Early in the morning, Zhang Lexing woke up from his sleep, sat on the bed for a while, then got out of bed and changed into sportswear, came outside the house and started jogging along the usual route. Running and running, Zhang Lexing remembered that he had invested a sum of money in a small company in Toronto, Canada not long ago, and there had been no new news, so he didn't know what was going on now, so Zhang Lexing decided to call and ask when he would go to work.

After running home, it was still early, and Zhang Lexing began to prepare a breakfast for two people - toast, ham, fried egg and milk. When Zhang Lexing put the prepared breakfast on the table, Yang Xinxin appeared on the stairs just right, wearing black silk pajamas, and walked slowly downstairs.

"Breakfast is ready, let's eat it first. Zhang Lexing greeted.

"Hmm. Yang Xinxin nodded, walked gracefully to the table and sat down, picked up a knife and fork and began to destroy the food on the table.

Zhang Lexing took a sip of milk and said, "Sister Xin, I called from Hong Kong yesterday and asked when you would have time to go back." ”

Yang Xinxin's face changed, and he desperately cut the ham on the plate with the knife in his hand, Zhang Lexing sighed, and didn't speak anymore, and the atmosphere at the table suddenly became a little awkward.

After bullying the ham who couldn't fight back for a while, Yang Xinxin didn't seem to be angry, stood up with a bang, turned around and ran upstairs, leaving only one sentence, "I'm full, I'm going to work." ”

Zhang Lexing had no choice but to finish his breakfast quickly, and then began to clean up the dishes. Before she was done, Yang Xinxin had already changed her clothes and ran downstairs, leaving a sentence of "There is something to deal with in the company, I'll leave first", and before Zhang Lexing could come back to his senses, Yang Xinxin disappeared in the hall.

When she came to the garage, Yang Xinxin quickly started the car and drove out, and at this time, a mournful scream came from the house: "Is there a mistake, there are no taxis here!"

……

It wasn't until an hour later that Zhang Lexing came to the company, which was half an hour later than usual, fortunately he often kept exercising, otherwise he would have confessed today. Back in his office and sitting down, Zhang Lexing remembered the small company in Canada again, so he picked up the phone receiver and dialed a number, and the phone was connected after a few rings.

"Good morning, boss. Anderson's greeting came over the microphone.

"Good morning. Anderson, what happened to that small company that we invested in last month?"

"Is that the company that plans to make graphics cards?"

"That's right, we invested 900,000 yuan. ”

"Well, I've learned about it recently. He Guoyuan, who originally applied for investment, and his partner had already set up the company called ArrayTechnologies Inc., and in order to save money, they found an old parking lot site in Toronto to build a factory. They are currently working on their own product, a graphics processing chip using ASIC technology, and their potential customers will include PC manufacturers such as IBM that need graphics cards. ”

"This company should have good growth potential, and we need the graphics technology they have on hand to help me pay more attention. ”

Putting down the phone, Zhang Lexing pondered for a while: "Well, the processor and graphics chip have fallen, and then there will be a sound processing chip, but it's still early, and I'll go to Singapore in two years." Well, that's not enough, I still lack design experience, maybe I can go to Nintendo and find a way to do it then......"

Just as I was thinking about it, the voice of the secretary came from outside the door, "Boss, your phone, second line." ”

Zhang Lexing answered casually, then pressed the button on the table and picked up the telephone receiver.

From the earpiece, Benjamin, the director of the Blue Dragon Studio, said excitedly: "Boss, our experiment has been successful, come and take a look." ”

"Experiment, what experiment?" Zhang Lexing looked confused, but listening to Benjamin's voice shouldn't be a bad thing, just go and take a look.

When Zhang Lexing came to the Blue Dragon Studio, he finally saw what Benjamin's experiment was, and it had to start from a year ago.

Since KF-Panda officially set foot in Nintendo's game development, Zhang Lexing has used his own convenience to collect some FC games for his PC game studio (later Blue Dragon Studio) for reference. Compared with the PC games of that time, FC games were simply one in the sky and one underground, FC games had colorful animations, wonderful sounds, and lifelike game characters, while the games on the PC were as simple as antiques before the Atari era.

After playing FC games, the designers of Blue Dragon Studio are always thinking about how to achieve the effect of FC games on the PC, of course, due to the limitations of PC hardware, the music and sound effects of the game are not much better, and the designers chose the goal of breakthrough on the game screen. Unfortunately, at that time, PCs were still the world of CGA graphics cards, and the low resolution and the fact that there were only four colors available made designers quickly give up.

Last year, IBM's latest model of PC/AT machine was launched, which was a faster option for business users, and for the designers of Blue Dragon Studio, the EGA graphics card on the PC/AT rekindled their hopes, and the FC game replication plan was reopened. In fact, Zhang Lexing also knew about this at the time, but there was no news for a long time, and he gradually forgot about it, but he didn't expect that after a year, there was finally a result.

