Which game is hotter than the main game, which work will you think of for the first time?
It's not new for the game to become a separate series, but the spin-offs that were originally just foils have brought an impact that rivals or even surpasses the canon, which is not something that can be seen often. This is mainly because companies that have the ability to launch a series of derivative works are generally financially strong and will not allow the quality of their signature canon to deteriorate... But there are exceptions to everything, after all, the game industry is so big, it is normal to have a few swords to go sideways, right?
This article will focus on three influential spin-offs/spin-offs of Red Alert, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Persona, to take you through the past and present lives of these games.
>>> Red Alert: "Tiberia" without Tiberia
Many people know that the famous "Red Alert" is a sequel to the Command and Conquer series, but from which one it began to spin off, and how different it is from the main story... I'm afraid it's another muddle.
The famous Westwood studio didn't start with RTS in the beginning, but did Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG. After being acquired by Virgin Group, Westwood, a full-fledged science fiction fan, took a fancy to Dune, one of the world's most expensive IPs held by Virgin, and Virgin was also thinking about how to play the value of IP, so the two sides hit it off and made "Dune 2" that laid the foundation for the future RTS game genre.
Dune 2, however, is a hard-to-pick up, high-threshold game, and the fast-paced RTS gameplay is far from the mystical style of Dune's original book. This led to the embarrassing situation of "Dune 2" "applauding but not calling", and could not make up for the sky-high copyright cost brought about by the blockbuster IP of "Dune", so Both Ximu and Virgin were not very satisfied. Nishiki later decided to distill the industry-recognized setting from Dune 2 to make his own game, which was the original Command and Conquer.
That's why you'll see a lot of very "dune" stuff in Command & Conquer. For example, the spices in Dune that give humans superpowers are the only designated hard currency in the universe, and in Command & Conquer they become the alien black technology mineral Tiberia; in Command and Conquer, there is a world of difference between the two camps of GDI and NOD and the building tree, just as in "Dune" Hakennan and the Erridy family have completely different winning ideas; as for the pure black war fog in Dune 2, which is hailed as the classic, it becomes "Warcraft" after absorbing the advantages of Warcraft. Command & Conquer's Black-Gray Two-Stage War Fog.
These classic gameplay, combined with sci-fi settings, made the original Command & Conquer and its expansion pack a success, and then Nishiki took advantage of the hot iron to launch the "Red Alert" (Red Alert 95), based on the Cold War-era United States and the Soviet Union. Red Alert takes place before command and conquer's Tiberium mine arrives on Earth, and the series villain Kane goes from Brotherhood leader to mastermind behind world wars. At that time, the U.S. market was widely popular with science fiction and fantasy RTS, and "Red Alert", taken from the real Cold War theme, naturally succeeded in creating a new world.
These designs, which came to be hailed as classics, propelled Command & Conquer, Red Alert, and their expansion packs to become one of the best-selling computer games in the United States at the time. At its peak, Westwood even accounted for about 5% of the U.S. PC game industry, so much so that EA spent more than $100 million to acquire Westwood in that era, which is equivalent to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard today.
Speaking of EA, everyone should know the story of EA forcibly dismantling Westwood Studios, and many players are not very satisfied with EA's approach. But what you may not know is that "Red Alert 2", which is widely circulated in China and even known as Nishiki's song, is actually the product of EA's forced operation.
Originally, Nishiki intended to continue the plot of "Red Alert 2" after the original "Red Alert", continuing the story of Kane manipulating the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War era and paving the way for his own ambitions. However, EA forcibly separated the Red Alert series from Command & Conquer, asking the development team that had been renamed Westwood Pacific at the time to make Red Alert a complete parallel time and space, so the second generation of Yuri and Kane really had nothing to do with each other, just looked alike.
