Recaps

GameNova unveiled a trailer for Battlefield 1991, a modern-warfare game set in a parallel version of the Gulf Crisis, and stirred anticipation for its expected Presidents' Day release. The next day, President Bush announced the start of Operation Desert Storm, and the Gulf War erupted.

• GameNova announced that Infocom would remain focused on adventure games as Richard Vander Wende took over from Jon Van Caneghem, who planned to rebuild New World Computing.
• GameNova kept quiet about the 3DO launch while players looked forward to its Presidents' Day announcements and a new game described as large in scope.
• On January 16, 1991, television hosts introduced the first trailer for Battlefield 1991, which depicted a satellite-guided campaign involving aircraft, troops, tanks, and a carrier battle group.
• The trailer presented Battlefield 1991 as a game about a parallel-timeline Gulf Crisis escalating into full-scale war and gave February 18 as its probable release date.
• On January 17, 1991, President Bush announced that Operation Desert Storm had begun, marking the outbreak of the Gulf War.

As the Gulf War began, CNN reporter Bernard Shaw used GameNova's portable Nova media terminal to broadcast live from Baghdad. In New York, Vincent and his mother Emma watched the coverage and received a letter from Vincent's father, Kent, who had been sent to Saudi Arabia.

• Bernard Shaw and his crew set up GameNova's Nova media terminal at the Al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad.
• Bernard connected to the satellite and confirmed that CNN was receiving the broadcast.
• Air raid sirens sounded, and Bernard began reporting live as the war started.
• Vincent stayed up with his mother Emma to watch CNN's live coverage of Baghdad.
• A postal worker delivered a letter from Kent, who had written to Emma while serving in Saudi Arabia.

George objected to GameNova turning war into entertainment, while Emma defended “Battlefield 1991” and planned to buy it. As the Gulf War’s air campaign continued without a ground invasion, Emma and Vincent returned from shopping with the game, leaving George to inspect its box.

• George condemned “Battlefield 1991” over breakfast, arguing that war was nothing like a video game and that the campaign risked trivializing soldiers’ suffering.
• Emma defended GameNova’s game, while Vincent timidly suggested they skip it; George remained unconvinced despite reports that GameNova would support veterans and the Pentagon had praised the game’s accuracy.
• Over the next month, coalition forces carried out massive air strikes against Iraq, and people began to wonder whether the war would avoid becoming another Vietnam-style quagmire.
• Emma and Vincent came home from a shopping trip as CNN continued its coverage of the air strikes.
• George picked up the large box and read the title, “Battlefield,” and its subtitle, “[1991].

Emma, Vincent, and George watched Battlefield 1991’s opening cinematic, which showcased the Gulf War’s land, sea, and air forces with stirring music and sound. The cinematic impressed George despite his skepticism, while Vincent felt that the game conveyed the gravity of war and human life rather than the thrill of slaughter.

• Lin Lixin secured DoD authorization and used official footage and support to present Battlefield 1991 as both a game and military publicity.
• George accused GameNova of rushing out a Quake rehash, but the cinematic’s marching music and desert battlefield drew him in.
• The cinematic showed M1 Abrams tanks and coalition naval forces, including carriers and warships presented through live footage and prerendered scenes.
• Aircraft formations appeared before the Battlefield 1991 logo, and George admitted that the cinematic was respectable.
• Vincent compared Battlefield 1991 with action-focused shooters and felt that it carried the weight of war, history, and life.

Emma and Vincent tried to join a Battlefield 1991 multiplayer match, while George became absorbed in the game's Gulf War briefing and class system. After the match loaded, Emma chose scout, but George urged her to pick a class that would help the team advance.

• Emma and Vincent chose multiplayer and waited several minutes before securing a place in a 32-player match.
• The Operation Desert Tomahawk loading screen presented a battlefield map and a Gulf War briefing that George read closely.
• Emma reached the spawn selection screen and realized that available spawn points belonged to coalition forces, while enemy positions were unavailable.
• George pointed out the five classes and explained that teamwork between infantry, armor, medics, engineers, and anti-tank troops shaped the battlefield.
• Emma selected scout because she trusted her sniping aim, but George criticized the crowded scout role and told her to choose assault, medic, or engineer.

Emma and the others entered Battlefield 1991, where the enormous desert map and its playable vehicles made the game feel like a battlefield simulator. Emma climbed into a Humvee’s machine-gun position as an F-15 streaked across the horizon.

