Video Game Empire

"Xuan Shao, you are here!"

As soon as Li Xuan stepped into the door of the game room, a pony sitting behind the cashier immediately got up and greeted him with a smile.

Li Xuan took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and threw one out: "Is Cao Sheng not here?"

In Cantonese, it is customary to call Mr. Sheng for short. Cao Sheng is the owner of this video game room. His name is Cao Mingfa. When Li Xuan came to this game room for the first time, he happened to encounter a fixed board of a game machine. The so-called fixed board is that the game suddenly gets stuck on a screen and will not move.

It just so happened that the repairman couldn't come for a while, so Li Xuan persuaded Cao Mingfa, who was present at the time, to allow him to disassemble the mainboard of the arcade machine to take a look. Li Xuan used an oscilloscope found in the warehouse to check the CPU first, and it turned out that it was really a CPU problem.

It only took Li Xuan less than two minutes to find out the problem. At that time, the boss Cao Mingfa didn't quite believe it. Later, the repairman specially hired by the game room said that it took half an hour to finally determine that it was the CPU problem.

So when Li Xuan came to this game room for the second time, he was promoted from Xuan Zai to Xuan Shao. The boss specially instructed a few cashiers that he would play for free. Of course, Li Xuan didn't come here specifically to play games.

In 1978, Taito Co., Ltd. released an arcade game called "Space Invaders", which caused a huge sensation all over the world. It was also at this time that Hong Kong began to introduce such large-scale electronic game machines from Japan, and there were the first few game arcades.

"Space Invaders" is a shooting game. Players control the plane to move left and right to fire bullets, and destroy the rows of alien monsters that move slowly downward at the top of the screen. , The King of Fighters, Street Fighter, these arcade games are a thousand miles worse.

But it is such a simple game in Li Xuan's opinion, but in this era it has attracted the attention of countless teenagers from all over the world. From Europe to North America to Asia, there are always a lot of people gathered at the door of the grocery department and convenience store. .

Compared with the American arcade market, which mainly comes from crowded places such as community convenience stores, grocery stores, gas stations, and movie theaters, Hong Kong is concentrated in specialized game halls.

The main reason for this is that the price of arcade machines is too expensive. It costs US$2,400 to import a Space Invaders game console from Japan’s Namco Corporation, which is equivalent to more than 12,000 Hong Kong dollars. Willing to spend such a large price to import.

On the contrary, a small number of bosses who have the vision and are willing to take risks bought a dozen or 20 games in one go and opened a special game room. Every day, they were full of customers and made a lot of money. Li Xuan believes that with these people who take the lead in eating crabs, jealous followers will soon flood in.

"Hey, every time Xuan Shao comes, there is Marlboro!" The cashier called A Liang, "Cao Sheng came this afternoon, and he's gone!"

"Oh, it doesn't matter if he's not here! Are there any unusable computer boards in the warehouse?" Li Xuan asked.

"Yes, two more were broken this week, only one was repaired by Pujiewen, and the other was a problem with the computer board, and it can only be repaired after returning to the factory!"

Pujiewen is a repairman hired by the game room, who can only repair some relatively simple wiring problems.

"Well, I'll go to the warehouse and have a look! Later, the strong brother from your soda shop will come to talk to me about something. When he comes, you can call me!" Li Xuan explained to A Liang that he made an appointment with Scar Qiang. Come here to talk about things.

After Li Xuan discussed with the big brother just now, Li Ke personally went to invite his big brother, and he came to the game hall first. As for why he chose such a noisy game room as the place to talk business, Li Xuan also had his own considerations. He is easy to be looked down upon at a young age, so he needs to show his professional strength, dismantling a game console in front of the big boss Scar Qiang to do science popularization, which is more convincing than empty words.

"Uh, which strong brother? Scar is strong?" A Liang is also a member of Shuifangtang. The game hall created by Cao Ming was handed over to He Andang, a man named Sijiuzai nicknamed Mad Dog, who was in charge of watching the game. one of the younger brothers.

It is said that these flower names taken by Hong Kong community figures are very vulgar, such as Mad Dog, Bo Zi Li, Da Fei, Picking Feet, etc., few of them can be appreciated by both the refined and the common.

