Wolfenstein... 3D!

Over the past month, aside from overseeing the overall direction of the console's development, Lin Lixin had devoted all his remaining time to the design document for The Legend of Zelda.

Who would have thought that the earliest open-world RPG had been released on a machine as underpowered as the Famicom?

Lin Lixin felt he had already been working nonstop at maximum efficiency during this time, yet someone else had moved even faster.

Early morning.

Sam was awakened by a bout of impatient knocking and groggily opened his apartment door.

"Hey, you. I'm looking for Mr. Lin."

The speaker was some brat Sam didn't recognize, seemingly only high-school age.

He carried a medium-sized suitcase and had an arrogant air, as though Sam were his to order around.

"Where did you come from, kid? Pulling pranks this early in the morning? Go play somewhere else."

Sam had been working overtime and staying up late every day lately, leaving him badly short on sleep.

Today, he finally had a day off, only for some little punk to interrupt his peaceful sleep.

As they spoke, Lin Lixin's yawn sounded from behind him.

When he saw that the visitor was John Carmack, he, too, was stunned for a moment.

What was going on?

Had this kid secretly run away from home and come here?

Lin Lixin had no doubt whatsoever that Carmack would do something like that, and his scalp prickled.

"Lin, I made what you wanted."

Completely unconcerned by their attitudes toward him, Carmack took a storage chip out of his backpack.

Lin Lixin scratched his head helplessly. In any case, he let him in first.

"Didn't I tell you to focus on school? Did you sneak out? All the way from Kansas to California?"

Carmack rolled his eyes at Lin Lixin, reached straight into his bag, and pulled out an opened mailing envelope.

Lin Lixin took the envelope and pulled out its contents for a look. His vision promptly went dark.

An admission letter from the University of Kansas.

"You got your high school diploma and got into the University of Kansas in one month?"

"Wait, he's the person you said you went to Kansas to find?"

Sam jolted, now thoroughly awake.

Everything in their exchange told him that Lin Lixin's earlier business trip to Kansas had apparently been to find this little brat.

In Santa Clara, GAMENOVA's current staff all exchanged bewildered looks as they stared at the insufferably arrogant brat beside Lin Lixin.

"Ahem... Anyway, that's more or less the situation. Carmack will be staying with me for now."

"Wait, Lin, are you serious?"

Vivian looked Carmack up and down. His stubborn, show-off attitude really wasn't very endearing.

"Come on, Carmack. Show them what you've got."

Without further explanation, Lin Lixin patted Carmack on the shoulder, signaling for him to demonstrate the program he had written.

A few minutes later.

Even the expressions of high-level technical experts like Gerald and Ho Kwok Yuen had changed.

The screen clearly rendered a small room.

It wasn't the usual side-scrolling 2D or overhead view. It was 3D.

3D!!!

Blue brick walls, a dusty gray floor, and a concrete-colored ceiling.

Although it lacked details such as shadows and highlights, the naked eye could already clearly tell that this was a three-dimensional room.

As Carmack pushed the joystick, the viewpoint even began moving around the little room.

Moving forward and backward, turning left and right-it had everything it should.

Perhaps the only shortcoming was that it couldn't look up or down; the view remained level throughout.

Carmack folded his arms, his chin practically jutting into the sky.

"This is pseudo-3D technology I implemented using a ray-tracing algorithm."

There was no stronger proof than this program.

Even Lin Lixin, who had anticipated it, felt pleasantly surprised.

The results of this 3D rendering fully met his expectations.

Change of plans. Time to develop Wolfenstein 3D!

Guns were one of North America's big three, after all, and an enduring evergreen of video games.

The engineering department at Nintendo of America, NOA, in New Jersey.

Minoru Arakawa, the North American president who had established Nintendo of America at the invitation of his father-in-law Hiroshi Yamauchi in 1980, stood before a square, flat, boxlike machine.

"President, the NES prototype is complete."

NES, short for Nintendo Entertainment System.

Arakawa had given it this name. In reality, the NES was merely a North America-exclusive version of the Famicom with a different shell, with virtually no difference in specifications.

Naturally, this was to adapt to the North American home console market, which Atari had battered to the point of near ruin.

Both players and parents now had severe PTSD over the word "console."

A more neutral name would help them revitalize this market with its enormous commercial potential.

"Atari has squandered its reputation. We don't need to worry about its new console. The real problem is..."

His gaze shifted to an intelligence report.

[Report on the Master System, the new console under development by Sega]

If the report was accurate, Sega was the rival they most needed to worry about.

The Sega MS's specifications were superior to the NES's in virtually every respect, yet its price was the same $199.99.

This machine had clearly been prepared to snipe their North American strategy.

"President, should we adjust our specifications too?"

The engineering staff knew about the MS and were likewise somewhat worried.

Arakawa considered for a moment, then shook his head.

"No, this is enough. Test it, then arrange the trial sales in New York this week."

His eye was keen: he saw at once that competing over hardware was actually a seemingly sweet trap.

They were not Atari. Nintendo's greatest asset was not its hardware specifications, but its lavish lineup of games.

To win this war, which was destined to unleash a storm of blood, Arakawa had prepared an exceedingly ruthless strategy.

Bundling Super Mario.

Every NES purchase would come with a Super Mario cartridge.

That was a phenomenal video game developed by the great Shigeru Miyamoto at their Japanese headquarters! No player could resist its allure.

Arakawa did not believe there could be another game in the world as excellent as Super Mario, or one with greater influence.

It wasn't arrogance, but Atari and Sega alone could never achieve that.

Unless some powerhouse suddenly descended from the heavens in North America, with its crumbling video game industry, and emerged as a major dark horse!

That was even more impossible!

It should be... impossible, right?

"Click."

Lin Lixin pushed the floppy disk into the NovaBox prototype.

After several full seconds of loading, the CRT television connected to the console flickered, revealing the game's main screen.

"Wolfenstein 3D"

Looking at the shirtless tough guy carrying a rotary machine gun on the cover, Lin Lixin sucked at his teeth.

"Is it just me? Why does it feel like I've made another game with such a 'Schwarzenegger' style?"