It had been a week since Midnight Cowboy opened. A week of sold-out shows, and hysterical headlines.
Duke drove past the main gate of Paramount, flashing his badge at a security guard who looked more like a riot policeman than a underpaid movie lot guard.
Outside, a group of about thirty protesters were marching in a tight, angry oval.
They held signs painted in stark black letters, 'STOP THE FILTH', 'PARAMOUNT PEDDLES PORNOGRAPHY', and 'HOLLYWOOD IS A SEWER'.
One woman, wearing a respectable Sunday hat and clutching a rosary, locked eyes with Duke as his car rolled through.
She shouted something about "saving the children," but the heavy glass of the Lincoln Continental eliminated her shout.
Duke didn't look away. He respected the passion, even if he disagreed with their premise. In 1969, the idea of a culture war wasn't as prevalent as in his part time but it was still a thing.
He parked his car and walked up to the administration building with air conditioner, the heat was getting to Duke. Luckily his limp leg had stopped it's pain since he stopped being on cold states and he could walk normally now.
As he walked toward Robert Evans' office he heard Evans yelling at somebody.
When Duke walked in, Evans was on the phone, pacing around the office. He was holding an iced tea in one hand and the receiver in the other.
"I don't care what the Archbishop said!" Evans barked into the phone. "The Archbishop isn't buying tickets!"
Evans listened for a moment, his eyes darting to Duke. He winked.
"Sid, listen to me. The 'X' rating is the best thing we have. We can't cut a single frame or we lose the credibility. We hold the line. Yes. Yes. Alright. Goodbye."
Evans slammed the phone down and let out a laugh that was half-manic, half-exhausted.
"Too many people are panicking looking at the Midnight Cowboy success," Evans said, collapsing onto his leather sofa.
"I wanted to push for a wider release, but in the bible belt most theater owners said that if they show the movie, their local sheriff could raid the projection booths on obscenity charges."
"Let them wait until the box office becomes bigger and they will willingly come ask for the film," Duke said, pouring himself a glass of water. "Also... a raid is front-page news material."
Evans pointed a finger at him. "That's exactly what I told the board. But they're too indecisive, Duke."
Duke sat down in the armchair opposite Evans. "The numbers don't lie. What's the gross?"
"We broke the house record at the Coronet again last night," Evans said, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper. "People are sitting in the aisles. We have scalpers selling tickets for twenty dollars. Twenty dollars, Duke! For a movie!"
Evans leaned forward, his face serious now. The showman mask slipped a little, revealing the brilliant strategist underneath.
"But it's not just the money. The critics... Kael, Sarris... they're using words like 'masterpiece.' They're saying it's the most important American film of the moment."
"And the morality groups?" Duke asked. "The people outside the gate?"
"I'm ignoring them, let them march," Evans said, waving his hand dismissively.
Evans stood up and walked to the window, looking down at the protesters.
"Although," he mused, "I did have to hire extra security for my house. One of them sent me a Bible with all the pages that said 'sodomy' highlighted in red marker. It was actually quite thorough research."
Duke laughed. "At least they're reading."
"So," Evans said, turning back. "The movie is a hit. The controversy is burning hot. I'm busy fighting here. What are you doing? You've been absent this week. Hiding out in that warehouse of yours?"
"Something like that," Duke said. "Still thinking about my next project."
"Oh?" Evans raised an eyebrow. "The boxer film or the war film?"
"I haven't decided," Duke said, standing up.
Evans also hurriedly told him the news. "In your boxer film, you needed an african american guy right? What about OJ Simpson, the number one pick on the draft, his agent says he's open to accepting roles."
Duke just said "No" and left
An hour later, Duke was in a different world.
The new Atari facility in Malibu was the factory of their arcade venture.
It wasn't a "factory" in the Ford Motor Company sense.
It was a 10,000-square-foot converted fruit packing shed that smelled of apple and sawdust.
The sound inside was deafening. It was the sound of circular saws cutting plywood.
Duke walked onto the floor.
Nolan Bushnell was standing in the center of the chaos, holding a clipboard.
"We're out of the 7400-series logic chips!" Nolan shouted over the noise as Duke approached. "Texas Instruments is backordered! We have five cabinets sitting there with no brains!"
"Call Motorola," Duke said, not breaking stride. "And if they can't do it, call Fairchild."
"Fairchild is expensive," Nolan argued, wiping sweat from his forehead. "If we use their chips, our margin drops."
Duke stopped and looked at the assembly line.
It was a crude setup. A dozen long tables where local hires, some college students and an out-of-work machinists were assembling the Pong cabinets.
On the left, sheets of cheap particle board were being cut and glued into the iconic upright shapes. In the middle, the guts, a messy tangle of wires, a power supply, and the TV tube were being shoved into the wooden husks.
On the right, the finished machines were being slapped with yellow vinyl stickers and tested.
Blip. Blip. Blip.
