Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 139 False alarm? Trap?
'COLOR TV GAME 6?'

'What the hell is this?'

Ethan Jones frowned, his bright eyes filled with endless surprise.

Because he couldn't search his brain for any past life memories related to this machine!
In his impression, isn’t the first generation of game consoles released by Nintendo the Famicom?
And when did all that happen?
After the Atari crash, mid-eighties?
With Mario Bros. as their flagship game, they crushed all other game makers as soon as it was released! Then, they swept the world with overwhelming force!

Because Nintendo was so powerful in that era and was the first company in the gaming industry to surpass other game manufacturers, Ethan Jones, as a gamer, knew this history by heart. But now... before Nintendo came out with the Famicom, it actually had other console products?
He seems to have never heard of this matter!
Was this thing fanned out by his butterfly wings? Or did it already exist in history?
Ethan Jones was a little confused. He really couldn't figure out the situation now.

And when he forced himself to suppress the surprise and uneasiness in his heart, picked up the newspaper and read the contents on it, the report with black words on a gray background made his eyelids twitch!
Because the report says:

[When the Star Wars game of Destiny exploded the American game market and attracted countless people to stop and play in the streets, the editor of this newspaper also became curious about the historical achievements of the game producer Ethan Jones. Because in our memory, every time Ethan Jones launched a game, it would explode the entire North American continent. His creativity and imagination made us amazed...]

[While we were collecting data, planning and summarizing, trying to get the real achievements of Ethan Jones since his debut, we found that the two games he launched before "Star Wars" had been successfully sold overseas, and the comic books in the East had taken root. In order to ensure the completeness of the data, we specially contacted the media related to comic books, and then we learned an amazing news...]

[Two months ago, Snake was a best-selling game in Japan, dominating the Japanese game market like a giant. The little green snake could be seen on the streets of almost all cities. But since the beginning of last month, that is, June 6st, its popularity has been completely overshadowed by Nintendo's new products, COLOR TV GAME 15 and COLOR TV GAME ...]

[Since the names of these two products are too straightforward, we will not introduce what they are. The numbers after the names represent the number of games installed on the machine...]

[Since these two products are currently only available on BenZhi, we did not get their prototypes before the article was published. However, according to BenZhi media, these two products were sold out as soon as they were launched. Both the machine performance and the game content have been widely praised...]

[What is most popular among Japanese people is actually their prices. Among them, COLOR TV GAME 6 with six games is priced at 15 yen, and COLOR TV GAME with games is priced at yen...]

【Just these two figures may not make many people understand how cheap they are, so we want to tell you that the average annual income of Japanese people last year was 15 million yen, and they only need to spend % of their annual income to buy a COLOR TV GAME . As such, their current sales may exceed in a month, right?】

[However, even if they sell well, we are not worried that Nintendo will enter our country like Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, because we have Ethan Jones and Destiny. When Star Wars arrives in our country, I think everyone there will surrender to it.]

Although the entire press release was written from the perspective of promoting the Game of Destiny, and although a lot of flattering words were used throughout the press release to praise Ethan Jones, when words like "it sold out as soon as it was launched" and "sales exceeded 100,000 already" appeared in front of Ethan, he still felt as if there was a heavy hammer in the void, hitting him hard on the back of the head!
Admittedly, the sales volume of 100,000 game consoles is not impressive in later generations, because the top-selling consoles all sold billions of units, but this was 1977!
Before the Internet age arrived, information dissemination still took time, and game delivery was inseparable from disk carriers, how could a home console sell 100,000 units as soon as it was put on the shelves?
This can be considered as a market explosion!
"What's going on?"

"Can anyone tell me what's going on?"

Ten minutes later, in the meeting room of the Destiny Game.

Ethan Jones waved the newspaper in his hand and angrily asked the company's financial director: "Alan Massey! Aren't Nintendo's financial statements sent in monthly, quarterly, and annually?"

