Rebirth of America, this is my time

Three hours later, at home in Palo Alto.

Wearing an apron and busy in the kitchen, Ethan took out four eggs and broke them into a bowl, then poured some fresh milk.

After stirring evenly, use a strainer to filter out the unmixable foam and egg tendons, then put a pot on the stove and melt a tablespoon of butter.

Pour the egg liquid into it, stir-fry slowly over low heat, and turn off the heat when it's about half-cooked.

Sprinkle white pepper on the soft, tender, creamy scrambled eggs, then remove from the pot, put on a plate, and bring it to the restaurant.

When Ethan brought the last dish of scrambled eggs to the table, a hearty dinner of steak, salad, soup, and scrambled eggs was ready!

If it were in a previous life, after cooking this fragrant dinner, Ethan would definitely take out his phone, take a photo and send it to Moments. He wants his friends around him to know that his cooking skills are still very good~

But now, without the Internet or social platforms, we can only entertain ourselves and appreciate ourselves.

Oh no!

There is obviously someone next to me!

Why is there no feedback at all?

"hei~hei~hei~ give me some reaction! Dinner is done!"

Looking at the figure holding the document and looking hard at it, Ethan immediately snapped his fingers.

Such a call made Evelin at the dining table look up suddenly.

She first looked at Ethan with a blank expression, then lowered her eyes and glanced at the table instinctively. When the beautifully arranged dishes with tempting smells appeared, she suddenly woke up and praised belatedly. : "Oh Ethan, are you done? This is really hard on you~"

‘…’

‘How perfunctory. ’

Ethan curled his lips and showed his unhappiness directly on his face.

This performance also made Evelin understand and quickly change her words. She put her hands together in front of her body and opened her eyes wide to pretend to be sincere.

"Oh my God - what a wonderful dinner - and it's all my favorites -"

"Oh Ethan—did you do all of this specially for me? Oh, thank you so much—"

‘…’

The hypocritical look made Ethan feel suffocated.

And the deliberately manipulated voice made Ethan smell the smell of tea.

"Okay, Okay, Okay."

Somewhat unable to bear it, he raised his hands and surrendered, "Evelin, please let me go. I don't need your praise anymore. Let's eat."

Ethan placed the sterilized knife, fork and spoon on the dinner plate and pushed it in front of Evelin.

Looking at that helpless look, Evelin laughed.

Get up and move your chair.

The girl sat next to Ethan with a snap.

Then he shook the document in his hand and explained with a smile on his face: "Oh Ethan~ Don't be angry~ It's not that I want to ignore you~ The main reason is that the intention plans in these two cooperation agreements really surprised me~ "

"Really!" She emphasized: "The terms of the agreement in these two plans are so exaggerated! Fifteen million US dollars? A 20 million US dollar contract will be given at will? Wow! Is this because they have money? Or is it because they have money? Do other countries in the world really have such a big game market?”

Yes, after Evelin came back from school, Ethan handed her the letter of intent for cooperation between Sega and Nintendo.

After all, "Snake Game" is not his game alone. If it is to be released overseas, Evelin must know about it.

And his caution was rewarded with Evelin's seriousness, but wait until the girl opens the document and reads it carefully...

The dull look just now appeared.

Precisely because he knew the whole process, Ethan didn't care about it.

Moved Evelin's dinner plate in front of her again, and then Ethan raised his knife and fork and cut the steak.

At the same time, he also said: "Of course other countries also have huge game markets."

"After all, businessmen are all driven by profit. If this business is not profitable, then why would they come to me?"

"Are you giving us free money?"

"Isn't this a mental illness?"

"That's right." Evelin felt that what Ethan said was reasonable.

"Then what do you think about this matter?" the girl asked.

At the same time, she also added, "I think you have no plans to be self-employed in this matter, right?"

"At least at this stage, you shouldn't have?"

Evelin was really right!

Regarding the overseas distribution rights of "Snake Game", Ethan really plans to sell them.

It's not that he doesn't want to do it himself, but that they don't have the strength yet.

"certainly!"

While putting the cut steak into Evelin's plate, Ethan nodded and said: "We are not qualified to talk about overseas self-operation now. I already knew about it when I was working at Mi Luohua, Sega It took fifty years and more than 20 million to build a fully equipped arcade production line in Liben and Southeast Asia. This kind of consumption of time and money is not something we can afford."

