Jester, who had just returned home and had not closed his eyes for thirty hours, had just wanted to lie down on the bed and get a good night's sleep, when his mother told him that the company had just received a letter addressed to him.

When Jester asked where the letter was coming from, his drowsiness vanished in an instant.

The letter came from Kansas and was sent by John Carmack.

Jester remembered the little boy he had met by accident in Los Angeles some time ago, and knew that he was the one who would be the most popular superman John Carmack.

Let him design a very famous PC mini-game in history - Minesweeper.

Then, Jester woke up instantly, didn't want to sleep much, and didn't let the letter be delivered to his home, but drove to the company himself.

When he got the letter that Carmack had sent him, he was a little surprised, it was not just a thin page and a floppy disk, as he thought, but a thick stack.

Jester tore open the envelope with some curiosity and took out the manuscript paper inside, which was densely filled with lines of code on dozens of thick pages.

Although Carmack's handwriting is not good-looking, the code is still written very neatly one stroke at a time, and the entire code is divided into three parts, which are carefully separated by Carmack with staples, one is APPLE, one is on IBM/PC and their compatible machines, and one is Komodor 64, which are currently the three most popular personal computers.

At this time, Jester reacted, John Carmack couldn't really be a contributor to the magazine and send the code directly to himself, right?

This suddenly made him cry and laugh a little.

Jester was still a little anxious to get back to the office, eager to see what John Carmack had done.

When he came to his room, he turned on his computer and used the drawing software to simply draw a few pixels of the minesweeper, and then Jester carefully looked through the code that Carmack had written about the 'minesweeper' he had introduced.

From beginning to end, Jester kept looking at it several times, nodding his head while watching, and his eyes flashed with surprise from time to time, after reading it, Jester couldn't help but sigh, Carmack was much better than himself in terms of programming.

Jester also realized for a while that the owner of his own body was a good programmer, but now he found that it was not surprising that compared to a legend among programmers like Carmack, even compared to those who specialized in programming that he had just recruited into the company, it was far from it.

In fact, Jester had thought about how to write this simple little game before, but the code he had in mind was much more complicated than Carmack's.

In order to achieve the same purpose, a programmer can be distinguished by looking at the complexity of the code.

A good programmer completes a logic, and his language is concise and straightforward.

Carmack's code, simple, clear, and extremely logical, with almost no superfluous parts, is as classic as a textbook.

At the end of the code of the "Minesweeper", there is also a short introduction written by Carmack, and the language is very similar to Carmack's style of a second-year teenager who feels invincible in the world.

"My future boss, Mr. Jester Lee, the first assignment you gave me has been completed, and to be honest, it was so easy that I had little effort, and I didn't even have any interest in programming it on a computer, but even though I was only programming on paper, I thought the code I had written must be the most concise, efficient, and without any bugs, I ......"

BLABLABLA SAID A LOT OF COMPLIMENTS ABOUT HIMSELF, AND AT THE END OF THE LETTER, CARMACK WROTE IN LARGE FONT: "YES, DON'T FORGET THE IPHONE YOU PROMISED ME!" ”

After reading it, Jester couldn't help but laugh.

He really didn't expect that a genius programmer like Carmack would be interested in a dumb computer like Apple, doesn't it mean that those current programmers are disdainful of Apple computers?

In fact, Jester was surprised when he watched DOOM Apocalypse, and the geniuses like Carmack and Romero all started with Mac, even though they all switched to PC programming, but that was after Apple weakened due to its closure.

He programmed the game on the Macintosh computer in his office against the code Carmack had sent him, but it was a very simple thing to do, just copy Carmack's code, and all he had to do was what he had done before - a few simple pixel icons.

As for why Jester uses the Apple computer that only fools use all the time, in fact, this is a very simple question, how do you get a person who is used to the way of operation in the future to use DOS to operate every day? How can it be convenient to click directly with the mouse of Macintosh.

It's still far from WIN95 ten years later, but bear with me for the time being.

After the 'Minesweeper' was programmed, Jace opened the game and played it on the computer, to be honest, the playability of the game "Minesweeper" is still very large, and the rules are very simple, but Jester is not very good at it, he can also play with the difficulty of 40 mines, even so, he often finds mistakes, and he doesn't want to think about it at the highest level, which is too time-consuming and brainpower-consuming.

However, the appeal of a puzzle game like Minesweeper lies in the sense of intellectual accomplishment after completion, even if it is only the lowest level.