"They have already used MOS 6502 chips on such a large scale, why don't we know about it? Did you not report it to me, or did they not reflect it in the report at all?"

"ah?!!!"

Ethan Jones roared in anger!

After a few seconds of pause, he continued: "I know this is my personal business! But I also paid you a separate salary for being the agent for this part of the business, right?"

"After such a big anomaly appeared, didn't you warn me?"

Ethan Jones was so angry that he couldn't even speak clearly.

So far, Ethan Jones and Nintendo have a total of three collaborations in two areas, namely the agency of "Snake" and "Pac-Man" in terms of content, and the production of MOS 6502 in terms of hardware.

Among them, the agency of "Snake" is a personal collaboration between Ethan Jones and Nintendo. Because when the contract was signed, "Snake" had not registered for copyright, but applied for legal protection in the form of a temporary patent. The applicants at the time were Ethan Jones and Evelyn Johnson, two independent individuals, so the income in this regard belongs to their personal income and does not need to go through the company's account.

Later, when Professor Barbara Babcock told them that Disney had become a huge success and that registering the copyright in the name of the company would provide better legal protection, Ethan Jones asked Julis Noble to register the copyright for Snake in the name of the company.

But even if the rights holder has changed, the nature of the previously signed contract will not change due to the time sequence. Moreover, the company is theirs, so the arcade business income of "Snake" in the book still belongs to the personal income of Ethan Jones and Evelyn Johnson, and it is actually difficult for the company to manage the accounts in this regard.

However, Ethan Jones felt that it was troublesome to hire another accountant, and the copyright of Snake was currently owned by Destiny. To have an independent accountant manage his personal income would require multiple meetings and communications with the company, which was a very troublesome process. Therefore, after learning that California employment regulations did not prohibit company finance from acting as an agent for the boss, he handed these matters over to Alan Massey and gave him another salary separately. The same was true for MOS 6502.

In Ethan Jones's view, this all-in-one approach allows him to effectively understand everything without having to constantly summarize reports from all parties due to fragmentary information. It is also because under his operation, the information has been highly aggregated, so when he found out that Nintendo had actually released a home console, his instinctive reaction was to hold him accountable and ask Alan Massey how he read the reports.

But when the angry questioning voice appeared, Allen Massey acted very aggrieved.

"Boss, this matter has nothing to do with me!"

“The agency contracts for Pac-Man and MOS 6502 were both signed last August!”

"And in the financial statements I got for the past ten months, they haven't been officially put into production at all! As for the reason... that's what you told me. You said that they said it would take time to build a factory, and they knew that the launch of Pac-Man would definitely affect the revenue of Snake, so they decided to officially launch the arcade machine of this game after August this year..."

Alan Massey spread his hands.

Although his father worked for Ethan's uncle and Evelyn's father, Thomas Johnson, for many years, it did not mean that he was willing to take the blame for this inexplicable crime.

And his words also made Ethan stunned for a moment.

Then he slapped his forehead and sat down.

Yup!

When discussing cooperation last year, Yamauchi Hiroshi did tell him that he wanted to "squeeze out" all the value of the game "Snake". He would not launch the "Pac-Man" arcade machine when "Snake" was popular in the notebook. He would launch a new game after the daily sales of "Snake" began to decline.

And this time should be one year.

The specific time point was August 1977.

More importantly, Japan does not have its own advantages in CPU production. The reason why MOS was able to reduce the production cost of chips is that they used new machines developed by PerkinElmer instead of the old ones from Kodak. The equipment for projecting circuit diagrams onto wafers is easy to purchase in America, but if you want to ship them to Japan, you must go through a series of approvals. Nintendo and MOS can handle all of this, but it takes time. By the time those machines are shipped to Japan, it will take at least half a year. Therefore, specific production should start this year.

When Ethan heard these arrangements, he had no objection.

