Chapter 69 Shock

  "So, the last question." Jester clasped his hands together, leaning forward with a satisfied smile on his face. Clearly, he was very pleased with Adrian Loken's professional knowledge and abilities, which didn't seem to be a problem at all in his eyes.

  "Ed, if I were to put you in charge of a magazine, what would your attitude be towards these released games?" Jest asked with a smile, possibly fearing that the other might not understand his meaning, so he explained further, "I mean, would you follow your own subjective judgment or be influenced by external pressures?"

  "Haha." Adrien couldn't help but let out a light laugh at Jester's words, and after their conversation earlier that seemed like a chat between friends, the idol-like distance he felt towards Jester weakened significantly. In his eyes, this person who was six years younger than him was just an optimistic big boy.

  Of course, he is an extremely talented young man.

  "Boss, although you haven't formally hired me yet, please allow me to address you as such. Actually, my attitude towards this magazine isn't what's important, it's your attitude towards it that matters." Adrien replied.

  Jester didn't say a word, he still smiled at Adrian, after ten or so seconds of silence, he suddenly stood up and extended his hand to him once again.

  "Welcome to join Game Magazine."

  "It's an honor." Adrien also shook hands with Jester.

  Next, Adrian began preparing for the magazine "Game", from recruitment to content and layout, all of which he was solely responsible for. Jester also provided him with a lot of inspiration based on some magazines he had read in later generations, but some columns are currently not feasible, such as reader mail.

  However, Jester still agreed to take a few people from Mars Entertainment for an exclusive interview, which many fans of Mars Entertainment will definitely be interested in.

  However, Jester wasn't very interested in doing the interview himself and was planning to have either Mark Seni or Shawn Dabiri do it instead. After all, he's already well-known among players, and Mars Entertainment's current success isn't solely due to his own efforts.

  But what interested Adrien most was a trial version of a game called "Battle City" in Jester's mouth.

  It is said that Jester was specially made for the release of "Game".

  He was eager to see what Jester, a man always full of ingenious ideas in game design, could bring him this time.

  Following Geoff to Mars Entertainment for an interview with Mark Serny or Shawn Dabbie, Adrian also had the opportunity to play this game that Jaffe participated in throughout the entire process, although it was only a trial version. The level flow is only half of the full version, and even the game content is less than a quarter of the official version.

  However, when he cooperated with an employee of Mars Entertainment to destroy tank after tank, break through one level after another, and found that there were so many cooperative moves and tactics hidden in such simple map elements, he was deeply attracted to this game.

  And this kind of desperate fight to the death against evil invaders in order to defend one's home also made Adrian feel his blood boiling with excitement.

  He spent the whole afternoon playing this game over and over again, even when no one was around to play doubles with him, he still enjoyed playing by himself.

  If Jester hadn't called him over for an interview, Adrian might not have left the IBM-compatible PC with a trial version of "Battle City" installed on it. Well, in order to keep the good things from flowing into outsiders' fields, all the IBM-compatible PCs here at Jester's are sourced from Dell.

  And Dell's recent sales have been very good, with July's sales reportedly five times that of June, for a total of $1 million in sales.

  Of course, this amount of money is still not in Jester's eyes.

  "This game is absolutely flawless." As soon as he saw Jester, Adrian said with an unmistakable look of excitement on his face, talking non-stop about the game "Epic City", almost to the point of exaggerating it to the heavens.

  Although Jester was somewhat pleased to hear this, he couldn't help but feel a little frustrated.

  "He turned to Adrian and said, 'In a minute you'll be interviewing Mark Cerny, the game development director of Mars Entertainment. He's a year older than me, very talented, and in a minute I'll let you play something. Mark just announced that he's scrapping a game that was about to go into production and reworking it from scratch. The first two levels are ready, and when you see them, you'll realize that the games you've been playing so far are like yesterday's news.'"

