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

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: NemoTheCaptain

A year of retro and trendy.

Editor's note: 2002 is a crucial year for both the global game industry and China's game circle. The rapid development of hardware makes more games into the full 3D world, the popularity of Internet and broadband makes PC and host players feel the fun of online, online video is beginning to take shape, e-sports and game TV programs are developing rapidly.

Time flies, and today's gaming industry is the echo of the golden age of 2002, when history laid the foundation for today's pattern. So since the end of last year, we have reviewed the game industry in 2002 in serialized form. When readers see these familiar and unfamiliar people and things in the past, do they have a special feeling?

What we publish today is the last part of the series.

Serial one: shining Stars: the Game Industry in 2002 (PC)

Serial 2: the History of melting and casting: the Game Industry in 2002 (e-sports, Network, hardware)

The year 2002 is the key year for the host to move towards networking, and the new generation of network services represented by Xbox Live began to operate in this year. In addition, classic series familiar to players such as Mario, Zelda and Contra launched orthodox sequels this year. This year is also the year of the World Cup, football players ushered in a carnival.

The retro wind is dedicated to hardcore action gamers. "

-- the title picture of "True Contra"

"True Contra", "Shinobi Ninja", "Argos Warrior", "Ninja Dragon Sword", "Galactic Warrior: fusion", "Galactic Warrior: Prime". The above games all participated in the 2002 E3 exhibition. If you remove the subtitle, it seems that this string of names looks more like the 1992 game release list? Yes, E3 in 2002 is so retro, the old classics that have been silent for many years have reappeared on the new generation platform, so that the old players are quite moved. As for whether 2D classic games can successfully enter the 3D world, different works choose different routes.

"True Contra" chooses a conservative route: 3D pictures and 2D games. Veteran players only need to pick up the handle and play for a few minutes to understand the meaning of the title-this is a real orthodox sequel to Contra! On the other hand, True Contra is not so conservative as to be lazy, and the system is still reformed: players are born with three weapons to avoid the trouble of losing guns; the longer the game is archived, the more lives there will be at resurrection; players can easily pass through 30 secret books, but if the score is not high enough, they will not be able to hide the ending. These settings give sufficient challenge value to this work without shutting out the novice, which can be said to be appreciated by both the elegant and the popular.

The game is like the living fossil "True Contra" and "Shionbi Ninja" choose the harmony route: the method of play is changed into 3D, but the characteristics of the 2D era are pushed to the extreme. You can still see a lot of cliff terrain in Shinobi Ninja, which is uncommon and significantly more difficult for 3D games in the PS2 era. The 1993 predecessor Super Ninja 2 was praised for its sense of speed, while Shinobi Ninja pushed it to the extreme. The new system "Kill Array" not only urges players to kill the enemy quickly, but also shows a unique performance effect, making "Shionbi tolerance" a creative personality masterpiece.

This kind of personality is lacking in the freehand style of "Shinobi tolerance" and "Argos Warriors". The PS2 version of Argos Warrior inherits the FC version's focus on exploring and upgrading elements, but these ideas have long been realized by the Ghost Warrior, which was released in 2001, and this work does not introduce a similar creative system. Argos Warrior, a Greek mythological work with gorgeous pictures, magnificent scenes and dazzling CG, was frustrated by its lack of personality, and eventually became the reference material for "God of War".

Argos Warrior has a large-scale scene. If the Xbox version of the Ninja Dragon Sword follows the path of the FC version of the Ninja Dragon Sword, it is likely to become a Shinobi without killing. In fact, the Legend of Ninja Dragon Sword chooses the most radical 3D route: restart the system and create a whole new set of fighting ideas. The Legend of Ninja Dragon Sword does imitate "Ghost Warrior" and "Ghost Cry", but it also integrates the fighting game skills of "death or Life", which is its uniqueness. Such a big change obviously requires more development time, and of the above list of names, only the Legend of Ninja Dragon Sword did not go on sale in 2002.

Ninja Dragon Sword has changed as much as the new IP Galactic Warrior series chose two ways to develop in parallel, while launching a 2D game Galactic Warrior: fusion and 3D game Galactic Warrior: Prime to meet the needs of different players. Although "Galactic Warrior: Prime" is a first-person perspective, it retains a series of exploratory elements in terms of play, which can be said to be scattered and gathered together, opening up a new way for the series.

