This game saved my idiom knowledge.
The wind is still blowing and the birds have flown away
People are still watching and people are surprised
Checking your luggage while watching others busy
Collect rags and my beautiful dreams
… …
It's time to go
This lyrics comes from a popular song "It's Time to Go" at the end of the last century, sung by the band Feiyu. By 2017, the band Feiyu, which had been disbanded and reorganized, would still appear on the lists of some music festivals, but it never became popular.
However, for players in the 1980s and 1990s, this song and the name "Feiyu" represent their memories of the best period: it is the opening theme of the computer game "Virtual Life 2".
At that age when we still didn’t know what love was, the sentence "Hold my hand, big-eyed girl" was enough to make people blush; when the understanding of English was still limited to letters, the sentence "It's time to go" became the first English phrase I learned.
The “virtual” life that is often mistaken
The first generation of "Virtual Life" was launched in February 1999, and the producer was Taiwan Gangye Information. The English name of the game is "life", which is the letter V in "VR virtual reality".
This year, EA's "The Sims" series has not yet been released. Due to their similar names, the two were often confused for a long time. When it came to the second generation, "The Sims 2" was released earlier than "The Sims 2", which caused many people to go to the computer store to buy "The Sims", thinking that the second generation was coming out, but the pirates gave them "The Sims" instead. 2"
In order to distinguish the two series, even the Chinese Wiki specifically states that "the subject of this article is not the Sims series."
Although the names are similar, the gameplay of the two is completely different. The game's advancement method is similar to Daewoo's "Monopoly" series, which incorporates many elements such as business simulation, card battles, role playing, and question and answer development. The main goal of the player is to become as strong as possible in the limited life, that is, the number of rounds, and finally defeat King Asura.
Just like each square on the Monopoly board has a different function, the player's actions in each round of "Virtual Life" also depend on which square they walk into. The parameter grid can spend money to improve character attributes, the event grid can trigger random plots, the fate grid can increase or decrease abilities through psychological tests, and the monster grid can increase experience through card battles.
When the player comes to the "job transfer grid" as a non-student, he can choose various professions based on the character's attributes. Normal ones include soldiers, lawyers, and programmers, while more imaginative ones include spies, prisoners, and even supermen.
In just a few hundred rounds, players will experience a complete life from admission and examination to entering society and entering the workplace. Just like in reality, when the protagonist finishes his senior year of high school, he will face the first major exam in his life. The result of this exam will also determine the trend of life. If you can't get a spot on the gold list, you can only enter the society as a gangster in advance.
The so-called "college entrance examination" is all multiple-choice questions covering many fields such as history, geography, astronomy, mathematics, literature, biology, and physics. Although the questions were just common sense multiple-choice questions, considering that the Internet was not yet popular at the time, it was still quite difficult for players – not to mention that most of the players at that time were young children.
At that time I read two lines of poetry
Another impressive aspect of the game is the voice acting. Nowadays, dubbing has become a standard feature of many game products, but 18 years ago, domestic games with real-person dubbing were not that common. "Virtual Life" is one of them. In addition to its interesting semi-real-time card combinations, its battle system is also about its special moves and voice acting.
Each special move of the protagonist and monsters in the game consists of four Chinese characters, most of which are idioms, such as "fishing in troubled waters", "hiding a knife in a smile", "going in the wrong direction", etc. In addition, each move has a real person dubbing. These idioms and sounds have left a deep imprint on their minds. It is no wonder that some players will lament that "virtual life is my first idiom teacher" more than ten years later.
Because of the unique gameplay and strong randomness of the game, the first version of "Virtual Life" gained a good reputation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. According to the publisher "Tomorrow Studio", the first-generation genuine version has sold more than 300,000 copies nationwide, which was a good result in an era when piracy was rampant.
"Take my hand, big-eyed girl"
Riding on the success of the first generation, the publisher Tomorrow Studio was very optimistic about the prospects of "Virtual Life" and simply took over the development of the sequel.
This is actually a well-established studio, and game development and distribution is just one of their many businesses. Its founder is Wen Shiren, and the martial arts novel "Qin Shi Mingyue" adapted into a popular animation is Mr. Wen's legacy.
