On the Atari R&D lab in El Gato, Duke Hauser stood at the center of the main lab, leaning over a drafting table where someone had unrolled a large map of Asia. The map was not decorative.
It was covered in red circles, blue arrows, and hand-scrawled annotations in at least three different handwriting styles, each one marking a location where an unauthorized clone of Atari technology was being manufactured, distributed, or sold.
There were a lot of circles.
Stanley Jaffe stood to Duke's left, his legal pad balanced on the edge of the drafting table, his pen hovering over a column of figures that he kept updating as new information arrived.
Nolan Bushnell stood to Duke's right, his Hawaiian shirt slightly more subdued than usual, and his expression caught somewhere between professional concern and personal affront.
"Elepong," Bushnell said, tapping a red circle over Osaka. "Manufactured by Taito. It's not even a good clone, the paddle response is sluggish, the ball physics are inconsistent, and the sound effects are just plain bad. But it's cheap. They're selling it at sixty percent of our price point, and the operators in Tokyo and Osaka are buying it because they don't know the difference."
"And this one?" Duke pointed to a cluster of circles around the Kanto region.
"Pong Tron. That's Sega. Better build quality than Taito, Sega's seems to have real engineering talent. Their clone is close enough to the original that if you put them side by side, a casual player might not notice the difference. They're in about two thousand venues across Japan and spreading into South Korea and Hong Kong."
"What about Taiwan?" Jaffe asked, his pen never stopping.
"Taiwan is the Wild West," Bushnell said, running his hand through his beard. "Small-shop manufacturers turning out knockoff boards by the hundred. No branding, no quality control, just raw circuit boards that approximate our architecture well enough to run a basic game. They sell them to operators in Southeast Asia who build their own cabinets out of plywood and hope."
Duke studied the map in silence. The red circles formed a group that stretched from Tokyo to Taipei to Seoul to Hong Kong to Bangkok.
In a certain way, it was a compliment, nobody cloned a failure.
The existence of Elepong and Pong Tron and the nameless Taiwanese knockoffs was proof that video games had a big market.
"The open licensing deal with the FTC handles the domestic market," Duke said. "Five percent royalty, non-discriminatory terms, everyone pays the toll. But that only works if we can enforce it within U.S. borders."
"Out here" he swept his hand across the Pacific "we're fcked."
"Our international patent coverage is thin," Jaffe confirmed. "We filed in the UK and West Germany, but Japan has its own patent system, and our filings there are still pending. The Japanese Patent Office moves way too slow."
"Which means these companies are operating in a gray zone," Duke said. "Not quite infringing under Japanese law, not quite safe under international treaties. They know it. We know it. And every day we wait is a day they build market share, generate cash flow, and develop the manufacturing expertise to eventually compete with us on our own turf."
"So? Let's sue them," Bushnell said. It was less a suggestion and more of a reflex.
"We sue them and we undercut them," Duke said. "Suing alone takes years. Japanese courts are slow, and the companies will string out the litigation while they keep selling. By the time we get a judgment, they'll have made enough money to pivot into new products and the market will have moved on."
He straightened up and looked at Bushnell. "Nolan, I want to set up Atari-Japan."
Bushnell's eyebrows rose. "A subsidiary?"
"A joint venture. We find a local manufacturing partner, someone with factory capacity, supply chain relationships, and an understanding of the Japanese distribution system."
"We set up a co-owned entity that manufactures Atari-branded cabinets locally, using Japanese components and Japanese labor, and we sell them at a price point that makes the clones less economically irrational."
"Undersell the knockoffs."
"Not undersell them, since we won't have a race to the bottom but price enough to make them less atractive. If a Japanese arcade operator can buy a genuine Atari cabinet, with the Atari name, the Atari quality, the Atari warranty for the same price as a Taito clone, why would he buy the clone? He wouldn't. The clone market collapses under its own weight, and we absorb the Japanese arcade sector."
Bushnell was quiet for a moment, his mind running calculations. "The margins would be tight at that price point. We'd need to manufacture at Japanese efficiency levels to make it work."
"Which is exactly why we need a local partner. Japanese manufacturing is the most efficient in the world right now. Their quality control, their just-in-time production systems, their ability to optimize a factory floor, it's decades ahead of what we're doing here."
"I know some people at Namco," Bushnell said slowly. "Masaya Nakamura, he runs the company. Small company, mostly coin-operated amusement rides, but he's smart and he's ambitious and he's been asking me about video games."
