Chapter 006: Cutting off someone's financial resources is like killing their parents
In 1989 Shenzhen was full of opportunities everywhere.
It's a special era, the country has encountered setbacks on the political front, and that incident happened, coupled with the joint sanctions of Western countries, resulting in material shortages and soaring prices in society. You're worried that you won't have goods to sell, almost anything can be sold!
Only demonstrated once the Gluttonous Snake game, the wholesale merchants of Shenzhen's cartridge market sold out all 1,000 copies of the cartridges, paid quickly and in cash. More than a dozen people carried bags of cash to surround Zhao Yongping, scrambling to buy!
One shot hits the mark!
Zhao Yongping and the cashier rushed onto the car with 30,000 yuan in their arms, tears streaming down their faces.
Although it's just a small 300,000 yuan, it means that Huamao Electronics Factory finally has a way out!
Zhao Yongping, under the age of thirty, bore tremendous pressure to apply for a job at the factory, trying every means to make a living. How much pressure he shouldered, how many people's scolding he endured...
1,000 boxes of cassette tapes were sold out in less than an hour, and seven or eight bosses are preparing to visit the Huamao Electronics Factory. The follow-up orders are "how much do you want, how much we will give", the price is not even negotiable. Everyone at the Huamao Electronics Factory is extremely excited.
The factory is saved!
On the other hand, Yang Yun left ahead of time by himself. He rarely came to Shenzhen and this time he took a good tour of the local electronic products wholesale market. He really had no bottom in his heart.
As expected, when Zhao Yongping was about to drive back to Chongshan, he saw Yang Yun with a gloomy face and noticed that Yang Yun was carrying a large package.
This is a beautifully packaged box with a label that clearly writes an English word: Nintendo!
Zhao Yongping's heart suddenly sank, because he saw a word in Yang Yun's eyes, called helplessness!
……
……
Back at Huamao Electronics Factory, the three of them arrived at the development workshop.
As Yang Yun took out cartridges named "Donkey Kong" and "Super Mario Bros", Zhao Yongping asked: "What is this?"
Alexei fiddled with a test machine next to him for half a day, and after inserting the cartridge, it was surprisingly compatible, so he simply started playing the game.
Yang Yun's face was gloomy: "These are Nintendo's genuine cartridges! The whole set of machines costs 1200, how can I afford it?! It took me half a day to get these few discs, and there's Donkey Kong and Super Mario! I'm going to die! Is this a scam or what?! You seven uncles' three nieces! How the hell am I supposed to play this?!"
Yang Yun was furious and somewhat incoherent, not caring whether Zhao Yongping could understand him or not, because he suddenly felt a deep sense of powerlessness.
Nintendo is a renowned Japanese video game company that entered the FC market in 1985 and developed Donkey Kong and Super Mario within two years, successfully landing in Europe and America in 1987. In the following years, it sold 40 million copies of cartridges in North America and Japan, and eventually, the entire Super Mario series sold 160 million copies worldwide!
What is this concept?
There is such an opponent, it's simply a nightmare! What competition are we talking about? It's not even on the same level. A baby and a heavyweight champion can't be compared at all. No, Huamao Electronics Factory isn't even worthy of being called a baby, at most it's just a frightened egg...
Fortunately, in 1989, Nintendo only sold legitimate cartridges. The mainland Chinese market had low purchasing power and struggled to make progress, and it did not attach great importance to the Chinese market, nor did it lay out large quantities of goods.
Yang Yun's eyes blazed with fire, if he wanted to put this classic game in his pocket, he had only one way to go - that is, copycat!
Yang Yun said seriously: "Director Zhao, I hope to work with Alexei to do research and develop this Super Mario as soon as possible, then release our own version of Super Mario! Let's compete with Nintendo in speed and grab the market!"
Zhao Yongping's first reaction was that this is a good thing, anyway, it's all pirated stuff, anyone can pirate them, since they have already pirated 1000 boxes, then in the future they can pirate out 10,000 boxes, and pirating Kote's learning card doesn't make a difference from pirating one Nintendo.
It's like stealing a chicken, at first both parties are concerned about morality and public opinion, but once they break through the first hurdle, it's easy to make another appointment with their lover.
These two days, 1,000 pirated copies of the game were sold, with a profit of nearly 20,000 yuan. If I pirate another two games and put them on the same cartridge, the selling price will be even higher, who wouldn't do that!
Zhao Yongping nodded, looking at the monitor where Mario was jumping around, seemingly quite attractive. He himself burst out laughing and asked: "Aleksey! What do you think of Xiao Yang's plan?"
Alex accidentally jumped into the pit and lost all three lives, game over.
He put down the controller, hesitated for a moment and said: "The Gluttonous Snake is nothing, I haven't heard of any big company owning its patent. But to completely copy Nintendo's two games, I'm afraid there will be trouble! Nintendo is also a large Japanese enterprise, aren't you afraid they'll sue you for infringement?"
Yang Yun coldly snorted: "This is China! I still don't believe little Japan can stir up such a big wave!"
In 1985, the Japanese Prime Minister's first formal visit to Yasukuni Shrine caused a huge stir in Chinese public opinion. The Xinhua News Agency published a commentary saying that this move was an attempt to revive militarism and rekindled anti-Japanese sentiment at home.
Adding to this, with what happened in Beijing this year, the US led other Western countries in imposing multi-faceted sanctions on China, and Japan was among them!
This is a sentence of Yang Yun's angry words, he who is familiar with history, of course knows how Sino-Japanese relations will develop in the future, little Japan really stirred up quite a commotion in China, countless Japanese enterprises entered mainland China, blooming everywhere.
Moreover, he also knew that later on, Universal and Nintendo went to international court over the copyright of Donkey Kong, and Nintendo also dragged Sega and Sony into endless legal battles with cartridge games. Nintendo is absolutely not a vegetarian!
Everything comes down to one thing: money.
To cut off a person's financial resources is like killing his parents!
Shanzhai Super Mary then competed with Nintendo for market share, and its nature changed!
Nintendo is a powerful company that has a tight grip on the exclusive production rights of all cartridges in Japan, as well as the publishing rights. All game cartridges must be manufactured in its factories or in strictly quality-controlled external factories. The majority of profits from popular third-party games go to Nintendo, while developers bear all the risks and obligations.
If Yang Yun really completely copied this Super Mario, it's hard to say whether Nintendo will sue him or not.
But he really didn't want to give up Super Mario, this classic game!
Zhao Yongping is the de facto controller of Huamao Electronics Factory. He has many things to consider and asks, "When was this Super Mario made?"
"Two years ago, around 1987, it was mainly sold in Japan and North America, I heard that the sales of cassette tapes were over a million, but it was very hard to find in our mainland market. After searching for a long time in Shenzhen, I finally found one, and the dealer told me that this tape is too expensive and doesn't sell well!"
"There's a market of over ten million... so what are you going to do?"
PS: Some things can only be vaguely brought along, so some events have undergone minor modifications in time, please don't mind.