• The game began at an American forward base, where Emma noticed the low frame rate and examined her M16A2.
• Vincent and Emma were stunned by the immense scale of the map and the sprawling base.
• A player named Simon climbed into a Humvee and called for the others to follow.
• Emma joined Simon’s Humvee at its working machine gun while George watched with a furrowed brow.
• An F-15 fighter jet streaked across the horizon as Emma gripped the machine gun.

Emma experienced the chaos and scale of Battlefield 1991, where she was killed in combat and revived by a medic before her team captured the strongpoint. She told George that the game was very different, and found him sitting silently with red, swollen eyes.

• Emma manned a Humvee’s machine gun, struggled to aim amid the vehicle’s restrictions, and jumped out to fight on foot with her teammate.
• Emma and her teammate exchanged fire with enemies from behind cover, and she killed an enemy before an aerial bomb killed her teammate.
• Emma requested support, then a recon soldier shot and killed her with an SVD sniper rifle.
• An M1 Abrams and supporting troops arrived, and a medic revived Emma while the team advanced and captured the strongpoint.
• Emma told George that Battlefield 1991 was very different, and saw that his eyes were red and swollen.

After the Gulf War ended in a rapid coalition victory, Battlefield 1991 became a sensation as the public embraced its accurate war simulation and praised GAMENOVA. Lin Lixin finished a banquet celebrating the game’s success, then visited GAMENOVA’s developing Delta Base, where he met Lucas and discussed their projects.

• Operation Desert Sabre ended in a 100-hour coalition victory, and CNN and Battlefield 1991 gained enormous public attention.
• Battlefield 1991 sales and public enthusiasm surged after its detailed portrayal of the Gulf War drew praise from media outlets and players.
• Lin Lixin hosted military contacts at a banquet and agreed to provide dedicated servers for an internal network on a base.
• The next day, Lin Lixin visited Delta Base and admired the developing ocean-view villa.
• Lucas met Lin Lixin at the site, discussed building Skywalker Estate with Trevor, and praised Battlefield 1991 before asking why Lin Lixin had ignored 3D0.

Lin Lixin explained why GAMENOVA planned to build an affordable 32-bit next-generation console around the powerful ATHENA processor, while Lucas considered making adventure games before reclaiming Star Wars video game rights. In Helsinki, Linus discovered an unexpected file on his computer and found a message claiming that an optimized version of his operating-system project had been sent to his public email.

• Lucas said he wanted to make a Star Wars game, but explained that Atari still held the video game adaptation rights.
• Lin Lixin suggested that Lucas start with adventure games and revealed that GAMENOVA was preparing a new console.
• Lin Lixin argued that clock speed, cost, and a healthy ecosystem mattered more than choosing a 64-bit processor, and said ATHENA could approach 80 MHz.
• Linus worked on an operating-system kernel using C and assembly on his i386 PC.
• Linus found an unfamiliar file in his project and read a message criticizing his tools and pointing him to an optimized version sent by email.

Linus arrived in California to join GAMENOVA, intrigued by the company and by Lin Lixin’s unusually personal recruitment. On the drive to headquarters, Carmack challenged Linus’s suitability to develop an operating-system kernel, and Linus defended his focus on reliability over raw performance.

• GAMENOVA secured Linus an H-1B visa, and after a week of travel he arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Linus reflected on his love of Zork Idle and Screeps and how Lin Lixin’s polished solution to his code had persuaded him to accept the offer.
• Carmack picked Linus up in his Corvette and asked whether he was the player known as “The Finnish Guy” in Screeps.
• Carmack challenged Linus’s kernel work as inefficient and argued that he could better exploit the i386’s performance.
• Linus defended his priority of stable support for many programs and hardware devices, then questioned why Carmack did not simply use UNIX or NeXT-STEP.

Lin Lixin offered Linus funding and support to develop his open-source operating system, seeing it as a future foundation for servers and mobile devices. He then called Schwarzenegger with an offer to appear in a new fighting game.

• Lin Lixin and Jensen Huang discussed designing a custom graphics card for GAMENOVA’s next-generation consoles.
• Carmack brought Linus to meet Lin Lixin, who offered to fund and support Linus’s operating-system work without taking ownership of it.
• Linus said he planned to make the operating system open source, and Lin Lixin explained its potential for game servers and future mobile devices.
• Lin Lixin suggested Linus speak with NEXUS about its version-control software and reflected on his history with Schwarzenegger.
• Lin Lixin called Schwarzenegger on the set of The Terminator 2 and asked whether he was interested in appearing in a new fighting game.

