"Battery save?"
Gerald stared at what Ethan had written, his face full of confusion. He knew what a battery was, but how could something like that possibly have the ability to save data?
At their core, computer data consisted of binary digits, 0s and 1s. To store them, there had to be some kind of structure capable of representing high and low states. A high voltage represented 1, while a low voltage represented 0. It was one of the most common approaches.
But how could a battery store data? By using whether the battery was conducting electricity as the basis? But that would only be able to store a single bit of data.
"That's right."
Ethan smiled. This was the exact technology used by the Game Boy. It was simple, ingenious, and wonderfully elegant.
"Think about it. What's the biggest problem we're facing with game saves right now?"
"We need floppy disks?"
"That's certainly one part of it, but not entirely." Ethan nodded. "Floppy disks aren't the only components capable of reading and writing data."
He turned and wrote several letters on the whiteboard.
RAM.
RAM, Random Access Memory.
Unlike the ROM used in their game cartridges, RAM could be written to. But it also had one fatal flaw.
"But... RAM loses all its data once the power is cut. Isn't that the exact opposite of what we need?"
After listening to Ethan's explanation, Gerald wasn't any less confused. If anything, he had even more questions. If simply switching to RAM solved the problem, why had they struggled for so long?
"Then let's just make sure it never loses power."
"Huh?"
While Gerald wore a completely bewildered expression, Ethan reached into his pocket, fumbled around for a moment, and suddenly pulled out a tiny, fingertip-sized round disc.
It was a button-cell battery. The instant Gerald saw it.
It felt as though a membrane inside his brain burst with a pop. Inspiration rushed into his mind like the sudden release of a badly constipated stomach after taking a lot of laxatives.
"Jesus Christ! Genius! That's fucking brilliant! It was really that simple!"
Of course! As long as the SRAM never lost power, wouldn't it effectively function as a storage device?
Only then did Gerald realize he'd been thinking about the problem all wrong.
He had been obsessed with finding a true high-capacity, permanently writable storage medium, completely overlooking the fact that, in reality, players didn't actually need anything that extreme.
How long could a button battery last?
Three years? Five years?
By then, many players would have long since moved on, perhaps even upgraded to the next generation of consoles. And even if they were still hooked on the current game, all they'd have to do was replace the battery.
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It was cheap and reliable. That was exactly what he needed.
"So that's the basic idea. Of course, it's still only a concept. Actually making it practical will depend on you, Gerald."
Ethan left the battery on the table.
"As for NovaPocket's launch title, I've already prepared that as well."
Granted, without floppy disks, even using the previous bank-switched ROM design would only allow for a maximum capacity of around 256 KB.
But the game he wanted to make... If they squeezed hard enough, that capacity just might be enough. The final step of his master plan, the true trump card.
Pokémon.
The first-generation Pokémon games occupied a full 1 MB of storage, an absurd amount by current standards, essentially floppy disk territory.
But the problem was… Its developer, GAME FREAK, had never been a company that succeeded through technical prowess.
They had started as a doujin magazine group. Without Shigeru Miyamoto's technical support, Pokémon might never have been born at all.
That gave Ethan plenty of room to work. As long as he put enough effort into compression and optimization, cutting the required capacity by more than half didn't seem impossible.
After all, this was the legendary development team that managed to cram an entire city model into a game without splitting it into separate maps.
...
Pokémon was a work far ahead of its time, but at its core, it actually wasn't particularly complicated. It was more like a perfect fusion of numerous existing concepts, finding the ideal balance for itself.
Collection, raising, and trading formed its gameplay core, perfectly appealing to every age group and both genders.
Boys loved training powerful Pokémon, defeating other players, and becoming the strongest Pokémon Trainer.
Girls loved collecting adorable Pokémon and treating them as genuine companions.
And Ethan now had a one click method for completing the Pokémon battle code, saving an enormous amount of development time for other tasks.
Two hours later.
"Take care, Ethan! Come visit again whenever you've got time!"
Under Jon Canham's reluctant gaze, Ethan waved goodbye while carrying a floppy disk containing a copy of the combat code from Might and Magic, then got into the car for the trip back.
Turn-based combat was fundamentally universal. Even though Might and Magic and Pokémon looked completely unrelated, the code could still be reused.
...
"Carmack, you handle this part."
Ethan handed John Carmack the completed design document along with the code he'd just acquired.
"Ethan! You actually used someone else's code! Why didn't you just let me write it myself?"
"...If you can write something even better, remember to send Jon Canham a copy."
Ethan had more or less gotten used to Carmack's competitive personality.
Ignoring the puffed-up John, Ethan sat down at his desk, picked up a paintbrush, and clumsily sketched a yellow mouse. Some may say it's a rabbit or a squirrel but going by official sources, Pikachu was listed as a mouse Pokémon.
"Hiss..."
Ethan sucked on his teeth.
Damn it. Why does this look so ridiculously abstract? Opening up his status panel, Ethan finally realized that he'd been neglecting his graphics related skills for quite some time.
His once lowest music attribute had already risen after developing Street Fighter, nearly catching up with his other stats. But his graphics skill had never received any meaningful improvement.
He did possess a graphics-related skill he'd obtained long ago, but it enhanced computer graphics, not traditional hand-drawn concept art.
And even the first generation alone contained a full 151 Pokémon. With his current drawing ability, if he insisted on illustrating all of them himself, the final result wouldn't be Pokémon.
It would be some kind of eighteen plus dungeon crawling Stranger Things fan game.
Start grinding experience now?
It was possible, but drawing all 151 Pokémon from beginning to end by himself would still be an enormous hassle.
Improved technique didn't mean his memories would magically become clearer. That left only two options.
The first was to simply draw the most iconic and popular Pokémon that he remembered clearly, then freely create original designs for the rest.
And the second option, Ethan looked up and swept his gaze across everyone busily working around the office.
"By the way, does anyone here know Japanese?"