Jester had been fond of playing Minesweeper in his previous life, and sometimes when he was bored, he was even able to play all night without doing anything else.

ALTHOUGH HE HAS PLAYED IT COUNTLESS TIMES BEFORE, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME JESTER HAS PLAYED HIS OWN "MINESWEEPER", WHICH IS VERY SIMILAR TO THE LATER WIN3.1 VERSION, IN FACT, HE WAS LIKE DESCRIBING KAMAK ACCORDING TO WIN3.1, THE VERSION HE IS MOST FAMILIAR WITH.

There is a timing system, there is difficulty selection, there is customization, there is that smiling face and crying face, and there is a hero list.

Just as Jester was playing the minesweeper of this world with some misery, forgetting that he hadn't slept for nearly forty hours, and hadn't even noticed the knock on the door, Maxeni pushed the door and walked in.

He saw Jester frowning in front of the computer, pondering what he seemed to be doing.

He then stepped forward with some curiosity, and glanced at Jester's screen, which was a rectangle, divided into many grids, the grid was very small, and the words of Arabic numerals such as 1, 2, 3, and 4 were written in different colors, and Jester was constantly clicking on these grids, and sometimes tapping the keyboard from time to time, and inserting a small flag on the grid.

Just as Mark Seni wondered what the other party was doing, Jester finally planted a small flag on a grid again after careful consideration, and then clicked the mouse to the remaining empty grid points, and when he clicked a few, suddenly a black dot appeared after clicking on a grid, which seemed to be a mine or something, and then, he watched the word GAMEOVER appear on the screen.

Jester also showed a look of annoyance the moment the black thing that seemed to be a mine appeared, and cursed fiercely, and at the same time, he slapped one palm on the table.

"What is this?" Mark Seni had a curious look on his face.

At this time, Jester found that someone had come to his side, and the failure of the game just now also made Jester's long-term sleepiness well, he yawned listlessly, and explained to Mark Saini: "I just asked people to design a small game to play with a mouse on the computer, called "Minesweeper", which is to randomly distribute some mines in some fixed matrix, and then let the player find these mines. ”

Then, Jester thought that Mark Seni carefully explained the rules of minesweeping, for example, the game is divided into ten mines, forty mines, and one hundred mines, and those numbers represent 'the number of mines in the horizontal and vertical squares around the grid with numbers', and then click twice with the mouse to open the grid, click to select it and then press enter to insert the red flag that indicates that this is a mine.

The current mouse does not have a two-button setting, only a single button, and there is no later generation of the shape of the grip according to the palm, just a small box that is ugly and silly, so Jester has no choice but to temporarily let enter replace a button on the original mouse to play this game.

After hearing this, Mark Saini's eyes lit up, and he thought about this game carefully in his mind, and suddenly found that it was very interesting, and it tested a person's logical ability.

He was about to ask Jester how he had come up with it, only to see that Jester had yawned and walked to the lounge on the side of his room.

This lounge is also deliberately isolated by Jester, he knows that it is common to work overtime late at night in game development, so he deliberately set up a lounge, and when the overtime is too late, he sleeps directly in the office.

"You can first, don't wake me up beforehand, I really can't hold on." As he closed the wooden door to the lounge, Jester's voice came from the lounge, and then, just a few seconds later, Jester could be heard snoring as he fell asleep.

Mark Saini could only shake his head helplessly, and then sat in Jester's seat, curiously playing this game called "Minesweeper".

And then......

Jester yawned and struggled to get out of bed, the room was pitch black, he carefully moved to the wall, turned on the light, Jester looked down at the watch on his wrist, three twenty o'clock.

"I've slept for so long?" Jester himself was startled, and he remembered that he had slept before noon.

There was a small sound outside the room.

Jester shuddered when he heard the voice, it couldn't be a thief, and while thinking, Jester quietly walked to the door and quietly opened a crack in the door.

The headlights in his office were off, but the lamp on his desk was on, and the screen of the Macintosh computer was lit up, and by the faint light, Jester could clearly see a blonde man sitting in front of the computer, staring at the screen without blinking.

Jester looked closely, and the blonde man was none other than Mark Saini.

At this time, Jester remembered that before he went to bed, Mark Seni came to him, and because he was too tired to sleep, he gave him the "Minesweeper" he had just finished and asked him to play first.

"He's not going to really play until now, is he?"