"Boss, come and see, this is the game CommanderKeen that we made with the latest technology. Benjamin said excitedly, pointing to an IBM-PC/AT machine.

Zhang Lexing leaned in and took a closer look, and sure enough, it was different from the previous PC games with dull graphics. Most of the early PC game screens are fixed, unlike FC game screens with horizontal or vertical scrolling, which is also due to the hardware limitations of the machine, FC game consoles are hardware that directly supports horizontal or vertical scrolling on the background picture, and if the PC wants to achieve the same effect, it can only be achieved by repeatedly rewriting the stupid method of displaying the content of the mapping unit, the speed is super slow, and it is impossible to achieve a smooth scrolling effect. The game Zhang Lexing saw today is different, with the running of the green-haired game character, the game background outside the screen is smoothly revealed, although there is still a little gap with the effect of FC games, but it is already a huge innovation for PC games.

"This game is very good, who developed this new technology?" Zhang Lexing was very happy.

Benjamin blushed and said, "Boss, no one is there." ”

"What's going on?" Zhang Lexing was a little anxious, how could such an important person not be there.

"Boss, this idea was actually the idea of a friend of mine. This kid just turned fifteen years old this year, and he took a year off from school last year, and came here to play some time ago, and he actually came up with an adaptive update algorithm to reduce the screen data that needs to be processed, and on this basis, we completed the game. Now the kid should go back to school, so ......," Benjamin explained.

Zhang Lexing couldn't help but sigh: "It's incredible, I didn't expect this kid to be so powerful at such a young age." Benjamin, can you invite this kid to our studio in the future?"

Benjamin said embarrassedly: "I'm afraid it's not easy, I actually asked, this kid's family is in Kansas City, Missouri, and he doesn't want to come so far, maybe we can try again after graduating from college in a few years." ”

Zhang Lexing sighed and gave up. At this time, he didn't know how much he would achieve in the future with the child he let go, if he could know in advance, he believed that Zhang Lexing would tie him back even if he was tied up.

……

Nintendo of America (NOA) started as a new York office, relying on the efforts of Yamauchi's son-in-law Minoru Arakawa, plus the addition of barrister Howard Lincoln and marketing genius Pete Mann, and began to grow. After relying on "Donkey Kong" to open the North American market, NOA achieved sales of 120 million US dollars (about 40 billion yen) in just two years, and completely established itself. This year is the fifth year of NOA's establishment, and the business is still a simple arcade board sales, although there is a lot of profit, but Minoru Arakawa has long been not satisfied with this. Since the re-launch of FC consoles in early '84, a lucrative market has been created, which has made Minoru Arakawa salivate and is interested in bringing FC consoles to North America.

Yamauchi did not turn a blind eye to the North American market, as early as the year when the FC game console was first launched, there was a corresponding plan, hoping to sell FC game consoles through the agent of Atari Inc., which had not yet completely collapsed, but because Atari was too entangled in the sharing problem, he lost his last lifebuoy, and Nintendo also lost confidence in developing the North American market. Two years have passed, and the home game console market in North America still shows no signs of recovery, and some experts even assert that the home game console market will not recover in two decades. Nintendo was also hesitant to do so, not wanting to give up the huge North American market, but also fearing that it would rush into Waterloo again.

Minoru Arakawa knew that it was his father-in-law who really made the final decision in Nintendo, so he put the goal of tackling the problem on Pu Yamauchi. Relying on Minoru Arakawa's unremitting efforts, coupled with the fact that his father-in-law also has the intention to cultivate his son-in-law, Nintendo finally agreed to launch FC consoles in North America. Taking into account the characteristics of North America, Nintendo redesigned the FC game console, from a red and white game console to a "video recorder", increased the port of video output, the game cartridge was different, a few pins were added, the shape became a bit like a video tape, and even the name of the game console was changed to Nintendo Entertainment System (NES, Nintendo Entertainment System).

At the beginning of October, after careful preparation, NES first began to test the waters in New York, along with fifteen NES games, in addition to the popular "Super Mario" in Japan, as well as "The Legend of Zelda" and "Contra", which KF-Panda specially produced for the North American market. In less than three months, the NES achieved 50,000 units in New York, and the Nintendo home game console set foot on the North American continent and created a legend.

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Horizontal scrolling: A technique used in early games to achieve spatial expansion, similar to a small window (this is the area that the user sees from the screen) moving on a large picture (background image) made in advance, often used in flying shooter or action games, such as "Super Mario" is a typical horizontal scrolling game, "Contra" in the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth level is horizontal scrolling, and the third level is vertical scrolling.

CommanderKeen: A side-scrolling game based on Super Mario 3, billed as the first side-scrolling game on the PC, launched by John Carmack in 1990.

John Carmack: One of the founders of IDSoftware, known as the "father of first-person shooters", classics include Wolf3D (Wolfenstein 3D), DOOM (DOOM Slayer), Quake (Quake) and more.

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