Because at that time, Yamauchi Hiroshi assured him that even if the "Pac-Man" arcade machine was not sold, when they settled the revenue for the first half of last year this year, they would give him a sales commission in advance based on the shipment volume of 10,000 units to show Nintendo's great sincerity.

But now...

Is the sincerity gone?
Nintendo developed its own home console behind his back?
But this doesn’t make sense!
How did Nintendo come up with COLOR TV GAME 6502 and COLOR TV GAME 6 when they couldn't even get the MOS 15 themselves?
Ethan Jones couldn't figure it out.

He felt that no matter how stupid Yamauchi Hiroshi was, it was impossible for him to purchase chips from other companies to produce home consoles after obtaining the chip production rights, right?

"I'm sorry, Aaron, I was so angry."

Thinking of this, Ethan Jones immediately apologized to Alan Massey.

"Oh, boss...it's okay...I'm actually quite surprised too..." Alan Massey shook his head and said, "The appearance of this machine from Nintendo is really weird."

Just as Alan Massey said, at this moment Ethan Jones just felt that those people at Nintendo were like ghosts. Why did they launch two home consoles inexplicably?
Since the two consoles are currently only sold in books and there are no products of theirs in North America, almost no one knows their true situation. So Ethan Jones asked Julis Noble to contact the newspaper that published the news immediately to obtain more information.

Soon, she invited the editor of the San Francisco Daily to play the game of fate.

But unfortunately, their intelligence did not satisfy Ethan——

"Mr. Jones, we did this special report just to tell the public how great you are. Our original intention was not to investigate what new game products have appeared in the notebook. And what does the appearance of game products in the notebook have to do with us? No matter how well those machines sell in the notebook, they can't cross the ocean to come to our market because we have you to support us here! Therefore, we don't know what Nintendo's machines are like."

"We only know how much their machines are priced at and how many units they have sold. As for the rest? The last digit of the machine number represents the number of games installed in the machine..."

Ethan Jones was speechless after hearing these words.

As a media outlet, you started reporting without finding out the details of the matter?

Where has your professionalism gone?

But Ethan Jones also knew that now was not the time to get angry, so he smiled and nodded to express his gratitude, and then asked Julis Noble to give him some travel expenses.

After sending the other party away, Ethan Jones began to scratch his head again, because he found that the whole thing seemed to have reached a dead end.

He wanted to know the information on the notebook, but he had no channels.

'What should I do?'

'Should I go there myself?'

'Go buy these two machines back?'

This thought popped into Ethan Jones's mind.

Then, his eyes became brighter and brighter.

Although this idea seemed unreliable because he didn't understand Japanese, and according to the people in the San Francisco Times, Nintendo's machines were sold out in the notebook. Even if he made a trip, he might return empty-handed, but... he could ask others for help!
Aren’t Hollywood blockbusters often released in book form?

Didn’t Spielberg’s Jaws cause a sensation in the book?

Shouldn't we be able to get some information from them?

Thinking of this, Ethan called Spielberg directly and decided to continue to fleece the international director. When the other party learned that Ethan seemed to be backstabbed by his partner, this guy who was grateful to Ethan for the cooperation on "Star Wars" immediately said -

"You want to know about the new Nintendo machine?"

"no problem!"

"We have a publishing company at Universal Books! I'll have someone go and help you investigate right now!"

Spielberg answered readily, but his actions were actually even faster.

Four days later, Spielberg's driver, who had met Ethan before, came to the Game of Destiny and delivered a suitcase-sized package to Ethan.

"Mr. Jones, Mr. Spielberg asked me to give this to you. He said everything you want is here, and he had the Universal script staff memorize it directly."

This fact made Ethan overjoyed. He thanked him repeatedly and couldn't wait to open the box.

Then he saw three small boxes.

Among them, there are two orange-yellow paper boxes, printed with the Nintendo logo and the COLOR TV GAME 6 and COLOR TV GAME 15 logos respectively.

The other box was the size of a book and had no packaging.

After opening it, a black videotape appeared in front of Ethan.