Fortunately, The old foundation of Westwood is still there, so "Red Alert 2" is still a well-known classic, and the bridge section where the Soviet big head soldiers parachuted into New York to blow up the Statue of Liberty has also been talked about by domestic players for a long time. Nishiki, who had already lost a lot of personnel at this time, then followed EA's orders to develop a new spin-off work" "Command and Conquer: General", introducing a new Chinese and GLA camp in the RTS framework they were good at, which was well received by players and the media... Then the next second, Westwood was directly merged by EA into the Los Angeles division, IP and technology were completely annexed, and the core members were almost lost, and the name Westwood disappeared into the long river of history.
Westwood's "corpse," EA's Los Angeles division, continued to produce Red Alert 3 and Command & Conquer 3&4 over the next decade, but it didn't spark the market response that year.
Honestly, the quality of these games is really good, especially Red Alert 3 in 2008 with excellent water effects and exquisite 3D modeling to capture a lot of players, and today there are still many people playing Red Alert 3's PvP mode or making excellent Mods like Corona. Command & Conquer 4 brings a comprehensive upgrade to the gameplay, UI and combat rhythm of the entire series, and although it has been accused by many fans of being "not fun", its positive spirit of change is still commendable.
Unfortunately, everyone knows that even if the boom caused by "Red Alert" as a sequel is still continuing, The era of Westwood will never return.
>>> Heroes: It's really more famous than the main story
Also the IP demise caused by corporate mergers and acquisitions and equity changes, the history of the "Heroes of Might and Magic" series can be much more tortuous than that of "Red Alert", I will try to introduce it in plain and simple language.
The earliest "Magic Gate" was actually close to the "Dungeons & Dragons" desktop rules, sales and responses were good, and works such as "Baldur's Gate" were classified as exemplary works of early RPGs, but they did not make a very large-scale wave in the 90s.
Developer New World Computing later produced The King's Gift, and wanted to try adding strategic elements of army management to the Dungeons & Dragons-style Western fantasy setting and role-playing gameplay. The game itself is rudimentary, taking about 10 hours to complete (a very short process in the 90s), but the media and players gave it a good review, which also planted a seed in the hearts of New World Computing:
Can you add a strategic element to Might and Magic?
Five years after the release of The King's Gift, the original Heroes of Might and Magic was born.
Strictly speaking, "Heroes Invincible" is actually a strategically played "Magic Gate", nothing special... But New World Computing's grasp of the balance of the game is first-class in the industry, after all, making the hero too strong is meaningless to manage the army, and making the hero too weak will be dominated. This delicate balance captures the player's cool spot, who doesn't like to cultivate several powerful heroes, lead an army of fantasy creatures to attack the city, and eventually become the king of the world?
There are many spin-offs of "Might and Magic", such as "Crusaders of Might and Magic", "Warriors of Might and Magic", "Legend of Might and Magic", etc., but none of these twins can match the sales and reputation of "Heroes". Soon the Heroes series became a rising star in the game industry, earning 500,000 sales between 1995 and 1997 with just two games, equivalent to a quarter of the 11-year-old Might and Magic sequel.
The entire Heroes series strictly follows the principle of "different stories that occur by year under the same worldview", and the most influential works should be the 3rd generation. Presumably, many post-80s and post-90s players should have a deep memory of "Heroes 3: The Restoration of Erasia", after all, it has indeed led a wave of Wargames in the United States and Japan.
The graphics in 1999 were first-class, with 3D modeling to 2D hand-drawn exquisite cityscapes that amaze players, and elements such as snowy mountains, rivers, forests, and grasslands on the large map are even more scenic and fascinating. The game's plot revolves around 7 large battles, 8 races (factions) with completely different styles, the plot is intertwined and foreshadowing, and each race has 7 basic classes that can be upgraded and 2 major categories of heroes to recruit... Such an exaggerated content richness can be regarded as "a lot of tubes" today, not to mention the later launch of the "Doomsday Blade" and "Shadow of Death" expansion packs added 14 new battles.
All of this brilliance came to an abrupt end in Heroes 4: The huge success of Generation 3 made the publisher 3DO have some unrealistic illusions, trying to make the development team use the same cost as Generation 3 to make Heroes 4 a 3D game, and also wanted to make the entire Heroes 4 change dramatically, so as to recover its huge debts.