"Set up the meeting. I want to be in Tokyo within sixty days."
"What about the legal side?" Jaffe asked. "If we're setting up a joint venture in Japan, we need to file our patents there immediately."
"And we need to structure the Joint Venture so that the intellectual property stays in our hands, the Japanese partner gets the manufacturing license, but the patents remain Atari property."
"Agreed. Lloyd Rich's firm can handle the patent filings. I want the structure to be clean, Atari holds the IP, the JV manufactures under license, profits are split according to the ownership ratio."
"And here's the key, Stanley the JV doesn't just serve Japan. It serves Asia. South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines. Every market where the clones are currently operating."
"We manufacture in Japan and distribute regionally, using the Japanese logistics infrastructure to reach markets we can't efficiently serve from California."
"A Pacific distribution," Jaffe said, his pen moving rapidly.
"And eventually, that distribution extends further. Latin America. Europe. The Middle East. Atari feeding a global distribution network, with every unit carrying our patents and our brand."
"I want every component used in a video game in Asia stamped with our patent numbers," Duke continued, "We take the market before they can fight back."
Jaffe closed his legal pad and capped his pen. "I'll start the logistics analysis today. Manufacturing costs, shipping routes, tariff structures, currency conversion. We'll need to account for political sensitivities, some members of Congress aren't going to love the idea of a major American company manufacturing in Japan."
"Some members of Congress aren't going to love anything we do," Duke said. "That's what congressmen are for. We make the economic argument that we're not moving American jobs overseas."
"We're adding Japanese capacity to serve markets that American factories can't reach. Every unit we manufacture in Tokyo is a unit we wouldn't have manufactured at all, because our domestic lines are already at capacity serving the U.S. market. We're growing the pie, not splitting it."
"And if the political pushback gets serious?"
"Then we hire a lobbyist. But let's cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, the priority is getting Atari-Japan established before Taito and Sega build enough market share to challenge us on the console front."
Bushnell folded up the map and tucked it under his arm.
"I'll call Nakamura tonight," Bushnell said. "Tokyo is sixteen hours ahead. If I catch him at breakfast, we might have a handshake by lunch."
___
Love Field Airport sat in the July heat like a griddle, Duke Hauser stepped off the plane and felt the heat hit him like a wall.
He sometime wished to be born in Montana where there's only snow, animals and a few people. Good weather and no technology.
Dallas, Texas. July 1971.
He knew this city from both his past life and his 'new' life.
Duke picked up his bag and walked toward the terminal. The air conditioning inside hit him, and he stood in the cool, corridor for a moment, adjusting.
He was here for a reason. There was business to do.
Duke hailed a cab and headed downtown.
The Dallas Petroleum Club was exactly what its name implied, a club for men who had gotten rich pulling liquid money out of the ground.
Duke was shown to a private room overlooking downtown. A bottle of Maker's Mark stood on the table beside two crystal glasses, already poured.
Robert Folsom was waiting.
Folsom was a big man in every sense, six-foot-three, broad through the shoulders, with hands the size of a dinner plate.
Of course, Duke didn't fall behind standing at 6'5.(MC will play Leatherface and Darth Vader)
He was forty-five years old, a real estate developer of considerable success, a pillar of the Dallas civic establishment, and the lead owner of the Dallas Chaparrals, a professional basketball team that was currently, by any honest accounting, a disaster.
"Connor Hauser," Folsom said, rising and extending one of those big hands. "I've been reading about you. The Hollywood papers say you're The Boy Wonder of Paramount."
"A pleasure to meet you Mr. Folsom," Duke said, shaking the hand and noting his firm grip.
They sat. Folsom pushed a glass of bourbon toward Duke. "I hope you don't mind. I took the liberty."
"I never mind bourbon."
"A man of taste." Folsom took a sip and settled back in his chair. "So... You flew all the way from Los Angeles to talk about a basketball team that can't fill a high school gymnasium."
"I did."
"Well, I appreciate the trip. Most people trying to buy something from me do it over the phone. You're either very serious or very bored."
"I'm very serious."
"The Chaparrals," Folsom said. "Let me be honest with you, Duke. I love this team. I love basketball. I love the idea of professional sports in Dallas. But the ABA is..."
He searched for the word. "The ABA is a beautiful idea with no money. The league is hemorrhaging cash. Half the teams are on life support. The Chaparrals play in a venue that seats eight thousand and we're lucky to fill three thousand on a good night."
