Hong Kong films: From street thugs to Hong Kong financial tycoons

Chapter 119 The Countdown to Despair: A Global Strike by Dimensional Reduction!

Hong Kong, Mong Kok, Golden Dragon Arcade.

A full week has passed since that all-black monster descended.

During this week, Boss Fat B felt that his mental state was on the verge of collapse.

He originally thought that this broken machine, which didn't even show the game screen, was just a novelty to attract attention, and that people would only look at it for a short while and then leave.

But he was very wrong. It was Friday night at eight o'clock, which should have been the busiest time for arcades and the loudest coin-operated games.

But now the Golden Dragon Arcade has a strange atmosphere. The hall is still crowded with people, even more than twice as many as before. Even outside the door, there are gangsters and students standing on tiptoe to peek inside.

However, those Japanese-imported arcade machines that could have made Fatty a fortune were completely empty. Street Fighter...

The Double Dragon display screen flickered forlornly, with no one tossing in even a single coin.

Everyone's eyes were drawn to the pure black "Primordial: King of Fighters" machine in the very center of the arena, as if drawn by a magnet.

The machine was locked, and the expensive flat-screen display showed nothing but a bright red countdown.

[47 days, 11 hours, and 23 minutes until the descent of the gods.]

"Tick-tock".

"Tick-tock".

The countdown wasn't actually very loud, but in this quiet, oppressive environment, it felt like a heavy hammer, striking everyone's hearts again and again.

"Gulp."

A blond-haired teenager swallowed hard, clutching a handful of game coins soaked with sweat.

"Brother B—this machine still won't accept coins today? I just want to touch the joystick, is that alright?"

"Screw you! Didn't you see it says 'locked' on it? Can you afford to pay for it if you break it?!"

Fat B sat behind the cashier and cursed angrily, but his own eyes were also fixed on the machine.

This is a terrifying form of psychological marketing, commonly known as "training the eagle."

Lin Yao didn't bother with a massive, widespread campaign of "GG" (a derogatory term for being defeated).

He simply threw this monster with its dimensional-lowering appearance directly into the lowest-level player group, then used that ten-second miraculous self-check screen to shatter their worldview, and then stopped letting them play.

What you can't have always stirs your heart. For the past two weeks, and for the next two weeks, these players have been watching the countdown every day, their minds filled with crazy fantasies of the visceral, visceral Chinese martial arts.

Their appetites and their expectations are being raised to an unhealthy degree.

"Damn Yaosheng Technology—this move is too ruthless—"

Fat B looked at the pitifully small amount of revenue in the drawer and felt like crying.

Players are so eager to play this amazing machine on Chinese New Year's Day that they're not willing to spend a single penny on other machines, and they're all keeping their pocket money tightly in their pockets.

What Fatty B didn't know was that this despairing countdown to the end of the game wasn't just happening in his small arcade.

At the same time, in Osaka, Japan, at the Capcom Corporation headquarters building.

An emergency board meeting is being held on the top floor of this building, which represents the pinnacle of global arcade fighting games.

The heating in the conference room was on full blast, but all the board members, including President Kenzo Tsujimoto, felt chills and even had some difficulty breathing.

At the end of the long conference table, a bulky television was playing a low-quality VHS videotape on a loop.

This videotape was secretly filmed in an arcade by a corporate spy they sent to Hong Kong, who took great risks.

The footage captured was the ten-second self-check sequence from "Primordial: King of Fighters".

"Snapped!"

Development Department Director Yoshiki Okamoto slammed his hand on the table, his once arrogant face now contorted with utter disbelief.

"This is impossible! This is absolutely a fake, a scam orchestrated by people from Hong Kong!"

Okamoto Yoshiki, like an enraged beast, pointed at the Erlang Shen on the screen, who was unleashing a sonic boom cloud, and roared.

"President, board members, please use your common sense to think about this!"

"The motherboard of an arcade machine is just a simple circuit board and a few memory chips. How could it possibly run this level of real-time 3D graphics?"

"Our Capcom's latest CP system substrate can display 2D pixels in dozens of colors, which is already the pinnacle of the industry."

"The images from their machine are completely photorealistic; this would require the most advanced supercomputer to render for months."

Only then can it be made.

"Squeezing a supercomputer into an arcade machine and then distributing it on the street for free? That's utterly absurd!"

'

Okamoto Yoshiki's loud shout echoed in the conference room.

The Japanese gaming industry leaders present nodded in agreement; in their understanding, this indeed defied the common sense of physics and economics.

Hong Kong's game industry has always been synonymous with knock-offs and shoddy products. How could they possibly come up with such cutting-edge technology that is a century ahead of them overnight?

"Okamoto-kun, calm down."

President Kenzo Tsujimoto, sitting in the main seat, had his hands crossed on the table, his face so gloomy it looked like it was about to drip water.

"Is the videotape fake?"

Kenzo Tsujimoto turned to look at the head of the intelligence department.

The head of the intelligence department suddenly stood up and bowed deeply at a ninety-degree angle, his forehead covered in cold sweat.