Lin Lixin decided to create Mortal Kombat, a new fighting game aimed at European and American players, after admitting that hardware limits had stalled his 3D ambitions. He brought Brandon Lee, Schwarzenegger, and Lucas together to develop a game shaped by American culture and Hollywood.

• Lin Lixin concluded that manufacturing limits prevented software optimization from pushing 3D games much further, so he planned to make less graphically demanding games.
• Brandon Lee arrived and asked whether Lin Lixin was making a fighting game, then asked if it would be a sequel to Street Fighter or The King of Fighters.
• Lin Lixin told Brandon Lee that the project would be an entirely new fighting-game IP and named it Mortal Kombat.
• Lin Lixin explained that Mortal Kombat would target European and American markets and that Hollywood would help give it an American identity.
• Schwarzenegger and Lucas arrived by boat as Lin Lixin prepared to explain the plan.

Lin Lixin gathered Schwarzenegger, Brandon Lee, and Lucas to explore casting and a filmmaking approach for a Mortal Kombat game. He proposed using live actors and rotoscoping for a 2D fighting game, then ended by introducing the series’ defining Fatality mechanic.

• Lin Lixin had Schwarzenegger pose bare-chested and considered him for the role of Johnny Cage.
• Lin Lixin asked whether Linda Hamilton was available to play Sonya Blade and considered Brandon Lee as a stand-in for a Bruce Lee tribute character.
• Brandon Lee asked how Lin Lixin planned to distinguish the game, and Lin explained that he wanted to bring Hollywood action blockbusters into video games.
• Lin Lixin rejected relying on prerecorded film clips or motion capture alone and proposed filming live actors, then converting their performances into game animation through rotoscoping.
• Lucas realized Lin Lixin intended to make the game 2D, and Lin cited smooth movement, visual clarity, and room for more clips as reasons.
• Lin Lixin introduced Fatality as the signature mechanic that would define Mortal Kombat.

Lin Lixin explained how Mortal Kombat’s Fatality Finishing Moves would intensify victory feedback and draw arcade spectators into playing. He left Lucas and the others anticipating a second mechanic he had prepared for the game.

• Lin Lixin explained that Fatality would let winners choose how to finish off their opponents, creating stronger feedback than traditional fighting games.
• Lin Lixin connected Mortal Kombat’s interactive Finishing Moves to Mahjong Academy’s H-button mechanic, which made players feel involved in characters undressing.
• Lin Lixin told Lucas that Fatality’s gore was secondary to immersion, spectator appeal, and commercial success.
• Lin Lixin asked Lucas what mattered most in an arcade game, then explained that attracting new players was even more important than keeping existing players feeding in coins.
• Lin Lixin said Fatality could make passersby stop and want to play, then hinted that he had prepared another mechanic central to Mortal Kombat.

Lin Lixin asked Brandon Lee to perform Mortal Kombat’s impossible-looking Flying Dragon Kick and Bicycle Kick for filming. Brandon Lee could not truly fly, but he demonstrated a rapid, precise Bicycle Kick while reclining on a chair, impressing Lin Lixin.

• Lin Lixin asked Brandon Lee to fly across the set with a Flying Dragon Kick, and Brandon Lee said he would perform the kick while postproduction handled the rest.
• Brandon Lee questioned how a person could do the Bicycle Kick without wires, and Lin Lixin explained that Mortal Kombat used exaggerated Hollywood-style martial arts.
• Lin Lixin brought over a chair and showed Brandon Lee how to recline on it to imitate riding a bicycle in midair.
• Brandon Lee stabilized himself on the chair and rapidly alternated his legs in a smooth, precise series of kicks.
• Lin Lixin praised Brandon Lee’s Bicycle Kick as perfect.

Lin Lixin coached Schwarzenegger to shed his stiff T-800 mannerisms and adopt Johnny Cage’s loose, cocky, and obnoxious style. After demonstrating Johnny’s ridiculous dance and charge-up move, Lin Lixin left Schwarzenegger to practice the character before filming.