"As for putting aside your worries and setting up a factory directly?"

"That's even more impossible."

"After all, the last Atari opened a branch rashly..."

"They've already exploded."

After the success of "Pong", Atari founder Nolan Bushnell felt that he was the son of destiny.

Ever since, he started to develop the idea of ​​​​exporting games, hoping to capture global interests.

The first stop is aimed at establishing a foundation where the national economy is performing very well.

However, after they established a branch in Liben with great confidence and poured millions into it, they discovered that Liben was a very closed market and strangers were not welcome to invest at all.

Their rash actions violated the business rules there, and they were met with strong sanctions and boycotts.

then……

Atari had no choice but to admit its losses and leave.

When millions of dollars have not been exchanged for the corresponding market, it is naturally impossible for Ethan, who has no money in his pocket, to think about overseas distribution.

Ethan had told Evelin about this story before.

So when he mentioned it again, Evelin immediately laughed when she recalled all this.

"Yeah~Yeah~Yeah~"

"I see."

"So you want to cross the river touching Atari's body?"

"Why not?" Ethan said nonsensically in a serious tone: "My colleagues have already given wrong examples. What we can do is to pay high respect to their dedication and express our gratitude for their failure. Sincerely sorry.”

Having said this, Ethan winked at his sister.

"Goose goose..." The damaging words made Evelin extremely happy.

Throwing away the documents, he picked up the knife and fork and ate the steak.

When the almost rare taste appeared, her eyebrows instinctively frowned.

Glancing at the cross-section of the steak, and then at Ethan who was eating deliciously, she shook her head helplessly and put the remaining half on the fork into her mouth.

"So, which company do you want to cooperate with?" she asked vaguely.

This question was asked to Ethan.

After swallowing the steak in his mouth, Ethan paused, with confusion on his face.

"To be honest, it's really hard to choose between these two."

"If you look at the breadth of the market, I would give priority to Sega. Because they not only have branches in Liben and Southeast Asia, but also have their own marketing points in Europe. Their global shipping capabilities are definitely greater than Nintendo's. .”

"But if you look at the depth of a single market, then I would choose Nintendo. Because Liben is the second largest electronic game consumer goods market in the world after us in North America. Deep exploration in this market can give us Bringing greater profits, and Nintendo is such a company that has the ability to deeply explore the Liben market, because this company has been operating in Liben for almost a hundred years."

"What?" Ethan's words surprised Evelin.

"Is Nintendo so powerful?"

"I thought it was just an ordinary Liben company!"

That’s right, Americans in this era actually didn’t know about Nintendo. In other words, before Mario started the trend of repairing toilets, few people in America had even heard of Nintendo’s name.

But this is normal.

After all, Nintendo in this era is still focusing on the development of its own market and has not officially extended its tentacles to America.

But... the indigenous people's lack of understanding does not mean that Ethan, the time traveler, will ignore it. While sorting out his memories, he introduced the great things about Nintendo to his sister——

"Nintendo was born in the last century. At the beginning, they were engaged in Liben's unique Huazha Solitaire business. At its largest scale, it could even be said to have monopolized the entire Liben Huazha Solitaire market."

“When a single field reached its peak, they tried to expand new businesses and introduced our country’s playing cards to Liben. Before that, no company in Liben was engaged in the playing card business, so their introduction was natural. It has gained an innate monopoly advantage.”

"Not only that, they also reached a cooperation with Disney, obtained image authorization from Disney, and printed Disney's classic cartoon characters on playing cards. In this way, they have achieved great success in the field of playing cards."

"Then, they focused on research in the field of toys and tried to develop toys. Their company had an engineer named Gunpei Yokoi, who invented several toys with sales exceeding one million in a single year, such as Milova Odyssey. The equipped light gun was invented by him. This product alone can bring Nintendo tens of millions of dollars in revenue a year."

"WTF? Did they make Milohua's light gun?" This news surprised Evelin.

Ethan nodded with a smile and said, "Yes, they made that light gun."

The light gun in the mouth of the two people is actually the light gun peripheral in shooting video games.

