Recaps

Blizzard’s developers struggled to create alpha-blending effects for the NX’s limited hardware until Lin Lixin demonstrated a CRT-focused dithering technique that simulated transparency in software. He left the team to apply the method and suggested they seek help from Nazca Studio as Hollywood began work on promotional material and cutscenes.

• Mike and Alan discussed how the NX’s limited hardware made the alpha-blending effects needed for the project difficult to implement.
• The developers considered asking Lin Lixin to design a dedicated chip, but Mike argued that Lin would reject the idea.
• Lin arrived, heard the problem, and demonstrated software dithering that used CRT blur to make overlapping colors appear naturally blended.
• Lin explained that the technique could turn the NX’s display limitations into an advantage and encouraged the team to use dithering in its pixel art.
• Lin suggested contacting Satoshi and bringing in Nazca Studio, then left as the Hollywood team prepared to produce promotional material and cutscenes.

Lin Lixin oversaw the filming of Red Alert’s Allied campaign opening and worked with Hans Zimmer to shape the Soviet theme into a heavy, industrial-rock version of “Hell March.” The distinctive chant and music began to take form, leaving Hans excited by a sound that suited the game’s over-the-top action.

• Lin Lixin reviewed the Allied campaign scene in which Stavros reported that Einstein had stopped transmitting, and Linda Hamilton appeared as Tanya Adams.
• Lin Lixin asked Lucas about Soviet faction actors, then left the set to discuss the music with Hans Zimmer.
• Lin Lixin explained that “Hell March” needed a forceful, industrial-rock sound rather than a conventional orchestral war score.
• Lin Lixin and Hans Zimmer built a demo with heavy snare drums, synthesized brass, bass, and distorted guitar.
• Hans Zimmer reacted excitedly when Lin Lixin added the chant and guitar melody, recognizing the sound as a fitting theme for Command & Conquer.

George secretly played Battlefield 1991 while his family was away, then mistook a television trailer showing a Russian invasion of America for real news and prepared to fight. His son Kent returned home and revealed it was only a prank.

• Lin Lixin decided that Red Alert should emphasize flashy, exaggerated Russian and American technology rather than historical accuracy.
• George secretly used the family laptop to play Battlefield 1991 and enjoyed several rounds as a sniper.
• A television trailer showed Russian forces invading American landmarks, and George became convinced the attack was real.
• George worried that his family was stranded at the store and began putting on his gear.
• Kent came home from military service and told George to chill because it was a prank.

Kent showed George Command & Conquer: Red Alert, and George became engrossed in its cinematic story and first Allied mission. As Kent began guiding Tanya and his troops through the rescue of Einstein, George nervously urged him to destroy the power plants.

• George learned that Kent's apparent military return and the chaos he had witnessed were a surprise, then declined to play Red Alert himself.
• Kent launched the Allied version of Red Alert: Collector's Edition and watched its opening cinematic, which showed Einstein traveling back in time and altering history.
• The game's cinematic introduced the Allied command team and instructed the player to rescue Einstein by infiltrating a Soviet base and exploiting its power supply.
• Kent began the first mission, controlling Tanya and other troops while avoiding the base's Tesla coils.
• George became immersed in the mission and clutched Kent's arm as Kent identified nearby oil drums that might help destroy a power plant.

Kent tested the new Command & Conquer installment and found its improved pixel art, shadows, and campaign guidance made the familiar game feel more immersive. George took over the game, rediscovered his love of video games, and called Kent to help him in competitive play.

• Kent noticed the installment’s improved pixel art and shadow effects as he played Tanya’s mission and destroyed oil drums to disable a Tesla coil.
• Kent rescued the old man from the laboratory and completed the mission by escorting him to a helicopter.
• Harrison and Schwarzenegger briefed Kent on the Russian troop buildup and asked him to lead another operation.
• George watched Kent play and realized he had been pretending not to enjoy video games because he cared too much about keeping up appearances.
• George took over the second mission, began building a base, and called Kent from the kitchen to help him beat a strong opponent in competitive play.

Red Alert’s sales surged as the Soviet Union dissolved, turning the game into an unexpected historical sensation. Lin Lixin celebrated GAMENOVA’s success and prepared for its next console generation, but an arcade-machine failure revealed a serious ATHENA-II problem.