Without hesitation, Ethan inserted the videotape into the projector. After a burst of snow, Nintendo's new product promotion advertisement appeared on the TV screen.

Like all TV commercials, Nintendo's new product promotion ads are just introducing its products to the public. Although Ethan doesn't understand Japanese, he can understand the images, and when the new product display segment appears, his frown finally relaxes.

Because he discovered that no matter whether it was COLOR TV GAME 6 or COLOR TV GAME 15, they were not CPU game consoles like the Famicom, but the most primitive circuit board game consoles!
This fact made him feel relieved.

After he disassembled the game console that Spielberg brought, connected it to the Sony TV, and plugged in the power adapter, the various ball games such as "Squash", "Tennis", "Football", and "Table Tennis" installed in the game console appeared, which made him put his mind at ease, as he had been worried for several days.

"Damn it! It was just a false alarm!"

Ethan threw the game console casually and leaned back in his seat.

"I thought Nintendo had released the FC ahead of schedule! Turns out it's an Odyssey?"

"Hey! What a piece of crap!"

That's right!

The reason why Ethan was nervous was that he was scared by Atari's New Generation and MILO's Apollo!

He thought that with the flapping of his butterfly wings, Nintendo had released the FC ahead of time!

If COLOR TV GAME 6 and COLOR TV GAME 15 are really early-release versions of FC, he would be extremely anxious now!

Because during his trip to the island country last year, he witnessed the birth of the four giants of Nintendo with his own eyes!
In his previous life, those people were able to dominate an era despite starting late and bring Nintendo to the top of the gaming world. But now, under his stimulation, the global gaming market has already shown infinite potential in advance. What if Nintendo gets started on time at this time?

What will the consequences be?

He didn't even dare to think about it!
Fortunately, it was all a false alarm. Nintendo did not tinker with their "home computer" in advance, and after defeating Atari and Magnus, Ethan Jones still had time to develop his own console. From a certain point of view, he was still "far ahead" in the entire battle.

"It's okay, it's not a big deal..."

"This almost scared me to death..."

Just as Ethan was sighing that Nintendo might be really awesome, but it couldn't be more awesome than a hacker like him, because he at least had a world in his head...

Leaning back in his seat, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

"Wait a moment!"

He came to his senses and sat up straight again.

“Are COLOR TV GAME 6 and COLOR TV GAME 15 circuit board game consoles?”

"And it's loaded with ball games?"

Ethan muttered.

At this moment, he seemed to be a blind monk who had discovered a highlight, staring at the display on the TV. The game display, which was almost identical to Mirowa's Odyssey, made his breathing rapid again!

"MFxxk!"

"This is not a COLOR TV GAME!"

"This is clearly the Milowa Odyssey!"

"Nintendo released a book version of MILOVA Odyssey?"

"Fuck!"

“I’m afraid there’s something seriously wrong with this product!”

Ethan Jones' pupils contracted.

he thinks……

It seems like I have been cheated!
And they were cheated by a gang of people!
Because he remembered!
The MILO Odyssey machine is equipped with Nintendo's light gun!
"Grass!"

Note: ① In reality, Nintendo did release the COLOR TV GAME product on June 1977, 6. This series was Nintendo's first game console series and a very successful series. The entire series sold 1 million sets, and the sales volume of COLOR TV GAME 300 was 6 sets. This number seems small now, but it was very impressive at the time. MILO Odyssey sold only 30 sets in three years. Nintendo did start the chip and circuit board projects at the same time. ② The machines that improve the CPU yield rate were not banned from sale in America at that time. Ricoh directly purchased the projection mask burning machine after obtaining the MOS license. There is no embargo bug here. ③ Universal's distribution company is called CIC (Cinema International Corporation), which was jointly established by Universal and Paramount and was born in 35. This is the global distribution company of Universal and Paramount in Hollywood. It still exists now, but it is called United International Pictures.

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(End of this chapter)