Feels inferior to arcades... in performance

"Lin, we've run into a little trouble."

Sam finished dealing with the reports in his hands, his brow furrowing slightly.

"What is it?"

Lin Lixin pulled his attention away and looked at him in puzzlement.

There was no question that Contra was a phenomenal success. Sales were red-hot right now. What could possibly have happened?

"Not the bad kind." Sam scratched his head, gathering his words. "We're selling too well. A little too well."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Tetris and 1942 aren't a problem. The problem is Contra."

Cross-checking several orders and reports, Sam showed Lin Lixin a set of figures.

"It's too... expensive. So expensive that only the medium and large arcades in each area can afford it."

The documents compiled the sources of recent orders. Without exception, they came from fairly sizable establishments.

Small businesses like their own little arcade or convenience stores couldn't possibly afford it.

"A monopoly..."

Lin Lixin murmured. He immediately understood what Sam was worried about.

Although Contra's explosive popularity had indeed revived the gaming industry to some extent, it had also dealt an invisible blow to the lower-tier market.

"Exactly." Sam nodded, his eyes catching the new content on Lin Lixin's screen. "If you're planning to develop a new game, continuing to pile on the hardware and build high-end machines might... have the opposite effect."

Arcade machines were different from home consoles. Each neighborhood only needed a few.

Once problems arose at the lower end of the market, they could instead deal a devastating blow to the arcade market.

The better they sold, the more problems arose instead.

But once he understood what Sam was worried about, Lin Lixin actually breathed a sigh of relief.

"Seeing how nervous you looked, I thought something serious had happened."

He smiled, turned his gaze back to the screen, and typed the title [METAL GEAR].

"Don't worry. This new project was prepared specifically to solve that problem."

The Metal Gear IP was actually divided into two parts: Metal Gear (MG) and Metal Gear Solid (MGS).

In fact, what later generations called "the beginning of a legend" referred more often to the latter.

MGS was a series reboot personally helmed by Hideo Kojima. It launched on the Sony PS in 1998, when the move to 3D was only just beginning, and that was what made it a classic of its generation.

However he looked at it, the feeble hardware available now couldn't deliver that true legend.

But the original MG wasn't necessarily an unremarkable work either.

The original MG was released on the MSX2 platform in 1987. It was also the first game Brother Kojima made after graduating from university and joining Konami.

The MSX wasn't an arcade machine, but a home PC, similar to the C64 he had on hand.

Its feeble performance left it utterly incapable of rendering lavish, high-end visuals. Creating exhilarating battle scenes like those in Contra was impossible.

To address this, Hideo Kojima found a solution so brilliant it made people slap the table in admiration.

"Sneak in and avoid combat, and you fail if you're spotted??"

After hearing Lin Lixin's description, Sam was utterly dazed.

"Exactly. A stealth espionage game. Or you could think of it as-hide-and-seek."

"That's... pure flights of fancy..."

Sam imagined the gameplay Lin Lixin had described, unable to understand where the fun in it lay.

Who wouldn't want to wield powerful weapons and defeat enemies amid a forest of guns and a rain of bullets?

Skulking around like a little coward afraid of dying was just too stifling!

The idea Lin Lixin had proposed was practically going against the mainstream on purpose.

"Lin, this is too risky. If you're trying to lower the hardware requirements, why not use 1942's system to make something with a different theme?"

Sam's thinking was clear. Even if they reheated old leftovers and made a reskinned version of 1942, he would still buy into it.

Wouldn't switching to tanks or battleships be just as interesting?

"Let's wait until we're driven mad by poverty before we consider reheating old leftovers."

Lin Lixin laughed, unbothered by Sam's doubts.

Before he actually saw Snake hiding inside that cardboard box, he had never imagined what could be fun about stealth either.

After all, he was the sort of person who chose to dual-wield greatswords even when playing the latest Assassin's Creed.

Mountain View, Santa Clara County.

Gerald Lawson took the hand-soldered arcade board Lin Lixin handed him, his eyes widening into circles.

Although the board was handmade, it was neat and elegant, without the slightest waste of materials. Every wire sat snugly against the board.

This craftsmanship was entirely different from the "Indian-style bodge wiring" Lin Lixin had shown him last time.

He had improved this quickly in just one short month?

"All right... I suppose I should have gotten used to you defying convention sooner."

Gerald quickly composed himself and carefully examined the board in his hands.

"What's this for? It only has a single 8-bit Z80 processor."

He had thought Lin Lixin had another new demand for high-end hardware. He hadn't expected such a low-end board.

Lin Lixin took a document out of his bag and solemnly placed it before Gerald.

The title on the front cover told Gerald what the document contained.

[Interchangeable arcade board specification]

His gaze sharpened. He instantly understood what Lin Lixin wanted to do.

"Mr. Lawson, I'm sure you've guessed already. I intend to introduce a more flexible arcade specification, allowing boards to be swapped as freely as cartridges in a home console."

The very reason he had come to Gerald was that he was the creator of the world's first home console with interchangeable cartridges.

Surely no one was better suited to take on this task.

"This is to... cut production costs?"

"Exactly." Lin Lixin nodded in acknowledgment. "The games GAMENOVA currently publishes-Tetris, 1942, and Contra-use identical cabinets and button layouts, apart from their different hardware specifications."

"If we split the production line into two parts, one producing arcade boards and the other producing cabinets, we can effectively control both flexibility and costs." Gerald picked up right where Lin Lixin left off. They hit it off immediately.

"Oh, right." Just as Lin Lixin was about to leave, he suddenly remembered another important matter and pointed at the board. "Do you think developing a home console with these specifications would have potential?"

It might only be an 8-bit machine, but both the FC Famicom, which was currently sweeping all before it, and the Sega MS, due to launch the following year, actually still used 8-bit hardware.

It wasn't until the Sega MD in 1988 and the Nintendo SFC in 1990 that 16-bit processors began seeing widespread use.

Although Lin Lixin was eager to break through the hardware bottleneck so he could bring out more game concepts that were currently difficult to realize.

At this stage, however, the prices of 16-bit processors remained stubbornly high.

Trying to get players to spend four or five hundred dollars on a home console would be a lost cause, even with Contra.