Jester doesn't doubt the charm of the game "Minesweeper", which has been popular all over the world since two engineers from Microsoft installed it on WIN3.1 in '92, and I don't know how many people have worked hard about this little puzzle game, and there seem to be countless mysteries hidden in the small rules.

Even in the era when entertainment products emerged in an endless stream before him, minesweepers have never gone out of fashion, I don't know how many people open the minesweepers that come with the WIN system when they are idle and bored, and they can play until they have tea and dinner, and they will never stop until they find out all the mines.

This is different from the kind of thrill that comes with brainless car gun ball games, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with the completion of this puzzle puzzle game is indescribable and will never go out of style.

Jester walked over to Mark Seni, who had just finished the round, playing the highest difficulty of a hundred thunders.

He also saw Jester, he looked at Jester with sincere admiration, stretched out a thumbs up, and said sincerely: "You are simply a genius, so simple, but how did you come up with such a fun game?" ”

Jester smiled and didn't answer, but said, "It's not a bad game, isn't it?" ”

"It's not bad! It's just flawless, I can't stop at all from the beginning, I've been playing since you started sleeping, and I've been playing until now. "Mark Seni has been playing all day, but obviously he's still in a state of euphoria.

As he spoke, he started a new round, which was still the most difficult 100 thunders.

I have to say that Mark Seni learns quite quickly, and the rules and gameplay of "Minesweeper" are also quite simple and easy to understand, Jester watched the other party constantly look for mines in the rectangular array, and Mark Seni's minesweeping speed has been far faster than his own for more than ten years......

Jester asked with some curiosity, "Mark, how fast can you play this highest difficulty?" ”

Mark Saini said wait a minute, clicked on the minesweeper hero list that comes with the program, looked at the record on it, and said, "Three minutes and six seconds." ”

Jester sighed after hearing this, it is rare for a beginner to be able to be so fast, especially when there is no minesweeper formula and it is all on their own reasoning.

Of course, Jest knows that the world record holder for minesweeping is the Polish Kamil Mulanski, who was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2012 for minesweeping records, and he alone holds all ten records for minesweeping, of which the speed of his highest difficulty 99 mines is a little more than 30 seconds, while the speed of 40 mines in intermediate difficulty is only 8 seconds.

However, Jester didn't remember the formula at the beginning, and he couldn't have this kind of speed, even Mark Saini, who was far inferior to him, and he felt that this game would not have that kind of fun if he remembered the formula and then played it, and it was purely a competition between speed and hand speed.

Playing games is for fun, and this is the most important thing for Jester, whether it is in the previous life or in this life.

If you're not happy, why do you want to play?

Doesn't that mean putting the cart before the horse?

Seeing that Mark Saini was almost done with this game, Jester spoke: "You can sleep in my lounge for a while, and I'll discuss with you tomorrow morning about the promotion of this game, "Minesweeper" seems to me to be the most suitable platform to run on the computer, in fact, this is a game I designed specifically for the mouse." ”

Mark Seni nodded in agreement, and he did feel a little tired after Jester's words, so he said hello and walked towards Jester's lounge.

By the time Mark Seni closed the door to the break room, Jester sat down, thinking about how to get Minesweeper out there.

It is natural to sell it directly as a floppy disk, but the sales of PC games in this era have not been high, and it is difficult to maximize the promotion, the best way is to learn from Microsoft back then, and carry this game in the computer system to do a comprehensive promotion.

The problem is, I don't make my own computer.

Jester thought, it is definitely not possible to go to IBM, now that IBM has a big business and the PC business is thriving, even if they fancy their games, they will inevitably only give a charity price.

And Apple ......

Jester shook his head again, this pure crush is a personal reason, he doesn't like Apple, in the last life he was sprayed enough by those tall fruit fans, so he has an instinctive aversion to Apple, since they have been reborn, naturally how happy how to come, how can there be reborn and feel uncomfortable for themselves, but it is undeniable that the current Apple, in the field of personal computers, is indeed in the limelight.

Jobs is a good cow fork, but so what, there are more cow forks in the world, but Jester hates the urine nature of apples will not change.

Jester knows that in the future personal computer war, the final winner is neither the blue giant IBM that is now rich and ambitious, and wants to monopolize the entire market, nor is it Apple, which is now in the limelight and seems to be rising rapidly, but those small manufacturers who are not favored by everyone now, but only rely on their own computers that are compatible with IBM's PC DOC system for a living.

For example, it's still just a garage business, Dell.

