Most people who have learned about the history of the development of electronic games have heard of this anecdote.

It is precisely because of this incident that Nolan Bushnell entered the game console industry without hesitation, which led to the prosperity of electronic games and the birth of Atari, the first giant in the history of the game industry.

It was a summer in 1972.

Bushnell, who had just experienced the first business game console he designed, that is, the arcade "Computer Space" failed because the game was too complicated, was not discouraged. He and his partners designed an extremely simple game arcade - Pong.

This can only be considered an experimental work by Bushnell.

Now it seems that this is a simple game that cannot be simpler. If you have seen its picture, you will know that what I said is true.

There are only three simple lines, a symbolic ball net running through the screen in the middle, and a short symbolic racket on both sides. A light spot in the middle represents the tennis ball moving back and forth through the impact of the racket on both sides. The player uses a simple rocker and button to control the racket to hit the light spot, that is, the tennis ball.

The two of them were just slapped around so bored.

Now it seems that the game is not fun, but surprisingly, the game has achieved amazing success.

In fact, Bushnell didn't plan to sell this simple game console at the beginning because his partner Alan Alcon knew nothing about designing games except an excellent electrical engineer and computer expert. Bushnell originally planned to make his favorite racing game, but because Alcon knew nothing about it, he changed this idea and decided to teach him to design a simple game to practice. This is Pong.

As for why such a strange name is, one is that Pong can represent the sound of the racket being placed on the ball, and the second and most important reason is that Ping-pong has been used by someone.

After the game was made, Bushnell, a top student in the computer department of the University of Utah, had no interest in this naive and young game, but in order not to let his partner Alcon be disappointed in making the game, he deceived him and said that General Motors had decided to sell the game.

In fact, he just put it in a bar called Andy's Bar in St. Neville, where the small company called Atari, which they both started, was located, because the bar also operated several pine ball machines.

Unexpectedly, just a few days later, Bushnell received a call from the bar owner Andy, saying that the two strange machines he sent were broken and hoped that he could repair them.

Unexpectedly, after Bushnell went to see it, he realized that because there were too many people playing with this machine, the coins were stuffed too much, and the coin hole was blocked...

What happened later was well known. Pong's arcade machine became popular in the United States. It printed US dollars like a money printing machine, laying the foundation for them to become the overlord of the game industry later.

It was precisely because of the story that Jester realized that the situation now was so similar to that time.

Yes, it was the wilderness of video games, and it can even be said to be bluntly that it was the blank period of video games. It was because Atari was the first person to try it out that they were so successful later.

And isn't that the case now?

Atari impact is disastrous for the American gaming industry. To put it as an inappropriate example, this is a Pearl Harbor battle for video games.

After this, no investor wanted to enter this industry.

In addition, CBM has toughly terminated Atari's company's research and development of games on its own game console Atari 2600, and the American people's despair for electronic games, resulting in a gap in electronic games in the European and American game industry.

Temporary, to a certain extent, caused a situation similar to that when Atari just launched Pong.

This blank period appears because of the hostility of Americans to repetitive games without any novelty, rather than really feeling that video games are meaningless.

Of course, Americans now do not call this time a temporary blank period in the video game industry, but a death period.

As for whether it is a death period, the American American version of FC, the NEC, who is the carrier of hell, will come to the United States next year, and sweeps the world with "Super Mario", will only wake up from a dream.

But it's too late.

The electronic gaming industry then entered the era of Japanese rule, first Nintendo, Sega, and then Sony. Until fifteen years later, as Microsoft returned to the home console gaming field with its own XBOX at a cost of $2 billion a year, American talents returned to the market that they once dominated and now coveted.

And I can completely copy this classic success story of Atariga's reign in hell at that time.

Using arcades to gain fame and gain the first pot of gold, sweep the world with the home machine and "Super Mario".

Of course, the premise of all this is that he needs a game that can reactivate the extinguished American passion for video games.

Even if you can't do this, it's at least a super hot-selling game.

There are not many such games, but not many. The problem is that they can adapt to the current development environment and are almost rare.

"Super Mario" is of course such a game. In fact, this mission is accomplished by this game in real history.