"The players are talented, but they're playing for peanuts compared to the NBA, and the best ones keep jumping ship."
Duke asked the most important part. "What are your losses?"
"Last season? About fifty thousand. The season before that, twenty.five. It's sustainable since I've got the real estate income to cover it, but it's not fun. And my partners are getting restless. A couple of them want to move the team to San Antonio. Better market, they say. With more support."
"And you?"
"I'm a Dallas man. I don't want to move the team. But I can't keep pouring money into a pit, and I can't do it alone. So when your people called and said Duke Hauser wanted to talk Chaparrals, I was curious. What does a Hollywood mogul want with a failing ABA basketball team in Dallas, Texas?"
"I was born here and I want to buy the team outright. Six hundred thousand dollars. Cash."
Folsom blinked. Then he laughed.
"Six hundred thousand," Folsom repeated, shaking his head. "Duke, that's, look, I appreciate the offer. It's a fair number. Hell, it might be a generous number given our financials. But I've got partners. I've got obligations. I've got-"
"You've got a team that nobody wants, in a league that might not exist in five years, playing in a building you're embarrassed to bring sponsors to."
"I'm offering you a clean exit. Cash. No contingencies. No earn-outs. No complicated ownership structures. You sign the paper, I wire the money, and you walk away."t.
"Why?" Folsom asked. "And I want the real answer, not a press-release answer."
"The real answer is that I believe professional basketball is going to become one of the most valuable entertainment properties in the world. In twenty years or maybe sooner."
"I will advocate for the NBA and ABA to merge, the economics demand it. And when they do, every ABA franchise that survives the merger becomes an NBA team."
"And an NBA team in the fourth-largest media market in the United States is going to be worth..." Duke paused for effect. "Significantly more than six hundred thousand dollars."
"And you think the NBA is going to let you keep the ABA team during merger cause of your media holdings..."Folsom leaned forward. "Great plan. You think Dallas can support an NBA team?"
"I think Dallas can support anything. This city, Dallas is going to become one of the great American cities. And great American cities have major professional sports teams. Dallas deserves a team that play in state-of-the-art facilities with corporate sponsors and national television contracts."
"You're talking about building a new arena."
"Yeah, a sports and entertainment venue. Owned by the team, not leased from the city. Getting revenue from every event, basketball, concerts, conventions, all flowing directly to the organization."
Folsom picked up his bourbon and took a long, slow sip. Duke could see the real estate developer's brain working behind those shrewd eyes, calculating property values, construction costs, the political landscape of a city that was eager for development and prestige.
"You know," Folsom said, "it's about time Texas had its own media mogul."
Duke smiled. "I was thinking the same thing."
"And what about me? What happens to a former team owner with an embarrassing win-loss record and a lot of free time?"
"Well, I'm going to need friends in this city. Friends who know the landscape, who know the people and from what I hear, you've got political ambitions of your own."
Folsom's expression shifted, surprise, quickly masked, then something warmer. "People talk."
"People talk. And what they're saying is that Bob Folsom is going to run for mayor of Dallas. I been thinking of acquiring some Texas Newspapers that will maybe cover that race." Duke leaned forward.
Folsom laughed again, it was the laugh of a man who had just met someone who spoke his language.
"Six hundred thousand," Folsom said.
"Cash."
"And a friend in the Mayor's Office."
"When the time comes."
Folsom extended that enormous hand. Duke took it.
"You've got yourself a basketball team, Mr. Hauser."
"Thank you, Bob. You won't regret this."
"I know. Because I've got a feeling that you don't do things you regret."
They finished the bourbon. They talked about Dallas, about the neighborhoods, the power brokers, the churches, the way the city worked beneath its polished surface.
Folsom was generous with his knowledge, offering the kind of insider map that no amount of research could replicate, the kind you could only get from a man who had built his life in the soil of the city and knew where every root ran.
Duke even got told that he should invest in Dallas, so that he can meet the Butt Family, the Hunt's, the Bass Family and maybe even Ross Perot. Or if he had luck maybe even meet LBJ.
By the time they parted, handshakes, back-claps, promises to have dinner again soon, the sun was setting over downtown Dallas, painting the modest skyline in shades of amber and rose.
Duke Hauser owned a professional basketball team.
___
While in a Dallas hotel, Jaffe called, "Hey did you got a call from Valentine?"
"No, I just got back to my room."
"Well, we, as in some executives, you, the actors and Desmond Doss are invited to the White House to talk about Hacksaw Ridge with President Nixon."