There is such a game series, it can ignore the law of the market, ignore the trend, and even ignore the changes in the taste of players, thirty years as a day in accordance with their own style to do the game, and has always been prosperous, the big sale, still maintain a desperate sales record, defy all the descendants, it is the world's strongest video game known as the "Mario series", and the protagonist "Mario" is also the greatest game character in the history of the game, there is no one, to know that this man once stood in the ruins , single-handedly saved the entire video game world.
A bloody case triggered by ET The first game industry crashed
In 1982, the center of the world's game industry was still in the United States, Atari was the industry hegemon at that time, their "Atari 2600" was dominating the video game market, and players all over the world were crazy about it.
And like all emerging industries, the early video game industry was full of profiteering, speculation and myths: young developers wrote a new game, there were a large number of hungry players to pay for it, and a new rich and handsome man was born!
Atari host of the year
Such a format soon attracted a large number of investors, brave capital began to pour in, the video game industry entered a barbaric growth period, a large number of new games suddenly appeared on the market, but most of them were of inferior quality, much the same, like a scam to consume the feelings of players, at that time the practitioners did not realize the existence of the crisis, full of "to make the most games at the fastest speed!" Because they always sell! ”
Jobs was also a game developer at Atari
In 1982, Atari spent $21 million to buy the game adaptation rights of "ET", with the fame of the movie, Atari believed that the game would be a hot sale anyway, but it was also subject to ultra-high licensing fees, Atari could only reduce the development funds as much as possible, even so Atari must ensure more than 4 million copies of sales to make money, and in order to catch up with the Christmas schedule, Atari only gave the game 5 weeks of development time, and finally this "shortest development cycle in history" game became recognized" The worst game ever".
This is the game screen of "ET", and the image of this ET has to be said to be very bunker
"ET", which was regarded as a Christmas gift, was originally highly anticipated, but in the end its inferior quality caused serious damage to players, and players angrily exclaimed, "This is simply a graffiti for a 3-year-old child!" "Naked garbage!" "That's a scam!" "I've called the police"...
Et reportedly produced a total of 5 million copies that year, but only sold more than 1 million copies, and the legend that the remaining 3.5 million games were transported to the desert by Atari to landfill, and it was not until this year that they were dug out of the ground.
People dug up ET from the desert that had been buried for 30 years.
A lot of ET can still work
ET has provoked players' long-standing anger at inferior games, causing a serious chain reaction, people began to refuse to buy all games because they were almost all insincere scams, under the pressure of accusations and pressure, the sales of game products began to fall sharply, Stores in the United States have begun to take down these "e-waste" indiscriminately, and Atari, which had an operating income of up to $2 billion in 1982, lost $536 million in 1983 and soon declared bankruptcy.
Atari was brilliant for only 5 years
Later generations called this event the "Atari Shock" or "The Great Collapse of the Game Industry", the emerging industrial bubble burst, video games suffered a heavy blow, standing in the ruins, people began to think about the future of the game industry, or whether the game industry has a future, people at that time were really very skeptical about this, many American newspapers pessimistically believed that "the game industry will not want to recover in ten years!" ”
Popeye's little stand-in Donkey Kong is just beginning to emerge
Let's pull the time back to before the big crash, in 1980, the first golden age of the game industry, Nintendo has been involved in the video game industry for nearly 3 years, and has achieved nothing, Shigeru Miyamoto also came to Nintendo for 3 years as an artist, and finally under the promotion of the old president Yamauchi, he won the opportunity to preside over the development of the game for the first time, he was ordered to develop a game with the theme of "Popeye".
Former president Yuki Yamauchi led Nintendo into the game industry in 1977
The main content of this game is consistent with the cartoon, the heroine Oliver is snatched away again by the big bad guy Pluto, the player has to control Popeye to rescue his girlfriend, the big bad guy will stand on the high ground and constantly throw the barrel downwards, and the player will climb the ladder while marching to the high platform... However, when the game development was about to end, Nintendo Usa had bad news, they could not buy the rights to Popeye, and the characters in the game had to be redone.
