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Chapter 18 : Does Contra Really Need That Much Hardware?
Sam was so overwhelmed by the sudden news that he was too excited to sleep the entire night.
Early Sunday morning, before dawn had fully broken, he had already contacted a contract manufacturer and was preparing to discuss production arrangements.
As for Lin Lixin, he would be taking over Sam’s shift and heading to GAMENOVA early to watch the shop.
“Looks like we really do need to hire an employee.”
Lin Lixin stretched lazily, having already made up his mind.
Ŵеb̂ ǹ о v̈ е l̇ Е̂n̊ ūmа
Thanks to his skills, he only needed two or three hours of sleep to stay energetic all day long.
But if given the chance, who wouldn’t want to sleep in comfortably?
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Clang!
He dropped a large cardboard box onto the counter behind the register.
Inside was a brand-new Commodore 64 along with all sorts of miscellaneous development tools.
With this setup, he could continue developing games even while working at the arcade.
Е̌n u mа̀.
“Boss, hurry up and open!”
“Open the door already, manager! We’re regulars!”
“It’s already six o’clock! Are you even doing business or not?!”
…
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Before Lin Lixin could even finish organizing his equipment, the players lined up outside were already growing restless.
The shouting came wave after wave.
W.ѐ b̂ n о̄v̀ е́ ĺ Е̄ n ú m а
There were even more people today than yesterday.
“So this is the power of word-of-mouth…”
Rubbing his temples, Lin Lixin reopened the shop and switched on the “OPEN” sign.
Thinking about it carefully, the term “word-of-mouth effect” itself had supposedly first been coined by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi.
It took Lin Lixin quite a while to squeeze through the densely packed crowd and finally make it back behind the counter.
Leaving the frenzied players to themselves, he shifted his attention back to the computer.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Although everything had seemed to progress smoothly over the past half month, the gap between him and the true giants of the industry remained unimaginably vast.
Nintendo.
Namco.
Sega.
Any one of them could effortlessly crush a newcomer like him.
Especially considering there was less than a year remaining before Nintendo fully invaded the North American market.
W еb̈n ôv̂ё l Eǹũmа́
If he failed to build up his own forces before then, he would have no ability to resist them.
Before that day came, the only thing he could do was develop as many blockbuster games as possible.
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Maybe even intercept some of the legendary Famicom titles before Nintendo could dominate North America with them.
Once his capital reached a sufficient scale, he could begin laying the groundwork for entering the home console market.
“Super Mario… and Contra…”
Lin Lixin rhythmically tapped his fingers against the desk as he pondered how to deal with the two games.
Ёn̄ u m а..і̆ d̀
In terms of influence, there were probably fewer than five games in the world capable of rivaling Super Mario.
As for Contra, it was Konami’s flagship title after Nintendo opened the door to third-party developers.
But the moment Lin Lixin thought about Contra, his eyes suddenly lit up.
This actually seemed like a good option.
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Judging from Contra’s storyline, the whole “one-man army storming enemy bases to save the world” style of heroism had extremely strong compatibility with the American market.
Back in that era, the first two Contra games on the Famicom had been every bit as famous as Super Mario.
En_ũm̂_a. і d
Using it as a weapon against Nintendo while simultaneously sabotaging damn Konami?
That was a double victory.
No—a double win.
Having made up his mind, Lin Lixin stopped hesitating and immediately began planning out the development process.
But almost as soon as he started, he ran into a huge problem.
The hardware wasn’t strong enough.
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Contra wasn’t a contemporary of Super Mario.
It was released three years later, in 1987.
At the time, Contra ran on Konami’s custom arcade board, whose performance utterly crushed contemporary arcade systems in every conceivable way.
Just looking at the processors alone made comparisons meaningless.
The Motorola 68000 paired with a Zilog Z80 dual-CPU architecture absolutely beat contemporary single-chip 8-bit processors into the ground.
Its custom graphics chips elevated visual fidelity to an entirely next-generation level.
Ẁ ěb ǹо vе́ l̂ Ê ǹ um_a
Compared to current graphics hardware, even implementing the scrolling backgrounds and sprite effects in 1942 had already completely squeezed out every drop of graphical performance available.
Not to mention its massive 256KB capacity.
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Finding a storage medium large enough to hold it alone would already be difficult.
“What are you thinking about?”
Vivian’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Ever since earlier, she had noticed Lin Lixin constantly frowning in concentration, sketching things onto sticky notes from time to time.
Е n ům̆а
“If there’s something you need help with, maybe I can lend a hand.”
“Senior Vivian.”
Lin Lixin greeted her with a nod, surprise flickering across his eyes.
After just one day, her attribute panel seemed to have risen by several points again.
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“Senior, what do you think…”
He hesitated briefly.
E n̆ ü m ā
“With current arcade hardware, if algorithms were optimized to their absolute limits, how far could performance be pushed?”
Vivian tilted her head slightly and thought for a moment.
“To be honest, what you already did in 1942 is amazing. If you optimize further, you’ll probably have to sacrifice visual quality. Personally, I think that wouldn’t be worth it.”
After spending an entire day playing 1942, Vivian felt like she learned something new every match.
His technical skills weren’t necessarily top-tier, but his way of solving problems was incredibly interesting and worth studying.
“So that’s how it is…”
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Lin Lixin nodded.
He had more or less guessed as much.
Given the limitations of hardware from this era, there really wasn’t much room left for algorithmic tricks.
Hardware limitations were nearly impossible to overcome.
“But why are you asking this? Still not satisfied with the visuals in 1942?”
“Sort of. I’m planning a new game, but I’ve run into a hardware bottleneck. It’s giving me a headache.”
Е̊n̈ ǔ m̂ ӓ. і d.
If Contra truly proved impossible to realize, he would have no choice but to retreat and honestly develop a platformer to fight Super Mario head-on.
Unfortunately, while Vivian majored in electrical engineering, her focus was graphics.
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As for Sam, his technical ability wasn’t much different from Lin Lixin’s own without cheats, making him equally unreliable.
If only he knew some kind of hardware expert.
“Hardware problems?”
Vivian nodded thoughtfully.
Ӗ n̊ u mӑ
“Lin, I really don’t know much about that area, so I can’t help directly. But…”
She suddenly changed the topic.
“Do you remember me mentioning that I work part-time at a small company?”
“Hm?”
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Lin Lixin blinked, unsure why she was bringing this up now.
“Even though the company is mainly software-focused, my boss there might actually be able to help you.”
W е b̌ n о̃v̌е́ l Е̊ n ǔm̀а̊
She borrowed one of his sticky notes and wrote down an address along with a contact name.
VideoSoft — Gerald Lawson
The instant Lin Lixin saw the name, his eyes widened.
He knew that name.
Gerald Lawson.
Former Fairchild Semiconductor engineer.
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This African-American engineer was later hailed as.
The Father of the Modern Game Console.
The Father of Programmable Game Cartridges.
The world’s first cartridge-based game console, the Channel F, had been his creation.
(End of Chapter)
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