It turns out that it is difficult for a woman to cook without rice. "Heroes Invincible 4" allows heroes who can only collect equipment and release magic to join the battlefield directly, but because "Heroes Invincible" allows many armies to be stacked in the same grid, it is common for heroes to be killed by the corps in a face-to-face; in addition, the production team also "intimately" brings more than 40 kinds of optional transfers to the heroes, but in fact, most of the classes are glass cannons, and the players' real options are not many, which seems that most of the design is redundant.
Of course, Heroes 4 also has advantages, six very different battles tell six different stories with ups and downs and twists and turns, and the magnificent soundtrack makes the game full of epic feeling. In order to watch the plot, there are even many players who have to endure poor gameplay to complete the game... But that doesn't help Heroes 4 save its reputation, after all, for a game, whether it's fun or not is the most important thing.
The sales of "Heroes 4" have completely broken 3DO's capital chain, and New World Computing, which has long been acquired by 3DO, has disappeared into history, and the final "takeover man" is the Ubisoft that everyone is familiar with.
In fact, Ubisoft's acquisition of the entire "Magic Gate" IP only cost a mere $1.3 million, but the French potatoes at that time were still in the stage of "Ubisoft production, must be a boutique", so Ubisoft, who was not sure of the appetite of fans, decided to reproduce the glory of "Heroes 3" in a high-definition 3D mode, which is the series reboot "Heroes 5". This stimulated fans who were impressed with Heroes 3, so when the budget-strapped but aggressive Heroes 6 came out, all that awaited it was a violent death.
At present, Ubisoft's attitude towards Heroes 7 and the canon "Might and Magic X" is also very simple, that is, let the production team fully listen to the players' opinions to develop the game: what race, what class, what hero and even what battle are voted by the community players, and the development team is only responsible for making the player's favorite game at the lowest cost. I don't want to judge the good or bad of this design, but I just want to sincerely wish the Heroes series to cheer up and bring players a new experience of wargame.
>>> Persona: Not a very everyday routine
Many people know that "Persona" is a sequel to "The Rebirth of the True Goddess", but what you may not know is that "The Rebirth of the True Goddess" is actually a very complex series, with various branches and derivative works intertwined, and it is no problem to use "Peach and Plum Full Hall" to describe it, "Persona" is just the most famous one.
In the early 1987, Atlus's Digital Demon Story Goddess Rebirth 1&2, released on the FC Red and White Machine, was an adaptation of Nishitani's science fiction novel Digital Demon Story. Later, On this basis, Atlus magically changed his own original "True Goddess Rebirth", which laid the main tone of the entire series: the protagonist of both good and evil, the fusion of Eastern and Western demon legends, the confrontation of chaos and order, and the painting style full of mystery... and the war-torn wasteland of Tokyo.
This is a strong contrast with the hot sword and magic JRPG in the Japanese market that year, and naturally it has also been recognized by many players. However, Atlus felt that "True Goddess Rebirth" was too serious, so he moved the idea of matryoshka and decided to carry out magic modification on the basis of "True Goddess Rebirth If", which is the origin of the original "Goddess Anecdote".
In fact, the earliest "Persona" also has a rather brain-intensive system complexity and a relatively slow plot rhythm today, and the main difference with "True Goddess Rebirth" is that the world has not completely collapsed, and the teammates are a group of normal people (which seem to be abnormal). "Persona" involves a lot of micro-horror sections such as urban weird talk and campus legends, and replaces the protagonist group with humans with special abilities, so as to intersperse the modern daily life and even the love drama that players like to see in the hunting plot, so that "Persona" can be more acceptable to the general public than "True Goddess Rebirth".
1996's "Persona" caught up with a good time, because the Japanese and North American markets are popular "Iron Fist", "Resident Evil" and other refreshing and exciting games, the style and gameplay are different and slightly hardcore "Persona" is naturally sought after.
