The Genius Engineer Atari Had Screwed Over

Lin Lixin had always assumed that Vivian worked at some cutting-edge graphics laboratory.

He had never expected it to be VideoSoft.

This was the company Gerald had founded after leaving Fairchild Semiconductor.

A video game development company.

"Wait, your part-time job is at VideoSoft, but you never play games?"

"No." Vivian shook her head. "Our boss has designed a few game prototypes, but he's never finished any of them. I just handle odd jobs optimizing graphics. According to him, because of Atari..."

Bang!

Lin Lixin suddenly slapped the table and sprang to his feet, startling Vivian so much that she swallowed the rest of her sentence.

"Thank you, Vivian. You've really been a huge help! Oh, could you watch the shop for me? I need to go out!"

Vivian had given him a much-needed wake-up call.

The opportunity the Atari Shock offered him was not merely a brief vacuum in the market.

As the top dog of the North American video game industry, Atari had essentially been feeding every domestic third-party game developer.

Atari's fall had caused the North American gaming market to evaporate overnight, bankrupting almost all third-party developers.

Among them were Gerald Lawson and his VideoSoft.

If he remembered correctly, Lawson had founded VideoSoft with the intention of developing games for the Atari 2600, which had been riding at the height of its glory.

But that had already been 1980.

No one could have imagined that, just two short years later, such a devastating earthquake would shake the entire gaming market.

VideoSoft should already have been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, destined to close its doors for good by early 1985 at the latest.

Gerald Lawson, too, was about to become one of the countless dream-filled game creators swallowed by the tides of the times.

At that thought, Lin Lixin could not help swallowing.

The way out of his predicament had been sitting right in front of him all along!

Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California.

This city, which had transformed from a small agricultural town into a technology hub alongside Silicon Valley's development, now brought together countless leading figures in the industry.

Lin Lixin found the place he was looking for on an out-of-the-way block.

Low rows of office buildings stood unevenly along a lifeless street that looked nothing like an office district should.

He spotted VideoSoft's sign at a glance.

It was a board whose edges had already curled, with the company's name carved into it in a somewhat tacky space-age font.

Lin Lixin peered through the window beside the door. In the roughly eighty-square-meter office, at least half the workstations had been cleared out.

The computer monitors on the remaining desks were all dark, too. Only an old Atari 2600 was on, its screen displaying some crudely pixelated graphics.

"Ding-dong."

The doorbell still worked.

Lin Lixin saw a somewhat portly figure emerge from the back of the room.

He wore a plaid shirt, his skin the chocolate brown typical of Black Americans. A pair of sunglasses rested on his forehead, and signs of aging were already visible in his hair and beard.

It was Gerald Lawson.

He pushed open the glass door, and Lin Lixin could clearly hear his heavy breathing.

He was only forty-four that year, yet he already resembled an old man in his twilight years, without a trace of his former vigor.

Ill fortune.

Lin Lixin could think of no more fitting words to describe the hardware grandmaster before him.

[Gerald Lawson]

[Overall rating]: S (hapless entrepreneur)

[Hardware technology]: 153 (growth rating: S)

[Scriptwriting]: 11 (growth rating: D)

[Software development]: 51 (growth rating: A)

[Administration and finance]: 21 (growth rating: D-)

[Status]:

[Frustrated ambitions]: final values of all attributes -50% (rounded down)

The enormous "S," shimmering with multicolored light, dazzled Lin Lixin so much that he could barely keep his eyes open.

That three-digit hardware technology attribute proved his ability.

"Hello? Can I help you?"

Gerald looked rather weary. Seeing that his visitor was a young Chinese man who looked like a student, he showed a hint of puzzlement.

Lin Lixin gave a polite bow. "Mr. Lawson, Vivian, a senior of mine, referred me here."

Understanding appeared on Gerald's face, but it immediately gave way to a wry smile. "Sorry, we aren't planning to hire anyone right now."

"Mr. Lawson, I'm not here to look for a job." Lin Lixin's gaze passed him and landed on an arcade cabinet by the wall that was not even plugged in. "I'm a game developer, and I'd like to ask for your advice on a few things."

Gerald showed little reaction to these words and simply watched Lin Lixin in silence.

After a long moment, he sighed and stepped aside, motioning for Lin Lixin to come in.

He rummaged through cabinets and drawers before finding a bottle of purified water among a pile of miscellaneous items. It was already the best refreshment he could offer.

"I'll call you Lin, then." After listening to Lin Lixin introduce himself, Gerald nodded and sat down beside him. "Lin, this really isn't a good time to go into video games."

He sounded as though he were mocking himself.

He was as down-and-out now as he had been full of ambition back at Fairchild Semiconductor.

"Why?" Lin Lixin asked, despite already knowing the answer.

"Video games are dead." Gerald had long since come to terms with that. "Atari erected their tombstone itself, in New Mexico, not far from California."

"That's a tombstone Atari erected for itself." Lin Lixin shook his head. "I certainly don't think Atari represents video games."

Gerald gave a faint sigh.

Once, he too had been filled with fiery enthusiasm, just like Lin Lixin, believing he could make something of himself.

"I used to work as an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor..."

"I know. You led the development of the Channel F. The programmable cartridge design was nothing short of stunning!"

"Hmm... perhaps." Gerald neither agreed nor disagreed. It was one of the few things he still had left to boast about. "But did you know that this 'excellent' machine only sold three hundred thousand units?"

He made air quotes with his fingers, his words dripping with sarcasm.

"And Atari? They filled shelves with consoles like household appliances. The Atari 2600 alone sold over thirty million units! Thirty million!"

On average, nearly one in every ten people owned an Atari 2600.

No matter how stubbornly Lin Lixin argued, Atari was unquestionably synonymous with the North American gaming market.

Gerald waved a hand, unwilling to continue arguing with Lin Lixin about this.

"So, Lin, what did you come to ask me about?"

"A new game I'm developing has run into some hardware bottlenecks. It's become very difficult to make any significant improvements through algorithms alone. Vivian said I could come to you for advice on this."

Lin Lixin was in no hurry to persuade Gerald. To a genius who had been so thoroughly screwed over by that colossal pitfall called Atari, words were pale and powerless.

But Lin Lixin knew what packed a punch.

He pulled two black chips from his pocket: the EPROMs for Tetris and 1942.

These things packed a serious punch.