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Chapter 19 : The Genius Engineer Ruined by Atari
Lin Lixin had always assumed the place Vivian worked at was some cutting-edge graphics laboratory.
He never expected it to be VideoSoft.
Gerald Lawson’s company.
A game development company he founded after leaving Fairchild Semiconductor.
“Wait, the company you intern at is VideoSoft, but you’ve never played games before?”
En u m̆ å . і̇d̀
“Not really.” Vivian shook her head. “Our boss designed some game prototypes before, but none of them were ever completed. I mostly just handled miscellaneous graphics optimization work. The boss said it was because of Atari…”
Bang!
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Lin Lixin suddenly slammed the table and stood up, startling Vivian badly enough that she swallowed the rest of her sentence.
“Thank you, Senior Vivian. You’ve helped me tremendously! Oh, and watch the store for me. I need to go out for a bit!”
Vivian’s words had given him a huge wake-up call.
The opportunities created by the Atari crash weren’t just a temporary vacuum in the market.
Еn ǔm̈а . ǐ d̄
As the absolute giant of North America’s gaming industry, practically every third-party game developer in the country relied on Atari to survive.
When Atari collapsed, the North American gaming market evaporated overnight, and nearly every third-party studio went bankrupt.
That included Gerald Lawson and his VideoSoft.
If Lin Lixin remembered correctly, Lawson had founded VideoSoft specifically to develop games for the then-invincible Atari 2600.
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But that had been in 1980.
No one could have imagined that just two years later, the entire industry would be struck by such a catastrophic upheaval.
E ñ ũ m̌а. їd̊
At this point in time, VideoSoft should already be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, destined to shut down completely by early 1985 at the latest.
Gerald Lawson himself was about to become one of countless dream-chasing game developers swallowed by the tides of history.
Thinking of this, Lin Lixin unconsciously swallowed hard.
The solution had been right in front of him the entire time.
…
California, Santa Clara County, Mountain View.
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This city, which had transformed from an agricultural town into a technology hub alongside the rise of Silicon Valley, was now home to countless industry elites.
Lin Lixin found the place he was looking for in a remote district.
Low-rise office buildings stood in uneven rows, and the streets felt lifeless, nothing like a normal business district.
He spotted the VideoSoft sign immediately.
The board’s edges had curled with age, and the company name was written in a somewhat tacky sci-fi font.
Peering through the window beside the entrance, Lin Lixin saw an office space roughly eighty square meters in size. At least half the workstations had already been cleared out.
Eń.ū ṁ а̄
The remaining desks had dark computer monitors.
Only one aging Atari 2600 was still powered on, displaying crude pixel graphics on the screen.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Ding-dong.
At least the doorbell still worked.
Lin Lixin soon saw a somewhat overweight figure emerge from the back room.
He wore a plaid shirt. His skin was the deep cocoa color typical of African Americans, with a pair of sunglasses resting atop his forehead. Streaks of age had already crept into his beard and hair.
Е̂n̄ů m̆ ӑ
Gerald Lawson.
As the glass door swung open, Lin Lixin could clearly hear his heavy breathing.
The man was only forty-four years old, yet he already looked like an elderly man stripped of all vigor.
Ill-fated.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Lin Lixin couldn’t think of a more fitting phrase to describe the hardware master standing before him.
[Gerald Lawson]
Ё n.ūḿа
[Status]:
[Frustrated and Unrecognized]: Final Attribute Values -50% (rounded down)
The giant flashing S nearly blinded Lin Lixin.
A hardware stat exceeding three digits perfectly demonstrated Lawson’s terrifying ability.
“Hello? Can I help you?”
Gerald looked exhausted. Seeing that the visitor was a young Chinese student, confusion appeared on his face.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Lin Lixin politely inclined his head.
“Mr. Lawson, Senior Vivian recommended I come here.”
Gerald showed a look of understanding, but quickly followed it with a bitter smile.
“Sorry, but we aren’t hiring right now.”
“Mr. Lawson, I’m not here looking for a job.”
Lin Lixin’s gaze drifted past him toward an unpowered arcade cabinet sitting against the wall.
Еn̈ ǔ m̈ а̂ . і ď
“I’m a game developer. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
Hearing this, Gerald showed little emotional reaction and merely stared silently at him.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
After a long moment, he sighed and stepped aside to let Lin Lixin enter.
He rummaged through piles of clutter before producing a bottle of purified water. It was already the most polite form of hospitality he could currently offer.
“I’ll call you Student Lin, then.”
After listening to Lin Lixin’s self-introduction, Gerald nodded and sat beside him.
W̃e b̈ň о̄ v е̂ ĺ .Е̇ ñ_ûm̄à
“Student Lin, at a time like this, getting into the video game business is not a good idea.”
The way he said it sounded almost self-mocking.
Back when he worked at Fairchild Semiconductor, he had once been full of ambition.
Now he was nothing but a fallen man.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
“Why?” Lin Lixin asked knowingly.
“Video games are dead.”
Enum а̃. іd̃
Gerald had long since accepted the reality.
“Atari built the tombstone themselves. It’s sitting in New Mexico, not too far from California. That’s the tombstone Atari built for themselves.”
Lin Lixin shook his head.
“I don’t think Atari represents video games.”
Gerald let out a faint sigh.
Once upon a time, he too had been like Lin Lixin, overflowing with passion and believing he could carve out a future.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
“I used to work as an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor…”
“I know. The Channel F was your project. The programmable cartridge system was absolutely brilliant!”
“Mm… perhaps.”
Gerald neither confirmed nor denied it. It was one of the few accomplishments he still had left to boast about.
“But do you know something? That ‘excellent’ machine only sold three hundred thousand units.”
He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
Е̇ n̆ŭ_m á
“And Atari? They flooded store shelves with consoles like household appliances. The Atari 2600 alone sold over thirty million units! Thirty million!”
On average, one out of every ten people owned an Atari 2600.
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No matter how stubborn Lin Lixin wanted to be, Atari was undeniably synonymous with the North American gaming market.
Gerald waved a hand, unwilling to continue arguing about the matter.
“So, Student Lin, what exactly did you want to ask me?”
“I’m developing a new game and ran into some hardware bottlenecks. Algorithms alone can’t improve things much further. Senior Vivian said you’d be the right person to ask.”
W е b̌ n̆ оv еl̀ Еñum а
Lin Lixin didn’t rush to persuade him.
For a genius utterly ruined by the colossal disaster called Atari, words were meaningless.
But Lin Lixin knew exactly what would work.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out two black chips.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
The EPROMs for Tetris and 1942.
These things packed one hell of a punch.
Ẅ е̊ b n̄о̌ v̆ е̄l E ṅ u.m ā
(End of Chapter)
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