Most people who have heard this anecdote about the history of video games have heard it.

It was precisely because of this incident that Nolan Bushnell entered the game console industry without hesitation, which led to the boom of video games and the birth of the first giant in the history of the game industry, Atari.

It was the summer of 1972.

Bushnell, who had just experienced the first business game console he designed, that is, the arcade "Computer Space", failed because the game was too complicated, and he and his partner designed a very simple game arcade - Pong.

In fact, this can only be regarded as a real work of Bushnell.

In the light of now, it's a simple game, and if you've seen his footage, you'll know I'm right.

There are only three simple lines, the middle one runs through the screen to symbolize the net, each side has a short symbolic racket, and the middle point of light represents the tennis ball moving back and forth through the impact of the guò racket on both sides, and the player is to use the simple joystick and button to manipulate the racket to hit the point of light, which is the tennis ball.

The two of them just patted back and forth so boringly.

Now it seems that the game is no fun, but surprisingly, the game has been a phenomenal success.

In fact, Bushnell didn't plan to sell this simple game console at first, because his partner Alan Alcorn didn't know anything about designing games except for being an excellent electrical engineer and computer expert, and Bushnell's original plan was to make a game he liked best, but because Olcorn's ignorance made him change his mind and decided to teach him to design a simple game first, which was Pong.

As for why it is so strangely named, one is because Pong can represent the sound that the racket makes after it is lined up on the ball, and the second and most important reason is that the name Ping-pong has already been used.

After the game was finished, Bushnell, a top computer science student at the University of Utah, had no interest in this childish and young game, but in order not to disappoint his partner Alcorn with the game, he deceived him and said that the general company had decided to sell the game.

In fact, he just put it in a bar called Andy's Bar in St. Niwell, the site of the small company they owned called Atari, because the bar also operated several pachinko machines.

Unexpectedly, just a few days later, Bushnell received a call from Andy, the owner of the bar, saying that the two strange machines he sent were broken and that he hoped he could fix them.

Unexpectedly, after Bushnell went to take a look, he found that because there were so many people playing this machine, the coins were so full that the coin hole was blocked......

As we all know, Pong's arcade machine became popular in the United States, printing dollars for Atari like a money printing machine, laying the foundation for their later hegemony in the gaming industry.

It was because of this story that Jester thought that the situation was so similar to that time.

Yes, it was the wild period of video games, and it can even be said to be more blunt that it was a blank period for video games, and it was precisely because Atari was the first to eat crabs that they were able to be so successful.

And isn't that what it is now?

The Atari shock was catastrophic for the American gaming industry, and to put it mildly, for video games it was the Battle of Pearl Harbor.

After that, no investor wants to enter the industry.

Coupled with CBM's tough termination of Atari's research and development of games on its own game console, the Atari 2600, coupled with the despair of the American people for video games, there has been a blank period of video games in the European and American game industry.

Temporary, and at some point, created a situation similar to that when Atari first introduced Pong.

This gap arose because of Americans' hostility to repetitive games without the slightest novelty, rather than a genuine sense that video games were meaningless.

Of course, Americans today call this a temporary gap in the video game industry, but rather a dead one.

As for whether it is a dead period, it will not be until next year, when the European and American version of FC, NEC, who is the carrier of hell, comes to the United States and sweeps the world with "Super Mario", the Americans will wake up like a dream.

But it's too late.

After that, the video game industry entered the era of Japanese domination, first Nintendo, Sega, then Sony, and it was not until a full fifteen years later, when Microsoft returned to home console games with its XBOX at the cost of two billion dollars a year, that the Americans returned to the market they once dominated and now coveted.

And he can completely replicate the classic success story of Atari Gazhin Hell at that time.

Use the arcade machine to make a name for yourself and get the first pot of gold, and sweep the world with home consoles and "Super Mario".

The premise, of course, was that he needed a game that would reactivate Americans' passion for video games, which had been extinguished.

Even if you can't do that, at least it's a super hit game.

There are not many such games, but they are not few, and the problem is that they can adapt to the current development environment, which is almost rare.

Super Mario is certainly such a game, and in fact, it is the game that accomplishes this mission in real history.