Shigeru Miyamoto was forced to replace the big bad guy Pluto with a gorilla, the heroine Oliver into a blonde beauty, and Popeye was replaced by a short "Italian carpenter", this little carpenter wore red suspender pants, a blue top, a red hat, and a big beard under the big nose, and I am afraid that many players have already thought of it, yes, this character is Mario who later became famous in the world, and his debut game is this Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong game screen
Once launched in 1981, Donkey Kong was an astonishing success in North America, selling more than 60,000 units (arcade machines) in one year and generating a profit of $120 million, becoming Nintendo's first masterpiece. Through this work, people also met "Mario" for the first time, but at that time he was also called "JumpMan", that is, "Jump Man", his name was officially determined because once Nintendo in the United States was holding a meeting, the landlord Mario Segale suddenly broke in and asked them to pay the rent immediately, and the crowd immediately decided to let this "always played to death" little jumper called "Mario"!
Mario's original painting in Donkey Kong still has a strong shadow of Popeye
As for Mario's image, Shigeru Miyamoto said that at that time, he also considered "what if it is on fire?" "So the character image should strive to be distinct, there is a strong degree of recognition, but at that time the imaging technology was very limited, the mouth is difficult to perform, so it was put on a big beard, the hair is difficult to highlight the personality, so I put on a certain red hat, the torso in order to let the hands and legs can be distinguished, only added the setting of suspender pants, so that the color of the hands and legs can be distinguished, it is in this kind of opportunity, Mario's image was established.
The earliest human design
However, in the first few years of Mario's debut, he was not popular, he could only run the dragon set in his own arcade works, and even made a cameo appearance as a major villain in "Donkey Kong 2", which is also the only time Mario has played a villain so far.
Mario was the only time he was a villain
Mario grabbed Donkey Kong and put him in a cage
The era of the Nintendo FC rising from the ruins is coming
In 1983, the game industry was in the midst of the Great Depression, people were full of doubts about the future of the industry, there was no game that could prove to mankind what more interesting things these pixel squares could do, the game industry was still stuck in the legacy of the Atari era, a lot of money and businesses had begun to withdraw from this market, the game industry was undergoing a sharp recession, or a fierce reshuffle, and soon the center of the world game industry would begin a major shift.
FC
Domestic bully
Nintendo saw the market gap left after the fall of Atari, and released its own host FC (Family Computer), that is, "red and white machine", and there is a louder copycat in China called "Little Bully"! Nintendo believes that humans still need video games, but they need better games, but in the first two years of FC's release, although it has better graphics and more exquisite games, it has not been groundbreaking enough overall, and people have not seen any signs of the rebirth of the game industry.
The first game in which Mario starred, Brother Mary
Mario first starred in the game in 1983, and Brother Mary landed on FC as the first installment, achieving good results, selling more than 1.6 million units, and players remembered the resounding name for the first time. However, this work does not have much superiority in the system, similar to "Donkey Kong", that is, in a scene of constantly dodging enemies and collecting gold coins, but Mario's brother "Louis" and the future main enemy "Little Turtle" are all debuting in this work, and Mario's clothes are also reversed, becoming blue suspender pants and red tops, which has become a mainstream setting in later series, looking very much like a "plumber".
Many of the settings in the Mario series appear in this game
And Mario is about to reach the pinnacle of his life in his next work, completely changing the world game landscape.
Super Mario Bros. arrives The game industry ushers in redemption
"At that time, I only thought about selling about 1.5 million copies, but I didn't expect to sell tens of millions of copies!" When Shigeru Miyamoto later recalled, he excitedly said, "It's all lucky!" ”
Master Shigeru Miyamoto received GDC's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007
But where is a "lucky" explanation? According to incomplete statistics, "Super Mario Bros." sold a total of 40.24 million copies worldwide, has been holding the throne of the world's best-selling game for more than 20 years, decorating the dreams of generations of players, until 2006 was surpassed by the viral spread of "Wii Sports" 80 million sales, but the two games are not an order of magnitude in terms of influence, "Super Mario Bros. " is a completely world-changing work, it redefined the infinite possibilities of video games.
