was thinking hard. First of all, the team he recruited was a new team after all, and high-difficulty games were definitely not suitable. We should first make some simple games, but we became familiar with our colleagues in interesting games, and then we could enter to a higher level of difficulty.

So, some scroll games were mercilessly cut off by Jester.

It’s not that these games are not good enough, nor that they can’t be done, but that they are not suitable.

Then there is only the still picture left.

The so-called still picture means that the background of the game is fixed, such as "American Square" made by Jester before. In contrast, the scroll passes the level, which means that as the characters move, the background of the picture will be scrolled smoothly like the scroll, such as "Super Horse".

What is scrolled left and right is called horizontal scrolling, and what is scrolled up and down is called vertical scrolling.

Don’t look at this technology, it’s not very conspicuous. Atari’s PONG was the first real arcade machine in 1974. It was not until 1980 that Atari’s best designer Eugene Jarvis solved the problem of smooth scrolling background images on the arcade machine and created an epoch-making game - "The Defender".

Eugene Jarvis himself won the GDC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 for this achievement.

Perhaps many people have never heard of his name, but he is the fifth designer to win this honor, which shows how high his status is.

All the four previous names are well-known in the history of the game: Will Wright in the first year, the father of the Sims, the second year, the father of Sonic, the third year, the fourth year, the hardware god, Mark Seney in the fourth year, the younger brother of Jester, and the one he won afterwards, if you are a DND or Western role-playing game enthusiast, you will definitely hear his name, Richard Garrett, nicknamed "King of Britain", the designer of "Genesis" and the creator of Origin-Systems.

"Still scene..."

Jester frowned. This type of game is authoritative in Japan, especially Ren Hell. When their "Donkey Kong" was popular in the United States, they made more than 125 million US dollars a year with just this arcade game.

Even now, Donkey Kong is the most popular arcade game in the United States now.

Which one should I choose to fight against Donkey Kong?

"The Nuggets"? "The Bomb Man"?

Jester shook his head. It was not because these two games were not good. These two games were enough to compete with Donkey Kong. But these two games were released this year. As for whether they were released or not, Jester was not clear, but he knew that even if HUDSON was not released, their completion was already very high. Making these two games would obviously cause a car crash.

After these two models were eliminated, Jester continued to think. To be honest, he didn't play too many games with still pictures, especially this kind of similar to Donkey Kong.

"Brother Snowman?"

After about ten minutes, Jester saw a small snowman decoration on the table. He suddenly thought of this game in the East Asia project that was first released on the arcade platform in 1990s and then transplanted to FC. Then, his eyebrows were stretched out instantly.

The Snowman Brothers are known as the pinnacle of still-screen pass games. They created the Snowman Pass mode and had a great impact on many games in later generations, such as Rainbow Island and vacuum cleaner machines. Using this game to fight against Shigeru Miyamoto's "Donkey Kong" when the game design was not yet mature.

After writing the name of "The Snowman Brothers" on paper, Jester breathed a sigh of relief and his expression became a little relaxed.
Chapter completed!