“I received the Magic Eye book, by the way,” Sam said.
“So…？ Did you do it?”
“No.”
“Come on, Sam. What the hell? You have to do it. Go get the book.”
Sam walked over to his bookshelf, and he took the book off the shelf.
“I’m going to stay with you on the phone until you see it. My five-year-old can do it. I’ll take you through it.”
“It’s not going to work.”
“Hold the book up to your face,” Sadie instructed. “Right against your nose.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Now let your eyes go soft focused, and slowly pull the book back,” Sadie said.
“It didn’t work,” Sam said.
“Do it again,” Sadie commanded.
“Sadie, these don’t work for me.”
“You have so many ideas about what works for you. Just do it again.”
Sam tried again, and Sadie listened to Sam breathe.
“Sam?” Nearly a minute had passed.
“I can see it,” Sam said. “It’s a bird.” His voice sounded shaky, but Sadie couldn’t tell if he was crying.
“Good,” Sadie said. “It is a bird.”
“What now?”
“You look at the next one.”
Sadie heard the rustle of a page being turned.
“We should make something together,” Sam said.
“Oh God, Sam, why would we do that? We make each other miserable.”
“That isn’t true. Not always.”
“It’s not just you. It’s me. And it’s Marx. And too much has happened, I think. I’m not even sure I’m a designer anymore.”
“Sadie, that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Thanks.”
“And there’s no way it’s true. Well, I had to ask. I always have to ask. Let me know if you change your mind.”
Naomi came into Sadie’s bedroom. “It’s bedtime!” she announced. Sadie had invented a game where if Naomi called bedtime before Sadie did for seven nights in a row, Naomi received a prize. Yes, it was manipulative and basically bribery, but it was also effective at getting her five-year-old to bed. “Who are you talking to?” Naomi asked.
“My friend, Sam. Do you want to say hi to him?”
“No,” Naomi said. “I don’t know him.”
“Okay, run along to your room, and I’ll be there in a second.” Sadie returned to Sam. “I’ve got to put my kid to bed. Good night, Dr. Daedalus.”
“Good night, Ms. Marks.”
A Donkey Kong cabinet weighs approximately three hundred pounds. The crate, which will have to be specially built, an additional fifty. Freight shipping from a residence in 90026 to a university office in 02139 will run you about $400, or a little more if you want someone to carry the machine over a threshold.
Locally, you might find a classic Donkey Kong for cheaper. This will save you significantly in shipping, but the machine won’t have the same memory. It will not know, for instance, that the best Donkey Kong player who ever played at Dong and Bong’s New York Style House of Pizza on Wilshire Boulevard in K-town, Los Angeles, had the initials S.A.M.
When the cabinet arrived in Cambridge, the machine was still functioning, but the high scores were wiped. Memory on those early machines could be volatile, even when they were supposedly non-volatile. The backup battery, if it had ever one, probably died long ago.
When Dong Hyun’s machine loaded the now empty high scores screen, Sadie could still faintly see S.A.M. The score had stood so long, it had burned into the monitor.
4
Not quite a year after Dong Hyun’s death, ReveJeux, a New York– and Paris-based gaming company, approached Sam and Sadie about the possibility of making a third Ichigo. ReveJeux had several big hits, most famously The Samurai’s Code, a stealth and parkour-style game about a non-gendered team of Samurai. Sadie and Sam both had admired this game, and so they decided to fly to New York to take the meeting.
The group from ReveJeux was young, as people in gaming tended to be, and, in Sadie’s estimation, Sam and herself were the oldest people in the room by at least five years. How quickly you go from being the youngest to the oldest person in a room, she thought.
ReveJeux were self-described “huge fans” of Ichigo, and they wanted to preserve the style and emotion of the original game while using the technical firepower of today. Marie, an earnest Frenchwoman who appeared to be seconds out of college, was the team’s leader. She spoke of Ichigo with rising emotion in her voice. “I want you to know: Ichigo is the game of my heart. But ever since I played Ichigo as a young teenager, I have always felt that the story of Ichigo is incomplete,” Marie said. “More than anything, I want to see Ichigo grow up.”
In Marie’s proposal for the third Ichigo, Ichigo is now a salaryman, the Japanese version of a suit who takes the train and works a nine-to-five job. Ichigo has a wife and a young daughter. When the daughter goes missing, Ichigo must shed his salaryman skin to go find her. He must once again don his number 15 jersey to set off on another adventure. The game’s narrative would be split between Ichigo and Ichigo’s daughter. Marie saw Ichigo as a Peter Pan character, and she wanted to make the story as emotional and immersive as Uncharted or Journey.
“I must know,” she said. “ Why have you never made a third Ichigo? The game is so brilliant. And you both are so brilliant.”
Marie’s colleague, a man in aquamarine glasses, answered for them. “I imagine they have been busy doing other things,” the man said to Marie. On a second look, Sadie decided the man in the glasses might have been her and Sam’s age after all.
If they agreed to let ReveJeux proceed with a sequel to Ichigo, Sadie and Sam would be involved as executive producers, and the game would be a coproduction of the two companies. Sadie and Sam would consult, but the work would largely be done by the team at ReveJeux.
At the end of the meeting, Marie gave them a zip drive with a sample level of the third Ichigo that her team had put together. “It isn’t finished,” Marie warned. “I need you to know, if you give me the honor of letting me make a new Ichigo, I will treat it like it is my child.”
On the cab ride back to the hotel, Sam asked her, “So, what do you think? Do you want to let them have it?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “They’re a great company. I liked Marie, and I liked what she was saying, and Ichigo will be sixteen next year. I know people routinely license old IP. Still, it’s strange to think of someone else making our game.”
“It is strange,” Sam agreed.
“But I’m circumspect about it. It could be great. If they make a third game, we could take the opportunity to update and re-release the old Ichigos, bring them to a new audience.”
Sam nodded.
“I’m starving. Let’s get food and think about it,” Sadie said.
They had not spent any time together for years, and at first, the conversation was as stilted as at any business dinner. There were long pauses, as Sam or Sadie tried to figure out the next thing they might discuss.
“I heard you’re making interactive fiction, or something?” Sam said.