For a while now, I’ve been trying to hit enough of a stride to develop my own console before the game ends. I beat the game three times before, but only managed to unlock the hardware lab in the postgame each time. Several follow-up attempts resulted in bankruptcy.
I started a new game earlier, and did pretty well. I got to the fourth office and unlocked the hardware lab while the Playsystem 3 was still going strong. I don’t remember which year my console was actually finished and released, but the Playsytem 4 came out just before its release. Whenever it was, I finally managed to make a console before the end of the game!
I know a lot of other players have done this, and have probably done multiple consoles before the game’s end. I’m still proud of myself, though. I feel like showing off, so here are some screen shots!
Edit: Here’s my best-selling game before the end of GDT.
I squeezed in one last game just before the end date. I actually wanted to make a game with this topic/genre/title combo sooner (preferably in the garage), but virtual pet ended up being at the very bottom of the topic list for me and topic research was a low priority for me after I researched a few key topics.
I managed to release it just a week before the game ended. Talk about close calls!
Here’s a screen of my final score. I should have recorded my other scores for comparison, but I’m certain this one is higher than my previous play-throughs.
I played postgame for a while. In this entire play-through, I only managed to make a single game with all 10 ratings (I came close a few times with 9.75, but never a solid 10).
I’m probably looking like a one-note guy at this point with pony this and pony that, but I do make other games. The pony games just tend to be the most successful. I made quite a few other games of varying topics and title themes before Tactics Ponies 4, and this just happened to be the one to get all 10s.
Most of the other stuff I make just doesn’t get notable scores (those 9.75s I mentioned earlier also happened to be pony-themed, my more serious titles never score that high). I did the pony thing the first time for fun, but now it’s becoming more and more of a good luck thing. For that matter, my only all 10 in my last complete play-through was a pony game for grPhone.