Atlus Studio.
After a two-week vacation, Kobayashi Tetsu felt completely refreshed.
Jackie Chan had called back, confirming his availability. However, the specific contract details would need to be negotiated with his agent, Raymond Chow, who was also his adoptive father.
Kobayashi Tetsu naturally sought someone to handle the negotiations.
The "three-card monte" scam never goes out of style. With enough reputation, you could get Jackie Chan to star in your film. With a contract from Jackie Chan, you could approach film companies for distribution. Once a distribution plan was in place, no one would dare obstruct the filming.
The only difference between him and a swindler was that Kobayashi Tetsu could actually afford to hire Jackie Chan to make a movie.
Jackie Chan's salary was exorbitant. By the mid-1980s, it had already reached tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars, and production costs typically exceeded twenty million Hong Kong dollars.
At an exchange rate of eight Hong Kong dollars to one US dollar, the budget was equivalent to 2.5 million US dollars. This was on the lower end for an action film; typically, such films without major spectacle—like car chases, explosions, and gunfights—would cost four to five million US dollars.
In Japanese yen, this amounted to 700 million yen. In Japan, this would be considered a major production, the kind only directors of Akira Kurosawa or Kinji Fukasaku's caliber would dare to tackle.
Atlas could certainly afford it, but to mitigate the risk, they still needed to find co-investors.
Yamashina Makoto had recently invested in Royal Space Force and, as expected, lost money. Kobayashi Tetsu was considering bringing his good friend back to recoup the losses.
He shook his head slightly, pulling his thoughts back to the task at hand.
The film didn't require his direct involvement—he didn't understand the creative side anyway. His role was simply to secure talent and manage the budget. With Jackie Chan's star power, as long as the Street Fighter movie wasn't a complete disaster, a distribution revenue of at least 1 billion yen was practically guaranteed.
Distribution revenue represents the actual box office share that the production company receives. In other words, an investment of 700 million yen would essentially guarantee a return of 1 billion yen. The only downside is the long payback period, which could take one to two years.
Games, however, were his specialty.
"How was everyone's holiday break? You all look refreshed. I'll briefly outline this year's development plan."
Kobayashi Tetsu tapped the whiteboard, ensuring everyone could see it.
"The Double Dragon practice project is complete. I believe its quality is good enough for release. I'll be contacting Jackie Chan soon to collaborate on a GG promotion. Our main task for the next project will be to work with Capcom staff and the CPS1 arcade board they've provided to develop a fighting game called Street Fighter."
As he spoke, Kobayashi Tetsu nodded to the Capcom representatives.
Takashi Nishiyama, Yuji Matsumoto, and the others returned the nod.
Kobayashi Tetsu is willing to play ball with Capcom? He's a good guy!
Yuji Naka was nearly in tears.
The President is right—if it's a Jackie Chan game, it absolutely must have Jackie Chan!
"Another matter: Atlas has recently hired several new members, all experienced professionals with prior works to their name. For now, they'll be organized into Development Division 3. Divisions 1 and 2 will need to transfer some personnel to Division 3; I'll draft the specific roster later. Division 3's task is to develop a game based on the novel Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, tailored to Tokuma Shoten's requirements. They'll provide the development funds, so the revenue will be shared with Tokuma Shoten. The project code name is MEGA{."
This is an abbreviation of Megami Tensei.
Of course, our Atlas is much larger than the True Atlas, so the terms are more lenient. After Tokuma Shoten agrees to cooperate with the development of this work, Atlas will retain permanent ownership of the Megami Tensei name. Subsequent Megami Tensei games will be entirely independent of Tokuma Shoten.
Tokuma Shoten is self-funding the anime adaptation, which will premiere simultaneously with the game in 1987, as in the original timeline. Kobayashi Tetsu doesn't need to worry about it; Tokuma Shoten has even handled the promotion for him. He just needs to focus on making a great game.
Iwata Satoru stared at Kobayashi Tetsu, hesitating to speak.
What about the Second Division? What will they do?
He still really wanted to work!