But now he can't do that, Super Mario he has to do it before he goes to hell, but not now.

Now is not the time, he does not have the equivalent of FC's gaming platform.

So, he thought of a masterpiece that could also serve this purpose.

A masterpiece in every sense of the word.

In almost all subsequent game selections, there is no doubt that there are only two games that will compete for one or two places, and one of them is Super Mario.

And the other one is Tetris - Tetris!

It's always been Jester's style to think about it, and Tetris is a game that isn't that complicated, it's because of its special algorithm that makes this little game so lovely.

In the world of Jester's body, he has carefully studied the algorithms of many Tetris spin-off games, and he knows the uncomplicated code program of the first version of Tetris.

After all, this is a game with still graphics, far from being a complex side-scrolling action like Super Mario just now, but after more than two hours of self-absorbed typing on the computer, a simplified version of Tetris that can run on his IBM5150 is completed.

Running the program, Jester manipulated his first games in this world, watching them run perfectly, and with Jester's dexterous hands, several Tetris patterns on the screen fell rapidly, and then formed rows of blocks at the bottom of the screen to connect and successfully eliminated.

And the numbers on the scoreboard on one side are also constantly jumping upwards.

"Flawless!"

After playing it more than a dozen times, trying the five difficulties he set, and there was no running problem in the whole game, Jester sincerely admired the programming ability of the original owner of this body.

It's really a tough mess, needless to say, far beyond his previous life, even if he is the best programmer he has ever seen in his own time, he may not have half of the original owner's programming ability in this book.

"It's no wonder that my friend who is very good at programming always says that even now, the best programmers in the world are still those who honed their memory in kilobytes in the seventies and eighties, and their logic writing ability is so strong that they can do what dozens of lines of code will do in the future with just a few lines of code."

Jester himself remembers that Tetris' code was written by later generations, although it is the same logical algorithm, however, there is no memory limit in later generations, so that many codes are not concise enough, but not in this era, you must know IBM5150 that this personal computer that has just been launched for a short time is already the most advanced one now, but his memory is only 16KB! As for Atari's classic host, the Atari 2600 has only 2KB of memory!

In order for a game to run perfectly on such a machine, due to memory limitations, it is necessary to be extremely short and concise in the program.

This process has a special name for this process in later generations, called optimization.

Fortunately, Jester in this world is a master of programming, and he can reduce the complicated code programs he remembers to the point where they can be used now, otherwise, Jester may really have no way.

Jester, who finished his first game, was left with how to sell the game.

He had already decided to use the same method used by Bushnell to place an arcade machine equipped with the game in a public place to cause a sensation within a certain range.

For this method, Jester also has a unique advantage.

His mother runs a medium-sized supermarket in the city, and there are a few Atari arcade machines in the supermarket, which Jester has visited in his free time, and those arcade machines have also been affected by the Atari shock, and have not been doing very well in recent times.

But he believed that as long as he made a few Tetris arcade machines and put them in his mother's supermarket, it would be impossible for the business not to be booming.

Because this is something that history has verified.

As long as it makes a splash, then don't worry about finding someone willing to buy his game arcade.

This is Tetris, one of the greatest games ever created by mankind. Even in the 100th issue of EGM journals, this one was removed.

As for the original name of the game, Tetris, which comes from the Greek four, because it is too abstract to be promoted to the American people, who do not have a high average IQ.

However, the name that China chose for this game back then was very meaningful.

Naturally, the name Tetris cannot be used, firstly, the game has nothing to do with Russia, which is now the Soviet Union, and secondly, in the United States, it is not a good idea to call this game Tetris.

It was the Cold War, and Reagan was at the height of his Star Wars program.

"However, Tetris is a good name, easy to understand......"

Thinking of this, Jester's eyes lit up.

Since it can't be called Tetris, why not America?

You must know that the American people also attach great importance to the sense of national honor, otherwise MacArthur's classic West Point speech on duty, honor, and country would not have caused such a sensation in the United States.

“American－Diamond！ American Cubes! That's a good name! ”

Jester wrote the name on a piece of paper.

In addition to the square, Diamond also has another meaning, diamond.

In Jester's eyes, this game is bound to shock the whole of America like a diamond that is too bright to be equal.