Chapter Thirty-Eight Off to Chicago

  Late at night, on a plane bound for Chicago, Jester couldn't sleep.

  He was thinking about how to respond to Namco's legendary arcade game "Xevious", and Capcom's classic flying shooting game "1942", which dominated the arcade games of this era in history.

  In fact, the four games he released are all casual elimination-type small-scale games, and the audience they face is not completely overlapping with these two games.

  And what's next is Snow Bros, which wants to take a share of Donkey Kong's market, and another one that Mark Cerny is working on, a fighting game.

  These two games will not compete positively with Namco and Capcom's two games that pioneered the scrolling shooter genre, after all, they are not of the same type.

  But what's crucial is that Jester, having insight into later history, knows that the arcade market can't be divided so simply by type without competition.

  Because arcade players have diverse tastes, they won't just play one type of game.

  But sometimes they are very particular about their tastes. When they are crazy about a certain type of game, they will look down on other types of games.

  Why did fighting games in the mid-to-late 1990s thoroughly defeat action clear version type games to dominate the arcade market?

  Jaleco was hesitant about releasing a vertically scrolling shooter to compete with Xevious and 1942.

  He knew how important word of mouth was for a game company, especially Capcom, which had established its reputation with 1942 and gained its first batch of die-hard fans. As one of the most hated game companies before Jester's rebirth, this company treated players like pigs and dogs, and he personally could not tolerate Capcom achieving success in his previous life.

  These two games are the benchmarks for this type of game in later generations, and almost every vertical scrolling flying shooting game in later generations is paying homage to these two games in different forms.

  Of course, Jester also knows that these two games are not perfect and have their own shortcomings. After all, they are just the pioneers of this type of game and are not perfect.

  For example, the screen and level design of "Iron Plate Array" are single, for example, "1942" has not yet added the 'bomb' system that is most famous in this type of game, etc.

  But even so, making a vertically scrolling shooter that can crush 1942 and Iron Clad is no easy task.

  At least Jester can't think of any game that has a crushing advantage over these two games, "Strike 1945" doesn't work, "Raiden" doesn't work, even "Samurai Aces" doesn't work.

  It's not that these games are not excellent, but surpassing and crushing are two different concepts.

  To create a work that completely surpasses these two games, it's definitely not possible to just limit oneself to the historical games that have already existed. It's necessary to make targeted arrangements based on the shortcomings of these two games... Jester thought so.

  But now on the plane, it's clearly not the time to consider this matter. Jester shook his head and put this idea aside for the time being. He indeed had some thoughts about it, but now was not the time to delve deeper into this issue.

  But the idea was barely suppressed when another problem immediately emerged in Jester's mind - Mark Senny's "Avenger" had a problem, which was also the news he had just received before departure.

  Mark Cerny greatly underestimated the difficulty of developing a groundbreaking game, especially in terms of achieving smooth action. The pursuit of smooth action was extremely memory-intensive, and combined with his own extreme pursuit of visuals, progress was not very fast - at least it seemed unlikely that he would be able to complete it by the end of the year as he had initially said.

  And Mark Cerny also made it clear again that their hardware R&D team has basically completed this arcade motherboard, but the color processing is completely not up to his requirements.

  But wanting to re-research is an impossible thing, the development team of the arcade version has started the project of 16-bit motherboard, and it is fundamentally impossible to extract elite personnel to re-develop a more powerful 8-bit motherboard, and this will also make the previous research investment equivalent to doing useless work.

  Just after Jester's father rebuffed Mark Cerny's outrageous request, Jester came up with an idea. He suddenly thought of how a future game console handled color processing inadequacies - the PC-FX, touted as the strongest 8-bit machine, was actually an upgraded version of the PC-Engine. However, NEC Japan had used two 16-bit PPU chips for image processing, which produced excellent results.

  "Can we make a high-end version, the previous one you had is equivalent to a low-end basic version, can we add two PPU chips instead of one without changing the circuit architecture on this low-end motherboard and add more memory chips to achieve stronger image processing capabilities, making a high-end version?"

  Jester's proposal not only made these hardware developers' eyes light up, but after discussing it, they found that the plan was indeed feasible. Even Matthew Marcus, the head of the home console development team codenamed "Zero", carefully studied it and immediately overturned the previously completed design. In the new scheme, he also believed that adding two PPUs was a great idea, which could greatly improve the quality of the graphics.

