Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 89 Conspiracy?

Three hours later, at home in Palo Alto.

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

After stirring evenly, use a strainer to filter out the foam and egg tendons that cannot be mixed, then heat a pot on the stove and melt one tablespoon of butter.

Pour the egg liquid into it and simmer slowly over low heat. Turn off the heat when it is about 70% to 80% cooked.

Sprinkle white pepper on the soft, tender and milky scrambled eggs, then remove from the pan, serve on a plate and bring to the restaurant.

When Ethan pushed the last dish of scrambled eggs to the table, a sumptuous dinner of steak, salad, clear soup and scrambled eggs was ready!
If it were in his previous life, after cooking this fragrant dinner, Ethan would definitely take out his phone to take a photo and post it on WeChat Moments. He wanted to let his friends know that his cooking skills were still pretty good.
But now, without the Internet and social platforms, we can only entertain and appreciate ourselves.

Oh no!
There is clearly someone next to him!
Why is there no feedback at all!

"Hei~hei~hei~Give me some reaction! Dinner is ready!"

Looking at the figure who was holding the document and reading it hard, Ethan started snapping his fingers.

This call made Evelin look up sharply at the dining table.

She first looked at Ethan blankly, then lowered her eyes and instinctively glanced at the table. When the beautifully presented and tempting dishes appeared, she suddenly realized and praised him belatedly: "Oh Ethan, are you done? This is really hard for you~"

'...'

"What a perfunctory response."

Ethan curled his lips, his unhappiness written directly on his face.

Evelin understood what he meant and quickly changed her words, putting her hands together in front of her and opening her eyes wide to pretend to be sincere.

"Oh my God - what a wonderful dinner - and all my favorite things -"

"Oh Ethan - did you do all this just for me? Oh thank you so much -"

'...'

Ethan felt a little suffocated by the hypocritical look.

And the deliberately suppressed voice made Ethan smell the scent of tea.

“Okay, okay, okay.”

Unable to bear it any longer, he raised his hands in surrender, “Evelin, please let me go, I don’t need your praise, let’s eat.”

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

Evelin laughed at the helpless look.

Get up and move the chair.

The girl sat down next to Ethan in an instant.

Then he shook the documents in his hand and explained with a smile: "Oh Ethan~ Don't be angry~ It's not that I want to ignore you~ It's mainly because the intended plans in these two cooperation agreements really surprised me~"

"Really!" she emphasized. "The terms in these two plans are so exaggerated! Fifteen million dollars? A twenty million dollar contract is given out of the blue? Wow! Do they have money? Or do other countries in the world really have such a big game market?"

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

After all, "Snake Game" is not just his game. If it is really released overseas, Evelyn will definitely know about it.

His caution earned Evelin's seriousness, but when the girl opened the document and read it carefully...

The dazed look just now appeared.

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

After moving Evelyn's plate back in front of her, Ethan raised his knife and fork and started cutting the steak.

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

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

"Giving us money for nothing?"

"Isn't this a mental illness?"

"That's right." Evelyn felt that what Ethan said made sense.

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

At the same time, she added, "I guess you don't have any plans to run your own business in this matter, right?"

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

Evelyn was right!

Regarding the overseas distribution rights of "Snake Game", Ethan really intends to sell it.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to do it himself, but they don’t have the ability to do so now.

"Of course!"

As Ethan forked the cut steak into Evelin's plate, he nodded and said, "We are not qualified to talk about overseas self-operation right now. I learned about it when I was working at Milova. Sega spent 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 throwing away your concerns and setting up a factory directly?"

"That's even more impossible."

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

“They’ve already blown up.”

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

So, he started to think about exporting games in order to gain global benefits.

The first stop is Liben, where the national economy is performing very well.

However, after they confidently established a branch in Liben and invested millions of dollars in it, they discovered that Liben was a very closed market that did not welcome strangers to invest.

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

then……

Atari had no choice but to accept the loss and leave.

When millions of dollars failed to bring in the corresponding market, Ethan, who had no money in his pocket, naturally could not think about overseas distribution.

Ethan had told Evelyn this story before.

So when he mentioned it again, Evelin burst into laughter when she recalled it all.

"Yeah~Yeah~Yeah~"

"I understand."

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

"Why not?" Ethan said in a serious tone. "Our colleagues have already set a wrong example. All we can do is to pay high tribute to their dedication and express our sincere regret for their failure."

At this point, Ethan winked at his sister.

