Opening an arcade on his own doorstep, apparently

Of course Lin Lixin knew Tetris would be a hit-a massive hit.

But he had never expected it to catch on so quickly.

After all, he had only put the thing outside his door to sound out the current players before deciding on his next move.

He had never imagined it would turn out like this. The long line of players outside gave Lin Lixin a headache.

He pushed the door open and stepped outside. The people in line casually glanced up, then quickly turned their attention back to the arcade machine ahead.

The second person in line turned back, looked at the screen, and suddenly shouted, hopping with agitation.

"Hey, you bastard! You snuck in another game while I wasn't looking!"

He distinctly remembered that damned nigger's screen had been about to fill up. How had he started over from zero in the blink of an eye?

The young Mexican guy in the other seat had clearly won the last round, but he had shamelessly stayed put too and started another game.

"u f**king asshole!"

As the man's curses grew nastier, even the people behind him started getting worked up. Seeing that it was about to turn into a street brawl, Lin Lixin hurried over and held him back.

Only after a great deal of persuasion and refunding the two young men who had gotten carried away playing did he finally get them to give up their seats.

But Lin Lixin had barely breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the two of them circle around and voluntarily join the back of the line.

They were clearly planning to go another round!

The corner of Lin Lixin's mouth twitched, but then he understood what was happening.

Right. Ask players to spend thirty or forty dollars on a game cartridge with absolutely no guarantee of quality, and players whose hearts Atari had thoroughly broken would naturally refuse to try again.

But spending just twenty-five cents to join the fun did not necessarily carry such a high cost for trying something out.

He was too used to the extravagant golden age of video games decades in the future, and had set his standards for these retro titles a little too high.

For players of this era, especially those who had just swallowed that enormous pile of shit called E.T., Tetris was an unquestionable masterpiece, one worth pouring hours into playing over and over.

Lin Lixin's gaze swept across the line and settled on a familiar figure in the middle. He laughed.

Vivian had changed into a neat, clean casual outfit. It looked as though she had been home.

She held a purse filled with coins that clinked and rattled.

She had also joined in condemning the two queue-jumping bastards earlier, and had even cursed louder than anyone else.

"Twenty-five cents' worth of chum, and the fish are biting like crazy."

Lin Lixin nodded in satisfaction, only then remembering that he had not seen Sam anywhere.

Hadn't he told him to help keep an eye on things?

Clatter.

Just as he was thinking that, the sound of a can rolling came from behind him.

Lin Lixin turned to look.

Sam had found a lounge chair somewhere and lay motionless on it, his eyes vacant and drool clinging to the corner of his mouth.

His arm hung limply at his side. The can had just slipped from his hand.

"Hey, what's wrong with you?"

Startled by his deathly gray face, which looked as though he had gotten far too high, Lin Lixin hurriedly shook him a few times.

"I... I've had my heart broken. You wouldn't understand, Jesse. You wouldn't understand."

"Look at your sorry self." Lin Lixin curled his lip and gave him another disdainful nudge with his toe. "Do me a favor, and I'll give you a present afterward."

"A present?" Sam murmured, then suddenly sprang up as though something had dawned on him. "A new game?"

Lin Lixin said nothing more, smiling as he patted his shoulder and motioned for him to come inside to talk.

What he needed to do was very simple, but also very important.

Apply for copyright protection.

He needed to register the Tetris brand name, source code, audiovisual elements, and other content for copyright protection as soon as possible.

Otherwise, once Nintendo began implementing its North American expansion plans next year, he would be in sorry shape.

"Copy this out, put the forms in order, and mail them to the Copyright Office."

Lin Lixin put the source code on the C64 directly in front of him. As for screenshots, photographs, circuit diagrams, and the like, he had Sam help print those out too.

To be fair, a copyright registration only cost ten dollars in registration fees, which was pretty reasonable.

He had only just finished giving instructions when someone knocked on the apartment door.

Puzzled, Lin Lixin opened the door to find a middle-aged man standing before him.

Perhaps because of the man's eye-catching hooked nose, Lin Lixin decided at a glance that he seemed to be a Jew.

"Can I help you?"

"Hey, my friend, I was wondering whether you were planning to sell that arcade machine outside?"

The visitor wore a suit even in the summer heat and held his hat in his hand.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Meyer, and I own an arcade. I noticed you have a new machine here that I've never seen before."

Meyer had spent quite a while observing outside and was absolutely certain that this machine called Tetris held an enormous business opportunity.

"Sorry, I'm not planning to sell it for now."

Lin Lixin smiled and casually turned down his request.

He did intend to make some money as startup capital, but he had no intention of selling arcade machines outright, even if Meyer might pay him two thousand dollars on the spot without blinking if he named that price now.

For one thing, Lin Lixin's current production capacity simply could not support manufacturing arcade machines. This one alone had taken them nearly half a month to complete, from modification to porting.

And that was by modifying a fully functional secondhand arcade machine.

After subtracting the eight hundred dollars spent buying the machine and the development and modification expenses along the way, the machine's actual cost came to around nine hundred dollars, meaning it could bring in a little over a thousand dollars in net income.

Trading half a month for a thousand dollars did not meet his expectations.

For another, they were currently in the copyright application stage. Selling a machine without even chip encryption would land them in unnecessary trouble.

Meyer looked disappointed at Lin Lixin's refusal, but still had no intention of giving up.

"Sorry, then may I ask where you ordered this machine? I can pay you a referral fee."

"I picked it up on the secondhand market," Lin Lixin replied vaguely, brushing him off. "But you can leave your contact information. I can get in touch when I find one."

Although he could not sell arcade machines right now, when someone was rushing to hand him money, he still had to find a way to keep him around.

Once things settled down later, this fellow might well become a major buyer.

After seeing Meyer off, Lin Lixin took a can of soda outside and settled into the lounge chair to take over watching the place from Sam.

He would use this opportunity to start planning his next game and work out just how he would earn his first pot of gold.

Lin Lixin already had an idea of what his next game should be.

At this point, development on Super Mario should already have begun. Taking the risk of copying it was out of the question.

But the scrolling technology used in Super Mario gave him a good idea.