Chapter 7: A Dragon Tens of Meters Long!

  Jester moved Mark Sennett with his most sincere and ardent words, while he also explained his plan to the other party.

  "We go tell them, the game sells not out only one reason, that is the game not good enough, if the game made well, then naturally will let all people flock to it, and we want to do, is make the best game!"

  Make the best game, this is also Mark Cerny's creed.

  As for what kind of game is a good game, Jester this time without any modesty pointed to his own "American Blocks" and told Mark Cerny that this is a good game.

  "The American Block" will make a lot of money, and Jester never doubted it.

  At the time, Atari had a very short period of several months with exclusive patent rights to Tetris and they sold over 20,000 arcade machines. As for how many cartridges were sold, it is impossible to count, but after losing the lawsuit against Nintendo over the Tetris licensing issue, there were tens of thousands of copies of Tetris cartridges that were prohibited from being released and were stored in warehouses.

  As for Tetris being acquired by Nintendo and selling over 30 million copies on the Game Boy, that's a well-known fact.

  The charm of Tetris is unsolvable in this era.

  Jest didn't say he wasn't going to start a game company with Mark Sweeney, it's just not the right time.

  His "American Blocks" has not achieved enough success yet, and if they form a company together, he can't even suppress Mark Sennett in terms of the company's shares.

  Mark Xun is certainly a helper that Jester wants to get, otherwise he won't be so garrulous and say so many words to make him dispel the idea of going to Shijia.

  His talent is crystal clear to the future Jest, not only proficient in game development, but also skilled in hardware development, and even more capable of cultivating and promoting new people. Even in the purely theoretical research on how to make a good game, he has extremely high attainments. The Seni theory he put forward is the Bible in the eyes of countless game developers, and this is exactly what he needs.

  Making games is absolutely not a one-man affair. Perhaps now making these pixelated block games can still be done from start to finish by one person, but in the future, this will be a massive team effort of dozens or even hundreds of people working together, and taking an extremely long time.

  For example, the famous "World of Warcraft", at that time Blizzard set up a research and development team of over 100 people for this purpose, and it took three years to complete the original version. By the time of its release, it had undergone eleven months of testing and modification.

  For example, in 2013, GTA V swept various awards, and the team built by Rockstar had more than 200 people and took five years.

  Even with the help of that unknown system, plus knowing which type of game will be successful, after all, I am just one person, it is impossible to hold up a large game company.

  If Nintendo only had Shigeru Miyamoto, they would at most be a well-known game development studio, but could never become the most dominant giant in gaming history.

  A great company must be composed of countless elites from various industries, each contributing their own strength. The power of one person is truly insignificant in this context.

  Jester from the later generation is extremely clear about this point. He clearly knows that relying solely on himself is fundamentally impossible to achieve success in his dreams.

  With the help of his father, Jester completed the patent application for "American Block", and then it was time to make an arcade motherboard that could carry this game. As for the cabinet of the arcade machine, there is no need to worry about it, not to mention Jester's father's experience in this aspect, but also Jester has countless classic arcade cabinets data in his mind.

  Originally, Jester wanted to continue using the 8088 CPU as the core for design on IBM5150, because his "American Block" program was written based on Intel's 8088 and could be transplanted without modification. However, this plan was proposed by his father and was mercilessly vetoed.

  His father looked at him with an idiot-like gaze, scolding him without leaving any room for mercy: "You use the best 16-bit CPU just to run this simple game of yours? Do you know how much it will increase our costs? Don't you know that one 8088 is enough to buy ten 8-bit CPUs?"

  His father told him clearly that if you can do something well with $10, don't go spend $11, because the extra $1 is a complete waste.

  Finally, on his father's advice, he chose an extremely cheap but still decent 8-bit CPU - the MOS 6502. According to his father, this CPU was capable of running games ten times more complex than Tetris and cost only one-ninth that of the Intel 8088 core.

  And with his father's reminder, Jester also remembered that this was the CPU used by Ren Tian's FC and Sega's MS, which had been popular for a full ten years since its release. From this point of view, this seemingly outdated chip would not become obsolete in a short period of time, at least not in the game industry.

  However, due to the change of CPU, Jestr also had to re-write the program of "Block Buster" in 6502 assembly language, because the previous one he wrote could not run on the motherboard with MOS 6502.

  As for Jester's father, his work was much simpler. He worked at Atari's arcade factory for ten years, designing countless arcade machines. Building a simple 8-bit motherboard was child's play compared to that.

  In just five short days, two brand new arcade machines capable of running "American Block" were freshly made by hand by Jester's father.

  Looking at the two arcade machines in front of him, with frames drawn by himself and handmade by his father, the design of these arcade machine frames, which is very similar to SNK's later fighting game cabinets, has a strong postmodern sci-fi style. This was also done in the hope that when these two arcade machines are placed next to Atari's old arcade machines and pinball machines, they will stand out like cranes among chickens.

