In the summer of 2017, just as players were speculating about where the next game in the "Like Dragon" series would be, Sega suddenly unveiled a work that made everyone's jaw drop - "Big Dipper among Men".
This new work that combines the worldview of the "Like a Dragon" system and the "Big Dipper God Fist" is really surprising. But if you look back at history, it is not difficult to find that sega company and this thousand-year-old assassination technique is still closely linked. Now, Kenjiro will once again be Sega's game hero.
<h4>Times make heroes</h4>
The popularity of "Big Dipper God Fist" began in 1983. At that time, the Hollywood blockbuster "Mad Max 2" was on fire in Japan, and the wasteland world became a popular worldview setting at that time. At the same time, Hong Kong kung fu films led by Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan have also set off a wave of martial arts in Japan. Under the influence of various popular cultures, Tetsuo Hara, who had not yet become a professional manga artist, created a short story, which was taken by the editor of "Shonen Jump" and urged him to start a long series.
Tetsuo Hara initially refused because he thought it was an impossible task to complete the hard work of manga serials alone. After being matched by shueisha's editors, professional manga writer Takeruzumi was brought before Tetsuo Hara. Wu Renzun created such a world for Tetsuo Hara - the wasteland after the nuclear war at the end of the twentieth century, the Chinese assassination boxing method that has been handed down for two thousand years, and the love and hatred between men because of sex and violence... This is the "Big Dipper God Fist" that later became the pillar-level work of "Shonen Jump".
"Big Dipper God Fist" has become a hot topic among readers because of its unique world view setting, violent and bloody impactful pictures, and boy stories with blood and tears. It received even greater response as the anime produced by Toei aired, and this period was known as the "First Hokuto Outbreak". Years later, the first fifty episodes of the cartoon were introduced to China, which also caused great repercussions and panic among parents. "You're dead" has become a well-known line among Chinese and Japanese anime fans.
The popularity of anime works has naturally spawned game products. The competition around the "Big Dipper God Fist" game is like the first console battle of the miniature.
In 1986, Sega was at a considerable disadvantage in the competition for home consoles. Three years ago, Sega's elaborate 8-bit home console SG-1000 was launched on the same day as Nintendo's FC, but the end result was heaven and earth. The FC effortlessly beat the SG-1000 to the point of and, almost occupying the entire TV console market in Japan. After a period of hard work, Sega Demon changed the defeated host and fought the red and white machines under the name of SEGA MARKIII. Now people talk about this console, more often than not in his American name SMS.
As a weapon against FC, SMS has more powerful performance and better graphics, but the only shortcoming is fatal - the lack of good software support. For this reason, Sega can not be said to have worked hard, so the famous work on SMS was born - "Big Dipper God Fist". At this time, FC has become a day in the sky, and the addition of a number of third parties makes its hegemonic position difficult to shake.
In July 1986, the SMS version of "Big Dipper God Fist" was launched. Just a month later, the work of the same name, written by Toei Animation itself, landed on FC. The two Hokuto Shinken films met narrowly in the Japanese game market, but the end result was that the less popular one won.
If you compare the "Big Dipper God Fist" on SMS and the "Big Dipper God Fist" on FC, good or bad can even be distinguished at first glance. The FC version of "Hokuto God Fist" inherits the consistent bad quality of toei's games, and the gameplay, action, and even voice are obviously copied from Irm's "Jackie Chan KickIng Pavilion". The background image of the game's spicy eyes makes people sickly unable to eat, and even more annoying is the maze of doors and doors. In contrast, the Sega version of "Hokuto Divine Fist" has a high quality, it has excellent graphics, smooth movements, and attaches importance to the scene restoration of the original.
