Speaking of which, he is also a guy who once shone brightly but fell like a shooting star.
Now, the official artist for Dragon Quest, Sankai Mitsusuke, has a similar background.
In this respect, the two games are balanced.
Now that the composer should be settled, what's left is to find a suitable artist.
Takayuki didn't waste any time on this matter and promptly called her mother again to ask for her opinion.
This time, his mother didn't disappoint him. He quickly provided Takayuki with an address, apparently belonging to one of her former students.
In the previous life, the three pillars of Final Fantasy were the artist, the game producer, and the composer.
This student's art style also met Takayuki's expectations, reaching around an eight out of ten in his eyes, similar to the early Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano.
Of course, everyone has their own style, so it's impossible for them to be completely similar to Yoshitaka Amano. But they are about seventy to eighty percent similar, which is enough.
At first, the artist didn't seem particularly interested in electronic games, but because Takayuki was the child of his old teacher, he eventually agreed to help. Anyway, Takayuki would definitely pay him well, as no one would refuse money.
With these two, the trio of Final Fantasy's pillars was settled, with the composer being slightly more important. Because Yoshitaka Amano only helped draw for the first six Final Fantasy games, and after the seventh installment, the series took a new direction. But composer Nobuo Uematsu remained the official composer, his position unshakable.
Besides these two, the last pillar of Final Fantasy would naturally be taken up by Takayuki himself.
He would set the main tone of Final Fantasy, ensuring that they could make the game according to his requirements.
With this, the development work of the fifth game development team officially began.
The composer, Sakai, was personally inspected by Takayuki to confirm that he indeed met his standards. Then he was arranged into the game development studio.
Perhaps living an ordinary life for over a decade had smoothed his rough edges, and he no longer dwelled on the bottlenecks of his youth. He turned out to be surprisingly obedient, doing whatever Takayuki asked of him. If he asked him to compose a certain style of music, he would do it without hesitation. He was indeed a very high-quality composer.
Such obedient composers were not common. Just based on this, Takayuki had already decided to make him the official composer for future Final Fantasy games.
As for Sakai, he also cherished this job opportunity. After all, he was on the verge of being unable to support his family. The mundane life of everyday chores made him realize the importance of life, and money became even more important.
The artist recommended by Takayuki's mother was not very common. He simply followed Takayuki's instructions step by step to help draw various original concept drafts. Apparently, this artist still looked down upon the emerging electronic game industry and couldn't truly integrate into it yet.
But that wasn't a big problem. Final Fantasy's binding to artists was not as strong as Dragon Quest's, and the composer was more important.
Accepting this artist as a temporary worker was acceptable.
As time passed, more and more people joined Japan's electronic game industry.
Among them, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment took the lead. Now, there were more than thirty independent game studios developing games on the Famicom, and more than twenty companies with some reputation expanded their business, also making electronic games on the Famicom.
This included Golden Flat Entertainment, which previously cleared out its inventory by selling refurbished game consoles.
They had a considerable number of IPs in anime, movies, and novels, and simply making games with the same names as these popular IPs would be well received.
A six-point game, combined with a well-known IP, could achieve very good sales.
However, they chose to log in to their own games on multiple platforms, taking 30% of the share on the Famicom, which was 10% less than the exclusive share taken by other companies, resulting in much less profit.
But they still insisted on logging in to multiple platforms.
Their first official game was a game based on a somewhat famous adventure novel called "Edward's Adventure Legend." The game type was the most profitable role-playing game with turn-based combat, with some slight innovations in gameplay, which attracted some players.
On the most authoritative game review website in Japan, Ichigo Game Net, formerly a forum established by Ichigo Murakami's child, the game was given a three-star rating, making it the second three-star game logged in on a platform other than the Famicom.
Of course, according to Ichigo Murakami's evaluation, half a star should be added to the fame of the IP itself. In terms of playability, it was actually only two and a half stars, not as good as Sorai Electronics' Sun Knight.
While these people were bustling into the hot market of electronic games, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment suddenly released a brand new product without any warning.
This thing could also be called a game console, but its functionality was limited, and the performance of the game console itself was quite low.
But it had a very unique appearance, resembling a cartoon character, looking like a decoration more than anything else. More importantly, it could be played with in hand.
At the same time, related advertisements were broadcasted on Tokyo TV, and advertisements for this product were also posted on trams and street billboards.
These advertisements all had a significant common point.
That is, there were cute girls with lovely smiles in the advertisements.
They showed the sunniest smiles in the world, holding something shaped like an egg in their hands.
In the TV commercials, a group of girls ran joyfully under the morning sun, each holding colorful egg-shaped objects in their hands.
On the shoulders of these cheerful girls, cute little animals also showed happy expressions, dancing along with the advertising music.
The appearances of these little animals were quite special. There was one that was yellow, with rabbit ears but a tail like lightning; one looked like a nine-tailed fox; and one was simply a little creature with the appearance of a slime, the signature monster of Dragon Quest.
These little animals bounced on the girls' shoulders, and finally, they all jumped into the colorful eggs held by the girls. Then, the front photos of those egg-shaped items were shown.
There was a black-and-white pixel screen in the middle.
On this screen, which was about the size of two or three thumbs, the rough appearance of the little animals was outlined with very simple pixel graphics.
They sometimes looked happy, sometimes sad, and sometimes even angry, but they all appeared very lifelike.
"Tamagotchi."
"Grow, nurture, educate, until old age, experience the feeling of raising little pets."
"With over fifty different kinds of little animals, each with different personalities, every nurturing experience will be different!"
"Tamagotchi is now officially on sale. For more details, please contact the following phone number or visit authorized stores of Gamestar Electronic Entertainment to purchase! For only 2000 yen, you can bring home over fifty little animals! You can take them out to nurture anytime, anywhere! Take care of your babies at all times."
"Tamagotchi, we all love it!"
In the advertisements, the girls held the little eggs in their hands, stretched out their hands towards the camera, and showed broad smiles.
Then, the advertisement ended, and immediately, the contact phone number left on various advertisements was bombarded with calls.