  Moreover, he also put forward a very creative proposal, they can refer to the architecture of arcade motherboard - in this way, when the arcade game is transplanted, it will be more convenient.

  As a result, the home console, which was originally expected to be completed by the end of the year, had to be delayed. Matthew Marcus told Jester that he could only guarantee that a prototype would be available by the end of the year, and as for the final version, it would depend on the situation, maybe yes, maybe no.

  This was originally the worst news, but it made Jester slightly relieved. The only good news in hardware R&D is that the progress of the miniaturized GW-class handheld device he requested is very fast, because it is a four-year-old technology, according to Moore's Law, his request to shrink by at least half is completely no problem.

  Moreover, Jester found that some of his previous ideas were a bit far-fetched when he looked back on the plans he had already made, was going to make and hadn't made.

  He originally planned to release his own console at Christmas, but the plan was not well thought out. His plan was to set up his own factory in China, but even if he could go to China, it would definitely be after the Los Angeles Olympics, which is in October. Even with strong support for foreign investment in China, it would take at least a month to get approval and prepare the land, and building the factory would take at least half a month, even with a steel structure. Adding in equipment testing and trial production, that's another half a month.

  This set will be available by next January, and the pass rate of newly produced products must not be high. To increase production, plus training new employees also need at least two months to adapt, that is to say, they can start producing in large quantities, at least until next March.

  Originally thought time was sufficient, but Jester carefully thought for half a day and found that his own time was still too tight.

  But being able to get a prototype by the end of the year is also good, as long as it doesn't miss the CES exhibition in Las Vegas in January next year. He remembered that the FC version of Hell was first shown in front of Americans at this exhibition, and with the support of several boutique games from Hell, NES still caused a certain sensation at that exhibition.

  Let's start the first battle of hell from CES.

  Before he knew it, Jester hadn't noticed the passage of time until the in-flight broadcast came on and he realized they had already arrived in Chicago.

  This international metropolis, nicknamed the Windy City, is the third-largest metropolitan area in the United States, after New York and Los Angeles. Its status as a global economic and financial hub is well-established and its honors and prosperity are self-evident.

  The people from Chicago AM TV station were already waiting at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

  This isn't the West Coast, in Chicago, a city in America's Midwest, Jest is still quite noticeable as an Asian with a fit build.

  Jest had just emerged from the waiting area when he saw two employees of Chicago AM TV waving a sign with his name on it.

  Although it was still early in the morning, both of them were in good spirits.

  Everyone was excited to see Jester, one of whom is a loyal player of "American Block", according to his own words, he goes to the arcade every night after work for several hours.

  "I'm pretty good at this! Just a little bit more and I'll be able to put my own name on it." This Chicago AM TV station employee, Hewes Ian, was talking non-stop since Jester had just gotten into their Ford van.

  It was another driver, slightly older in years, who showed no interest in this, while Jester, having just gotten off the plane and not having slept all day, was also somewhat fatigued. However, seeing his fans discussing his game, he couldn't show any impatience, so he patiently chatted with them one sentence at a time - basically, they were talking and Jester was listening.

  From O'Hare International Airport, the world's only dual-hub airport, to downtown Chicago is about thirty kilometers. Along the way, Jester also inquired about the information of the program he was going to attend.

  It was a surprise to Jester that the host of the "Chicago Morning" talk show he was going to participate in turned out to be Oprah Winfrey, who would later become the queen of talk shows. At this time, she had not yet founded Harpo Productions, let alone her famous Oprah Show.

  She is now a host of Chicago AM TV station, who was paid $230,000 annual salary by her boss Dennis Swanson from Baltimore, the easternmost city on the American continent to host a talk show called "Chicago Morning".

  It was a direct response to the similar show hosted by Phil Donahue.

  Jester's show was scheduled to be recorded in the morning, and after these two TV station staff members sent Jester to the designated hotel, they agreed on a time to pick him up and then left.

  Jester lay on the soft bed in his hotel room, unable to resist the drowsiness brought by fatigue, and fell into a deep sleep.

  Perhaps too exhausted, Jester was actually sleeping while thinking in his sleep about the game he had a bit of an idea for, to counter "Iron Plate Array" and "1942".