How Could 64KB Not Be Enough?

An hour later.

Gerald Lawson fell silent.

From two entirely different angles, the two games had shown him a corner of a new world he had long since given up on.

"Tetris" was an overwhelming victory in gameplay and design, achieving the most captivating fun with the simplest graphics and sound effects.

"1942," meanwhile, took the opposite approach, unabashedly piling on the hardware demands and squeezing performance to its absolute limit to present a stunning Pacific Ocean battlefield.

"Now this is gaming..."

He let out a long breath, his gaze unconsciously drifting toward the dust-covered Atari test unit on the desk.

"Games are products, but ultimately, they still have to be games. Mr. Lin, you are unquestionably a genius."

Gerald changed how he addressed Lin Lixin; his assessment of him had undergone a change that turned heaven and earth upside down.

But then he sighed again.

The more brilliant Lin Lixin's performance was, the stronger Gerald's grief and indignation grew.

This was not jealousy, but regret.

"Born at the wrong time. If 'Tetris' had come out a few years earlier, Mr. Lin, every Atari 2600 would have had a 'Tetris' cartridge!"

Without the Atari Shock that had destroyed everything, Gerald estimated, even by the most conservative reckoning, that the game would have sold no fewer than ten million copies.

It might even have become a flagship title that drove Atari 2600 sales to even greater heights.

Yet now, it could only run on arcade machines.

Once the market collapsed, quality no longer held decisive significance.

After that terrible Christmas, Atari had quickly released several well-made titles in an effort to salvage its reputation.

Even viewed through today's eyes, those titles could all be called excellent.

But after being made fools of so many times, why would players buy into it anymore?

"Mr. Lawson." Lin Lixin showed no disappointment at having missed out on a deluge of riches. "I have always believed that Atari does not represent video games, and that video games absolutely cannot die."

"Players were only disappointed in Atari, not in video games."

"How could something that brings people joy just die because of one greedy businessman?"

"Video games aren't anything that dull!"

Lin Lixin's voice rose. Aside from the emotion he deliberately forced out to persuade Gerald, there was, of course, genuine anger mixed in as well.

Besides Gerald Lawson, how many other unknown, talented developers like him had been dragged under by Atari, only to end their careers swallowing bitter regret?

Stimulated by Reaganomics, the economy of the Americas recovered, and consumerism flourished.

Home consoles filled every shelf in every shopping mall, waiting for delighted players and children to take them home.

This undoubtedly should have been fertile soil for the video game industry.

For Lin Lixin, who had grown up in the era of the console ban, that feeling was especially strong.

Fucking Warner, fucking Atari!

"Mr. Lawson, I wonder if you've heard of a game company called Nintendo."

Lin Lixin knew that no amount of chicken soup for the soul could match the force of a living reality placed right before someone.

"If video games really are dead, why is the FC Famicom still selling in every street and alley across Japan?"

This new king, soon to ascend the throne and be crowned, had relied precisely on the "royalty system" established by its president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, to strictly vet game quality, making the Famicom and its successor, the SFC, legends of their generation.

Having said that, Lin Lixin said nothing more.

Because he saw that the crippling debuff in the other man's stat panel had suddenly disappeared.

Gerald Lawson suddenly broke into a broad grin.

Right, when exactly did I start equating Atari with video games?

It was just a stupid businessman with eyes for nothing but money.

"I've learned something. If home consoles won't work, I'll make arcade games. If arcade games won't work, I'll make PC games!"

At this point, he looked at Lin Lixin and suddenly remembered why the young man had come to see him.

"Right, Mr. Lin, you said you ran into a hardware bottleneck while developing a new game? Tell me exactly what happened."

He had only just played "1942," a title that had already squeezed the performance of the current standard Z80 board to its absolute limit.

That was a level only seasoned hands in the industry could achieve.

And a performance bottleneck encountered even at that level sparked Gerald's keen interest.

What exactly did this young man brimming with talent want to make?

A smile appeared on Lin Lixin's face as well. Only then did he take a document from the bag he carried, with a table laid out on it.

Gerald rubbed his sore, tired eyes, took the document, and carefully scanned it, his brow furrowing.

It was a specification list, or rather, a list of requirements, and what it contained was downright inconceivable.

"A 16-bit main processor and an 8-bit auxiliary processor? And a graphics chip supporting multiple independently scrolling layers and a higher sprite count? More than 64KB of RAM and video RAM??"

Though 16-bit processors were high-end, they were not entirely out of the question.

As Gerald recalled, Motorola currently had a 16-bit processor designated the MC68000.

But that thing had always been used in high-end PCs. Lin Lixin wanted to use it to make games? Wasn't that rather like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

Not to mention the demand for large amounts of RAM.

He simply could not imagine what game content could not be implemented with a full 64KB of RAM.

Wanting a larger capacity for EPROM storage chips was understandable. After all, the greater the capacity, the more content could be packed in.

But what the hell did he need so much RAM for?

"Mr. Lin, these specs... if they're for running games, they really are a little too extravagant. Higher specs aren't always better for arcade machines."

Gerald could only attribute all this to Lin Lixin's lack of experience with hardware.

No wonder he had come specifically to consult him. So he was a young genius whose talents were lopsided.

"Why don't you tell me what you want to achieve? I'll tailor an absolutely precise specification list for you!"

For mass-produced products like arcade machines, any costs that could be saved naturally had to be saved.

Even if each machine cost only one dollar less, ten machines would save ten dollars. What about a hundred, or a thousand?

Lin Lixin spread his hands and pointed at a C64 on the desk. "May I borrow your machine?"

Although the C64 had an intimidating-sounding "64" in its name, it was nothing like the 64-bit PCs of later years; it was merely an 8-bit home computer.

With Gerald's permission, Lin Lixin tried creating a test project and entered its filename: Contra.