These are the people who will unite to form a compatible machine alliance when IBM reveals their greedy minions that want to swallow up the entire market, not only will the blue giant IBM be unable to take care of itself, but also the Apple that refuses to let go of its closed environment will be thrown into the abyss, not Steve Jobs will come out again, I am afraid that Apple can only become a historical symbol, which can only be seen from those encyclopedias.

Jester knows this history, and he feels that he should grasp it, although the future PC market is very profitable, because the prices of accessories are transparent, and these profiteers can no longer kill people, but this is not the case now, the current PC market is a fool of people and money comes quickly.

At this time, it is the era when whoever can boldly underestimate the IQ of Americans will be able to make a lot of money.

For example, when Dale talked about his entrepreneurial journey, he bluntly said that he rented a room on the top floor of a building at the time, and then posted a small advertisement, he only needed to install a hard drive for everyone who came here, and he could get a hundred dollars, and the money was just like picking up, and within a month, his turnover was more than 50,000 US dollars, and the net profit was more than 20,000 US dollars, and he was alone.

Therefore, Michael Dale found that even if he had a serious job after graduating from school, he would not have earned as much as he does now.

So he dropped out of school without hesitation.

I remember that it seems that Dale became famous when he was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1986 by the American Association of College Entrepreneurs when his annual sales exceeded $60 million.

Thinking that he is still struggling in a garage in Texas and fantasizing about the future of Michael Dyer, he probably won't turn down his investment, right?

Of course, I won't refuse, you must know that the first thing Dell did after becoming famous was financing.

Jester thought.

Then Jester began to be distressed again, he didn't have time to do the thing he had thought about buying Illusion Studios to get the rights to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", and now he had the idea of investing in Dell, but he was really lacking in skills by himself, should he set up a venture capital fund to do this?

And he still has countless things he wants to do in his head, but after all, he has limited energy alone and can't do them all.

It seems that this investment fund must be done.

Jester jotted down the idea on a piece of paper on his desk, he had been so busy lately that he had been inadvertently forgetting a lot of important things.

When he was pumping paper, he also saw the design of the level sketch of the first level of Super Mario that he didn't finish that day, in addition to different types of bricks suspended in the air, various mushrooms and monsters, and various explanations, there was also Mario's big nose, red hat, red and blue bib pants, and the iconic image of a big beard.

Jester suddenly discovers a problem that he hadn't noticed before, and that is that he actually drew Mario on the drawings!

But the problem is that this image has long been set by Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto in '81, and this character has already been used in three games, two Donkey Kongs, and even a game made specifically for Mario, which has sold 1.6 million copies in Japan.

Thinking of this, Jester immediately angrily threw the original set art into a ball and threw it in the trash, secretly scolding himself for being stupid.

Jester wants to redesign a character, but his mind is full of the image of Mario, and Miyamoto Shigeru's thoughts at the beginning of designing this character are constantly recalled in his mind - the appearance that makes people look at a glance like a mark, and the color scheme that is easy to show Xiàn's movements, but the problem is that the image of Mario is too deep in his mind, no matter what he thinks, only the image of Mario in his mind fits Miyamoto Shigeru's setting.

So, Jester simply abandoned the setting of Shigeru Miyamoto, and wanted to create a character with an amiable image and easy to distinguish, but Jester drew several on the manuscript paper in a row, even including some classic games in later generations, or the characters of classic comics, handsome, cute, fierce, etc., but none of Mario's original image is more complex with the characteristics of this era.

Maybe it's because Mario's image is too timely, after all, he started from his childhood, and this image has accompanied him for a full twenty years, which is an absolutely indelible memory.

That's all Jester can think about.

Although Jester knew that Mario's success was due to the gameplay of the game, it laid the foundation for how a good game should be made, guided countless designers who were still confused, and made countless children think, 'I moved a super arcade machine home for more than fifty dollars!'" It's just amazing! rather than how classic this character is, the character's classic is built on the success of this game.

But in Jester's eyes, Super Mario, a game that can never be forgotten in the history of games, is a flawless work, any aspect of him is flawless, since he wants to make this game, he must not allow himself to do worse than the original, as a person who loves video games and wants to revitalize the industry, he will never allow himself to desecrate this real masterpiece in the history of games in any sense.

You have to go beyond it!

Jester took a breath, and could only helplessly throw the painting brush that was almost used up in his hand, and looked at the distant sky that had begun to turn white through the window, and the golden sun was slowly rising: "Let's wait to find a professional, those painters who have not been affected by the image of Mario to paint." ”

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