In 1972, Pong Arcade was released, a coin-operated arcade using the integrated circuit TTL.
In 1973, Pong arcade machines came to Japan. Tai Dong believed that there was no market for this extremely expensive game, and gave up the opportunity to exclusively represent Pong Arcade machines and instead co-agent with Sega. As a result, Pong has long been known, triggering Japanese companies to compete to enter the arcade game market. Pong's success shocked the employees of Taidong. Integrated circuits were a symbol of the latest technology at that time, and I did not expect to be applied to coin-operated arcades. Kogan asked the R&D department to start research and development immediately, and the burden of making a similar product fell on Yuhiro West Point.
Taidong Labor Model West Corner Yuhiro
Unlike Iwatani, who came out of Pac-Man in less than 2 years, Tomohiro Nishikaku faces a much greater difficulty. Before him, there were no arcade machines using integrated circuits in Japan, and the west corner needed to be studied from scratch. With a background in the Communications Engineering class, coupled with rich experience in development and development, West Point quickly penetrated into the development principles of Pong. In the process of learning, he finally found his life's work: a game device that really stands at the forefront of technology.
After half a year of repeated exploration of integrated circuits, West Point fully grasped the working principle of Pong, but he did not want to be a copycat machine. After talking to Kogan, Kogan supported him in making a brand new game: Soccer, Soccer.
In 1973, Taitung Soccer was released. Soccer is also an arcade with an integrated circuit design, using a green background to simulate the competition venue. Soccer was imported into the U.S. by Midway after its release and received good market feedback. Soccer is Japan's first original, integrated circuit-based arcade game.
Pictured is Taidong's Soccer arcade game.
After soccer arcade, West Point went on to develop a second ic-based game: Davis Cup, Davis Cup. The Davis Cup supports doubles and supports 4 players playing at the same time. After the release of the Davis Cup, it became a pillar of the Taidong Game Hall.
With the support of Kogan Dingli, West Point Yuhong did not stop the pace of product development. Genius producers, combined with capital and trust, burst out of the power is infinite.
In 1974, West Point began researching how to transform the game characters from simple rectangles into character graphics. He fulfilled his character in the TV Basketball: Video Basketball game, which was released in Europe in April of that year. After the release of TV Basketball, It was granted the agency rights by Midway in the United States and became the most sold game in Midway that year.
The picture shows the players in TV Basketball.
In November 1974, Speed Race was developed in West Point: Speed Race. The game was also released in North America by Midway, and Taitung's exports were booming. Sega, on the other hand, has never found talented engineers like Tomohiro Nishikaku and Toru Iwata, and can only work as foundries and traders.
Speed Race creatively introduces scrolling graphics, allowing the car to vary in width and narrowness as it moves along the route. As the score increases, competitors will have more vehicles and the speed of vehicles will increase, creating an urgent sense of competition.
The Speed Race is equipped with a racing steering wheel and instrument panel with accelerators, shifters, tachometers and tachometers. Players can choose between a single player game or a two-player game, with each player having to exceed each other's score. The game's selectable difficulty, allowing players to choose between "beginner" and "advanced players", was another innovation at the time.
The North American version of Speed Race was released by Midway, renamed Wheels, sold more than 10,000 units and became the best-selling arcade game in North America in 1975.
Pictured is the Speed Race in Taidong.
Tomohiro West Point was very prolific, and in 1975 he presided over the development of Western Gun, Western Gunfight. Gun Fight adapted from Sega: Gunfight.
Shooters have always been a hit genre, and Western Shootouts has innovatively pioneered a two-player mode with a slightly violent twist. The characters in the game all have personal avatars, and there are cacti, pine trees, and trains in the scenes. Props in the scene can cover the player or be destroyed. The player's bullets are also limited, with only 6 per person. The game also takes a double stick shooter, one for moving the character and the other for the user to change the direction of the shot. Bullets can also be reflected at the edges of the frame, hitting the opponent.
Pictured is the Western Gun arcade game.
Western Shootout was also licensed to Midway for distribution in the United States, and Midway renamed it as customary: Gun Fight, Gunfight. When Midway made Gun Fight, he creatively took a microprocessor as the processing core of the arcade. This inspired the West Corner, and he also began experimenting with developing games using microprocessors. Throughout the 1970s, Taidong and Midway were very close partners, licensing each other on products and sharing technology with each other.
In just four years from 1973 to 1976, Taito became Japan's number one arcade company. Kogan's discerning talents and sparing no effort of support, the genius of Yuhiro Nishikaku, and the operation of Akio Nakanishi have created the taitung miracle. In September 1974, Kogan took taitung core employees to the United States to participate in the AMOA exhibition. West Point Yuhong was also named, and at the exhibition Bushnell secretly pulled the West Corner aside and offered a sky-high salary to dig West Point to atari to engage in product development.
The West Point refused, and Bushnell's poaching failed.
Gun Fight was released as a huge success in the United States, selling 8,600 units. It was ranked third in North America in 1975 and second in North America in 1976. Gun Fight's success is a clarion call for Japanese arcade games to attack the U.S. market, and the U.S. home console market is in the midst of a battle.