The cost of the traditional game "Galactic Warrior: Prime mainframe networking" from the first-person perspective is static. If the sales are not losing money, the more they sell, the more natural profits they make. However, the cost of online games is dynamic, and more users need more servers. This is by no means an industry to lie down and make money. "

Ken Kyudo Yoshiki, founder of SCE

Sega's "Dream Star Online", as a pioneer in console online games, once achieved a record of 270000 registered members on the DC host. As the DC console was discontinued in 2001, DreamStar Online launched the NGC version in 2002, and after the game was released, the number of registered members quickly reached 100000. However, the NGC version encountered serious Bug such as copying props soon after its release, because NGC did not have hard disk peripherals, Sega was unable to repair Bug through network patches, and could only replace players' CDs for free, which greatly affected the development of the NGC version.

The picture quality of the NGC version of "Dream Star Online" is basically the same as that of the DC version. Unlike "Dream Star Online", "final Fantasy 11" is a game that must be run on a hard drive, and Square gave up NGC from the beginning. As for Xbox's standard 8GB hard drive, its capacity is not as large as PS2's 40GB optional hard drive. As a result, final Fantasy 11 chose PS2 and PC. The PS2 version went on sale on May 16, 2002, and Square expected an initial shipment of 200000, but actually sold only 70,000 in the first week.

There are many reasons for this gap. Square overestimates the carrying capacity of the server, and the 40,000 registered members of the PS2 version crashed the server when it was first released. After that, the problem of the server was solved, and the problem of hard disk supply was encountered. By August 2002, the PS2 version of final Fantasy 11 had 120000 registered members in Japan, and Sony shipped only 140000 PS2 hard drives in Japan. On November 7, 2002, the PC version of final Fantasy 11 was released, and the game was considered to have a stable environment.

The flamboyant image of final Fantasy 11, supported by hard drives, was released in August 2002 by the most popular PS2 online game in the United States, Navy SEALs (SOCOM: seals. Navy Seals), which is similar to the "counter-Terrorism Elite" but provides both first-person and third-person perspectives. Seals do not need a hard drive, as long as the network card can be online, with the help of this work, the American version of PS2 sold 400000 sets of network cards in the three months of 2002.

The SEALs, which can switch perspectives, on the other hand, the SEALs, which gave up the hard drive, encountered similar problems with the Dream Star Online and could not simply fix the network program through patches. The Internet cheating phenomenon of "SEALs" is serious, and the game can be modified around the third-party Goldfinger, which is no different from modifying a single-player game. The cheap version of SEALs released in 2003 restricted Goldfinger, but the cheap version and the original version used two different servers, and Sony forcibly merged the two servers in 2006, triggering a new Bug.

Hard disk has thus become the number one problem perplexing the development of PS2 online games. The ultra-thin version of PS2 released in 2004 is equipped with broadband network interface, but the hard disk interface is removed, which adds more trouble to manufacturers. The sales volume of PS2 far exceeds that of Xbox in all markets around the world, but PS2 does not have an advantage in terms of network.

The deep-pocketed Xbox adopts an one-step solution, and each Xbox is equipped with a broadband network interface and a hard disk. Xbox Live Web Services went into operation on November 15, 2002, and it took only 45 days to gain 250000 registered members, which has exceeded Microsoft's expectations. In terms of servers and registration platforms, Microsoft has far outperformed Sony, and what Microsoft lacks is masterpieces.

Looking back at Xbox Live's debut work, Ghost Operation and Unreal Colosseum 2003 are just portable versions of PC games, and the effect of the handle is not as good as that of the mouse. The "Mecha raid" greatly simplified the system of the PC game "Mecha Warrior 4" to fit the shoes, and only then accommodated the handle operation. What players really need is Halo, which is designed to optimize the handle, but Halo 2, which supports Xbox Live, has been delayed until the end of 2004.