However, SMS, which has been on the market for less than a year, has been lacking in Japan, and even if Sega's "Hokuto Divine Fist" is significantly better than the FC version released later than its release, it will not change the momentum of FC's world domination. The advent of powerful third-party games like Dragon Quest made Sega unsupportable, and SMS was quickly submerged in the ocean of red and white machines. The FC version of "Beidou Shen Fist", which is of worrying quality, sold extremely well because of the hot sales of the host. After Toei launched sequels on FC, it even adopted a random original plot, and the gameplay was changed to RPG. But this can not stop the player's enthusiasm for buying, the entire "Big Dipper God Fist" series sold nearly 1.5 million copies on the FC, making Toei smile tightly.
<h4>Kenjiro howling in a gambling machine</h4>
Sega, who had suffered two consecutive battles, finally launched a 16-bit console MD a few years later, and this black console has also become an enlightened game console for many Chinese players. (Are you playing New Tianli VCD?) Get out! In the most difficult early days of the console, MD's game lineup was really lackluster, and the main features were ported from arcade halls. As a sequel to the SMS masterpiece, the MD version of "Big Dipper God Fist" has become one of the few original highlights in the early days of this console, and has been used as a marketing focus and has played a lot of advertising.
But no matter how Kenjiro screams, it can't change the fact that Sega is in the hardware market. With the failure of the competition of multiple hosts such as SS and DC, Sega as a hardware manufacturer was completely crushed. The company founded by the Americans has encountered the biggest crisis since its inception, and how to save Sega has become the biggest problem.
In 200X, Sega suffered a major blow in the hardware market and was on the verge of closure. At this time, in front of Sega, it seems that only the road of being acquired can go.
As early as early 1997, when Saturn was still trying to struggle, Sega under the leadership of Hayato Nakayama began to look for the right buyer. On the same day that ENIX announced that Dragon Quest 7 would be registered on the PS, Sega also released a blockbuster message of the same scale - on October 1, Sega will merge with toy giant Bandai into a new company called Sega Bandai. With Bandai's care, Sega's head seemed to be covered with blue sky.
The release of this merger statement stirred up thousands of waves. Some speculate that because Japanese companies usually publish annual financial statements in March of each year, Bandai anticipated that the year might run its first deficit and wanted to use the merger to dispel investors' concerns. However, the toy factories that profit from Japanese anime licensing and the arcade factories founded by the Americans are very different in their style of behavior. The sky is not as good as the people, Bandai sold the electronic pet egg Takuma Songzi sales suddenly exploded, and then formed a social topic, Bandai's financial situation was alleviated at once, and the merger also collapsed.
By 2002, the failure of the DC console had once again placed Sega at the center of merger rumors. The companies that have spread the scandal with Sega have successively included Namco, Konami, Nintendo, EA, Microsoft... Among them, Namco, which is also an arcade factory, has gone the closest. The merger process between Namco and Sega is actually a step away, but the reason for the final miscarriage is likely to be that the overlap between the two is too high, and it is difficult to balance the interests of their respective lower classes.
While Namco and Sega were wrestling and falling in love, in December 2003, Sammy, who was mainly manufacturing Pachinko, suddenly launched a takeover war to buy Sega shares held by Sega's parent company CSK overnight, and sega had de facto become a Sammy company before everyone could relax.
There are many rumors about Sammy's motivation for acquiring Sega. Some say that Sammy, who was rumored to have an affair with the underworld because of gambling machines, took the opportunity to take a shot at Sega at a low ebb in order to wash himself; others say that Sega's former president and CSK executive director Ōkawa Kōkawa had been kind to Sammy in front of him, and after his death, Sammy helped Sega in order to repay the favor. Before Sammy launched the acquisition, Sega's top management, led by CSK president, had already met Sammy's eyebrows.
In any case, Sega, which was merged by the gambling machine factory, made many Sega fans have a kind of displeasure of being bullied by dogs.
Just when people are worried about the future path of Sega, which merged with the gambling machine manufacturer, "Big Dipper God Fist" appears again and truly saves Sega Sami.