• Lin Lixin reviewed California property options with Sam and considered a new GAMENOVA headquarters.
• As Christmas sales peaked, Gorbachev announced the Soviet Union’s dissolution, and Red Alert’s Soviet-version discs sold rapidly.
• Sam celebrated GAMENOVA’s success at anticipating major news, while Lin Lixin turned his attention to the company’s future plans.
• Sam received word that returned Mirror’s Edge arcade machines might have an ATHENA-II fault, and Lin Lixin went to inspect the chips.
• Lin Lixin found that the affected CPUs had suffered transistor aging from heat and high voltage, causing what he called “cylinder shrinkage.”

Lin Lixin traced ATHENA-II processor failures in the desert Southwest to transistor aging caused by excessive performance demands and temperature swings, then proposed a cooling fix. He decided to invest in ASUS to strengthen GAMENOVA’s hardware development and asked Sam to invite its founders to California.

• Lin Lixin and Vivian identified processor aging as the cause of ATHENA-II failures concentrated in Arizona and New Mexico, while Sam learned that Mirror's Edge had pushed the processors beyond their safe performance headroom.
• Lin Lixin proposed adding heatsink fins and a fan, along with a metal mass to moderate temperature swings, as a repair for the affected arcade boards.
• Lin Lixin recognized that the failures exposed weaknesses in Micro-Nova Semiconductor’s testing and GAMENOVA’s hardware practices, and decided the company needed a more reliable development path.
• Lin Lixin rejected Sam’s guess of Acer and said he wanted to invest in ASUSTeK, also known as ASUS, a new company founded by former Acer engineers.
• Lin Lixin asked Sam to have Satoshi and the others contact ASUS and invite its founders to California for Christmas.

Lin Lixin chose a Marin County site for GAMENOVA’s new headquarters and recruited ASUS’s engineers to develop a gamer-focused motherboard line called Republic of Gamers. Their partnership gave GAMENOVA the final component it needed to expand into IBM-compatible PCs, while Lin began preparing a new game.

• Lin Lixin selected more than 2,000 acres of ranchland in Marin County for GAMENOVA’s new headquarters, and Trevor moved there to oversee planning.
• Hsu Ted and the ASUS engineers presented Lin Lixin with their Cache386/33 and ISA486/25 motherboards.
• Lin Lixin proposed that ASUS develop enthusiast-gaming motherboards and introduced the Republic of Gamers project with plans for integrated chipsets and advanced BIOS features.
• Lin Lixin described monitoring CPU temperature and voltage in real time, and Hsu Ted agreed to a partnership with GAMENOVA.
• GAMENOVA strengthened its reach into the PC market as Linux, NEXUS, PlayStation, and Atari continued their respective efforts.
• Lin Lixin decided it was time to prepare a new game.

Lin Lixin decided to expand GAMENOVA’s Industry Alliance to develop higher-capacity optical discs, then chose a storage-heavy adventure game to test the technology. He announced Disco Elysium as Lucas Arts’ first major launch of 1992, leaving the team ready to begin work on the ambitious project.

• Lin Lixin told Sam to expand the Industry Alliance and named companies he wanted to help develop optical-drive and disc technology.
• Lin Lixin and Lucas inspected GAMENOVA’s newly acquired ranch, where Lucas asked when Lin would reveal the other two games in his planned trilogy.
• Lin Lixin realized that an ambitious, storage-heavy game could test the new discs and rushed with Lucas to Skywalker Ranch.
• Lin Lixin wrote Disco Elysium on the planning board and described it as an adventure game with some CRPG elements.
• Lin Lixin named Disco Elysium Lucas Arts’ opening project of 1992, and the developers enthusiastically agreed to take it on.

Lin Lixin explained how Disco Elysium would draw players into its world by making its amnesiac detective protagonist’s identity part of the story. He left the design centered on choices that shape Harry’s personality, beliefs, and relationships, with character attributes made concrete through named skills.

• Lin Lixin proposed making the protagonist an amnesiac detective whose identity players would discover as they explored.
• He described four attributes—Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics—and explained that branching dialogue would let players shape the protagonist.
• Tim recognized that players’ choices could make them collaborators in creating Harry, while Lucas understood how gradually revealing information could ease players into the world.
• Lin Lixin said the hidden main story was players coming to know and create Harry through choices affecting the case and his relationships in Revachol.
• Lin Lixin divided Intellect into Logic, Encyclopedia, Rhetoric, Drama, Conceptualization, and Visual Calculus to make abstract stats easier to understand.