The simplified system of "Mecha raid" lacks deep PS2 and NGC online games on their own, and players need to register accounts and payment channels for each game separately. Xbox Live uses a modern unified account system, and veteran Xbox Live users who registered in 2002 can use their accounts to this day. Microsoft even issued 20-year profile badges to these veterans.

In the above games, only SEALs do not need membership fees, while Dream Star Online and final Fantasy 11 both pay monthly membership fees, while Xbox Live uses a unified monthly fee service. Satoshi Iwata, then president of Nintendo, said: "it is unreasonable to let players pay a monthly fee when the game itself is charged. Nintendo will explore an online way that does not require a monthly fee." Since then, Nintendo's first party's online service remained free all the year round and did not become charged until 2018.

Competition and Development "PS2 already dominates the Japanese market, but I feel a little lonely because the Japanese market has shrunk. Only when there is competition, there is popularity. The more competition between" VR Warrior 4 "and" Iron fist 4 ", the better."

-- Zobayas, then Minister of propaganda of SCE

The arcade version of VR Warrior 4, which went on sale in 2001, generated billions of yen in profits for Sega and made up for the losses of the Shamu series. The PS2 version of VR Warrior 4, which went on sale in early 2002, has sold 540,000 units in Japan. Sega's all-Japan competition, "fighting the New Century," attracted 40,000 contestants, although this scale is not as large as the first qualifying contest in late 2002 and a far cry from the competition in the 1990s. But "fighting New Century" is still the largest Japanese individual combat event in the 21st century (the drama contains a variety of games).

The launch time of the arcade version and PS2 version of "VR Warrior 4" for Sega is close to that of "VR Warrior 4". As a result, Namco is disgraced. The Japanese version of "Iron fist 3" sold 1.4 million and 8.36 million worldwide. Sales of the Japanese version of Iron fist 4 have shrunk to 340000, compared with 2 million worldwide. Fortunately, the global sales of "VR Warrior 4" are only 1.5 million, which finally gives Namco some face. The main reason for the decline in sales of "Iron fist 4" lies in scene design. "VR Warrior 4" set the goal of scene simplification from the beginning of development, while "Iron fist 4" pursues complex scenes and wall skills, which leads to polarizing players' evaluation of "Iron fist 4".

The defeat of Iron fist 4 summed up the lessons for the sequel, but generally speaking, the relationship between Namco and Sega was friendly, and the two works often touted each other in magazines, at least not much at the publicity level. The competition between Namco and Tri-Ace in RPG is the real meaning of "narrow enemies".

In 1995, Wolf Team Studio was developing Fantasy Legend, and because the publisher Namco made too many demands, the main members of Wolf Team formed a new company, Tri-Ace, to develop "Ocean of Stars" to compete with it. The relationship between the two sides was settled as early as 1995, and there was an outbreak in 2002.

Tri-Ace announced a target sales of 1 million for "Ocean of Stars 3" released on November 28, 2002, and Namco, not to be outdone, also announced a target of 1.01 million for "Destiny 2" released on the same day. Because "Ocean of Stars 3" is the first full 3D work in the series, and "Destiny 2" is still a 2D picture, most players are initially optimistic about "Ocean of Stars 3". At the Tokyo video game show in September 2002, "Ocean of the Stars 3" once set a record of queuing for 150 minutes, which completely overwhelmed the "Legend of fate 2".

The 3D picture of "Ocean of the Stars 3" is more eye-catching.

However, on October 9, 2002, Tri-Ace suddenly announced that "Ocean of the Stars 3" had been postponed to early 2003. What is even more unexpected is that "Ocean of Stars 3", which was finally released in early 2003, is still full of Bug, and the game did not stabilize until the release of "Ocean of Stars: director's edited version" in early 2004.

In the end, Destiny 2 achieved cumulative sales of 1.1 million, while Star Ocean 3 reached 1.25 million. On the face of it, both have achieved their original goals, but in fact they are not. The initial target of both sides is PS2 Japanese version. By this strict standard, Destiny 2 sold 970000, while Star Ocean 3 sold only 630000. In the end, it broke through millions. "Destiny 2" relied on the PSP version, and "Star Ocean 3" relied on the European and American version, which was not within the original target.