Finally, Kobayashi Tetsu said, "The Second Division will follow me. I'm planning to develop a home console game, and I'll be personally overseeing it. The internal development codename is 'Jackal'."
Jackal was the game's original name, but it became more widely known as Final Mission: Red Fortress.
There's a saying about the "Big Four" games on the FC: Salamander, Contra, Red Fortress, and Green Beret.
Hmm, all Konami games.
Kobayashi Tetsu snatched Salamander, and Contra and Green Beret will both be released this year.
Actually, if he had worked faster, he could have snatched Contra too. But Kobayashi Tetsu still left some for Konami, just to remind them that they once made games instead of just dissertations.
—There was another main reason too. The Contra IP later died completely, and many people never played the new Contra games. Kobayashi Tetsu would rather wait for the arcade scene to develop further, with improved graphics, before making Metal Slug.
At least the Metal Slug IP is still alive and well. Capcom should continue making arcade games.
Capcom has never been shy about making arcade games.
After Kobayashi Tetsu finished speaking, all eyes in the room turned to him.
He's finally coming back to make games after slacking off for two years since moving out of the garage!
Naka Yuji pledged his loyalty: "I still want to go back and work on Jackal with you!"
Kobayashi Tetsu reassured him: "Your current mission is to work with Masanobu Endo and Capcom to make Street Fighter the best it can be. Iwata-kun, compile a list of personnel and bring it to the office later."
With the arrangements made, Kobayashi Tetsu returned to prepare for the Red Fortress game development.
By the way, anyone who's played Japanese versions of games from that era will notice something: the graphics in Japanese versions were significantly better than their American counterparts, and not just by a little.
This was because Japanese companies often included dedicated enhancement chips in their cartridges to assist the console with processing.
However, due to licensing agreements at the time, American versions were prohibited from including such chips, resulting in inferior graphics.
A classic example is the difference between the Japanese and American versions of Contra.
When bootleg cartridges were produced domestically, they often used the smaller, more cost-effective American versions and avoided the Japanese ones. This meant that fewer people played the Japanese versions of games in the early days.
The most famous example of this was Konami's "VRC" series of enhancement chips. Originally designed for arcade machines, they were adapted for Konami's own cartridges with some performance limitations.
Contra used the VRC3 enhancement chip, which gave the Japanese version dynamic visual effects and more than double the storage capacity of the American version, a staggering 256KB.
The American version only had 128KB.
Kobayashi Tetsu couldn't get his hands on Konami's enhancement chips, and Atlas didn't yet have the capability to develop their own.
But Kobayashi Tetsu could turn to Nintendo!
Nintendo and Sega also had their own enhancement chips for cartridges.
Nintendo's "MMC" series of enhancement chips focused on improving visual presentation. Unlike Konami's approach, Nintendo's chips effectively increased the video memory, allowing more elements to be displayed on screen simultaneously. This resulted in more aesthetically pleasing color palettes and the ability to show more enemies on screen at once.
Sega, like Konami, opted not to increase the amount of content displayed on screen. Instead, they focused on enhancing visual fidelity, such as adding dynamic trees.
This was primarily because Sega's consoles, compared to Nintendo's, were characterized by high processing power and relatively weak graphics. To compensate, cartridges were equipped with additional chips to boost display performance and enhance visual effects. Nintendo, on the other hand, lacked sufficient processing power, resulting in static-looking enemies in early games and simplistic boss battles. For instance, fighting Koopa in Super Mario Bros. involved simply jumping over him to grab an axe and finish him off, without any complex combat sequences.
Due to the high cost, very few third-party games, apart from Sega's first-party titles, were able to include these enhancement chips.
Kobayashi Tetsu intended to approach both companies, aiming to secure a license for Nintendo's MMC3 chip.
Super Mario Bros. 3 utilized the MMC3 to enhance its visual effects.
If Sega refused to grant him a license, Kobayashi Tetsu would truly be forced to abandon them.
"Nintendo is granting me the license, but you Sega won't? Aren't you afraid I'll completely switch to Nintendo?"
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