Lin Lixin explained how Disco Elysium would turn inner speech into personified attributes that influence a player's choices, while Lucas recognized the ambition and risks of the design. Lin insisted gameplay must remain central and asked Lucas to recruit specialists, including oil painters and writers, as development moved toward establishing the underlying mechanics.

• Lucas followed Lin Lixin's explanation of a character-building system that develops through gameplay rather than being decided all at once.
• Lin Lixin guided the team to consider inner speech, then described how personified attributes would whisper competing thoughts and shape player decisions.
• Lucas worried the system would be difficult to control, and Lin Lixin agreed it required careful development while emphasizing that the game must remain fun and playable.
• Lin Lixin asked Lucas to find oil painters, writers, playwrights, historians, psychologists, architects, and voice actors for the project.
• GameNova's experienced art team seemed difficult to use because Disco Elysium had an unusually offbeat visual style.

Lin Lixin oversaw GAMENOVA’s effort to develop higher-capacity optical discs, while Lucas assembled experts to shape the art and mental systems of the Revachol project. Francis Bacon became its art director and began planning how to create the city’s visual assets.

• Mark Cerny told Lin Lixin that a dual-laser pickup would best preserve backward compatibility and reported that AlGaInP lasers might enable discs with 900 MB to 1 GB of storage.
• Lin Lixin asked the team to have DuPont focus on the disc substrates and optical adhesives needed for the project.
• A neuroscientist joined the team after learning that research funded by Lin Lixin’s Photosensitive Epilepsy Research Fund had captured subjects’ inner speech.
• Lucas introduced Francis Bacon as the project’s new art director after describing Revachol’s violent, war-scarred history to him.
• Bacon asked for art supplies, and Lin Lixin proposed using a large-format CCD scanner and consulting the Cedars-Sinai medical team.

Lin Lixin watched Francis Bacon create the hanged-man painting for Disco Elysium, then painted the Insulindian Phasmid himself. He returned to the development team and began shaping the game’s RPG mechanics around interactivity and player control.

• Lucas brought Lin Lixin to see Francis Bacon’s painting of a detective’s corpse hanging from a withered tree, and Bacon explained how the work reflected his inner decay and agitation.
• Lin Lixin praised Bacon’s painting and, inspired by it, spent the afternoon learning oil painting under Bacon’s guidance.
• Lin Lixin painted the Insulindian Phasmid, and Bacon told Lucas to leave its meaning for players to interpret.
• Lin Lixin returned to the development team and resumed discussion of the game’s attribute design, emphasizing RPG elements and interactivity as sources of gameplay.
• Tim cited Lin Lixin’s design theory about twelve categories of player needs, and Lin Lixin recognized him as a fellow theorist.

Lin Lixin explained how Disco Elysium could combine RPG dice checks with exploration without punishing players for failures beyond their control. He left Tim with the design’s final safeguard: letting players save whenever they wanted and retry.

• Lin Lixin argued that Disco Elysium needed more player control than a conventional adventure game and warned that stat-gated clues could frustrate players.
• Lin Lixin told the team that frustration came from players being punished when they had made no mistake, and Tim considered how that principle applied to dice checks.
• Lin Lixin proposed making failed checks optional setbacks rather than progress blockers, while successful checks let players handle situations more easily.
• Lin Lixin suggested freely changeable equipment and builds, visible success odds, and chances to explore or prepare before attempting checks.
• Tim realized that the advice from the protagonist’s personified emotions also formed part of the decision system, and Lin Lixin reminded him to include save slots so players could save-scum.

After twenty years in prison, Bill struggled to understand a 1992 transformed by GameNova and bought a NovaPocket handheld before collapsing outside a convenience store. Simon and Benjamin arrived and found him lying motionless as the clerk called for help.

• Bill left prison after serving twenty years and tried to make sense of the unfamiliar world by reading a newspaper.
• Bill discovered an article praising Lin and Lucas Arts' new game, Disco Elysium, and learned from a clerk that Atari had fallen while GameNova dominated gaming.
• The clerk showed Bill a Walkman and a NovaPocket, then sold him a handheld with a Pokémon Red/Green cartridge during the Presidents' Day sale.
• Bill stumbled outside and collapsed, and the clerk called to Simon and Benjamin as they approached the store.