“Goose, goose, goose…” Evelin was so amused by the insulting words.

He threw the document away, picked up the knife and fork and started eating steak.

When the taste of the dish was close to nine-tenths rare, her brows instinctively furrowed.

After glancing at the cross-section of the steak and looking at Ethan who was eating with relish, 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 froze there, with a look of confusion on his face.

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

"If we 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 we look at the depth of a single market, I would choose Nintendo. Because Liben is the world's second largest electronic game consumer market after North America. Deep exploration in this market can bring us greater profits. Nintendo is such a company that has the ability to deeply explore the Liben market, because this company has been operating in Liben for nearly a hundred years."

“What?” Ethan’s words surprised Evelin.

“Is Nintendo so awesome?”

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

That’s right, Americans of that era actually didn’t know about Nintendo, or in other words, before Mario started the toilet repair craze, few people in the entire America had ever heard of the name Nintendo.

But this is normal.

After all, Nintendo at that time was still focusing on developing its own market and had not officially extended its tentacles to America.

But... the lack of understanding by the indigenous people did not mean that Ethan, the time traveler, would ignore it. While sorting out his memories, he introduced the awesomeness of Nintendo to his sister.

"Nintendo was founded in the last century. At the beginning, it was engaged in the business of Hana-Zha playing cards, which was unique to Liben. At its largest scale, it could even be said to have monopolized the entire Liben Hana-Zha playing card market."

"After reaching the top in a single field, they tried to expand into new businesses and introduced our country's playing cards to Liben. Because there was no company in Liben doing the playing card business before, their introduction naturally gained an inherent monopoly advantage."

"Not only that, they also reached a cooperation with Disney, obtained the 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 toy field and tried to develop toys. Their company had an engineer named Gunpei Yokoi, who invented several toys that sold over a million units a year. For example, the light gun that came with the MILO Odyssey was invented by him. This product alone can bring Nintendo tens of millions of dollars in operating income a year."

"WTF? Did they make Milova's light gun?" Evelyn was very surprised by the news.

Ethan smiled and nodded, saying, "Yes, they made that light gun."

The light guns in the two people's mouths are actually the light gun peripherals in shooting video games. When a target appears on the TV screen, the player holding the light gun aims and pulls the trigger, and then the target on the TV can be shot directly.

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

The inventor was Gunpei Yokoi.

“Wow…this is really…too unbelievable…” Evelyn said with emotion.

She didn't expect Nintendo to be so powerful.

As Ethan continued to talk, curiosity began to grow in her heart, “Ethan, how do you know so much?”

Although it was a question, she also gave her own guess, "Could it be that you have been paying attention to them when Mi Luohua was working?"

"I guess so." Ethan smiled at his sister.

"So you mean to choose Nintendo?" Evelyn continued to ask.

The next second, she came up with a new question.

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

"Why would they show up at the same time? At the same time, buy the publishing rights to Snake Game from us?"

"I don't know why Sega appeared at this time, but I wonder... could the appearance of Nintendo be related to Mirohua?"

"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."

"Mirowa 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 made Ethan very confused.

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

But after he cleared his memories of his past life, he felt that this was most likely a coincidence.

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

If he remembered correctly, it was a course about financial investment. During the class, the teacher introduced to them the blue chip stocks that had been long held by government pension funds in various countries. When talking about Liben, the teacher specifically mentioned Nintendo.

Because for many years, Nintendo has been a money-making machine in the country, second only to Toyota.

When exaggerated price-to-earnings ratios appear for more than a decade, analyzing their development history has naturally become something that financial professionals like to do.

There is no way, after all, finance is about trying every possible means to find rules in an industry without rules.
Through the teacher's analysis, Ethan also understood why Nintendo was successful.

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

Hold on to a good thigh.

Because the Yamauchi family, who created Nintendo, started out following the Mitsui Zaibatsu!
Afterwards, when selling Hanafuda, they directly clung to the thighs of Tobacco King Murai Yoshibei!
When Ethan recalled this fact, he realized that he was worrying too much.

No matter how much Milova brags and how dissatisfied you are with him, you can't move Nintendo!

Because Nintendo doesn’t make games, it is also a monopoly enterprise!

Mi Luohua wants to order it?
It would be better to go get a key!
Does it deserve it?
As for Sega...

They had just been sued by Milova, how could both parties possibly cooperate in a friendly manner?
Of course, Ethan couldn't tell Evelyn about this.

