If the NES had won over children and housewives, then the NovaBox was devouring everyone from young adults to the elderly without discrimination.
Its style and identity seemed practically tailor made for the American gaming audience. The competition between the two had been out in the open from the very beginning.
It was like two floods surging in from the East and West Coasts simultaneously, and amid this fierce battle, another contender suddenly stepped onto the stage.
Or rather, an old hero made a return.
Atari arrived with its so-called next generation console, the Atari 7800, and launched sales in Chicago.
Its $140 price tag immediately suppressed the entire field.
It was clearly positioned differently from either competitor, targeting a lower end market segment.
Can't afford the expensive NovaBox?
Then buy an Atari instead and then… the NES and NovaBox shipments arrived.
Atari's backward compatibility turned into a complete joke. It failed to stir up even the slightest wave before being kicked to the side of the road and forgotten.
...
"Ethan, you were right! You were absolutely right! I was such a fool, truly..."
Meyer gave up trying to contact Ethan by phone and personally drove over to see him, showering him with praise.
The NovaBox's performance after its official launch was completely different from its test-sale period. No matter how hard he racked his brain, he couldn't understand how Ethan had suddenly produced a game like Wolfenstein 3D.
And on an 8-bit machine, no less!
His gaze moved past Ethan and into the room. Gerald and Sam were busy at a workbench, processing something. Noticing Meyer's gaze, Ethan smiled and stepped aside, inviting him in.
"Meyer, you've arrived at the perfect time. The prototype for the first peripheral we've developed for the NovaBox is almost finished."
"A peripheral?"
Meyer felt some nerve connected to his future fortune twitch instantly, his spirits immediately lifted.
"That's right. Have you heard about Nintendo's 'Light Gun' released last year?"
"The Zapper? You're making your own light gun peripheral?"
Meyer immediately connected it to the recently released Wolfenstein 3D. Of course! A shooting game paired with a light gun accessory. Who knew how well that would sell?
Nintendo managed to make the Zapper a huge success with Duck Hunt alone.
"Something like that, but we're not using optical positioning."
Ethan nodded and picked up a crude plastic pistol model from the table.
Nintendo's Zapper used an ingenious positioning method. The moment the trigger was pulled, the screen would briefly turn black, leaving only a white square where the target was located.
The light gun would then use its built-in light sensor to determine whether the shot had hit.
Ethan connected the pistol to the NovaBox interface and inserted a Wolfenstein 3D cartridge. As he rotated the pistol in his hand, the viewpoint on the screen rotated as well.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
"We're using a horizontal acceleration sensor."
Wolfenstein 3D had a subtle but important difference from other shooting games. Its hit detection wasn't determined by an aiming cursor, it was determined by the player's viewpoint.
As long as the enemy stood directly ahead, the shot would register as a hit.
That gave Ethan an idea. He could make a small modification to the light gun concept and turn it into a pure input device. Their gun was more like a strangely shaped controller equipped with an acceleration sensor.
The greatest advantage of this design was that it didn't require the performance-consuming recognition and decoding systems used by traditional light guns. It also avoided the light gun's biggest weakness…
Poor responsiveness.
The Zapper was absolutely a product whose marketing far exceeded its actual user experience.
Many times, the only way to use it properly was to press it directly against the television screen. There were even many displays that simply weren't compatible with it.
After listening to Ethan's explanation, Meyer accepted the gun in surprise and examined it carefully. After clearing one stage, Meyer fell into a long silence.
If using a controller still left a slight sense of separation between the player and the game, then this gun completely erased the boundary between reality and virtuality.
Every time Meyer thought he had become accustomed to Ethan's genius, Ethan would suddenly pull out another product that completely shattered his understanding of what was possible.
Yet before he could even fully process the news, Ethan led him to another object on the workbench. It was a floppy disk drive. However, there was a telephone line port installed on the back.
"Wait... could this be..."
"A floppy fax machine. It can be used to upload player records stored on game disks directly to GAMENOVA headquarters."
"Wait... what?"
Meyer felt as though Ethan had wound up and punched him directly in the brain. His head buzzed in confusion. Where exactly did Ethan get all these crazy ideas?
Meyer had come intending to thank Ethan and admit that his earlier pessimism had been mistaken, but now he was in shock seeing the prototypes of the gun controller and the floppy fax machine.
...
Although the combination of Wolfenstein 3D and the gun peripheral caused a tremendous shock in the marketplace,
The NES's sales continued to grow steadily and the reason was simple.
Housewives naturally preferred letting their children play a bright and cheerful game like Super Mario Bros rather than running around the living room waving a pistol and shouting while shooting people.
Of course, Ethan wasn't generous enough to completely surrender that portion of the market.
To "clean up" public perceptions of GAMENOVA, he had already prepared his own Triforce.
He divided this image-rehabilitation plan into a trilogy.
A young hero's adventure, a warm countryside life and adorable pets.
And the first part of that trilogy was naturally The Legend of Zelda, which he had been preparing for a long time.
Looking at the map tiles displayed on the screen, Sam seemed puzzled.
"Why are we going backwards and making a 2D game again?"
As the first and only game company in the world to master pseudo-3D technology, GAMENOVA should, in Sam's opinion, seize this opportunity and further expand its advantage.
A 3D version of Contra.
A 3D version of 1942.
Wouldn't either of those be better than burying themselves in a completely new project?
Even if they were creating a new IP, why regress back to 2D?
"I'd love to make it in 3D."
Ethan rubbed his forehead.
He had chosen the original The Legend of Zelda as the foundation, but thanks to the NovaBox's superior hardware performance, the visual design could move closer to A Link to the Past.
A 3D open-world RPG was simply impossible with processors at the current technological level. No amount of hardware upgrades would change that.
Even if the performance somehow managed to keep up, there was no way a floppy disk had enough storage capacity to hold it.
"Sam, I've noticed you've started going down the wrong path."
Ethan spread a document open and placed it in front of him.
"Games should always put gameplay first. Graphics and visual quality are bonuses, but they're never the deciding factor."
It was a detailed map design document.
"What we're making is an Open World Role Playing Action Adventure Game."
-----------------------
If you want some extra chapters, be sure to check out my 𝒫a-trοn page, it's 30 chapters ahead and the chapters are also long so you can check it out.
𝒫 α t r e on => NovaScribe
Just replace 𝒫 and α with p and a. Also remove all spaces and search the name NovaScribe on that platform