Bill woke up at Benjamin and Simon’s gaming gathering and became fascinated by the video game Disco Elysium. He began playing, stunned by its moving, richly layered paintings.

• Bill woke up on Benjamin’s sofa while Benjamin and Simon played Red Alert.
• Benjamin told Bill he could try Disco Elysium and explained that Bill had passed out from low blood sugar.
• Bill started to leave, but the game consoles and Red Alert displays caught his attention, so he asked if he could play.
• Benjamin loaded Disco Elysium, and Bill marveled at its animated oil-painting title screen and its depiction of Revachol.

Bill played Disco Elysium and became absorbed in its richly detailed world, realizing he had mistaken the game’s scope and regretting that he had borrowed it without being able to repay the favor. As he prepared to leave, Benjamin offered him any NP cartridges from a bin, welcoming him to enjoy more games.

• Bill used the selection controls to dress the protagonist, find keys, and explore the room’s interactive objects.
• After speaking with Klaasje, Bill learned that the protagonist was a police officer investigating a case in Revachol after days of drunken trouble at the Whirling-in-Rags.
• Bill discovered the hostel’s larger first floor and found a city map among the documents in the game box, realizing the game offered far more places and stories to explore.
• Bill stopped playing because he felt he had imposed on his hosts and needed to find work and a place to live.
• Benjamin asked whether Bill liked games and offered him any NP cartridges from the bin beside the sofa.

Disco Elysium earned widespread critical praise and award nominations, though its sales were limited by its length and GAMENOVA’s incompatible disc drive. As Lin Lixin presented Francis Bacon’s final painting at a press conference, Jiang Wanmeng began exploring how optical discs might play video and decided to travel to an international broadcasting technology exhibition.

• Disco Elysium received a broad slate of award nominations and near-unanimous critical praise despite selling only slightly more than twenty thousand copies on its first day.
• Lin Lixin told reporters that the Insulindian Phasmid could mean different things to different players and credited Francis Bacon with the game’s distinctive oil-painted art.
• Lin Lixin revealed Bacon’s framed final painting and announced that it would be displayed at the GAMENOVA Game Museum.
• Jiang Wanmeng considered how optical discs might overcome VHS’s limitations and began imagining a Video CD.
• Jiang Wanmeng decided to take his engineers to the international broadcasting technology exhibition in Las Vegas to learn about the industry.

At Apple’s 1992 launch, John Sculley unveiled the Newton MessagePad, a handheld office device developed with Micro-Nova Semiconductor. Lin Lixin recognized its promise but believed its immature technology, high price, and limited software ecosystem would prevent it from succeeding.

• Lin Lixin and Vivian attended Apple’s product launch, where John Sculley greeted them.
• Sculley described Apple’s search for a portable computer and credited technological cooperation with Micro-Nova Semiconductor.
• Sculley showed how Apple had stripped down a laptop’s components to create a compact, stylus-equipped PDA.
• Apple revealed the Newton MessagePad, prompting excitement among the audience.
• Lin Lixin assessed the Newton’s potential and identified its usability, price, and software ecosystem as major obstacles.

Lin Lixin traveled to Japan to persuade Sega to build a reusable universal 3D arcade board that would cut development time and hardware costs. He outlined the shared 3D technology it could provide, then introduced a new AM2 project: Virtua Fighter.

• Lin Lixin told Vivian that GameNova’s main objective for the year was storage and that he had prepared for future mobile devices through the Hermes project.
• Lin Lixin arrived in Tokyo and explained to Satoshi that arcade games remained popular, making Sega well positioned to benefit from the downturn.
• Lin Lixin told Hayao Nakayama that Sega needed a universal 3D arcade board, and Yu Suzuki explained how shared 3D functions could replace repeated custom hardware designs.
• Lin Lixin argued that a common platform would help Sega share technology, shorten development cycles, and reduce arcade machine costs.
• Lin Lixin placed a document on the table and revealed Virtua Fighter, a planned 3D fighting game from AM2.

Lin Lixin argued that fighting games still had room to grow and proposed making Virtua Fighter stand apart through realistic, logical martial-arts choreography. He left the team considering how kung fu and motion-capture data could make grounded combat visually compelling.