As for the competition between "Cell Division" and "Stealth Dragon Bourne 2" in 2002, it is perhaps the most inexplicable competition in the history of the game. "Cell Division" in the promotion of "Dragon Bourne 2" fired frequently, in fact, although the two are sneaking into the type of games, but the style is very different. "Cell division" is closer to "divine theft", players need to avoid the scene light source, hide in the dark and move slowly, emphasizing the sense of reality. "Dragon Bourne 2" has the usual exaggeration of Japanese games, the scene is brighter and the rhythm is faster.

What's more interesting about Cell Division becoming the top-selling new work on Xbox in 2002 is that Stealth Dragon Bourne 3 greatly slows down the pace of the game and plays more like cell division. At the same time, the "cell division" series continues to improve the rhythm from "double agents" and is getting closer and closer to "Stealth Dragon Bourne 2". Today, when it comes to these two series, the smell of gunpowder between the two has long dissipated, more is the feelings of heroes cherish heroes.

The biggest showdown of 2002 belonged to EA and Konami. In the World Cup year, the two companies naturally have to seize the opportunity to kill the dark, new mainframe, old mainframe, handheld, PC …... The football games of both sides filled every trench. New mainframe versions such as PS2 are naturally the main battlefield, but the old mainframe version also provides data updates for old engines, and the two companies have also launched new works on GBA with limited performance.

EA's "FIFA World Cup 2002" and "FIFA 2003" include all platforms, and Konami is not to be outdone. PS2's "World Football: winning Eleven 6" is the first million sales of the series in Japan and the first million of the series in Europe. The expansion of "World Football: the final Evolutionary version of winning Eleven 6" sold another 630000 in Japan. The GBA version of "World Football: winning Eleven" uses 2D pictures but has all the necessary organs, while the PS version of "World Football: winning Eleven 2002" is a data update.

These are just football games for Konami Tokyo, and Konami Osaka launched Live World Football 2002 in 2002, with platforms including NGC, PS2, Xbox and PC. The picture and feel of this work is inferior to that of its counterparts in Tokyo, but it is worth playing with. This year the Osaka department also updated the Live World Football Pocket version 2 for GBA.

The classic cover of "World Football: winning Eleven and 6 final Evolutionary Edition"

Konami Osaka's "Live World Football 2002", if only on the main work, the sales of "World Football: victorious Eleven 6" tied with "FIFA 2003", while word of mouth said the former won. "FIFA 2003" is still in the stage of "more like hockey than football", and the word-of-mouth of the "FIFA" series will not surpass the "Victory Eleven" for the first time until the PS3 era in 2007.

The way out for the future: 2002 was the strongest year for the NGC game lineup.

Shigeru Miyamoto, then Minister of Intelligence Development of Nintendo

Nintendo set a target of 10 million shipments of NGC mainframes for the fiscal year (April 2002 to April 2003), but only 5.76 million, and there was a shortage, forcing NGC to temporarily suspend production and clear its inventory in early 2003. NGC did come up with the strongest game lineup in 2002, and the result was a bit strange. In Nintendo's internal reflection afterwards, they gave different reasons for the failure of different game sales to meet the target.

"Sunshine Malio" is technically first-class, no matter the scale of the scene or water surface special effects are impeccable, but its level design and operation plan has fallen into a quagmire of excessive complexity, hard core players still like this work, but casual players stay away. For this reason, the primary goal of the sequel Galaxy Malio is to simplify the design.

The Legend of Zelda: the staff of the Wind is moderately difficult and simple to operate, but many veteran players are more realistic than cartoon rendering. In order to satisfy the old players, the Legend of Zelda: Princess at Twilight returned to the style of realistic painting.

The water surface special effect of "Sunshine Malio" becomes a marvellous one.

"Legend of Zelda: staff of the Wind" adopted the most advanced cartoon rendering technology at that time, "Galactic Warrior: Prime" as the game with the highest media average in 2002, its quality has stood out from the crowd. In fact, sales of Galactic Warrior: Prime met expectations because Nintendo's expectations were low. The Galactic Warrior series has always had a much smaller audience than Mario and Zelda, and Nintendo doesn't expect it to drive NGC installation.