In August 2000, "Virtual Life 2", which was taken over by Tomorrow Studio, was launched.
Although Japan already had the precedent of "Final Fantasy 8", there were not many manufacturers that added live-action theme songs to domestic games at that time. This song "It's Time to Go" sung by Feiyu Band still has countless players leaving messages on an online music software to express their remembrance.
In the era when the Internet was underdeveloped, this song was inserted into Nicholas Tse's album by pirated tape dealers, and was named "Girl with Big Eyes", so that some people still mistakenly think that it is the work of Brother Feng – after all, Nicholas Tse The name is much more familiar than Feiyu.
In fact, not only the title song, but also the entire game BGM of "Virtual Life 2" was handled by Feiyu Band – this is also the first time in China that a rock band has been invited to provide soundtrack work for a computer game. When the game was launched, Feiyu Band was invited to the press conference and played the theme song live.
The gameplay of the sequel basically follows that of the first game, with the addition of an "opponent" setting. The opponent can be an NPC controlled by AI or a second player, taking turns acting with the protagonist. Among the default character names of the system, the boy is called "Wind Son" and the girl is called "Yue Zhi Wu". In a comment on Douban, a netizen said that his first online name "Yue Wu" came from this game.
"Child of the Wind"
Although the combat system and monster development are much more mature than those of the first generation, the second generation with a changed production team has removed the college entrance examination and other gameplay. The optional professions are more fantasy-based such as Cyborg and RoboCop, and the levels have become the "Seven Deadly Sins" Theme – While the game has become more "modern", it also seems to lose some of the flavor of "life" and is more like a Monopoly that emphasizes card battles.
From "virtual life" to "virtual cat life"
One year after the launch of the second generation, the efficient Tomorrow Studio took advantage of the situation and launched a spin-off work "Shura Wars". The combat method is still the traditional card series of the series, but the game format has become a war chess, and multiple players can operate at the same time. role.
Gaiden has become a war chess game with no special features.
In 2003, online games suddenly emerged, and piracy of stand-alone games took over. Most manufacturers stopped spending too much attention on stand-alone games. It was during this period that the third official work of "Virtual Life" was born.
Due to poor balance and monotonous plot, the Taiwanese newspaper "Computer Gamer" gave this work a rating of 2.5 points – a perfect score of 5. A few years later, some players discovered a large amount of unused material in the game's installation package, including new avatars, hidden endings, mysterious professions and even ending pictures that have never appeared.
In December of the same year, shortly after the release of "Virtual Life 3", Mr. Wen Shiren, the founder of Tomorrow Studio, died of brainstem hemorrhage. Although Mr. Wen had not had much involvement in game development before, the operating conditions of Tomorrow Studio, which has a wide range of businesses, have been deteriorating.
Finally, in 2009, the studio with insufficient cash flow finally decided to sell the classic brand "Virtual Life" and handed it over to Beijing Entertainment Channel and Bolide Studio for continued development – Entertainment Channel was the one that released "Sky in the Sky" in mainland China. A company that produces PC versions of Japanese games such as Locus, Ys, and Memories of Autumn.
Just this year, the fourth work of Virtual Life, which was in the hands of the stepmother, suddenly appeared in front of the players with an appearance that no one could recognize. Its subtitle was "Happy Star Cat", and the style and setting were obviously youthful. change.
According to information from Entertainment News at the time, the 4th generation reached an official "IP linkage" with a domestic animation called "Happy Star Cat", and abruptly changed the virtual life into a "virtual cat life". The consequences can be imagined .
Another year passed, and "New Virtual Life" developed by Bolide still looked like a game for young people, completely making players lose confidence. This once brilliant game brand was finally classified as a less popular one by Entertainment Channel. The perfect ending.
Currently, both the 3rd and 4th generations, which have received mixed reviews, are available for free download on the Cube Game Platform. However, the first two games, which are hailed as classics by more players, do not have any official versions as the copyrights are still in the hands of "Tomorrow Studio". Access methods.
