Chapter 14

"Uncle Chuan, have a cigarette!" Shao Yongqiang saw Li Haichuan standing not far from him and greeted him politely, offering him a cigarette.

Li Haichuan was taken aback and forgot to reach out for the cigarette. Shao Yongqiang, in the posture of offering a cigarette, felt a bit awkward when the other party didn't take it for a while.

Fortunately, Li Haichuan finally reacted, took the cigarette from Shao Yongqiang with a slightly trembling hand, and managed a forced smile.

Before today, Li Haichuan was just a small figure at the bottom of Hong Kong society, but now he was receiving a cigarette from a famous gang leader in Kowloon. He knew that all this was due to the face his son had earned for him, and this sense of pride made him feel ten years younger.

Shao Yongqiang was a proud man. He had seen Li Haichuan before but never thought of greeting him. However, he genuinely admired Li Xuan, this student. In just a few days, he had come to regard Li Xuan as an equal and a friend. If he hadn't already seen that Li Xuan was not an ordinary person and that the Hele Hall was too small to contain such a great talent, he might have seriously considered pulling him into the gang.

Li Xuan's recent efforts in setting up the company and the intelligence and ability he displayed also greatly changed Shao Yongqiang's view of this previously unambitious underling. Because of these two brothers, Shao Yongqiang had a genuine respect for Li Haichuan, who had raised such outstanding sons.

Noticing his father's awkward situation, Li Xuan came to his rescue in a timely manner.

"Brother Qiang, thank you for the advance payment. Otherwise, the company's funds would have been tight!" Li Xuan had initially prepared 120,000 yuan in capital, but it quickly turned out to be insufficient when setting up the factory. Fortunately, Shao Yongqiang provided a 100,000 yuan order payment under the guise of an agent, which barely allowed him to gather all the necessary materials.

"It's my pleasure. After all, Ke is my brother, and I should thank you both for the opportunity to make money!" Shao Yongqiang also noticed Li Haichuan's nervousness and quickly understood the reason, continuing with the conversation Li Xuan had started.

"The factory has just started, and the workers are not yet proficient. It will take some time for them to get used to it. I estimate that the production speed will be quite slow for the next while. By October, it should be on track. I have already prepared three of the most popular games on the market. The original plan was to produce 100 units of each game machine per month once the factory is running smoothly.

To open a game hall, having three different game machines is enough to get things going. I will try to develop one or two more new game machines as soon as possible!" Li Xuan knew what the other party was concerned about and briefly introduced the factory's situation to Brother Qiang.

This production speed is sufficient to supply the Hong Kong game hall market, and even the Hong Kong market can't fully absorb it. Of course, Li Xuan wasn't worried about Brother Qiang. Inter-gang cooperation across regions has long existed, and as long as there is profit, Hele Hall can establish channels in Taiwan, Macau, and Southeast Asia within half a month.

After the fireworks, Keji Electronics officially started operations. Li Xuan had already roughly calculated the factory's profit. With a monthly production of 300 arcade machines, the raw material cost and manufacturing cost of each machine would not exceed 2,300 Hong Kong dollars. At a factory price of 4,000 Hong Kong dollars per machine, Keji Company could generate nearly 500,000 Hong Kong dollars in profit each month.

Of course, Li Xuan did not plan to expand the factory's scale. When your factory is small, copying a few game machines from others, the big manufacturers won't bother with you. But once you grow to a certain size, they will pressure the Hong Kong government to protect their interests.

According to Li Xuan's plan, within half a year, after accumulating a certain amount of capital, Keji Electronics would be dissolved. Then he would establish a new company and truly start his own game business.

However, it's not easy to withdraw from a partnership with Hele Hall. Li Xuan had already planned his exit strategy. He was currently designing a new game machine, which might be the one Hele Hall would prefer.

Apart from Shao Yongqiang, there were no other guests at the opening of Keji Company. Originally, Zhong Chuhong was supposed to come, but she received a call from the director last night. A few scenes needed to be reshot for an advertisement, so she had to call Li Xuan early in the morning to apologize. Li Xuan didn't mind at all. He preferred to keep a low profile and didn't want anyone to know.

"Hey, Young Master Xuan, we are busy as hell, but you are so relaxed. Being a boss is different!" Du Wenqiang noticed Li Xuan walking into the office and teased him, showing that he had a special relationship with the boss. He was actually a very perceptive person. He used to call Li Xuan "Xuan" when they interacted, but after Li Xuan hired him, he immediately changed to "Young Master Xuan." According to him, friendship is one thing, but the hierarchy must be clear, and it would be a blow to the boss's authority if he were called "Xuan" by the employees.

Du Wenqiang's main job was to burn the game programs onto the chips, which required someone knowledgeable in electronics. Actually, with Du Wenqiang's capabilities, this job was a bit of a waste.

But since the company was just starting, and Li Xuan would soon be back to school, he needed to focus a lot of his energy on his studies. The rest of the time, he would focus on developing new games, so he needed someone who understood electronic games to handle the technical side.

"Young Master Xuan, I've tested all three games on the computer using the simulator you wrote. You are amazing, they are exactly like the originals!" Du Wenqiang squinted and smiled, flattering Li Xuan.

Li Xuan had already cracked the games Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Galaxian.

When the Japanese company Taito Corporation initially designed Space Invaders, the main character was a tank. However, because they used the Intel 8080 processor, an 8-bit processor with limited computing power, the game's graphics had to be simplified to ensure smooth gameplay.

In the end, although it was marketed as a space battle, it was actually a very simple shooting game. Rows of space invaders would appear from the top of the screen and move downward. These invaders had only four shapes: saucer, octopus, crab, and squid.

The player's cannon was at the bottom of the screen and could move left and right to shoot. Above the cannon were four bunkers. The player didn't need to worry about the enemies in the columns with the bunkers; they only needed to eliminate the enemies approaching from the gaps above the bunkers.

However, the monsters couldn't break through the bunkers, but the player's cannon could destroy them. As time passed, the monsters' downward speed increased, and if the player got nervous and fumbled, they could easily destroy their own bunkers, making the area they needed to defend larger and larger, eventually leading to a Game Over.

Li Xuan had only played the 1978 version of Space Invaders once in his previous life, and that was out of nostalgia. He specifically looked it up to see what this game, which left a significant mark in the history of arcade games, was like.

Compared to other Japanese companies like Namco and Nintendo, Taito Corporation has a unique history. Its founder was a Ukrainian Jew. He named the company "Taito" to mean a Jewish company in the Far East. Taito's initial business was selling vodka imported from the Soviet Union in Japan.

By chance, Taito entered the electronic game industry and became famous, producing popular games like Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, and Thunder Force.

Space Invaders was the first shooting game in arcade history. In comparison, Namco's Galaxian, released a year later, was more playable. Galaxian borrowed heavily from Space Invaders but lacked the bunkers, and the alien ships would occasionally fly down to attack. As for the game Asteroids, Li Xuan had never heard of or played it in his previous life.

Speaking of shooting games, Li Xuan's favorite and what he considered the most classic was Thunder Force. It was a standard game in game halls, along with Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The King of Fighters. Li Xuan loved watching others play this game as a child, fascinated by the colorful bullets and the cool and flashy graphics.

This game seemed to have been released in the 1990s. Once he had the resources, he would definitely develop it first, Li Xuan thought to himself.

PS: I have uploaded images of Space Invaders and Galaxian. If you are interested, you can check out what the most popular arcade games of the 1970s looked like.

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