"Apart from Scar Strong, have other strong brothers appeared in your Shuifangtang recently?"

Scar Qiang can be regarded as the most fierce and prominent eldest brother among a group of new generation characters that have emerged in He Andang in recent years. Two years ago, he was an ordinary four-nine boy with only a few younger brothers. Later, when he wanted to be promoted, the club gave him a chance to express himself. At that time, the two night clubs in Yau Ma Tei, which were trampled by other words, were given to him. He, but did not send him any additional staff, it was all up to him to fight.

Scar Qiang took three or four of his younger brothers to chop down a bunch of rotten boys who were making trouble, and robbed the two nightclubs of the right to watch the venue. Li Xuan's older brother, Li Ke, was one of several younger brothers who followed behind Scar Qiang. That night, Li Ke was stabbed on each of his left and right arms, and the wound on his right hand was even more visible to the bone. Needle, it takes more than half a year to recuperate.

Because of this incident, Li Xuan's old bean, Li Haichuan, began to strongly oppose his eldest son joining the club, and threatened to cut off the father-son relationship. Li Ke had no choice but to ask the boss to arrange a video room for him to watch the show. Although the oil and water in the video hall is far less than the richness of the nightclub, the probability that the same big trouble needs to be hacked is not high.

Afterwards, He Le Tang expanded to the east of Tsim Sha Tsui, and Scar Qiang took the lead to plant the flag for the club. It is said that he was born in Muay Thai and played invincible hands in Tsim Sha Tsui at that time. He established a strong reputation in West Kowloon, and let He Le Tang gain a firm foothold in Tsim Sha Tsui, the most concentrated Feng Shui gem in Hong Kong nightclubs. After that, the sitting hall of Heletang even opened the Xiangtang for him personally, and promoted him to double-spend red stick.

Such a ruthless and powerful person, he has a good reputation in the beginning, and he is fair and loyal, and the younger brothers are very convinced. It is precisely because of the reputation of this big guy that Li Xuan dared to borrow his big brother's mouth and cooperate with him to develop game consoles.

The warehouse area is not large, only seven or eight square meters. There are three game consoles in the corners of the side, and two of the display screens on the chassis have also been removed. Under the incandescent lamp is a large rectangular workbench, on which some switches, crank handles, resistors and other components are scattered.

Next to the workbench is a game console with its lower cover removed. This is probably the same machine that Ah Liang said before that he couldn't get it right. Li Xuan unplugged the motherboard from the socket, and then found various instruments and began to test slowly.

The biggest difference between arcade motherboards and ordinary computer motherboards is that there are neat rows of chips on it. Except for a few processor chips, which are what we call CPU, most of them are DRAM memory chips. The more refined the uukanshu.com game, the more memory chips it needs.

Li Xuan looked at the labels of the chips. Most of these memories are Intel's 6116 and 6264 chips. The storage capacity of the former is 2KB, and the storage capacity of the latter is 8KB. In 1979, Intel was still a semiconductor company focusing on three types of memory: DRAM, SRAM, and ROM. CPU was not its main business because of the small market demand.

Later, with the fierce competition of Japanese semiconductor companies, the profit of memory became lower and lower, and IBM launched the PC with Intel's 8088 processor, which started the frenzy of the personal computer era. Intel then seized this god-given opportunity and transformed itself to focus on the CPU market after 1983, so it has a series of familiar CPUs such as 286, 386, Pentium, Celeron, and Core.

After a while, Li Xuan had already figured out the problem with this machine. In the neat row of 6264 chips, two of them were probably burned out due to insufficient heat dissipation. These memory chips all contain game data, and if one cannot be used, it will affect the work of the entire machine.

In order to prevent games from being pirated, game companies strictly control parts and components. In well-established markets like Japan and the US, these jobs are naturally handled by agents. Since arcade machines have just appeared in Hong Kong, most of them are imported directly from Japan, and maintenance needs to go to Japan, which is not only troublesome but also a waste of time.

Just when Li Xuan frowned slightly, the door of the small warehouse was pushed open. Li Xuan turned his head and saw a very imposing man in a dark suit, with a flat head and a national face, who took the lead in walking in.