  Adrian looked at Jester with some surprise, for the games that Jester had just mentioned were all of the games he had made before.

  And as for the game "Tetris", Adrian is almost obsessed with it, he really can't believe that there's a game that could make him feel like "Tetris" is outdated.

  Even Snow Bros., which he played at the trial play meeting, didn't work out.

  Is this game more fun and better than "Snow Bros"?

  "Heh heh." Jester faced Adrien's questioning with just a faint smile, and didn't immediately explain to him. Instead, he simply said, "No matter how fun 'American Blocks' is, it's still just a small-scale game. This kind of game can't start a trend. Wait until you see the game Mark Senni is making, then you'll understand what I mean."

  Driven by this curiosity, Adrian met Mark Sennett, who had already reached the end of his working hours but was still forcing himself to work overtime.

  Throughout the interview, Jester was not accompanied by Adrian. He is now very busy with his work and just received a call from Qin Shuyi, saying that the Olympic delegation has arrived in Los Angeles. The Consulate General of Los Angeles organized them, these Chinese students who are preparing to hold a welcoming dinner together with some overseas Chinese in the near future.

  The venue has been chosen, it is a three-star hotel in Los Angeles where Juster's grandfather lives. Juster's grandfather sponsored the use of the hotel for free, but the organizer refused Juster's grandfather's proposal to sponsor more money, after all, this welcome party was sponsored by one person, which doesn't look so good.

  Although there were also many enthusiastic Chinese donations, the funds were still not very abundant, so Qin Shuyi thought of Jester, an American tycoon who was preparing to invest tens of millions of dollars in China, and thus had the idea of hitting up this tycoon.

  Jester agreed after listening, he first asked others about the general amount of donations and how much was still missing. Although he didn't lack money, he also couldn't stand out too much. He could give a bit more than others, but not too much. After getting Qin Shuyi's reply, seeing that it was less than $10,000 short, Jester directly said he would make up for the shortage himself.

  Ten thousand US dollars is indeed nothing for Jester now, and it's not too much either, nor will it be overly eye-catching.

  This also made Qin Shu Yan extremely happy, and she insisted that Jester must attend this welcome dinner.

  Jester agreed without hesitation.

  When Dejst saw Edrian again, it was in The-King's laboratory.

  At this point Adrian's interview with Mark Cerny was over, and he then asked if he could try out the game that had been secretly in development, which Jaffe referred to as 'genre-defining'.

  Mark Sweeney had also received a notice from Jester before, and he just tried out the abandoned "Avenger" made with the old engine. The new engine's "Avenger" that he was going to make would be more exquisite, adding more content, even the combo system that he had always wanted to do but hadn't succeeded due to smoothness issues this time also planned to add it, so he also agreed to Adrian's request with pleasure.

  So Adrian saw the first two levels of the abandoned "Avenger".

  Then Adrian was almost without resistance and was drawn to this fighting game that opened a new genre.

  To be precise, it's infatuation.

  The character he controls is 1P, also the male protagonist Patrick. In the setting, this is a master of Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai and French kickboxing, an unlimited fighting tournament champion. He returned from participating in the competition in the Netherlands and was preparing to go on a trip to Japan with his fiancée to celebrate his newly acquired championship. However, when he returned home, he only found a messy room full of bloodstains, with a dagger with a special pattern on the handle nailed to the wall with a bloody note.

  The words on the strip were written by Patrick's unmarried wife in fresh blood, a dazzling word, help.

  And on the table, a bloody finger was left behind, with an engagement ring that Patrick had given to his fiancée still on it.

  Then, Patrick, who is furious, knows that the leader of a large criminal organization in Sin City has kidnapped his fiancée according to the special pattern on the dagger, and the game plot of finding his wife and finding the enemy for revenge officially begins.

  Originally, only two characters were set, but Mark Cerny added a third hidden character at the suggestion of Jeremy, which requires a special key combination to select the third person at the beginning of the game.