When a target appears on the TV screen, the player holding the light gun aims and pulls the trigger, and the target on the TV can be shot directly.

This technology seems advanced, but it has been around since the 1960s.

The inventor is Gunpei Yokoi.

"Wow... this is really... too unbelievable..." Evelin felt a little emotional.

She didn't expect that Nintendo could be so powerful.

As Ethan told her story, curiosity arose in her heart, "Ethan, how do you know so many things?"

Although she was asking, she also gave her own guess, "You shouldn't have been paying attention to them when Mi Luohua was at work, right?"

"So be it." Ethan smiled at his sister.

"Then you mean to choose Nintendo?" Evelin continued to ask.

The next second, a new question popped up in her mind.

"That's not right. Didn't you find that Sega and Nintendo appeared a little strange?"

"Why do they appear at the same time? Buy the publishing rights of "Snake Game" from us at the same time?"

"I don't know why Sega appeared at this time, but I wonder...could Nintendo's appearance have something to do with Milowa?"

"After all...you are the one who disgusted them?"

Evelin frowned slightly, making careful guesses.

Such words made Ethan laugh, "Oh sister, I think you are worrying too much."

"Mi Luohua doesn't have that ability. They don't have the ability to influence Nintendo as you said."

In fact, the successive appearances of Nintendo and Sega also puzzled Ethan.

He didn't know why these two companies appeared at the same time so coincidentally and came to buy game agency rights from him at the same time.

But after he cleared the memory of his previous life, he felt that this was most likely a coincidence.

Because in his previous life, he learned about Nintendo in class.

If he remembered correctly, it was a course about financial investment. During the class, the teacher introduced them to the long-term blue chip stocks held by government pension funds of various countries. When talking about establishing capital, the teacher specifically mentioned Nintendo. .

Because for many years, Nintendo has been Liben’s money-making machine, second only to Toyota.

After more than ten years of exaggerated price-to-earnings ratios, analyzing their development has naturally become something that financial professionals like to do.

There is no way, who makes finance just try every means to find rules in an industry with no rules?

In the teacher's analysis, Ethan also understood why Nintendo was successful.

Even this kind of success can be summed up in one sentence——

Hug your thighs.

Because the Yamauchi family who created Nintendo started with the Mitsui Zaibatsu!

Later, when they were selling Hanafuda, they hugged the thigh of Tachimoto Tobacco King Murai Yoshihei!

When Ethan recalled this fact, he knew that he had been worrying too much.

Milohua is in Niubi, and if he is dissatisfied with him, it is impossible to move Nintendo!

Because Nintendo doesn't make games, it's also a monopoly!

Mi Luohua wants to instruct it?

Then you might as well get the keys!

Does it deserve it?

As for Sega…

He had just been sued by Mi Luohua, how could the two parties cooperate with Yan Yuese?

Of course, it was not easy for Ethan to talk to Evelin about this kind of thing.

He could only say that the probability that the whole thing was controlled by Milohua was very low.

And Evelin...

Nor is she interested in this kind of corporate gossip.

After Ethan had paid attention to these things, she no longer thought too much about other things. She just nodded slightly to express her understanding, and then said directly: "Since you think it is okay, then you can make the decision on this matter yourself. When it comes to signing, Just tell me directly."

"Are you sure?" Such a simple response was actually what Ethan expected.

Because he knew that Evelin hated this kind of business negotiation.

But at the same time, he still said half-jokingly: "Aren't you afraid that I will sell you?"

"Do you dare?" Evelin rolled her eyes, stretched out her left hand and clenched her fist.

"I can not."

"Hmph~" Evelin hummed twice, as if celebrating victory.

And as Ethan gave in, he also stopped playing around and revealed his plan——

“Evelin, I actually think so.”

"Give the independent agent of "Snake Game" to Nintendo, and hand over the agents other than North America and independent agents to Sega."

"If they accept it, that's the best news, and if Sega doesn't accept it..."

"Then we can only strategically abandon the markets of other countries and regions."

"After all, North America and Liben together already account for more than 80% of the global video game market share. It is not cost-effective to choose Sega for the remaining sporadic markets."

Evelin had no objection to Ethan's choice.