• Yuji Naka questioned why Sega planned to make a fighting game for its new arcade board, given the crowded market and the challenges of 3D controls.
• Lin Lixin said the genre was not saturated and argued that fighting games could include many formats beyond conventional one-on-one bouts.
• Lin Lixin explained that Virtua Fighter would innovate within familiar fighting-game conventions and contrast with Street Fighter’s exaggerated characters and moves.
• The project leads worried that realistic moves would look less appealing, so Lin Lixin argued that logical action could be beautiful and satisfying.
• Lin Lixin pointed to kung fu and motion-capture footage of a Hong Kong action star, then asked whether the team enjoyed Hong Kong-style action movies.

Lin Lixin arranged for GameNova to develop a martial-arts fighting game and invited Jackie to help with its action choreography. After learning that the Jackie Chan Stunt Team had disbanded, Lin offered to rebuild it as a professional action production company backed by GameNova.

• Lin Lixin assigned Yuji to lead the 3D engine work and Suzuki to prepare the game design proposal, while arranging martial-arts advisers.
• Satoshi brought Jackie to Game Freak headquarters, where Jackie praised Mirror's Edge for helping him gain an opening in Hollywood.
• Jackie explained that the stunt team had disbanded because its members needed better-paying work and he could not support them indefinitely.
• Lin proposed that GameNova establish a modern, contracted stunt company with structured pay, insurance, retirement funds, and a wider talent pool.
• Lin described plans to connect the team with GameNova's film production resources and concluded that Hollywood was his turf.

Lin Lixin brought Jackie and the Jackie Chan Stunt Team to Sega’s AM2 team to help develop a fighting game, and Jackie began reviewing its action designs. As Jackie grasped how frame counts shaped combos and impact, Lin Lixin reminded him that Virtua Fighter’s main advantage was its 3D gameplay.

• Lin Lixin offered to solve the Jackie Chan Stunt Team’s problems and open its path to Hollywood, and Jackie accepted.
• Lin Lixin brought Jackie and his team to Sega’s AM2 development team, where Yu Suzuki and the developers welcomed him.
• Jackie questioned the frame counts in the draft moves and demonstrated that Akira Yuki’s Iron Mountain Lean needed more time to build force.
• Lin Lixin explained how fighting games separately designed startup, active, and recovery frames to allow reactions and tactical play.
• Jackie recognized how frame counts connected moves into combos, and Lin Lixin pointed out that Virtua Fighter’s key advantage was 3D.

Lin Lixin explained why most developers failed when they moved fighting games into 3D, then returned to California to prepare GameNova’s Virtua Fighter project and inspect the new ROG Model 1 motherboard. The motherboard’s voltage regulation and monitoring features promised to make arcade hardware more reliable and easier to maintain.

• Lin Lixin recounted how Capcom and SNK struggled with 3D fighting games, while Virtua Fighter, Tekken, and Dead or Alive survived by taking different approaches.
• Lin Lixin returned to California with Jackie and explained that GameNova would provide a production base and help re-form the Jackie Chan Stunt Team.
• Lin Lixin told Jackie to coordinate motion-capture recordings with AM2 while he went to inspect the Sega Model 1 board.
• Hsu showed Lin Lixin the ROG Model 1 motherboard’s LCD voltage display and described its voltage regulation and sensor features.
• Lin Lixin learned that the Model 1 could monitor power and temperature, helping prevent hardware problems and simplify future maintenance.

Sega’s trial release of Virtua Fighter sold out, and Matsumoto Shoki and Furukawa Kentaro tried the new fighting game after growing tired of Street Fighter II. They discovered its roster and martial-arts styles, then began a match as they noticed its 3D character models.

• Sega began trial sales with 500 arcade machines, and its stock sold out through its existing network.
• Matsumoto Shoki and Furukawa Kentaro left Street Fighter II to look for a different game and found Sega’s new Virtua Fighter cabinet.
• The two noticed Virtua Fighter used only three buttons and examined Akira Yuki’s profile, which listed Bajiquan and Master Wu Lianzhi.
• Matsumoto chose Sarah Bryant while Furukawa chose Akira Yuki, and they prepared to fight.
• Matsumoto noticed the character previews were 3D and had visibly polygonal faces.