In years past, he would have had to wait until the end of the month for the latest gaming magazines to hit the shelves, or scour the newsstands for tattered, well-thumbed weeklies.
The webpage finished loading.
A bold headline at the top caught his eye:
"N64 Priced at $199; Gaming Industry Enters Three-Way Standoff."
"Blizzard Announces Diablo; Battle.net System Now Free."
"Square's Four-Disc RPG Stuns the Crowd."
The text was sparse, devoid of images.
Tommy leaned closer to the screen, reading each short update word for word.
The two or three hundred words Paul had typed were far more thrilling to Tommy than any long-form article.
The $199 price point shattered all previous rumors of Nintendo's new console being prohibitively expensive. The four-disc capacity challenged players' very understanding of game size. And for PC gamers who had long endured the tedious setup of LAN battles, the free Battle.net system solved a major headache.
Tommy grabbed the cordless phone from the table and dialed a number he knew by heart.
After seven or eight rings, someone finally answered. Josh's groggy voice mumbled from the other end.
"What time is it, man? We've got a Macroeconomics midterm tomorrow morning."
"Forget about economics," Tommy said, wedging the phone between his shoulder and ear while his hands continued to refresh the page on the keyboard. "The N64 is only $199. Nintendo's new console."
Silence hung on the line for two seconds, followed by the dull thud of a bedspring.
"Are you drunk, or still dreaming?" Josh's voice sounded much more awake.
"Silicon Valley Online's E3 Express Column. A reporter on-site just uploaded it half an hour ago." Tommy scrolled down the page. "And there's more. Square made Final Fantasy VI a four-disc set."
"Four discs? Did they stuff a Hollywood movie into the game?"
"Who knows. The reporter said it's going to completely ignite 'capacity anxiety.' And Blizzard, the company that made Warcraft, they've got this thing called Battle.net that offers free WAN matchmaking."
Josh swore on the other end. "Free? That piece of crap 3D0 game still charges me over ten dollars a month in subscription fees. How does Blizzard plan to make money?"
"Who cares? Free is the best. Hurry up, turn on your computer and go check it out."
"My crappy computer just broke yesterday," Josh urged, "Quick, read it out loud. What else is there? What about Sega?"
Tommy clicked on another link. "Sega's console press conference is scheduled for tomorrow. But today they showcased a Tecmo fighting game called Dead or Alive. It uses the Sega Model 2 Arcade Board. The reporter's exact words were that the visuals are maxed out, and it's mostly fan service."
"Fan service?" Josh seized on the key point. "Are there any photos?"
"No photos. All text. If you want to see photos, you have to wait until the end of the month to buy the E3 special issue of Computer Gaming World."
"Those bloodsucking reporters," Josh cursed. "See you at the cafeteria tomorrow noon. You have to print out the webpage for me to see."
After hanging up the phone, Tommy checked the time: 10:25.
He pulled out his address book again and dialed another best friend's number.
In 1996, having first-hand gaming information was equivalent to having the capital to walk sideways in one's social circle.
This kind of pleasure of showing off was even more direct than beating a high-difficulty game.
The same scene was playing out in every corner of North America.
The first wave of gamers to be hit by this flood of information were those with internet access.
They eagerly became voluntary broadcasters, using telephone lines to relay the heart-pounding news to everyone they knew.
Across the Pacific in Tokyo, it was 2:00 PM.
At the same time, in a cramped server room in Beijing's Zhongguancun, a few 386 computers hummed.
A college student wearing thick glasses tapped away at his keyboard in the GAME section of the SMTH BBS.
He had just struggled through the CERNET overseas gateway to reach Silicon Valley Online, manually translating a few English posts about E3.
Less than five minutes after he posted, over a dozen replies had already flooded in.
"199 dollars? That's 1,600 yuan. With the scalpers' markup, Zhongguancun will probably sell it for 3,000."
"A four-CD RPG? My hard drive is only 850MB. How big could this game possibly be?"
"Blizzard's Battle.net sounds amazing. We play Warcraft on LAN in the server room, and the IPX protocol settings are a nightmare. To be able to match and play directly online is like a dream."
In 1996 China, the number of people who could access the internet was already small, and those who could see first-hand gaming information from across the ocean were a tiny minority.
The bespectacled college student watched the reply count climb steadily. He pushed up his glasses, his vanity immensely gratified.
He reread the English description of Sega's Dead or Alive several times, finally typing into the translation field: Tecmo's new title, developed on Sega hardware. Stunning graphics. Rumored to feature a large number of eye-catching female character animations.
He didn't dare translate the suggestive content too bluntly; the BBS moderators were strict.
The information traversed half the globe, spreading through the gaming community with unprecedented speed.
While traditional gaming magazine editors were still in hotels, layouting and proofreading for an expedited print run two or three days later, the tentacles of the Internet had already silently crept into thousands of homes.
Those brief lines of text, devoid of flowery language or polished formatting, rapidly ignited the players' passion.
The number of replies on the BBS surged visibly. Some analyzed the cost of four optical discs, others questioned the stability of the free Battle.net system, but most were already cheering for the upcoming new console war.
After finishing his fifth phone call, Tommy slumped into his chair, his throat parched.
From the dorm hallway, the muffled shouts of other students and the ringing of phones echoed faintly. Tonight, many were like Josh—their sleep-deprived minds buzzing with a restlessness that made rest impossible.
The webpage on his screen remained crude and basic. Yet, behind its rough layout, a massive online community was taking shape, forged by the burgeoning network. Players were no longer isolated islands passively waiting for magazines to feed them information; they were now active participants in its spread and discussion.
Without a second thought about how this would affect his sleep, Tommy took a sip of his cold coffee and tapped the F5 key to refresh the page. He was eager for the reporter to post something new—even a single sentence or a single number would be enough to brag about to his classmates tomorrow.
On this ordinary night in 1996, the transformation of the gaming industry and the evolution of media distribution were unfolding in the most vivid way possible, right here, between the keyboards and phone lines of these young men.
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