Zhang Lexing's goal is very ambitious, but unfortunately the reality is often not satisfactory, when he discussed the idea of designing the FC game console (Nintendo Red and White Machine) with Jim, a hardware engineer in his game studio, he realized that it was not so simple to design a game console, and it was not easy to know a processor.

"Boss, you're having an interesting idea, but designing a console isn't that simple. Jim said very seriously.

"Then tell me why it's not a simple method?" Zhang Lexing's determination is not small, and of course he will not give up easily.

"Okay. Jim took a small blackboard and began to draw while talking: "The so-called game console is actually similar to the basic structure of a computer, which is also composed of CPU (central processing unit), system bus, memory, input and output and other parts, but the purpose is more single. In order to design a good gaming console, there are many factors to consider, such as choosing the right processor, which is the core of the gaming console, and then considering the appropriate peripheral circuitry and bus, and of course, the storage circuitry and input and output control circuitry. These are just the first steps, and the next step is to make a trade-off between console performance and manufacturing costs, not just because the cost is too high, or just because the cost is low, but you must choose the right balance between performance and not the cost of the game, and how much cost will not drag down sales. ”

"It's so complicated, it seems that it's not easy to make a host. Zhang Lexing sighed that the idea of designing his own game console has also faded a lot.

"More than that," Jim smiled and continued, "There are many factors that affect the success of a console, as well as the design of the final product, the planning of the console production line, the control of sales channels, the development of game software, and so on. For example, I participated in the development of the Atari 2600 host before, at the beginning we used a 1.19MHz 4-bit processor 6507, but then the processor performance slowly couldn't keep up, and we could only replace it with a 2MHz 6502 processor. Why didn't you just use the 6502 processor in the first place, which is also considered from the cost point of view. It took us nearly two years to develop the Atari 2600 console, and we spent $100 million on research and development, so that the boss Bushnell had to sell the company to Warner to hold on, otherwise we would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. ”

Zhang Lexing couldn't help but be silent, it turned out that it was so difficult to develop a game console, and it seemed that he wanted to design an FC console with just the 6502 processor. Seeing that Nintendo's genuine FC console will be launched in a few months, Zhang Lexing has no ability to be opportunistic in such a short period of time, and he does not have so much money to fight this water, it seems that his game console dream is going to be postponed for the time being.

However, although the console cannot be developed for the time being, it is possible to try to develop some games on the computer, which can be regarded as making some technical reserves for Zhang Lexing's future plans. Of course, these hardware engineers are not idle, just to analyze the hardware structure of popular computers, and provide technical support to the game development team.

This is not the period when PCs will dominate the rivers and lakes in the future, there are many popular computer styles, and there is no compatibility consideration between them, so the choice of development platform is quite important. Zhang Lexing is relatively unfamiliar with computers in the 80s, he has not heard much, and he has played even less, but he only knows that there are more games on Apple II and C* computers during this period, so the studio's development platform was selected as Apple II, C* and PC. Although the Apple II and C* have not been popular for a few years, they are a good choice to break even, after all, Zhang Lexing does not want his game development studio to become a money-burning organization, and the choice of PC is of course for the future.

Talents who are good at Apple II and C* game design are relatively easy to find, and soon the Apple II and C* game development teams in the studio were successfully formed. Game developers on PC are not easy to find, partly because few companies have considered developing games on PC, and partly because it is too difficult to run games on PC. One of the trends in game development is that graphics are becoming more and more beautiful, and PCs are a shortcoming in image processing.

One of the most commonly used graphics cards for PCs is an MDA card with monochrome display (green on a black background) and a CGA card with a color display with a resolution of 720 ×350 (width 720 points high 350 points), but because it is designed for text data processing, it can only display characters and cannot process colors and graphics, if it is used to design games, basically you can only consider some text-only adventure games or role-playing games, of course, if you are willing to use your imagination, you can also design some more complex games, but when you think of the characters floating on the screen, Zhang Lexing is not interested at all. CGA cards are a bit better, and if you want to design games, the most common is 320×200, in which case there are four colors available, and although they are not comparable to the beautiful high-resolution game graphics of the future, not even the Nintendo Red and White consoles in the near future, but at least some color can be seen.

With the help of selecting three programmers who had worked on PC development, plus two artists who had left Arida and borrowing two offices from VisualSystem, Zhang Lexing's PC game development team was finally established. At the end of March, the first plenary meeting of the PC game development team was held to discuss future development plans.

"Boss, what kind of game should we make?" said programmer A, who had never worked in game design before, and didn't even know what a computer game looked like, and his mind went blank when it came to game development plans.

Zhang Lexing saw that the rest of the people also had blank expressions, he knew that these people could not be counted on, and it seemed that the development plan this time could only rely on himself. But what kind of games can be made under such simple conditions, Zhang Lexing's heart has no bottom, although he has also played a lot of computer games, but they are basically games developed after 90 years, compared with the current PC, it is a world of difference, and it can only be used to open up ideas, and it is almost impossible to use it directly. After pondering for a while, Zhang Lexing didn't come up with any good ideas, and finally could only focus on "Gold Digging" and "Cubes", which he had developed on Apple II, and planned to start with game porting.

Zhang Lexing is busy with his game development studio, and Hawkins on the other side is not idle. Since the establishment of EA, Hawkins has been busy running back and forth, first recruiting troops everywhere, recruiting many elite soldiers from Arida, Ogilvy Advertising, Xerox and other companies, creating a strong team for EA. With the team in place, Hawkins went on to work towards his goal of "putting people first and elevating the social status of game developers." At this time, game development companies had no status in society, and game developers in game companies had even lower status, not much better than slaves, who could only make one game after another in obscurity.

In Hawkins' view, this situation is a serious hindrance to the creativity and imagination of game developers, and he wants to develop the game industry into a mainstream culture like music, elevating game developers to the same level as singers. So soon after EA was founded, Hawkins invested a lot of money in prominent advertisements in major computer magazines in an attempt to improve the public's perception of games. Another move is to package its game developers as celebrities and promote them to the public, calling them "composers of the software industry", helping the public to form a more intimate and vivid understanding of games and game developers. The employees of the three development groups were cramped and nervous to pose various POSE according to the photographer's requirements, or stay in front of the computer and pretend to be working so that the photographer could take work photos, and they were busy all day, and they were all tired and half dead, so that they could complete the shooting task, but everyone said that they would rather work overtime than participate in this kind of activity in the future. However, when the magazines printed with everyone's photos were delivered to the studio, the employees who had not seemed to be interested at all suddenly became active, and they competed for the magazines, and those who grabbed the magazines were smirking happily while reading them.

At this time, the game packaging was still very simple, basically a set of plastic bags and the end of the job, which was simply unbearable for art director Nancy Fang, and under her guidance, EA made a major improvement to the packaging of computer games, using the popular record set with a full-color game booklet.

Both game packaging and celebrity packaging were borrowed from the record industry, and one of the most important things Hawkins learned from the record industry was the distribution system. Similar to the recording industry's singer contract system, EA signs long-term cooperation agreements with studios that are willing to join it, and EA can also provide development funds, and the produced works are distributed by EA. In this way, many small studios were underfunded and unable to turn ideas into works, and soon in addition to Zhang Lexing's studio, EA signed four other studios.

At the beginning of May, Zhang Lexing's PC game development team completed the porting of "Gold Digging" and "Cube", and other EA's studios also launched six games at the same time, and EA's first batch of games were ready to be released.

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