Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On July 11, 2015, the news of the death of Nintendo president Satoshi Iwata reached his alma mater, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, one of the most important scholars at the prestigious university and the leader of the Japanese supercomputer, Satoshi Matsuoka with mixed feelings. In addition to his great grief and regret, he recalled the events of 30 years ago, a group of young people who called themselves "kimchi brothers" and the game they made together, "pinball".

Pinball machine, as an ancient game, broke into the field of video games a long time ago. Even if you haven't played physical pinball, you must have been exposed to such games on all kinds of electronic devices. Pinball games such as "Space cadets" can always be the most fun games in your mind, whether in class or at work, as long as they are not supposed to play games.

There are many kinds of pinball games on the market, but in the eyes of the president, the pinball machine on the red and white machine always has a place. Don't look at its simple picture, there are a lot of tricks in it. The protagonist of today's story is the person who created this interesting game.

In 1979, Satoshi Matsuoka, who lives in Tokyo, was admitted to the area's top private high school, Musashi University. Satoshi Matsuoka, as high achiever, has a hobby, like messing with computers and tapping code. There happens to be a Seibu department store in Ikebukuro near Musashi University, where there are many computer stores. Satoshi Matsuoka is like a mouse falling into a rice jar, drilling into the Seiwu department store after school and knocking on the code to close the door before he is willing to go home.

Because of his father's dispatch, Satoshi Matsuoka has been studying overseas since the fourth grade and did not return to Japan until the second year of junior high school, so he did not have many friends, but he met an enthusiast who was even better than him in the computer store. This man is several years older than him, and Satoshi Matsuoka is impressed by his programming skills. It was a coincidence to find out that the two had the same name. The man's name is Satoshi Iwata and my name is Satoshi Matsuoka. We are both smart (pseudonyms are written differently).

Satoshi Matsuoka asked carefully, and this man made him admire even more. It turned out that Satoshi Iwata was a second-generation official, and his father was the mayor of Muran City, Hokkaido. He went to Tokyo alone and was a top student at Tokyo University of Technology. As soon as they hit it off and hit it off, they immediately became good friends in the computer store.

Soon after, a man in this computer store resigned to set up a software company, which is the famous HAL Research Institute. Satoshi Iwata and Satoshi Matsuoka, who are close to the president, have joined the company. Satoshi Matsuoka, who has just been admitted to the University of Tokyo, can only take part-time jobs in the company because of his studies. But Satoshi Iwata, who graduated from university, had a big fight with the mayor's father because he was determined to join the small company, and the relationship between father and son was almost broken. Japanese politics, which has a son following his father's tradition, has lost a young politician.

The two good friends curled up in the small office in this way, but their hearts were filled with joy. They delved into computer technology without eating and sleeping. Because of the slow speed of the public computers in the university, Satoshi Matsuoka simply borrowed the new machine bought by Satoshi Iwata to complete the graduation project in the company. Two people eat Yoshino or McDonald's when they are hungry, and shop on the floor when they are sleepy. Because he lives close to the South Korean embassy, Satoshi Matsuoka has liked to eat kimgee since he was a child.

Coincidentally, this is also what Satoshi Iwata likes, so they simply gave their development team a loud name-"Pickle Brothers". Good brother, is to write code together, eat kimchi together.

In 1984, the kimchi brothers developed their first game, the pinball game "Roller ball" on personal computers. The game is very simple, there are only four levels, and the goal is also very simple, that is, to strive for high scores. But the game already has the basic elements of a red-and-white pinball machine. Such as split-screen display machines, slot machines, and very difficult to hit the spring baffle. In order to commemorate their friendship, Satoshi Matsuoka typed the developer's name under the title screen and specially added the name of "Pickle Brothers". This pinball game has also become the debut work of this male group.

In the year after the kimchi brothers made their debut, Satoshi Iwata noticed the hot FC on the market. He took a keen interest in this amazing console and decided that it would be the way forward, and then came up with the idea of playing games for FC. But HAL Research Institute is just a small start-up, how can it climb a century-old store like Nintendo. It so happens that a company that invests in the HAL Institute does business with Nintendo, and Satoshi Iwata has the nerve to ask for Nintendo's contact information. The young man, who just graduated from college, arrived in Kyoto from Tokyo in a suit and knocked on the door of Nintendo. To his surprise, Nintendo not only didn't shut him out, but actually cooperated.

Nintendo, which is suffering from a software lineup that can't keep up with hardware sales, fell in love with the "pinball machine" made by the kimchi brothers. They asked HAL Institute to remake the game on the red and white machine and rename it "Pin ball", which is what we are familiar with as the red and white machine "pinball machine".

The programming of the game is still left to Satoshi Iwata and Satoshi Matsuoka of the HAL Institute, but the content of the game needs to be redesigned by Nintendo, which is planned by the famous Shigeru Miyamoto. This is also the first cooperation between Satoshi Iwata and him. The way the game god works is an eye-opener for Satoshi Iwata. Although he does not understand it, he is greatly shocked. For example, Miyamoto throws the handle to someone who has never touched the game at all, and then stands behind him to observe. This method is called "Miyamoto's over-the-shoulder perspective." Satoshi Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto may not have expected that they would fight side by side for Nintendo for the next three decades.