In March 1976, West Point developed Interceptor: Air Interception. The game scales the target in a pseudo-3D way, giving the player a virtual sense of 3D.
Pictured is an Interceptor arcade game.
Space Invaders: Space invaders
In 1977, Tomohiro West Point began secretly developing a new game. He assembled a microprocessor himself, and based on this microprocessor, he independently designed and programmed the game, making art and sound effects for it.
Compared to Iwatani, who needs to work together as a team to make Pac-Man, the space invaders in the West Point can be described as "one man-machine".
West Point attributed the creation of the space invaders to one of his dreams: Japanese schoolchildren, waiting for Santa Claus to appear in the air on Christmas Eve. But instead of Santa Claus, there are rows of aliens. Smart kids use car batteries, spark plugs, and hub caps to form laser blasters. The laser blaster, under the control of the children, moves left and right, blowing up the aliens to save the earth.
The West Corner polishes this game repeatedly: 48 aliens, divided into 6 rows of 8 each, move horizontally across the screen. Once the intruder touches one side of the screen, the aliens descend a row, bringing them closer to the player tank at the bottom of the screen. Laser blasters engage aliens by moving from left to right to dodge their shots, ultimately killing all the aliens on the screen. The more aliens you kill, the faster they will descend. As each wave progresses, the green barrier the player uses to cover will eventually disappear, making you more vulnerable. After killing all the intruders, you move on to the next wave, and as you move forward, the game becomes more and more difficult.
Tomohiro West Point's strong hardware capabilities are fully exerted among space invaders. He uses an Intel 8080 microprocessor as a computing unit, uses a bitmap frame buffer to display raster graphics on a CRT display, and uses a combination of Mono Sound Analog Circuits texas instruments SN76477 sound chips to play music and sound effects. He also borrowed barrel shifter circuit technology from Gun Fight developed by Midway to make the animation smoother. The barrel shifter circuit allows the 8080 CPU to move pictures in the graphics frame buffer at a faster speed than using only its own native instructions.
While programming the game, Nishikado found that when there were fewer aliens on the screen, the processor was able to render every frame of the alien animated graphics faster. Since the alien position automatically updates after each frame, as more and more aliens are destroyed, the aliens will move across the screen at more and more speed. Instead of modifying this setting, he thought it could be used as a game mechanic: that's what was said at the beginning, replacing the traditional timer design with alien movement.
The picture shows the space invaders game screen.
Taitung released The Space Invaders on April 1, 1978, and entered mass production in July 1978. Also released along with the arcade version is TT Space Invaders.
The picture shows the TT version of the space invaders.
The work of the gods
Space Invaders brought video game art to multiple firsts in the history of art.
The first interactive style game.
Be the first game to use a high score record.
The first game to save your gamerscore.
The first player to fight off hordes of monsters in the game.
The first game to use a background audio track and variations.
The first game to move from the real world to the virtual world.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the father of legendary game producer Mario, said that Space Invaders is a game that changes the art of video games. Shigeru Miyamoto had never been interested in the game before playing Space Invaders. Shigeru Miyamoto, who graduated from the Department of Industrial Design at Kanazawa University of Fine Arts and Technology in 1977, wanted to join the game industry entirely because of space invaders.
I don't know if it's a compliment or a compliment.
After completing the development of the space invaders in the West Corner, Kogan thought it might not succeed. Because the game time of the space invaders is shorter than that of arcade games that use timers. Players play for a short time, which is a disadvantage in the consumer market. Kogan's judgment of the market was far less than that of people, and the space invaders quickly became superstars in the months after Japan's launch.
From April to December 1978, Taitung installed more than 100,000 space invaders in Japan, earning $670 million. By June 1979, Taitung had manufactured about 200,000 space invaders in Japan. These machines can earn 10,000 yen per day. Space Invaders were licensed overseas to Midway, and by the end of 1979, space invaders had sold 750,000 units worldwide.
Between 1978 and 1980, the space invaders arcade industry's top players, second only to Pac-Man. In 1982, its total revenue exceeded $3.9 billion, and Taidong's annual profit reached $500 million that year.
In 1980, space invaders went live on the Atari 2600. 2 million units were sold in the first year. Before the advent of Pac-Man, it was the best-selling game on the Atari 2600, accumulating 625 boxes of game cards.
Space invaders, like Pac-Man, are the works of gods in the history of video game art. There are many more praises and legends about it.
Today you open the official website of Taidong and see that there are still elements full of space invaders.
Taidong Afterword
Capcom Genesis Kenzo Tsujimoto said, "After I lost my job, Mr. Kogan, the president of Taitung, contacted me. He said he would invest in anything I wanted to do in the gaming industry, and I appreciated that. After Mr. Kogan died, every time I went to Los Angeles, I visited him at his cemetery. With his investment, I founded CAPCOM in 1983. ”
In February 1984, Mikhailo Kogan died of a sudden heart attack while on a business trip to Los Angeles. Following Jewish rituals, Kogan was buried in Los Angeles. (One said to be buried in Israel)
The second from the left is Kogan.
Taidong was succeeded by his son Abraham as chairman, with Akio Nakanishi as president.
In March 1986, Taidong was acquired by Kyocera.
In September 2005, Taidong was incorporated into Square Enix.
End of story.