Building a Gaming Empire In 1984

Sam was left dizzy by the sudden news. He was so excited that he couldn't sleep all night.

Early Sunday morning, just as dawn was breaking, he had already contacted a manufacturing contractor and was preparing to discuss production arrangements.

As for Ethan, he would be taking over Sam's shift and heading to GAMENOVA early to watch the store.

"Looks like I really need to hire an employee."

Ethan stretched and made up his mind.

Although the skill bonuses allowed him to function perfectly well on only two or three hours of sleep, who wouldn't prefer the chance to enjoy a proper lie-in?

He set a large cardboard box down on the table behind the counter. Inside was a brand-new Commodore 64 along with various development tools and odds and ends.

With this machine, he could continue his development work even while staying at the arcade.

"Man, hurry up and open the door!"

"Open up, manager! We're your customers!"

"It's already six o'clock! Are you even running a business or not?!"

...

Before Ethan had even finished organizing his things, the players lined up outside were already growing restless.

The shouting came in wave after wave.

There were even more people today than yesterday.

"So this is the power of word of mouth..."

Rubbing his temples, Ethan reopened the store and switched on the lights indicating that business was open.

Thinking about it carefully, the term "word of mouth effect" seemed to have originally been popularized by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi.

It took Ethan quite some effort to squeeze through the packed gaming area and make it behind the counter.

Leaving the players, who had completely descended into a state of carnival like frenzy, to themselves, he turned his attention back to the computer.

Although everything seemed to be progressing smoothly over the past half month, there was still a world of difference between him and the true industry giants.

Whether it was Nintendo, Namco, or Sega, any one of them could easily crush a newcomer like him.

Especially since Nintendo's full scale entry into the American market was less than a year away.

If he couldn't build up his own power before then, he would have little hope of resisting them.

Until that time came, all he could do was develop as many blockbuster games as possible, perhaps even intercept some of the legendary titles that originally belonged to the Famicom lineup, in order to weaken Nintendo's grip on America.

Once his capital reached a substantial scale, he could begin laying plans for the home console market.

"Super Mario and Contra..."

Ethan rhythmically tapped his fingers against the desk as he considered strategies for dealing with these two games.

In terms of influence, there were probably fewer than five works in the world that could rival Super Mario.

As for Contra, it was Konami's flagship title after Nintendo opened the door to third party developers.

But as he thought about Contra, Ethan's eyes suddenly lit up.

This seemed like a good choice.

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Judging by Contra's story, its heroic narrative of a lone commando infiltrating enemy bases and saving the world seemed particularly compatible with the American market.

Back in that era, the first two Contra games on the Famicom were every bit as iconic as Super Mario.

Using it as a weapon against Nintendo would also allow him to secretly trip up Konami.

A double win.

No, a win twice over.

Having made his decision, Ethan wasted no time and immediately began planning the development process.

But he ran into a major problem almost immediately.

The hardware couldn't keep up.

Contra wasn't a contemporary of Super Mario.

It wouldn't be released until three years later, in 1987.

At the time, Contra ran on Konami's proprietary arcade board, whose performance completely overwhelmed contemporary arcade hardware in every conceivable aspect.

Looking at the processors alone, there was hardly any point in comparison.

The dual-CPU architecture of the 16-bit Motorola 68000 and Zilog Z80 utterly dominated every single-chip 8-bit processor of the era.

Its custom graphics chipset pushed visual quality to what was essentially a next-generation level.

Compared to current graphics hardware, merely implementing the background scrolling and sprite effects seen in 1942 already exhausted virtually all available graphical performance.

Not to mention its massive 256KB storage capacity.

Even finding a storage medium capable of holding that much data would be difficult.

"What are you thinking about?"

Vivian's voice interrupted his train of thought.

She had noticed him furrowing his brows for quite some time now, occasionally scribbling notes and crossing things out.

"If there's anything you need help with, I might be able to lend a hand."

"Vivian..."

Ethan nodded in greeting, surprise flashing across his face.

After just one day apart, Vivian's attribute panel seemed to have increased by several points again.

"Vivian, what do you think... If we pushed optimization algorithms to their absolute limit with current arcade hardware, how far could we go?"

Vivian tilted her head slightly and thought for a moment.

"Actually, what you accomplished in 1942 is already very impressive. If you try to optimize it further, you'll start sacrificing visual quality. I don't think that trade-off would be worth it."

After spending an entire day playing 1942, Vivian felt that she learned something new from almost every session.

His technical skills might not be top-tier, but his approach to solving problems was incredibly interesting and worth studying.

"So that's the case."

Ethan nodded. He had more or less expected that answer.

Given the limitations of the era's hardware, there really wasn't much room left for algorithmic improvements.

The hardware constraints were practically unsolvable.

"But why are you asking? Are you still not satisfied with 1942's visuals?"

"More or less. I'm planning to develop a new game, but I've hit a hardware bottleneck. It's giving me a headache."

If Contra proved too difficult to realize, he'd have no choice but to retreat and honestly make a platformer to challenge Super Mario head-on.

Unfortunately, although Vivian studied electrical engineering, her specialization was computer graphics.

As for Sam, his technical skills were roughly on par with Ethan's own abilities without any cheats.

He wasn't much help either.

If only he knew an expert in hardware engineering.

"A hardware problem?"

Vivian nodded slightly.

"Ethan, that's really not my area. I can't help much."

"But..."

She suddenly changed the subject.

"Do you remember when I told you I worked part time at a small company?"

"Hm?"

Ethan blinked, unsure why she was bringing that up now.

"Although it's a software company, my boss there might actually be able to help you."

She borrowed his notepad and wrote down an address along with a contact number.

[VideoSoft] Gerald Lawson.

The moment he saw the name, Ethan's eyes widened.

He knew that name.

Gerald Lawson, former Fairchild Semiconductor engineer.

This African-American engineer would later become the pioneer of the Modern Game Console.

The Father of the Video Game Cartridge.

The world's first video game console with interchangeable game cartridges, the Channel F, had been created by him.

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