Miyamoto Shigeru's creativity has brought unprecedented vitality to the pinball table originally made by the man of science and technology. Compared with the previous computer version, the FC version of the pinball machine is obviously twice as much fun. The tigers at the top will become penguins of different shapes, while the slot machines at the bottom will be changed into chickens that can hatch eggs and be insured. Over 100, 000 points, the bezel will disappear and will not recover until 150000 points, not to mention the excitement. There are also sea lions heading ball, flipping playing cards, and exits that can be returned midway, all of which are Miyamoto's brilliant ideas. The best is Mario, the signature figure who joined Nintendo. As long as you make a hole in the upper right corner of the lower half, a Mini Game like "beating bricks" will be opened. Look inside, Mario is secretly having a rendezvous with his old lover Pauline against a steel plate.

As for the HAL Institute, the kimchi brothers divide the program requirements in this way. Satoshi Iwata is responsible for the rendering of the game, while Satoshi Matsuoka has to solve the problem of pinball movement. Don't look, it's just getting the ball moving, which gives him a big problem. As a computer professional problem maker at Dongda University, Satoshi Matsuoka naturally knows how to use programs to simulate real physical motion, but the hardware of the red and white machine is only so capable, operating in a conventional way, it must be a still frame game. If you can't do it, you can't do it, even if you bleed out the red and white machine.

The most difficult point is that it is impossible to perfectly simulate the collision of the sphere with various protruding and sunken rigid bodies of the pinball table. Satoshi Matsuoka tried various methods but made no progress, and it took him two months to do so. Satoshi Iwata, who is also the project manager, comes to urge him almost every day: "you see the delivery day is getting closer and closer. Haven't you done it yet?"

Suddenly one day, Satoshi Matsuoka came up with a brilliant solution. Multiple rectangular sets can be used to simulate various surfaces, thus creating an extremely efficient approximation algorithm. Based on this algorithm, Satoshi Matsuoka immediately wrote a set of physical engine packages and real-time drivers, and completed all the development work in a month and a half. In order to make the game more fun, he also made two sets of game modes, the biggest difference between the two is the quality of the ball. Because of Matsuoka Satoshi's genius physics engine, the two balls show completely different effects. Although this is just a small pinball game, it shows Satoshi Matsuoka's remarkable ability to improve computing performance. At that time, he was just a junior working in college.

Pinball is the first game produced by HAL Research for Nintendo and the small company's bid. The final sales of the game unexpectedly exceeded 1 million copies, and the kimchi brothers blossomed, which also impressed Nintendo on the HAL Research Institute. Since then, the cooperative development projects between the two sides have never been interrupted, "Golf", "F1 Racing", "Balloon Wars" …... These familiar games are all written by HAL Research Institute, which is dominated by Satoshi Iwata. Unfortunately, the name of Satoshi Matsuoka was never seen again in the games produced by HAL Research Institute.

As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a feast that never ends. Satoshi Matsuoka, who has been working at HAL Research Institute, is finally faced with an important choice in life. After the "pinball machine" went on sale, Satoshi Matsuoka, who was admitted to graduate school, gradually could not cope with the life of working and learning to run at both ends. The problem of time conflict came to the surface when he was studying for his doctorate, and after several considerations, he made the final decision to leave the HAL institute, leave the gaming industry, leave his kimchi brother and concentrate on becoming a computer scholar.

When he told his colleagues about the decision, Satoshi Iwata was reluctant to part. But he also understands that this younger generation, who is as good as him, is ambitious. When the two men said goodbye, Satoshi Iwata gave Satoshi Matsuoka these words: "I will be successful in the game industry, and Matsuoka you must also become a successful scholar."

This sentence is the agreement between the kimchi brothers. For 30 years, Satoshi Iwata and Satoshi Matsuoka have abided by this agreement by acting in person. When Satoshi Iwata became the new head of Nintendo and led the old shop to success again, Satoshi Matsuoka also became one of Japan's top scholars. After successfully completing his doctorate, Satoshi Matsuoka continued to do research at the university, where he worked at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Satoshi Iwata's alma mater. After years of buried research, now he has become a pillar in the field of supercomputers in Japan, and he leads the team to develop the best in Japan. No, it is the world's strongest supercomputer, Fuyue, which has repeatedly topped the list of global supercomputer performance, achieving an unprecedented "four consecutive hegemony", which is the pride of the entire Japanese scientific community.

No one in the field of supercomputing in the world does not know the name of Satoshi Matsuoka, just as no one in the gaming industry knows Satoshi Iwata. At that time, the kimchi brothers, as they agreed, became the leaders in their respective fields.

In 2015, Matsuoka heard the news of Satoshi Iwata's death. He was saddened by the departure of his good friend. After expressing his regret, Satoshi Matsuoka, a university professor, said: "my most important task now is to cultivate talents as good as Iwata."

At this moment, the story of the kimchi brothers has finally come to an end, but we can still review their legacy. In a small box of pinball games, we had simple and pure happiness, Satoshi Iwata's courage to bet on Nintendo, Matsuoka's wisdom to pursue the limits, and a sincere friendship that inspired each other over the past three decades.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: president

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