• Lin Lixin noticed Schwarzenegger looked too tense in Johnny Cage’s costume and told him to forget his other screen roles.
• Schwarzenegger relaxed his posture, crossed his arms, leaned against a wall, and developed the slick, punchable air Lin Lixin wanted.
• Lin Lixin told Schwarzenegger to practice talking more and brought him to shoot test clips with a lightweight prop camera.
• Lin Lixin demonstrated Johnny Cage’s exaggerated dance and charge-up move, chanting “Johnny! Johnny! Johnny!”
• Schwarzenegger said the dance made Lin Lixin look punchable, and Lin Lixin explained that provoking a swing was the move’s purpose.

Lin Lixin and Mark Cerny assessed the hardware requirements for Mortal Kombat and realized that 3DO’s MADAM+CILO architecture suited the game’s FMV-heavy 2D design. They decided to study the architecture and build a cheaper arcade board tailored to the game, leaving GameNova poised to challenge EA.

• Mark Cerny reviewed the existing Nova Wonder board and concluded that modernizing it would require so many replacements that a new design made more sense.
• Lin Lixin listed Mortal Kombat’s needs, including FMV sequences, layered 2D rendering, live-action sprite animations, and CD-quality audio.
• Lin Lixin and Cerny recognized that Mortal Kombat’s requirements matched the Panasonic Real 3DO’s MADAM+CILO architecture.
• Lin Lixin decided to study 3DO’s design and strip away unnecessary performance to create a cost-effective arcade board for Mortal Kombat.

Lin Lixin settled the hardware plan for the Mortal Kombat arcade game and began arranging a DC Comics crossover. Jenette Kahn agreed to consider using Joker and Watchmen characters, while Jack Nicholson was already filming footage in Hollywood.

• Lin Lixin and his team chose the inexpensive Motorola 68030 and a specialized decoding ASIC for the Mortal Kombat arcade machine.
• As character assets for Johnny Cage and Liu Kang developed, the team saw Mortal Kombat’s distinct style of violence and American comic-book influence take shape.
• Lin Lixin asked DC Comics president Jenette Kahn to provide characters for Mortal Kombat, and she worried the game could harm DC’s reputation with its young audience.
• Jenette proposed using villains or Watchmen antiheroes instead of DC’s traditional superheroes, and Lin Lixin named Joker and Watchmen characters as possibilities.
• Jenette agreed to arrange board approval for Joker, while Lin Lixin revealed that Nicholson was already filming the requested footage in Hollywood.

Jenette watched the brutal Mortal Kombat filming and worried about the game’s prospects, though she recognized its bloody spectacle suited American tastes. As the game’s arcade machines shipped nationwide, distributor Jasper tried a sample cabinet and found its bizarre, catchy presentation hard to resist.

• Lucas directed Arnold’s violent fight scene, using a prop camera to smash a dummy while Jenette watched and reconsidered Mortal Kombat’s appeal.
• GameNova sent Mortal Kombat cabinets across the country, and distributors bought stock quickly despite operators’ reservations about the game’s gore and restricted rating.
• Jasper examined a thousand cabinets in his warehouse, noted the famous actors featured in the artwork, and arranged shipments to his clients.
• Jasper powered on a sample machine and watched its loud attract sequence, which mixed a looping electronic soundtrack with graphic character attacks.
• Jasper found himself repeating the machine’s shouted title and wanting to keep watching its preview.

Jasper tried Mortal Kombat and considered how its separate block button and Hollywood-action focus set it apart from Japanese fighting games. He began a computer match, impressed by the coherent character-select screen, though he noted that the original game's interface looked crude.

• Jasper put a coin into the Mortal Kombat machine and started the game.
• Jasper examined the controls and noted that Mortal Kombat used a separate block button rather than hold-back-to-block.
• Jasper contrasted Mortal Kombat's emphasis on dramatic action and Finishing Moves with Street Fighter's footsies and technical mind games.
• Jasper chose a one-on-one match against the computer instead of starting story mode.
• Jasper inspected the character-select screen and praised its visual cohesion, while observing that the original interface looked cheap and rough.

Jasper tried GameNova’s Mortal Kombat and was astonished by its roster of familiar Hollywood and comic-book characters, live-action visuals, and responsive controls. He began mashing buttons as Liu Kang and experienced the game’s forceful combat firsthand.