"President, the videotape was absolutely unedited and untouched by any special effects. Our people watched that machine run with their own eyes!"

"And—and—"

The head of the intelligence department swallowed hard, his voice trembling.

"And what? Tell me!"

"Moreover, this machine, named 'Primordial Chaos,' has appeared not only in Hong Kong—"

The head of the intelligence department took out a thick report and handed it to the president with trembling hands.

"In the past week alone, these black machines have appeared simultaneously in major arcades and shopping malls in cities around the world—the total number exceeds 100,000!"

"boom!"

This number was like an atomic bomb, detonating directly in Capcom's conference room.

One hundred thousand units—what does that mean? It means that Yaosheng Technology isn't just creating hype or using one or two machines to scam investors; they genuinely possess the terrifying industrial capacity to mass-produce this technology!

Kenzo Tsujimoto suddenly stood up, grabbed the report, and began to read it quickly, his face growing paler with each reading.

"Force feedback damping joystick with built-in miniature subwoofer resonance, completely abandoning traditional collision volume judgment and adopting a real-time physical skeleton center of gravity calculation system —"

Kenzo Tsujimoto muttered to himself, each professional term feeling like a knife stabbing into his heart.

"How do we fight this?"

An old director leaned back in his chair in despair, his face ashen.

"Our Street Fighter is still working on how to make the pixelated characters' fists look more powerful."

"And this Yaosheng Technology, they directly recorded the actual power exertion movements of China's top martial arts masters into their computers!"

"This isn't a game; it's a machine that teaches Chinese martial arts. Compared to their overwhelming power, our games are nothing but a pile of laughable pixelated garbage!"

Despair, a bottomless despair. The hegemony that the Japanese gaming industry had built up over decades was like a sandcastle on the beach, instantly washed away by the tsunami stirred up by Lin Yao, leaving not even a trace.

"Contact Lin Yao of Yaosheng Technology immediately!"

Kenzo Tsujimoto gritted his teeth and gave the order to kill.

"No matter the cost, we must obtain the licenses for their underlying engine and motherboard hardware."

"Otherwise, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, not only will the Pan-Asian Alliance in Hong Kong perish, but our entire Japanese arcade industry will also be buried with it!"

Meanwhile, in Central, Hong Kong, at the headquarters of Yiu Shing Bank.

In the chairman's office on the top floor, Lin Yao was sitting on the large leather sofa, slowly brewing a pot of Kung Fu tea.

The aroma of tea is wonderful and refreshing.

"Boss, just now the presidents of Capcom and SNK from Japan were making a lot of international calls to our company, even offering to give up 30% of their shares in exchange for the technology license for our Loongson motion capture rendering engine and arcade board."

Chen Zheng stood to the side, holding a thick stack of letters of intent, his tone revealing a triumphant and triumphant feeling.

"About half a year ago, when we went to these Japanese guys to talk about importing games, they wouldn't even let us in the door, thinking we were country bumpkins. Now look what's happened, they're all kneeling at our door like grandsons."

Upon hearing this, Lin Yao didn't even lift his eyelids. He picked up the small purple clay teacup, took a slow, deliberate sip.

"Thirty percent of the shares? They really think I'm a junk collector."

Lin Yao sneered and put down his teacup.

"Old Chen, what did I tell you before? The content of Chinese martial arts belongs to the whole world; I absolutely will not apply for a private monopoly."

"It's profitable, but this algorithm and hardware ecosystem used to support martial arts can only belong to the Lin family!"

"Tell those Japanese guys that I will not sell any of my core technologies, nor will I authorize them to conduct any secondary development at the underlying level."

Lin Yao stood up, walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at the bustling steel jungle below. His eyes revealed a cold indifference, as if he were looking down on all living beings.

"If they want to make fighting games, they can bring their designed game characters and money to the Yiu Shing Digital Industrial Manufacturing Base in Tai Po Industrial Area."

"My computing farm can be charged by the second to help them render graphics, and my high-precision machine tool can help them manufacture arcade machine frames."

"From this day forward, I will make every action game company in the world a downstream worker of Yaosheng Technology. They will earn their meager wages, while I will extract the industrial tax of an entire era!"

Chen Zheng gasped in shock. He finally understood what this half-year-long plan was all for.

Lin Yao wasn't aiming to win a particular business battle; he wanted to overturn the chessboard and force everyone to sit at the table with the rules he had redefined.

"Boss, what about those 100,000 arcade machines all over the world? There are still more than 50 days until Chinese New Year. Are we just going to leave them with black screens like this?"

Chen Zheng swallowed and asked.

"Yes, let them stay dark."

Lin Yao turned around, a cruel smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Let that countdown of despair and anticipation spread like a plague to every player during these fifty days."

"I want to exhaust all the viewers, players, and those old-fashioned tycoons this winter!"

"Midnight on the first day of the Lunar New Year".

Lin Yao glanced at the perpetual calendar on the wall.

"With the movie's release, 100,000 arcade machines will be unlocked simultaneously, and blind boxes of related merchandise will go on sale globally. I'm going to use this unprecedented, saturation-style bombardment to teach the world a lesson!"