  Let everyone see these two machines loaded with "American Blocks" at a glance from those street machines.

  Everything is ready, all we need now is a push from behind.

  Jester's mother was a white woman, who in her youth was classmates with Jester's father. At that time, the naive girl was attracted to Jester's father's talent, and they had an affair. After Jester's father quarreled with his family, she followed him to Los Angeles without hesitation. Time flies like a white horse, and it has been almost twenty years since then.

  She was very fond of Jester and, upon learning of his plans, especially after personally witnessing the success of Jester's designed "American Blocks", she gave her full support.

  This game is just too much fun.

  June 7, 1984, which seemed like an ordinary day at the time, but in the eyes of later game enthusiasts, this day is considered to be the greatest game company in gaming history - Mars Entertainment was founded.

  The birthday of EAI (Enterprise Application Integration).

  Because Mars, in addition to being the name of the planet, is also the name of the war god Ares. Furthermore, Mars Entertainment later became almost invincible in the gaming industry, creating countless classics, so Mars Entertainment is often referred to as "War God" by fans.

  Later generations of media looked back on the history of video game development and interviewed players who had participated in the first public appearance of Mars Entertainment's first game.

  The player said so.

  "It was extremely humble, you can't imagine now that the first appearance of 'War Gods' could be so humble, they didn't even have their own name at that time. I still remember, there were only two machines of 'Mortal Kombat', you know, the game industry was not booming at that time and not many people played arcade games, although I was a fan of Atari's 'River Raid' (a classic shooter game from Atari) at that time, but I had also played enough of those unchanged Atari arcade games."

  "At that time, I went to the supermarket intending to buy something to eat, such as hot dogs and bread. It was a little after 9 o'clock in the morning, I remember it very clearly. When I walked to the entrance of my usual supermarket, I was shocked by what I saw! I couldn't believe my eyes!"

  "Do you know? The small empty space next to the supermarket, which has a dozen or so arcade machines and pinball machines, was packed with people, it was hard to even turn around. Next to those Atari arcade machines that I've played to death, there wasn't a single person, everyone seemed to be surrounding two brand new machines that were completely different from the old Atari style, staring at something. Behind those two very nice new machines, there was a long line of people, stretching for tens of meters! From inside the supermarket to outside, there were at least several hundred people in line, with children and adults, men and women, it's unbelievable!"

  "I went in and asked, only to find out that it was two newly purchased game consoles, with games on them that were incredibly fun. I asked around and found out that they seemed to be called 'Tetris', some kind of block-stacking game. At the time, I was a bit skeptical - how could a block-stacking game be so much fun?"

  "But I saw the scene was really hot and unbelievable, you know people all have a psychology of following the crowd, I couldn't help myself and went to buy a few game coins to try it out."

  "Right, I also remember that the game coins for 'American Block' were specially made, smaller than those used by Atari, and most importantly, they cost twice as much as Atari's. At that time, one dollar could buy two of Atari's game coins, but only one of 'American Block'."

  "Although many people were complaining that it was too expensive at the time, almost no one didn't buy it because it was so popular. Even those who never played games before stopped to buy one or two to try them out."

  "How long did I wait to play? Actually, it wasn't that long. At the time, there were people waiting next to each American Block arcade machine, and everyone could only play for three coins in a row. If you wanted to continue playing, you had to line up - I waited for about three hours."

  "Yes, yes, the first 'Tetris' game I played was 'The Tetris', and at that time... how to say it? It was too dreamy, it was like something not belonging to human beings! Especially when I cleared four lines of blocks at once and scored 800 points in one go, the black guy who was competing with me was so scared that he was stunned. The way he looked at me was as if he was looking at a monster! That feeling was as if everything in the world was under my control."

  "That day I played until the supermarket closed at 10 pm! At that time, there were still hundreds of people in line, many of whom were very dissatisfied and loudly shouting that they hadn't finished playing yet. Finally, after the supermarket staff promised to add three more "American Block" arcade machines starting from tomorrow, they dispersed... actually, I think most of those people had already lined up for the nth time..."

  In the midst of the bustling crowd, Jester stood beside his mother's supermarket clerk, Charsi, who was selling game coins. He gazed at the long line of people waiting behind the two "American Block" machines, and saw that after playing the game, they would still smile from ear to ear, and without hesitation, come back to buy more game coins and wait in the dozens-of-meters-long queue without getting tired. At this moment, he knew that half of the first step of his plan had already achieved great success.

  "The American Square" is already a hot and fixed situation.

  But whether anyone will come to order his "American Block" arcade machine is still an unknown quantity.

  After all, today's game market is really too bleak.

  But Jester was still full of confidence, he believed that success was already close at hand, and could even be said to be within reach.