Chapter 13

After Li Xuan confirmed the cooperation details with Brother Qiang, he registered a company. Registering a company in Hong Kong was very simple; it only required paying a few hundred dollars for business registration, and the business license would arrive in about half a month.

Li Xuan, the founder of the company, did not use his own name but instead wrote Li Ke. Cracking Japanese games to produce pirated versions was an illegal act of infringement, although patent protection in Hong Kong in the 1980s was not as strict as it would be in the future.

However, Li Xuan would never leave a stain on his record. The current approach was just a temporary measure. He had countless classic games in his mind, and after accumulating a certain amount of capital, he definitely planned to create original games. Compared to the small market in Hong Kong, Japan and North America were the vast oceans where he intended to soar.

Arcade games were just the first step in his grand plan. With the continuous development of computer technology, arcade games, except for the Japanese market, had been largely replaced by computer games in the United States by the 1990s. In his plan, he aimed not only to be a game tycoon but also a computer and semiconductor tycoon. Apple, IBM, and Intel were the giants he intended to compete with in the future.

Since the company's owner was listed as Li Ke, Li Xuan took the opportunity to be a hands-off boss, focusing solely on game cracking. He left all the company setup matters to his older brother.

At first, Li Ke was very hesitant. He was good at drinking, fighting, and chasing girls, but running a company and being a boss was a first for him. Initially, he was very cautious and sought Li Xuan's advice on every matter.

After a few times, Li Xuan finally got annoyed. He had never started a business before either, and his experience in this area was not much greater than his brother's. So when Li Ke came to him again for advice, he scolded him. Everyone has a first time; even Lee Ying-tung, who started as a coal worker, eventually became a billionaire.

After being scolded by his younger brother, Li Ke had no choice but to tough it out. Human potential is boundless; the more you push, the more energy you can unleash. Although Li Ke was not as academically inclined as his brother, he was not stupid; he had just lacked a clear goal in life and indulged himself.

In contrast, compared to Li Xuan, who was a tech-savvy Silicon Valley golden-collar worker in his previous life and a studious bookworm in this life, Li Ke had a better understanding of society and could navigate through all kinds of people and situations.

Who would have thought that a marginal figure in society could set up a small factory framework in less than a month? He rented a factory space in an industrial building, hired employees, and ordered raw materials according to the list provided by Li Xuan. By the end of August, all preparations were in place. Li Xuan couldn't help but look at his older brother with new respect; he believed that if he had been tasked with this, he wouldn't have done as well.

On a sunny day at the end of August, a small factory named Keji Electronics Manufacturing Company officially opened on the fifth floor of the Mei Xing Industrial Building in Kowloon's Kwun Tong Industrial Area. The opening ceremony was not grand; only two strings of 50,000 firecrackers were set off downstairs, and a few flower baskets were placed at the factory entrance on the fifth floor.

The number of employees hired by the electronics factory was not large, less than thirty. Half of them were ordinary young workers responsible for assembling frames and other labor-intensive tasks. The other half were skilled workers Li Ke had poached from other electronics factories at a high price, specializing in technical tasks like soldering chips. This was something an ordinary person couldn't master in a month; a slight mistake during soldering could damage the chip or circuit board, causing significant losses.

There was also a young man named Du Wenqiang, a technician specifically hired by Li Xuan. He was the cousin of Liu Heshen, the owner of an electronics shop Li Xuan knew, and had just graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic College.

Li Xuan had bought a used Z80 card from him. In the era before personal computers were widespread, those who played computers were mostly electronics enthusiasts or technicians in the field.

Du Wenqiang was one of the former; he studied law at the Hong Kong Polytechnic College. The Hong Kong Polytechnic College was only a higher college, able to award advanced diplomas. After graduation, Du Wenqiang could only do odd jobs at a law firm. Most of the famous lawyers in Hong Kong came from the University of Hong Kong, and the rest from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Li Xuan didn't think Du Wenqiang would become a famous lawyer. Compared to the handsome Xu Wenqiang from the TV series, Du Wenqiang was not particularly attractive. He was short and had a big belly, with small eyes that squinted into slits, making him look very sleazy. If he stood in court to defend, it would be hard for the judge and jury to believe he represented justice.

Despite his humanities background, Du Wenqiang had excellent computer skills. His father was a technician at a toy factory and often took him to the factory when he was young, fostering a love for hands-on work.

As Du Wenqiang grew older, he became bored with simple toys like wind-up frogs and started assembling radios, which sparked his interest in electronics. Li Xuan couldn't understand why he chose to study law.

Many large arcade games, when cracked, often experienced lag due to data loss and other issues. Many game companies also included suicide programs to prevent piracy, making the cracking process very delicate and requiring high technical skills.

However, the arcade games of the time were relatively simple, and the manufacturers had not yet been troubled by piracy. Li Xuan found the cracking process very straightforward. In just half a month, he had already cracked and copied the three most popular arcade games of the time: "Space Invaders," "Asteroids," and "Galaxian."

In his previous life, Li Xuan, during his elementary school years, barely caught the last glimpse of the golden age of arcades in China. At the time, internet cafes were just beginning to appear, and internet fees were very high. In comparison, game arcades, where two tokens cost one yuan, were more popular. As an orphan, Li Xuan didn't have to worry about his parents scolding him for going to the arcade, but being an orphan also meant he couldn't save pocket money to buy game tokens like other children. He could only stand by and watch enviously.

By the time he reached middle school, the internet cafe craze brought on by "Legend" had swept across the country, and arcades began to disappear from cities, with only a few remaining by relying on gambling machines like fruit machines and horse racing machines.

Perhaps because of his childhood resentment of not having the chance to play, Li Xuan, after entering university, specifically wrote an arcade game emulator to play through all the classic arcade games. Some games were so difficult that even with walkthroughs, he couldn't complete them, so he modified the game settings to give himself infinite lives and invincibility, creating various cheats to break the balance.

Later, when Li Xuan went to the United States for his master's degree at the University of California, Berkeley, which, along with Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay Area, was one of the most famous comprehensive universities on the West Coast of the United States. Unlike Stanford, which produced many CEOs and entrepreneurial heroes, Berkeley was known for producing various technical geniuses and geeks.

Li Xuan's roommate was also an avid gamer. During their time at university, they used the motherboard of a Nintendo FC home console as a base, bought various parts like wood and a monitor, and spent three days building a bar-style arcade machine.

Anyone who has played arcade games knows that regular arcade machines are over a person's height and very heavy, but their homemade bar-style arcade machine was only half a meter tall, used a 14-inch TV monitor, and could be placed on a desk, making it very portable.