Premise
It is 1981. Well, it’s actually 2025, but just roll with it. Video games are in their infancy. The Atari 2600, Fairchild Channel F, and Intellivision have been released. The Game & Watch has been released in the handheld market, while Magnavox, creator the the first game console, the Odyssey, has released the Odyssey 2. The market has many consoles. But you, yes, you, can change video game history. You can make a console, and if it’s good, it will be a hit. Be careful, for there is always the risk of the console being a flop…
How to play
Each round is about 3 months. Each round, you can start developing a handheld or home console. However, you can only be developing 1 console and 1 handheld at a time. You can use the unlocked tech in your console. Here’s the tech tree: Tech tree
(Click on the download button to see it in it’s uncompressed glory)
Technology is automatically researched. However, if the required technology to unlock a certain technology is unlocked, you can research it to make it unlocked a round faster. However, that will cost 10 million dollars, and you can only research one technology at a time. As for the consoles, they will cost a certain amount to make. You canmake the price higher than the manufacturing costs for a profit. You can make cartridges, and they will cost money to make, but not as much as consoles. Also, if nobody buys your console, you will lose money. You can spend money on advertising to make people buy it, though. This increases your hype value, which directly affects how many units your console sells. Also, handhelds use tech from the handheld branches. For example, a handheld with a 16kb cartirdge size will not use the tech 16kb carts, but 16kb handheld carts.
Now, onto the signup part. You can name your company, and set where it is based. This determines which market your consoles will be released to first. You can choose the release order of the console in other places. You can also name your console. Be careful with the name, because if you make it something unpronouncable, or just something you feel stupid when saying, it will have a very slight negative effect on your sales.
This is my most complex FG yet. Good thing there’s a constant, or ever-decreasing amount, of AI players. AI players can go bankrupt, just like you. So Nintendo may shut down, even if it did not in our timeline.