  2p is the younger sister of the male protagonist's fiancée, a student at a Chinese martial arts gym, blonde and big-breasted, skilled in Wing Chun boxing. The hidden character is an Interpol agent who has been tracking down this crime syndicate, skilled in boxing, judo and Israeli Krav Maga.

  The original plan was to have all characters use Jeet Kune Do, but Mark Sweeney decided after much consideration to create three characters with completely different fighting styles, as each character's moves are not identical, which also makes the game more in-depth.

  Of course, in order to make the moves of each character as realistic as possible, just hiring coaches who are proficient in various martial arts to participate in the setting of moves has cost a full $50,000.

  And Mark Cerny threw away the first two levels of Avenger, which had already been completed, and the entire The-King development team spent a total of $200,000 on research and development, an amount that exceeded the total spent by all other developers.

  As Adrian controlled Patrick to use a spinning kick to defeat the boss of the first level, a samurai wielding a Japanese katana, he also saw Jester standing quietly beside him for some time.

  His gaze at Jester was even more shocked, and he became incoherent when speaking.

  He simply couldn't believe that such an excellent game, one that left him speechless in praise, was merely a discarded version.

  He even forgot that he had just recently described "Battle City" as flawless.

  But now in his view, compared to the game called "Avenger", although "Battle City" is a very good game, there is still a big gap.

  "Boss, tell me, am I dreaming?"

  When Adrian said something so out of bounds, Jester just smiled and didn't explain, he simply said.

  "Regarding the reports on 'Avengers', you can write about it truthfully, but don't reveal what type of game it is or its specific plot. Just mention that tens of millions of dollars have been invested in its development, but because it didn't meet the designer's expectations, it was scrapped and remade. However, even the discarded version, in my opinion, is a 'groundbreaking' game that has almost reached perfection for this era, flawless and unimaginable. It's hard to imagine how the designers can further improve such a perfect game."

  Adrian had no objection to this, because the game called "Avenger" gave him a feeling that was exactly what Jester had just said, so after hearing Jester's words, he also agreed without hesitation.

  Then Jester continued.

  "This game isn't free to play for nothing, for example, you can create a scoring system in the magazine, from aspects such as graphics, music, storyline, and playability, establish a scoring system, give this game a score, then do some advertising, announce that at the next New York trial event, this "Avenger" will officially debut, open the first two levels for participating players to try out."

  Seeing Adrian nod to indicate that he had remembered everything, Jester didn't say any more unnecessary words. How this magazine was going to be done had been discussed with Adrian many times before, so there was no need to repeat it again. He just added one more sentence at the end.

  However, the core of this inaugural issue is still the first PC game officially produced by Mars Entertainment. As long as we focus on this point alone, sales won't be a problem. We're a new magazine and can attract gamers with the trial version of "Castle Siege" that comes with it.

  "Boss, rest assured! The game quality of 'Battle City' is far superior to any computer game at this stage, even if it's just a trial version. Our magazine will definitely sell well!"

  "That's good." Jester nodded in satisfaction, and from now on, the magazine company was Adrian's.

  PS2: I previously made a huge mistake due to memory issues. In my memory, the Los Angeles Olympics were held at the end of August, but when I checked the specific date today, it turned out to be at the end of July. This error is irreparable, so I can only postpone the time of the Los Angeles Olympics in this book. I really don't know what to say about this. When I saw this before starting to write tonight, I felt like I had swallowed a fly, it was so uncomfortable. However, this is my mistake, and I apologize for it.

  PS3: I saw that some readers in the book review area wrote 300,000 words and only wrote about one game. I counted myself, including Minecraft, Snow Bros, Zuma, Bejeweled, Bubble Bobble, Street Fighter II', Plane Shooter, Super Horse Riding, Western Sheriff Shooting, Minesweeper, Little 3 Legend, 2048, Battle City, and Pokémon version of Tamagotchi, totaling fourteen games that were completed or not.