But he can't do this now. Although he has to do "Super Mario" before he served in Hell, it is definitely not now.

It is not the time yet, and he does not have a gaming platform equivalent to FC.

So, he thought of a masterpiece that can also play this role.

A masterpiece in various senses.

In almost all the game selections in later generations, there is no doubt that there are only two games that compete for one or two, one of which is "Super Mario".

And the other one is Tetris - Tetris!

It has always been the style of Jester when you think about it, and the game "Tetris" is not very complicated. It is because of its special algorithm that makes this mini game so popular.

In the world of the soul in Jester's body, he has carefully studied the algorithms of many Tetris derivative games, and is very familiar with the not-so-complex code programs of the first edition of Tetris.

After all, this is a still-screen game. It is far from passing the horizontal scroll-like action like the one just now. It's just that after Jester selflessly tapped on the computer for more than two hours, a simple version of Tetris that can run on his IBM5150 was completed.

Run the program and Jest operate the first game he wrote in this world casually, watching them run perfectly, as Jest operates with his hands cleverly, several Tetris patterns on the screen drop rapidly, and then rows of cube connections are formed below the screen to successfully eliminate them.

The numbers on one side of the score table are also constantly jumping upwards.

“Fine perfect!”

After playing it for more than a dozen times, he tried the five difficulties he set, and there was no running problem in the entire game. Only then did Jester sincerely admire the original master of this body's programming ability.

It's really a mess. Needless to say, it's far beyond my previous life. Even the best programmer I've ever met in my era may not be half the programming ability of this book's original owner.

"No wonder my friend who is very good at programming always says that even now, the best programmers in the world are still those who were honed with KB as unit memory in the 1970s and 1980s. Their logic writing ability is really strong. They can do what dozens of lines of code in later generations need to do with just a few lines of code."

Jester himself remembers that Tetris' code was written by later generations. Although it was the same logical algorithm, there were no memory restrictions in later generations, so many codes were not concise enough. However, this era is not good. You should know that IBM5150, a personal computer that has just been launched, is already the most advanced one now, but its memory is only 16KB! As for Atari's classic host, Atari 2600 has only 2KB of memory!

If you want a game to run perfectly on such a machine, due to memory limitations, you must be extremely short and concise in the program.

This process has a special name for people in later generations, called optimization.

Fortunately, Jester in this world is a programming expert who can streamline the complicated code programs he remembers to the point where he can use them now. Otherwise, Jester might really have no way to do so.

The rest of Jester, who ended his first game production, is how to sell the game.

He had decided to use Bushnell's method back then, and placed an arcade equipped with this game in public, causing a sensation within a certain range.

Jester also has unique advantages in this method.

His mother runs a medium-sized supermarket in the city. There are several Atari arcades in the supermarket. Jester went to see them when he was free. Those arcades were also affected by Atari's impact. They have not been operating very well recently.

But he believed that as long as he made a few Tetris arcades and put them in his mother's supermarket, it would be impossible for the business to be booming.

Because this is something that has been verified by history.

As long as it causes a sensation, you will not worry about not being able to find someone who is willing to buy his game arcade.

This is one of the greatest games that Tetris, the human race has created in history. Even in the selection of the 100th issue of EGM journals, this one was removed.

As for the original name of this game, Tetris, this name comes from Greek 4, because the problem of being too abstract is not suitable for promotion to the American people with a low average IQ.

However, China's name for this game was of great reference value.

The name Tetris is naturally unusable. First of all, this game has nothing to do with Russia, that is, the current Soviet Union. Secondly, in the United States, calling this game Tetris is not a good idea.

Now it is during the Cold War, and Reagan has begun to implement his Star Wars plan, and the fiercest confrontation between the East and the West.

"However, Tetris is indeed a good name, easy to understand..."

Thinking of this, Jester's eyes lit up.

Since it cannot be called Tetris, why not call it Tetris?

You should know that the American people also attach great importance to national honor, otherwise MacArthur's classic West Point Military Academy speech on responsibility, honor, and country would not cause such a sensation in the United States.

"American-Diamond! American squares! This name is good!"

Jester wrote the name on paper.

In addition to squares, Diamond has another meaning, diamond.
Chapter completed!