Whatever You Do, Don't Play the Super-Fun New Game!

The machine was fixed, but Lin Lixin was in no hurry to erase the EPROM that stored its game.

This was Pac-Man, a bona fide masterpiece of its generation. Playing Pac-Man on a machine that qualified as an antique to Lin Lixin was a truly novel experience.

In later years, the only way to get a taste of this thing was through hacked machines like Pandora's Box, with thousands of games in one.

The big yellow dot, its mouth opening and closing, darted through the maze, dodging ghosts while collecting as many dots as possible.

Such a simple game had sold over a million copies in this era.

Even a loser like Atari had sold a staggering seven million copies on the Atari 2600, a console with sales of only ten million units.

Lin Lixin played a few casual rounds, then let Sam give it a final farewell.

Looking at that iconic figure on the cabinet, Lin Lixin's thoughts turned.

Pac-Man's developer was none other than the renowned Namco.

Even at this point, before it had merged with that other behemoth, Bandai, Namco was not an opponent the current Lin Lixin could easily handle.

"Pac-Man," "Tekken," "Taiko no Tatsujin"...

With numerous classic game IPs bolstered by anime-derived IPs, it was undoubtedly another overlord of this era.

Sam reluctantly unplugged the arcade machine and looked at Lin Lixin beside him.

"Are you going to start porting it?"

He immediately tossed the brief sorrow of parting to the back of his mind. He could still play the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man, but Tetris was only available here!

Over the past few days, Lin Lixin had been busy with all sorts of development work and had not let Sam touch his computer, much less play any more of the Tetris that had left him craving more.

But that was fine. Once Lin Lixin successfully got Tetris running on this arcade machine, wouldn't he be able to play for as long as he wanted?

God-fucking-damn, just thinking about it was a thrill!

Lin Lixin nodded, but as he looked at the machine before him, the hardware knowledge he had just mastered surged through his mind.

Suddenly, he came up with a brilliant idea that could more than double the rate at which people fed coins into this thing.

"Sam, I need some parts. Could you make a trip to RadioShack?"

RadioShack was a North American electronics retail chain, hailed in this era as a "maker's paradise."

Supposedly, before Chief Qiao founded Apple, he had spent his time tinkering with inventions in RadioShack.

"Parts?" Sam scratched his head as he watched Lin Lixin fill a slip of paper with a long list of things.

That week, both Lin Lixin and Sam were run off their feet.

Apart from keeping up with their daily classes, the two poured almost every remaining moment of their free time into the arcade machine in the living room.

On Saturday night, Lin Lixin pulled an all-nighter and finished porting Tetris before dawn.

The world's first Tetris arcade machine was born.

Sam lay sprawled every which way on the short living room couch, sleeping without a shred of dignity. The claw hammer in his hand slipped loose and hit the floor with a clang, startling him awake.

He rubbed his eyes and looked at the arcade machine, the drool at the corner of his mouth not yet dry.

After a week of extreme modding, the thing looked nothing like its original self. No one would ever have guessed that it had once been a secondhand Pac-Man cabinet.

He heard a burst of 8-bit sound effects from the machine. It was the familiar Tetris he had yearned for through countless days and nights!

"It's done? It's done?!"

Sam forgot all about his drowsiness, sprang off the couch, and rushed up to the machine.

"She's so beautiful... I've never seen such a beautiful, elegant lady."

He was practically draped over the entire cabinet, having completely abandoned all human dignity.

"Dude, seriously, stop grossing me out." The corner of Lin Lixin's mouth twitched as he disgustedly hauled Sam, who was now fully astride the cabinet, off it. "Help me carry this thing out front. It's Sunday today. We might even get a few players willing to pay."

"What?!" Sam let out an anguished shriek and threw his arms around the Tetris machine, his eyes like those of a dog guarding its food.

A game machine this fun... if they moved it outside, if other people discovered it, Sam had no idea how many people would fall in love with it!

Just thinking about other people having their fill of fun on his beloved machine made Sam's heart ache in spasms.

Why had it turned out like this...?

For the first time, I'd found my favorite game, and I'd even seen the first light of a video game revival.

Those two joys overlapped, and that double joy brought still more and more joy.

I should have already had a dreamlike time of happiness, so why, why had it turned out like this...?

"What the hell's gotten into you? Hurry up. I'm about to die of exhaustion."

Lin Lixin kicked Sam off and, without another word, lifted one side of the arcade machine.

"It's not like you can't play once it's set up. Besides, we don't even know if anyone will come today."

The damage the Atari crash had done to the North American video game industry was far more severe than it appeared on the surface.

So severe that even Atari's attempts to salvage its reputation by releasing several reasonably well-made new titles in succession had failed to halt its avalanche of collapsing goodwill.

For North American players of this era, "video games are dead" was more than just a slogan.

Getting them to accept video games again would have to happen one step at a time.

Vivian loved morning runs, even in scorching California.

But something went awry with today's run.

"Huff, huff..."

Vivian panted heavily, a layer of sweat already coating her body and giving her fair skin a slick sheen.

Once she finished the stretch through the apartment complex ahead, her morning workout would be successfully complete.

Her gaze wandered casually along both sides of the street. Admiring the scenery along the way was one of the great pleasures of outdoor exercise.

But she spotted something strange.

A sight she could not understand, yet found deeply shocking.

Two men were carrying a huge arcade machine and setting it down on a porch.

One of them, a handsome young Chinese man, was punching and kicking the other young white man. It was nothing short of a human tragedy.

The young white man taking the beating did not fight back, either. He clung to the arcade machine, wailing for his father and mother, and refused to let go no matter what.

Out of justice, out of empathy, and out of curiosity, Vivian decided to pause her morning run and go stop this utterly inhuman beating.

"What are you two doing?! Stop picking on him!"

Vivian shouted in a strong, ringing voice and hurried across the street.

But she could never have imagined, even if she racked her brains to pieces, that the young man taking the beating, the one whose cause she was championing, would shout in terror the instant he saw her approach:

"Stay back! There's no super-fun new arcade game here!"