Satoshi Iwata's speech in 2002 has summed up the general direction of NGC's defeat, admitting that the main reason why NGC lags behind PS2 is that the launch time is too late, and that he is considering whether he can avoid homogenization and bring back "pure fun" in the next generation of mainframe, implying the 2006 launch of the somatosensory host Wii.

As for the remake of Capcom's "biochemical Evil" and "biochemical Evil 0", sales of these two games are not high, but the same is true of "biochemical Evil: code name Veronica" on DC, and Capcom will not be surprised. Capcom's NGC game sales target for this fiscal year is only 3.2 million, but the actual sales are 3.23 million, which is barely met.

Some people mistakenly believe that Capcom lost 19.5 billion yen in this fiscal year because of the two games, and the two NGC works certainly do not have so much power. Capcom's huge losses were mainly due to failed real estate speculation rather than games. This is not alone in the Japanese gaming industry. Konami sold 20 million games this fiscal year, comparable to EA, resulting in a loss of 27 billion yen due to a setback in the gym business.

Makoji Miami, then Capcom's fourth development minister, attributed NGC's failure in Japan to the Japanese herding effect. Looking at the details of the data, it seems that some evidence can be found. NGC's best-selling game in Japan in 2002 was not the core masterpiece, but the uninnovative gathering game Malio Party 4, which is consistent with Nintendo's goal of family fun, but is also a kind of herding effect.

Japan accounted for only 900000 of the 5.76 million NGC shipped this fiscal year, 2.91 million in North America and 1.95 million in other regions. NGC has temporarily tied with Xbox in Europe and the United States, where the herding effect is not so heavy, but this is not good news for Nintendo. There are only a few cards left in NGC. Xbox did not launch a powerful first-party masterpiece in 2002. Microsoft waited for a chance to fight back a few years later, and eventually Xbox really overtook NGC in sales.

As a third party, Capcom has fallen into a situation of applause on NGC, while Sega's situation on Xbox is similar. "Gun Goddess", "Graffiti Boy Future version" and "Iron Armor Flying Dragon Orta" these three games have achieved good reviews on Xbox, but none of the sales have reached the standard. Fortunately, Microsoft has provided a lot of support for these three games, which has reduced Sega's expenses in disguise. Sega's real huge loss stems from the failure of the rugby game NFL 2K3 to compete with EA's Madden NFL 2003.

Graffiti Boy Future has so far failed to release compatible patches, making it a pity that the best-selling game in Japan in 2002 was Bao Ke Meng: ruby and Sapphire, which sold 3.2 million in just 40 days. In Europe and the United States, "bullying: the Sin City" sold 8.5 million yuan in just three months. Sales lists in all regions are filled with a large number of sequels and expansion films. New IP such as "ICO", "Zero", "Shadow Heart", "reversal referee" and "Pikemin" emerged in Japan in 2001. in 2002, the number of new IP dropped sharply, making people feel lack of creativity. "Heart of the Kingdom" is theoretically a new IP, but the game can't be sold around the world without the linkage of the final Fantasy characters and Disney. In comparison, "Cell Division" and "SEALs" have made it into the top 20 of the US console game sales list as real new works, demonstrating the hematopoietic ability of the European and American game industry.

On October 4, 2002, in a speech at the joint high-tech exhibition in Japan, Hideki Sato, then president of Sega, summed up from his own point of view: games developed in Japan once accounted for 70% of the global mainframe software market at its peak. By 2002 that share had fallen to 25%. One of the reasons for the decline of Japanese games is the upgrading of storage media capacity, the capacity of the cassette is very small, can not play too many pictures and music, so the Japanese will rack their brains in order to play. Gradually, the storage mode of the host has changed from cassette to CD and even DVD, and the capacity has increased thousands of times. The Japanese spend a lot of time on the upgrade screen, but the playability has been ignored.

The theme of Hideki Sato's speech coincides with Satoshi Iwata's idea of Wii. However, in 2002, Hideki Sato did not point out another problem: Japanese manufacturers have not adapted to the PS2 era, but the development of their functions is endless. Will there be a day when their functions will expand to such an extent that European and American manufacturers cannot adapt?. For readers who have seen all kinds of PS4 game development questions in Europe and the United States, I believe you already have your own answer.

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