Super Mario Bros. is born
You know, before 1985, video games were still firmly tied to a small monitor, and the characters could only move and adventure within the screen-sized scene, and after playing, they could switch to the next scene, and the game's world seemed so cramped.
For the first time, Super Mario Bros. breaks the shackles of the screen and introduces the revolutionary "True Horizontal Scroll" technology, where the characters of the game can continue to move forward, as if they can go beyond the screen, smoothly feel the changes in the game world, and constantly enjoy various surprises! The concept of game space was suddenly greatly expanded, as if the possibilities were infinite overnight, and video games ushered in a great liberation.
The world's most famous opening scene
The pioneering use of side scrolls gives video games endless possibilities (this screen is a commemorative image of Mario's 25th anniversary, and the question mark blocks have all become 25)
"Super Mario Bros." also established for the first time the setting of the character to "go from left to right", which became the golden rule of the horizontal game in the next 10 years, and later "Contra", "Double Dragon" and so on, although many researchers tried to interpret it and prove its significance, but in the author's opinion, this may be just a simple accident.
For the first time, Super Mario Bros. intentionally added a "hidden" bonus, and Cliffy B, the producer of Gears of War, recalled in "Game Movie", "When I once jumped up to an invisible block, that is, the hidden brick with a prize in it, my brain exploded, and for the first time I knew that there was something hidden in the game!" ”
The first game to "hide something" in the game
And the addition of many feature-rich props, such as eating mushrooms that will become larger, flowers that will set fireballs, etc., make the fun of the game multiply, endless changes, with arcade-level graphics, exquisite level design, first-class operation feel, moving BGM, the first generation of "Super Mario Bros." has a near-perfect degree of completion, and to this day it is long-lasting, people do not need to make any modifications to him, you can fully enjoy the fun, the word obsolete seems to be completely invalid for this work!
"The first time I played Super Mario Bros., I felt like it was completely different, brand new, perfect!" Reggie, the current president of Nintendo USA, still remembers the shock of playing Mario for the first time. To this day, there are still a large number of players every year in an effort to break through the records of "Super Mario Bros." The fastest clearance time of the right way and the evil way is still being refreshed every year, on July 1, 2014, Blubbler, a foreign player who holds the world record for the fastest clearance of "Super Mario Bros." Shortens the time of this record by about 1 minute again, and the current world record is 4 minutes 57 seconds 69 (with jumping off, using bugs and all other means).
Mario's image is constantly plumping up
"I think Super Mario Bros. is a milestone because before it, there was a big question mark hanging from the topic of 'will video games continue to be popular?'" Rob Pardo, former vice president of Blizzard, said, "After the crash, Nintendo took Mario to the scene and said, we can make video games pop again! Then everything changed, and in 1985, FC became one of the most successful consoles in history as Super Mario Bros. began to sell, and the center of the world game industry began to shift, and under the management of Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, the Japanese firmly controlled this center for 20 years, and the game industry also went to unparalleled glory during this period.
Mario's world is cool these days
epilogue:
To this day, Mario is still the most influential character in the video game industry, a well-deserved brother, in front of him Sneek, Kratos, Sergeant Major, Alsace and other descendants can only bow to the wind, Mario has long surpassed the limitations of a game character, become a symbol of culture, become a representative of video games. The entire "Mario Series of Games" (including "Mario Kart", "Mario Golf" and other works) has accumulated sales of 500 million units, far ahead of the second place "Pokemon" of 150 million, it has to be said that it is a real monster-level figure in the game industry.
Mario is an immortal fairy tale in the hearts of generations of players