Just two months before Sammy launched a surprise attack to buy Sega, Sammy released one of the most important products in the company's history, Bai Qingjie's version of "Big Dipper God Fist". Bai Qingyi is a type of mainstream gambling machine in Japan, which is a highly customized and localized slot machine. Bai Qingjie's version of "Big Dipper God Fist" has an extremely bloody performance effect. When the player pulls out the highest prize of the 777, there will be a very wonderful animation performance, which perfectly restores the scene in the animation. Pull out the 777 continuously, there will be hidden classic scenes, making old readers cry. This powerful and provocative performance effect makes gamblers who are already addicted to gambling halls even more obsessed.
When "Big Dipper Divine Fist" was first launched, some people who studied Bai Qingyi made criticisms. But in the ensuing time, the machine's popularity continued to rise, and finally broke the sky. Gamblers began to frantically pursue "Big Dipper God Fist", and magazines also tried to crack the mystery of the success of this machine through various data analysis. Because the popularity of "Big Dipper God Fist" is too strong, so that the small steel ball Bai Qingge, which was originally the mainstream of the gambling hall, can only stand on the side. On the street, there began to be a slot machine shop that only played Bai Qingjie, and even more, there were only shops with "Big Dipper God Fist".
Hokuto Set The Magic Fist of Gambling in Japan, becoming the highest-selling slot machine with a staggering 600,000 units sold. Suddenly, the Japanese gambling hall was full of Kenjiro's "Ah stink, stink" cry, a phenomenon known as the "Third Hokuto Outbreak". The boom even affected China, when Kenjiro's roar could be heard behind him while playing fighting games in the fiery arcade in Shanghai.
Soon after the release of Bai Qingjie's version of "Big Dipper God Fist", Sega merged with Sammy to form a new game company, Sega Samei. Sammy is quite generous to Sega, who is in poor financial shape. Sammy's situation, which had been subject to Japan's increasingly stringent gambling laws, was not ideal, and it was precisely because of the emergence of "Hokuto Shinken" that Sammy's situation suddenly became excellent, and the sales of the entertainment business rose by 80%. The surplus Sammy began to help Sega, allowing Sega to gradually get out of trouble.
In May 2004, Sammy, which had acquired Sega but had not yet merged, released their most successful game product, the PS2 edition of "The Battle of The Battle of The Sister-in-Law!" Big Dipper God Fist".
The so-called real combat victory method is to claim to use the same picture, rules and probabilities as the real gambling machine, so that those gamblers believe that as long as they spend a few thousand yen to buy PS2 games and practice at home, they can get greater returns on the real machine in the gambling hall. About 870,000 Japanese idiots believed this and gleefully took the game home and helped Hokuto Squeeze into the top 10 japanese game sales in 2004. The game eventually sold more than a million, making Hokuto Divine Fist the most successful gambling game in history, and also allowing sega Sami, who was founded a little later, to receive an unprecedented beautiful financial report. By the time of the annual settlement in March 2005, Sega Sami had been able to pay off its previous debts in a dashing manner, laying the economic foundation for Sega's complete transformation into a high-quality software vendor.
<h4>The second coming savior</h4>
After more than ten years of running-in, the current Sega Sammy has adapted to the new identity. Sega, which transformed into a software vendor, and Sammy, which continued its gambling machine business, each expanded into a broader market under the same signboard.
But now there is another hurdle in front of Sega, and the signature masterpiece "Like a Dragon" series that once made the company famous and rich seems to have encountered a bottleneck in development. After Dragon 6, the sound of getting tired of "Dragon" has begun to appear among players. This series needs to open up a new situation, on the one hand, the restart of the new protagonist and new plot, and on the other hand, to expand the possibility of "Rulong" and other IP linkages. At this time, Kenjiro appeared again!
When Sega was in a desperate situation, "Big Dipper God Fist" appeared like a heavenly fall and saved the company. Of course, Sega's situation is not as urgent as it was then, but can "Big Dipper among Men" open up a new world for "Like a Dragon" and make Sega rejuvenate? We'll see.