Building a Gaming Empire In 1984

Sam felt dizzy from the barrage of unfamiliar terms.

"So basically... you're making an action RPG, right?"

"More or less."

Ethan nodded and casually flipped through the draft pages.

For many people, their understanding of The Legend of Zelda, an IP that could be considered an immortal monument in gaming history, began with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the masterpiece that utterly dominated every other game released alongside it.

In reality, however, that game was, in a sense, a return to Zelda's roots. A return to what it had originally been.

The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Fantasy. The world's first true open-world game.

From the moment the Zelda series was born, it was a legend. Its arrival sounded the horn for video games' exploration of nonlinear freedom and open ended discovery, shaking the dominance of linear stage based progression.

However, bringing this game into existence proved far more difficult than Ethan had imagined.

The biggest challenge was the map lying before him. It was too large.

To put it bluntly, the original Zelda was essentially a masterclass in brute-force content volume. Otherwise, it would never have become a game that required a floppy disk system.

The overworld alone contained a full 128 screens. Sam had clearly noticed the problem as well and scratched his head.

"It looks like a lot, but when you think about it, maybe it's not too bad. Didn't our Metal Gear have over two hundred stages..."

Before Sam could finish speaking, Ethan suddenly flipped over the top map sheet, revealing the page beneath it.

Sam had assumed the following pages would contain character or monster design drafts. Instead, what appeared before him were even more maps.

Unlike the previous one, this map was clearly set inside some sort of dungeon. The label in the upper-right corner had changed to.

[Dungeon Map 1 (Overworld)]

"Wait..."

Sam swallowed hard and carefully lifted one corner of the map.

[Dungeon Map 2 (Overworld)]

"..."

Each map was built on the same 128-screen scale.

Nine dungeons. Plus, the world map. That was already 10 × 128 screens!

Yet Sam realized he hadn't even gone through half the stack. When he turned another page, he saw a map that resembled the first dungeon. However, its layout was completely different.

[Dungeon Map 1 (Underworld)]

"Huh?"

By the time he finished looking through the front and back versions of all nine dungeons, the world map, and the hidden rooms, he no longer knew what to say.

It wasn't as if he hadn't seen Ethan sitting at his desk drawing all day. But he had never imagined he was creating a world of such enormous scale.

This had already surpassed the limits of what video games had ever achieved before.

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"Bro, this thing..."

Sam struggled to find the right words.

"Drawing it and actually making it are two completely different things. There's no way the NovaBox has enough memory to fit a map this large."

Sam had participated in the NovaBox's design and knew its hardware specifications very well.

With its comparatively impressive, yet still tiny 64KB of memory, once the game systems, mechanics, and character data were loaded, there simply wasn't enough memory left to support a map of this size in real time.

Even using the tile-based rendering system they had developed for Metal Gear wouldn't solve the problem.

Video memory and system memory were limited. If they were developing for arcades instead, using a more advanced 16-bit processor with much larger memory capacity, then something like this might be possible.

But GAMENOVA's current strategy was clearly shifting from arcades toward the home console market.

"As for that, I already have a solution."

He turned on a newly acquired IBM 5170 and loaded a testing program.

"This is a technology John, and I designed called a 'pseudo-seamless map.'"

As Ethan moved the player character to the edge of the map, the screen immediately began a smooth scrolling transition, seamlessly flowing into the next area.

There was no black screen, no loading pause.

A level of technology that even Starfield couldn't achieve! (Not really.)

Ahem.

Of course, that was only possible because Zelda's maps were composed entirely of tiles, making the loading requirements relatively low.

Sam glanced toward John, who sat nearby typing away furiously at a keyboard. Suddenly, he felt a headache coming on.

Were kids these days really this ridiculous? Noticing Sam's gaze, John turned around and rolled his eyes at him.

"You don't understand Ethan's greatness at all. For a game like this, the technical implementation is merely a trivial detail."

His eyes shifted toward the stack of maps on the table, shining brightly.

"This is a game that redefines the very concept of RPGs. It's pure design artistry!"

While helping Ethan develop the system, John had already learned what kind of game he intended to make. It wasn't what he understood as an "adventure game" at all.

It was a work of art.

...

Santa Clara, California.

Zilog Headquarters.

The custom Z80S chip developed jointly by Zilog and GAMENOVA had already proven its value through the NovaBox.

Its higher clock speed and system on chip design philosophy had brought this aging processor architecture back onto the world stage.

"Mr. Ethan, this is practically magic. Despite removing so many instructions, the chip actually performs better. It's unbelievable."

Richard spared no praise, but his admiration wasn't empty flattery.

Even Zilog's own engineering team had been astonished by the unusual performance of the Z80S.

When Ethan had first brought them that seemingly absurd architectural blueprint, Richard had genuinely suspected that he knew nothing about chip design.

Zilog's flagship product, the Z80, took enormous pride in its Complex Instruction Set Computing architecture, CISC.

Compared to the Intel 8080's pitiful seventy-two instructions, the Z80 boasted a staggering one hundred fifty-eight.

This design made programming significantly easier than on competing products.

Just a few lines of code could accomplish what required dozens or even hundreds of assembly instructions on the Intel 8080.

And then what happened?

Ethan walked into their conference room and casually slapped a design document onto the table.

A design that removed the overwhelming majority of those instructions. Everything they had been proud of, everything that had allowed them to defeat Intel.

Ethan had simply discarded it all without hesitation.

Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC wouldn't become mainstream until after standardized PC architectures became widespread.

In the current era, adopting RISC was practically torture for programmers. All the complexity that previously resided inside the processor itself was shifted directly onto the programmer.

But if one could overcome the programming difficulty, then RISC would become the key to overtaking competitors on the curve.

And Ethan just so happened to possess exactly the product needed to make that possible.

The Nova programming language.

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