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

And Evelyn...

She is not interested in such corporate gossip either.

After Ethan had paid attention to these things, she no longer thought about other things. She just nodded slightly to show that she understood, and then said directly: "Since you think it's okay, then you can make the decision yourself. Just tell me directly when you want to sign."

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

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

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

“Do you dare?” Evelyn rolled her eyes and stretched out her left hand and clenched her fist.

"I can not."

“Hehe~” Evelin hummed twice, as if celebrating her victory.

As Ethan gave in, he also put away his playful thoughts and told his plan -

“Evelyn, I actually thought so.”

"The agency for Snake Game will be given to Nintendo, and the agency for all other games except North America and Liben will be given to Sega."

"If they accept, that would be great news, but if Sega doesn't accept..."

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

"After all, North America and Liben combined already account for more than 80% of the global electronic game market share. Choosing Sega for the remaining scattered market is not cost-effective."

Evelin had no objection to Ethan's choice.

So, the next day after work, Ethan called Sega founder David Rosen.

When he expressed his proposal, David Rosen was unhappy and rejected the leftovers given by Ethan in a harsh tone.

He also said that other terms were negotiable except for the global agency term because it was their bottom line.

Such a result made Ethan very regretful.

Since they couldn't come to an agreement, everyone had to part ways unhappily. When Ethan dialed the number left by Yamauchi Hiroshi, they learned that they were chosen and rushed to the Stanford Industrial Park within half an hour.

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

Yamauchi expressed his excitement to Ethan.

“I hope we can have a pleasant cooperation in the future.”

Ethan extended his hand and shook it.

Although Ethan had reached a consensus on cooperation with Nintendo, it took three days for them to sign the contract.

The reason is actually very simple, because Liben Company likes to be picky about words when signing contracts.

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

Therefore, contracts that could normally be written in dozens of pages can often be written in hundreds of pages. As for this kind of craftsmanship...

Ethan was actually very helpless.

However, he does not need to personally handle this kind of negotiation, as there are external lawyers to provide such services. He only needs to review the contract after it is drafted.

This kind of relaxation during waiting is good news amidst the bad news.

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

Sitting in his office, he wrote down 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 Evelyn could make the game more easily.

And when he finished all this, he handed over the plan that he thought was close to perfect to Evelyn.

Evelin’s eyes widened immediately after she scanned a few pages of paper.

"Oh Ethan - is this your new idea?"

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

"How can this be so amazing? This is extremely amazing!"

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

“Eat all the items in the maze while avoiding enemies? Wow, why does this idea seem more interesting than Snake Game?”

"You're such a genius!"

This compliment made Ethan look happy.

However, just when he thought that the plan was complete and the game production was about to begin, Evelyn, who had flipped through a few pages of paper, suddenly changed her expression.

"Evelyn, what's wrong? Is there a problem?" Ethan was a little confused.

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

"What?" Ethan was puzzled. He didn't understand why Evelin said that.

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

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

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

“If I had to describe it, it wouldn’t conform to the binary rules.”

"?" Ethan didn't understand.

Note: ① Atari entered the Japanese market in 73, but they admitted their losses and left in 74, selling the company to Namco for $70 million. That’s why Namco later became Atari’s agent in Japanese market. This story comes from the book “History of Silicon Valley”. ② Nintendo was born with the genes of success. The great-great-grandfather of the Yamauchi family was already a lime seller in Kyoto during the Edo period, backed by the Mitsui Zaibatsu, and was rich enough to find a son-in-law for his daughter. Nintendo founder Yamauchi Fusajiro was a son-in-law, originally named Fukui. During Fusajiro’s time, their lime shop was already the exclusive Kyoto distributor designated by Mitsui. More than half of the cement orders for Lake Biwa were consumed by their family. This lime shop is still there, and its name is Huixiao. Many infrastructure projects of the Japanese government were undertaken by them, including the Kyoto University Hospital and the Kyoto Aquarium. ③Kichibei Murai was known as the king of Meiji cigarettes. It is said that he made the first standard cigarette of Tachibana. He had a close relationship with Fusajiro Yamauchi. ④The patent of the light gun is indeed owned by Nintendo. With this alone, they made million US dollars in one year in .

P.S., today should also be a chapter. When I was writing about the production of Pac-Man, I mixed up the Pac-Man bug and the Space Invaders bug, so it was essentially a waste of time.

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(End of this chapter)