The sound of a dozen machines being tested at once created a rhythmic, electronic heartbeat that filled the cavernous space.
"Nolan," Duke said, "We now have the demand. I have a distributor from Chicago on line, asking for ten units. There's a guy in Florida who wants exclusivity for the entire state. I have a chain of bowling alleys in the Midwest asking if we can paint them red."
Duke tossed the board back into the bin.
"We don't care about a what? Four percent margin on the chips? We care about speed. Every day a cabinet sits here unfinished is a day it's not collecting quarters. And right now, we hold a monopoly of the machine creation, but soon we wont."
Nolan took a breath, nodding. "Okay. I'll call Fairchild. But we have another problem."
"What?"
"The coin mechs. We switched to the galvanized buckets like you said, so they aren't jamming anymore. But the businesses... they're getting greedy. That pizza place in San Jose called. They want to buy the machine outright. They don't want to split the coin drop 50/50 anymore."
Duke smiled. It was the classic "razor and blade" problem, inverted.
"No," Duke said firmly. "Were not selling the machines. Not yet. We lease them. We keep the ownership. If they don't want the split, we pull the machine and put it in the pizza place across the street."
"Trust me, Nolan. Once the kids find out where the machine is, the customers will follow. We have the leverage."
Duke walked over to a finished unit. It was rough around the edges. The wood grain vinyl was peeling slightly at the corner. The control felt a little loose.
"Quality control," Duke muttered. "We need to tighten this up. If a kid kicks this, it needs to break his foot, not the cabinet."
"We're learning as we go, so some mistakes are expected" Nolan defended.
"Just make sure it works," Duke said. "I'm going to the office. I have some design work to do."
The office was a room with several windows on the second floor overlooking the factory floor. It was one of the only quiet place in the building.
Duke closed the door. He sat down at his drafting table. It was covered in graph paper, schematics, and half-eaten plates of food.
He turned on the desk lamp.
He opened a flat file drawer and pulled out a stack of sketches.
He wasn't an artist, but he could draw well enough to convey an idea. He spread four drawings out on the table.
Sketch #1, Sonic, The hedgehod.
Duke looked at the drawing and then down at the schematic for the Pong circuit board.
"Impossible for now," he whispered.
To make Sonic work, you needed a processor that could scroll a background. You needed color—vibrant blues and greens. You needed memory to store the complex maps.
If he tried to make Sonic in 1969, it would just be a blue dot moving sluggishly across a black screen.
He moved the sketch to the Reject pile.
Sketch #2, Pikachu.
A chubby, yellow rodent with jagged ears and a lightning bolt tail.
Duke tapped his pencil on the table. Pokémon wasone of the greatest IP's of all time in hs past life.
But it relied on the social aspect of monster collecting, and also relied on a database of 150 monsters, each with stats, moves, and types.
A Pong machine had no memory. It couldn't save your game.
"Too complex," Duke decided. "The hardware isn't enough yet."
He moved Pikachu to the "Reject" pile. Wait for handhelds.
Sketch #3, Spiro, The Purple Dragon.
A small, winged dragon with horns.
This was a 3D platformer.
"Decades away," Duke sighed, "I could always adapt the game to the current hardware."
Sketch #4, Pac-Man.
A simple yellow circle with a triangular wedge missing.
Duke stared at this one.
It didn't require complex physics or scrolling backgrounds. It was a maze. A character. Four enemies. Dots.
Technically... it was possible. Maybe not on the current boards they were using for Pong, but on a slightly more advanced Z80 microprocessor setup? Yes.
But there was a problem.
Color.
Pac-Man needed color. The ghosts needed to be red, pink, cyan, and orange to differentiate their AI behaviors. If you did Pac-Man in black and white, you couldn't tell Blinky from Inky.
And right now, color monitors were prohibitively expensive for arcade cabinets. They were finicky, prone to magnetic distortion, and cost five times as much as a black-and-white TV.
Duke leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes.
If he released a black-and-white Pac-Man now, it would be a sluggish, confusing mess. People would play it once and forget it. He would burn the IP for nothing.
"No mascots," Duke whispered to the empty room. "Not yet."
He gathered the sketches up. These characters had to stay in the dark a little longer.
He took a fresh sheet of paper.
He drew a stylized "A". Three lines. Two curved, one straight. It looked like a mountain. It looked like a Japanese character.
ATARI.
"The brand is the mascot for now at least," Duke decided.
In 1969, the technology itself was the star. The fact that you could control a TV screen was the magic. They didn't need a cartoon to sell it.
There was a knock on the glass.
It was Nolan again. He looked happier.
"Duke! I got a hold of a surplus supplier in Oakland. They have 500 7400 series chips from a failed military contract. We can keep the line moving!"
Duke slid the sketches into his drawer and locked it. The secrets were safe.
"Great work, Nolan," Duke said, opening the door.
___
Short Chapter, but i'm on a friends house so can't write much