"What nonsense are you two talking about?"
Harvey held a brand-new NES box and a copy of One on One: Johnson vs. Bird, looking suspiciously at his two friends.
They had suddenly rushed over and spent several minutes babbling about how he needed to return the NES immediately.
Wasn't that just ridiculous?
"No, seriously, man!"
Miles grabbed Harvey by the arm and started pulling him towards the counter.
"You don't understand. Another game company made a basketball game too, and it's even better than the one you keep talking about from EA!"
"Oh, so that's what this is about."
Harvey shook off Miles' hand, now he understood.
"GAMENOVA, right? I know they made one too, but EA are the professionals when it comes to this."
"And look who they signed. Kareem, who's about to retire, and Jordan, who just recovered from his leg injury."
Although Harvey wasn't much of a gamer, he knew sports games inside and out, and according to him EA achieving the quality of the new One on One was already an extraordinarily rare accomplishment.
As expected of Konami's specially designed MMC enhancement chip, it made the game's already excellent graphics even better.
"Fuck, just come with us! You'll understand once you see it!"
Realizing there was no hope of convincing him with words alone, the two simply dragged him towards the demo area.
.......
"Sometimes it takes years to build a belief, yet destroying it often takes only a single moment."
— Harvey, 1986
"The NovaBox wasn't very heavy, so carrying it home wasn't difficult at all."
— Miles, 1986
"From now on, always remember to bring money whenever you go out, especially if you're going to a game store."
— James, 1986
.......
The next afternoon, as usual, Harvey and his two friends finished their classes and headed towards the basketball court with a ball in hand.
"Hey, Harvey. I saw you three at the game store downtown yesterday."
"So, shouldn't you be hanging out with those nerds, playing video games or something? What are you doing here?"
Harvey frowned as he looked at the newcomers, the jerks from the school club.
Being targeted by them was never a good thing. If they got labeled as "nerds," they'd never shake that reputation before graduation.
If it were only himself, that would be one thing, but dragging his two friends into it would be a whole different problem.
"So?"
Miles stepped forward, shielding Harvey behind him.
"You haven't even played Double Dribble, have you? That's seriously low, man."
"Haha, this guy probably doesn't even know what a NovaBox is. Why waste our breath on him?"
James burst into laughter before taking over from Miles, looking at the other boy with mockery in his eyes.
"Hey, little Mikey, listen up! Miles and I are throwing an awesome Double Dribble tournament this weekend. All the popular guys are gonna be there. Guess who's not invited?"
"Ooh, you scared him, James."
"So what? I'd bet he won't even be able to buy one this month."
The battle between EA and GAMENOVA had been brewing within the industry for months. Nearly every gaming magazine featured discussions comparing the two.
But when the real showdown finally arrived, the winner was decided in just a single week. It was far faster than anyone had imagined.
"How many copies has One on One sold? Already over a fifty thousand? Wow, that's better than I expected."
Ethan held a Motorola mobile phone that weighed nearly two pounds as he listened to Sam's report from the other end of the line.
"And ours? Oh... how many? Half a million copies?"
"Get EVO to finalize the official Double Dribble tournament rules as soon as possible. It'll help expand the event lineup."
"As for expansion packs... judging by things, Bird's and Johnson's agents are definitely interested."
".... Sam? You still there? We'll talk more about this later. Damn, this signal is awful."
Listening to Sam's broken, intermittent replies through the poor connection, Ethan hung up.
Looking at the Motorola DynaTAC in his hand, a phone that had cost him four thousand dollars, he couldn't help but feel a headache coming on.
Damn it!
For someone accustomed to modern smartphones, using this thing was uncomfortable in every possible way.
It was basically a giant brick, taking up space wherever he put it and never fitting in quite right.
If it weren't for the commercial cellular network around Silicon Valley already being well developed, it wouldn't even make phone calls reliably.
"What the hell? It's already almost out of battery..." Ethan sighed helplessly as he stuffed it back into his bag.
No matter what, at least it was a portable communication device, so he'd just have to make do with it.
He then looked up at the building before him. It was a three-story office building, but it wasn't particularly large, with each floor measuring just over five hundred square meters.
For other companies, a building like this might not have seemed like much. But for GAMENOVA, which until recently had been a classic Silicon Valley garage startup, it was a complete transformation.
Several workers were suspended from ropes on the rooftop, installing the enormous GAMENOVA logo.
As GAMENOVA's business continued expanding, relying on that small office had gradually become insufficient. So, taking advantage of this opportunity, Ethan decided to consolidate all of the company's scattered operations into one place.
Aside from MicroNova, every other division had been relocated into this new office building.
Looking into the distance, he could see Gerald working alongside several movers, carefully carrying crates full of electronic components into the building.
The new office was located in San Francisco, technically within Silicon Valley.
It was much closer to Vivian's place than before, so now it took less than half an hour to drive over to see her. Of course, after moving into the Bay Area, it wasn't only friends who had become closer.
EA's headquarters in San Mateo was also part of the Bay Area.
"This time we really hit them where it hurt."
Ethan was in an excellent mood. Although EA's One on One had also sold more than fifty thousand copies in its first week, its growth would inevitably slow as the market became saturated.
A game's sales were usually concentrated within the first month or two after release, so that result definitely hadn't met EA's expectations, and it certainly hadn't achieved the numbers Nintendo wanted to see.
To secure this full-scale partnership, Nintendo had undoubtedly offered EA extremely generous terms, making this Minoru Arakawa's first major counteroffensive after lying low for so long.
And if GAMENOVA had chosen to compete in a different genre this time, Arakawa might have actually pulled it off.
Because in America, the influence of sports spoke for itself, and if EA had successfully secured this crucial market and established a firm foothold, removing them later would have been far more difficult than it was now.
"What a shame... EA isn't that easy to kill."
Ethan narrowed his eyes.
Although EA Sports was one of Electronic Arts' flagship divisions, that didn't mean the company would collapse without it. If he wanted to finish them off completely, he'd have to hit them even harder.
SimCity, Madden NFL, Need for Speed, any one of those franchises would be enough to shake the entire gaming world.
Sam was already negotiating the rights for Madden NFL, so there was no need to rush that one.
As for Need for Speed, it wouldn't truly be possible until the 1990s, when 16-bit hardware and 3D technology had matured.
But the Sim series was different. That ill-fated studio had once held several world-class IPs, only to watch them slowly wither under EA's management. It was something he couldn't ignore, so he had to get his hands on it.