• Jasper spotted the Joker on the character selection screen and realized the game combined Hollywood, American comics, and GameNova’s properties.
• Jasper chose Liu Kang and set the AI to play Johnny Cage, whose camera-flashing entrance made him seem like a celebrity show-off.
• Jasper watched the fighters deliver pre-match dialogue, then discovered their live-action appearances carried over into a fully controllable match.
• Jasper tested the joystick and found he could move Liu Kang freely despite the game’s movie-like visuals.
• Jasper mashed buttons as Liu Kang, traded attacks with Johnny Cage, and was impressed by the dramatic impacts, screen shake, blood, and fiery flying kick.

Jasper introduced Robin to Mortal Kombat, and their match revealed the game’s Krushing Blow system when his Flying Dragon Kick struck Rambo. Robin discovered Rambo could recover health by eating bugs, then triggered a Krushing Blow that restored his health completely.

• Robin finished arranging shipping, and Jasper invited her to try Mortal Kombat after finishing a match as Liu Kang.
• Robin chose John Rambo, and Jasper chose Liu Kang for their first match together.
• Jasper struck Rambo with a maximum-range Flying Dragon Kick that triggered a Krushing Blow, shattering Rambo’s ribs in an X-ray close-up and taking a quarter of his health.
• Robin discovered that Rambo could stab and eat bugs to recover health, then repeatedly used the move while Jasper watched.
• After Rambo vomited, Robin tried eating another bug, triggering a slow-motion Krushing Blow that restored his health completely.

Mortal Kombat’s shocking finishing moves drew crowds and turned its age restrictions and criticism into free publicity. At 3DO, engineers recognized that GameNova had built the arcade board using an architecture reminiscent of MADAM-CILO, leaving Trip humiliated by the comparison.

• A Boston arcade crowd watched Johnny Cage repeatedly perform brutal finishing moves against Scorpion, while the game’s staged retakes added comic effect.
• The game’s ESRB-M restrictions and public attacks fueled curiosity, helping Mortal Kombat spread through arcades and attract its intended audience.
• 3DO’s engineering team examined the Mortal Kombat board and identified its custom chip, 68030 processor, and peripheral FPGAs.
• A supervisor told Trip that the board’s core architecture was basically similar to MADAM-CILO, with GameNova retaining only selected elements and adding its own technology.
• Trip felt anger and humiliation as he saw the board as a rebuke to 3DO, despite GameNova not having targeted the company.

After weighing GameNova’s finances and the cost of keeping its semiconductor technology competitive, Lin Lixin hit on virtual pets as a product that could unite the company’s hardware, software, and Pokémon ecosystem. He proposed the idea to Vivian and began outlining a device that could draw on GameNova’s factories, studios, and infrastructure.

• Lin Lixin reviewed the success of "Mortal Kombat" and concluded that the arcade game had become a major commercial hit.
• Lin Lixin assessed Japan’s declining economic bubble and judged that GameNova’s focus on talent rather than property and financial assets had insulated it from much of the damage.
• Lin Lixin examined an Athena chip and realized that GameNova would need expensive upgrades to its semiconductor facilities and equipment to keep pace with newer processors.
• Lin Lixin decided GameNova needed a product that could sell both hardware and software, then rushed to meet Vivian.
• Vivian showed Lin Lixin her pet rodent, and Lin Lixin proposed making a digital virtual pet inspired by "Tamagotchi".
• Lin Lixin identified Pokémon, GameNova’s display and battery production, memory chips, custom SoCs, and its Pokémon Center and ADSL network as pieces that could support the virtual pet device.

Lin Lixin explained to Vivian how GameNova would build a low-cost virtual pet using advanced mobile-device technology and attachment mechanics. Vivian learned the pet could die permanently if neglected, and Lin Lixin argued that dependence and separation anxiety would help players form a genuine bond with it.

• Vivian questioned whether Lin Lixin's virtual-pet idea would appeal to American consumers, and Lin Lixin proposed launching in Japan as well.
• Vivian suggested using GameNova's two-micron production line to keep the device cheap, but Lin Lixin chose 0.8 microns to make a smaller, more power-efficient SoC.
• Lin Lixin explained that the device would validate technologies for future mobile products, while Vivian warned they would need enough sales to cover development costs.
• Lin Lixin said the virtual pet would be an everyday necessity and described it as a low-cost alternative to real pets that still needed care and could die.
• Vivian objected that permanent death would restore the emotional burden of pet ownership, but Lin Lixin said dependence, separation anxiety, and reassurance would help create mutual attachment.