So, after going to work the next day, Ethan called the number of Sega founder David Rosen.

When he made his proposal known, David Rosen was very unhappy and refused the leftovers given by Ethan in a stiff tone.

Moreover, he also said that other terms are easy to negotiate, except for global agency, because this is their bottom line.

Such a result made Ethan very regretful.

Since they couldn't reach an agreement, everyone had no choice but to part ways. When Ethan dialed the number left by Hiroshi Yamauchi, they learned that they had been selected and rushed to the Stanford Industrial Zone within half an hour.

"Oh Mr. Jones, I'm so glad you chose us Nintendo!"

Hiroshi Yamauchi expressed his excitement to Ethan.

"I hope we can all have a happy cooperation in the future."

Ethan stretched out his hand and shook it.

Although Ethan had reached a consensus on cooperation with Nintendo, it would be three days before they signed the contract.

The reason is actually very simple, because Liben Company likes to pick out words when signing contracts.

For unclear terms, they always like to make some written statements.

Therefore, contracts that can be completed in dozens of pages can often be completed in hundreds of pages, and for this kind of craftsmanship...

Ethan was actually very helpless.

However, this kind of pulling does not require him to personally participate. There is an external lawyer to provide specialized services. He only needs to wait for the contract to be drawn up and browse it over.

This kind of relaxation in waiting can be regarded as the good news among the bad news.

Of course, during the three days waiting for the signing, Ethan was not idle.

Sitting in his office, he wrote out all the ideas for the game "Pac-Man".

From the gameplay to the design of the monsters, not only that, he also drew the corresponding game map on the draft paper so that Evelin could make the game more easily.

And when he finished all this and handed over the project that he felt was becoming perfect to Evelin.

Evelin's eyes widened immediately after scanning a few pages.

“Oh Ethan – is this your new idea?”

"Yeah~ Isn't it awesome?" Ethan asked with a smile.

"What's so great about this special code? It's very powerful!"

Evelyn exclaimed, "Oh—my God—how could you come up with such an idea?"

"Eating all the props in the maze while avoiding the enemy's pursuit in the maze? Wow - why do I find this idea more interesting than "Snake Game"?"

"You're really a genius at coding!"

This compliment made Ethan look happy.

However, just when he thought that the plan was completed and game production was about to begin, Evelin's expression suddenly changed after turning a few pages.

"Evelin, what's wrong? Is there a problem?" Ethan didn't understand.

Evelin raised her head again, looked at Ethan with surprised eyes, and said, "Ethan, are you sure you can make this game?"

"What?" Ethan was a little confused. He didn't understand why Evelin said that.

"Pac-Man" was the game of this era, and he was sure it could be made.

His doubts made Evelin scratch her head, think for a moment, and then said: "Ethan, there is a problem with the game you designed."

"In other words, the game you designed has a big bug from a technical perspective."

"If I have to describe it, it doesn't conform to the rules of binary."

"?" Ethan didn't understand.

Note: ① Atari entered the notebook market in 1973. In 1974, they resigned and sold the company to Namco for US$5 million, so Namco later became Atari's agent in this book. This story comes from the book "Silicon Valley History". ②Nintendo had success genes when it was founded. The great-great-grandfather of the Yamauchi family was already a lime seller in Kyoto during the Edo period. He was backed by the Mitsui Zaibatsu and was rich enough to find a son-in-law for his daughter. Nintendo founder Fusajiro Yamauchi was the son-in-law, whose original name was Fukui. Their Lime Store was already the exclusive distributor in Kyoto designated by Mitsui during Fusajiro's time. Their family eats more than half of Lake Biwa's cement orders. This lime shop is still there, and its name is Haitaka. Many of the government's infrastructure projects were built by them, including the Kyoto University Hospital and the Kyoto Aquarium. ③ Murai Yoshihei is known as the King of Meiji Cigarettes. It is said that he made Tachimoto’s first standard cigarette. He has a close relationship with Yamauchi Fusajiro. ④The light gun patent does belong to Nintendo. Based on this alone, they earned 30 million US dollars a year in 1970.

Ps, today should also be a chapter. When I was writing about the making of Pac-Man, I reversed the Pac-Man bugs and the Space Invaders bugs, which was like writing in vain.