An hour later.
Gerald fell silent.
The two games had shown him a glimpse of a new world he had long since abandoned, each from a completely different angle.
Tetris was a complete triumph of gameplay and design, using the simplest visuals and sound effects to create the most captivating form of entertainment.
1942, on the other hand, took the opposite approach.
It unapologetically piled on content, squeezing every last drop of performance from the hardware to present a breathtaking Pacific battlefield.
"Now this is what a game should be..."
He let out a long breath, his gaze unconsciously drifting toward the dust-covered Atari test machine sitting on his desk.
"Games are products, but in the end, they still have to be games. Ethan, you are a brilliant game developer."
Gerald abandoned his previous form of address.
His perception of Ethan had undergone a complete transformation.
Yet immediately afterward, he sighed.
The more brilliant Ethan's performance was, the stronger Gerald's sorrow and frustration became.
It wasn't jealousy.
It was regret.
"What a terrible time to be born. If Tetris had appeared a few years earlier then every Atari 2600 would have had a copy of Tetris sitting inside it!"
Had the catastrophic Atari crash never happened, Gerald believed that even the most conservative estimate would put the game's sales above ten million copies.
It might even have become the flagship title that pushed Atari 2600 sales to even greater heights.
And yet now, it could only exist on arcade machines.
After the market collapsed, quality alone no longer carried decisive significance.
As a third-party Atari developer, he understood all too well that simply being "excellent" was no longer enough.
After that disastrous Christmas season, Atari had rushed out several well-made games in an effort to salvage its reputation.
Even by modern standards, those titles could be considered quality products.
But after being fooled so many times, why would players continue to buy into it?
"Mr. Lawson."
Ethan showed no disappointment over having missed out on a fortune.
"I've always believed that Atari does not represent video games, and video games can never truly die."
"Players aren't disappointed in video games. They're disappointed in Atari."
"How could something that brings joy to people simply die because of one greedy businessman?"
"Video games are far more interesting than that!"
Ethan's voice rose passionately.
Part of the emotion was deliberately amplified to persuade Gerald.
But part of it was genuine anger.
Taken from NovelPhoenix, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Besides Gerald, how many talented developers had been dragged down by Atari and ultimately forced to watch their dreams die?
Under the stimulus of Reaganomics, the American economy had recovered and consumerism flourished.
Home consoles filled the shelves of every shopping mall, waiting for excited players and children to bring them home.
Without question, this should have been the best time for the video game industry.
Ethan, who had grown up during an era of gaming restrictions, felt this more strongly than anyone.
Damn Atari.
"Mr. Lawson, have you ever heard of a game company called Nintendo?"
Ethan understood that no amount of inspirational rhetoric could compare to a living, breathing example standing right in front of someone.
"If video games are truly dead, then why is the Famicom still selling throughout every street and alley in Japan?"
This soon to be crowned king had built its empire upon President Hiroshi Yamauchi's royalty system, strictly controlling game quality and turning both the Famicom and its successor, the Super Famicom, into legends.
After saying that, Ethan stopped speaking.
Because he noticed that the crippling debuff on Gerald's status panel had suddenly disappeared.
Gerald suddenly broke into a grin.
That's right.
When had he started treating Atari and video games as if they were the same thing?
Atari's disaster happened because of foolish businessmen obsessed with money.
"I've learned something today. If home consoles don't work, I'll make arcade games. If arcades don't work, I'll make PC games!"
As he said this, he looked towards Ethan and suddenly remembered why the young man had come to see him.
"Right, Ethan. You mentioned running into a hardware bottleneck while developing a new game. Tell me exactly what's going on."
He had just played 1942.
That game had already pushed the performance of the current general purpose Z80 arcade boards to their absolute limit.
This was the level of an experienced industry veteran.
Naturally, Gerald became deeply interested in a performance bottleneck that even someone of that caliber had encountered.
Just what was this talented young man trying to create?
A smile appeared on Ethan's face as well.
Only then did he pull a document from the bag he had brought with him.
Gerald rubbed his tired eyes, took the document, and examined it carefully.
His brow immediately furrowed.
It was a hardware specification sheet, or perhaps more accurately, a requirements list.
The contents were nothing short of unbelievable.
"A 16-bit main processor paired with an 8-bit coprocessor? A graphics chip capable of multiple independent scrolling layers and a higher sprite count? Memory and VRAM exceeding 64KB?"
A 16-bit processor was certainly high-end, but not completely unattainable.
As far as Gerald knew, Motorola currently had a 16-bit processor under the codename MC68000.
But that thing was generally used in high end personal computers.
Using it to make a game seemed like complete overkill.
And then there were the memory requirements.
He genuinely couldn't imagine what kind of game content would require more than 64KB of memory.
Wanting larger EPROM storage chips was understandable.
After all, greater storage capacity allowed for more content.
But what in the world would someone need that much memory for?
"Ethan, this hardware configuration... if it's intended to run a game, it's far too extravagant. Arcade machines aren't better simply because their specifications are higher."
Gerald could only attribute all of this to Ethan's lack of hardware experience.
No wonder he had specifically come seeking advice.
"Why don't you tell me exactly what you're trying to achieve? I'll put together a perfectly optimized specification list for you!"
For a mass-produced product like an arcade machine, every possible cost-saving mattered.
Even if a machine could be made just one dollar cheaper, ten machines would save ten dollars.
What about hundreds?
Thousands?
Ethan spread his hands and pointed toward a Commodore 64 sitting on the desk.
"Could I borrow your machine for a moment?"
Although the Commodore 64 had a very impressive-sounding "64" in its name, it was nothing like the 64-bit PCs of the future.
It was merely an 8-bit home computer.
After receiving Gerald's permission, Ethan created a test project and entered its filename.
CONTRA.