Atlus had a lot of personnel changes after the end of Persona 2, with the heads of supervision, art, music, etc. being replaced, so the entire series was fractured between generations 1/2 and 3/4/5. The main tone of the modern "Persona" has been fixed since the 3rd generation, focusing on the use of RPG+AVG mode to depict the dark side of daily life, and the theme is also limited to the high school campus. In addition, under the new production team's pen, the front and villain characters of the "Persona" series have become more and more distinct and characteristic, and players can easily impress different characters - this is quite important for a story-based JRPG, so the 3/4/5 generation of "Persona" has also been well received by the global market.
The success of the Persona series didn't stop Atlus from reinventing his game. In addition to continuing to produce a series of uncountable derivative works such as "Demon Summoner", "Heavenly Demon Transformation", "The Last Bible", "Demon Son", "Demon God Rebirth" for the "True Goddess Rebirth" series, it has also developed a sequel to the "Goddess Tales", such as "Q", "Arena", "Hot Dance", "Chaos: Phantom Attacker", etc., covering a variety of themes such as music games, page games, fighting, mobile games and even puzzle games, which shows that Atlus is experienced in exploring the potential of IP. I was a little tired of reporting the name of the dish...
Incidentally, in fact, "Persona" is only a subtitle of the original "Persona", and most of the subsequent series does not contain these five words. However, early translators mistakenly thought that the "Persona" written in front of "Persona" was the main title, so domestic players were influenced by this to call the entire "Persona" series "Persona". This mistake made Sega later "mistake is wrong" to write "Persona" officially," which is also an interesting event in the history of games.
For us Steam users, one of the most noteworthy is the "Persona 4 Invincible Ultimate Back bridge fall", which is already released on March 17, which is "P4AU" or "P4U2".
"P4AU" is Atlus and the fighting game for many years of "Evil Gear", "Wings Apocalypse" developer Arc System Works jointly developed the work, first released on the arcade platform in 2012, and then landed on the PS3/Xbox 360 platform, receiving media and players acclaim, this steam version is a port that supports high-resolution and 60FPS graphics. At present, this game also landed on the Shanguo Mall, and after pairing with an exclusive -15% coupon, the game can be collected at a price of 135 yuan.
Developed in a slightly older format, this game tells a new story after the end of the 4th generation plot in the form of a traditional visual novel, which is very pleasing to players who like the old-fashioned two-dimensional narrative method. In addition, the popular characters in the 3 generations have also appeared in "P4AU", and the big scene of the two generations of 37 characters fighting with arc system works' sophisticated fighting game skills, I am afraid that it can only be described by the term "double kitchen ecstasy". The most important thing is that even if you are handicapped, this game also has a caring automatic combat function for you to watch the plot...
Whether you're a veteran fan of P4AU who has never had a chance to play P4AU, a new fan of Persona 5 Royal Edition, or a passerby who has never been exposed to the series but has always heard about it, you can try this unique and interesting work.
>>> conclusion
There are actually many spin-off game series in the history of the game that can be regarded as "success", such as "Legend of the Sacred Sword", "Kingdom Heart" to "Final Fantasy", "Judgment" to "Dragon among Men", "Great Snake Matchless" to "Three Kingdoms Matchless", "Neil" to "Cavalry on the Back of the Dragon", "DQB" to "Dragon Quest" and so on, which cannot be counted for a while and a half.
It is not difficult for everyone to see that most of the spin-off series of games that have survived to this day are from Japanese manufacturers. This may be because Japanese manufacturers have insisted on cultivating their own golden signs since the 90s, and the main selling points of Japanese games are plot, characters and world views, and derivative works are naturally more successful today than in Europe and the United States.
Of course, a good quality spin-off game may not be successful, but a poor quality sequel will definitely die. I hope that manufacturers can continue to launch more excellent works in the future, whether it is derivative, canonical or new IP, as long as you have fun, we will pay money, it is so simple.