Chapter 405 My son came to see me again (please subscribe)

In the 1990s, there was the so-called "three bedrooms and one living room". This "three bedrooms and one living room" did not refer to the layout of the house, but to the entertainment venue.

The third room refers to the billiards room, video room and game room, and the first hall refers to the dance hall. These four entertainment venues blossomed everywhere in the 1990s.

The profits of these four entertainment venues are also very high. Basically, it is a one-time investment, and then you can sit and count the money every day.

Among them, the cost of opening a video room is probably the lowest. A video recorder, a TV, and a few wooden chairs can open a video room.

Let’s get some videotapes of Hong Kong films, such as Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat’s films, which are the most popular. As for European and American action blockbusters, many of them don’t have subtitles, so the audience is not as good as those of Hong Kong films.

In comparison, the game room requires a relatively large investment.

Not to mention that it costs a lot of money to go through formalities for a regular game room, but just to purchase game console equipment is also a huge expense.

The structure of an arcade machine is not complicated. Assembling an arcade machine is not much more difficult than assembling a computer. You can learn it with simple training.

However, the reason why arcade equipment is expensive is mainly because of the game motherboard.

Genuine arcade game motherboards in the 1990s were about the same price as they are now, starting at RMB 10,000. Motherboards for some popular games were 20 to 30% more expensive.

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, many people were still striving for the goal of a household with 10,000 yuan. In a small city, you could buy a house for more than 10,000 yuan. In other words, an arcade machine at that time could be replaced by a house with 10,000 yuan.

To buy a house and invest in an arcade, the cost is equivalent to selling a unit in a building.

More importantly, genuine gaming motherboards were hard to come by at the time.

Imported products require the use of foreign exchange quotas. In an era when the country's foreign exchange is tight, foreign exchange is used to import important materials needed by the country. How can there be excess foreign exchange to import game motherboards!

What's more, the country has always not encouraged things like game consoles. Later, it even issued a "game console ban", so it is very difficult to buy genuine game motherboards from regular channels.

Genuine game motherboards were expensive and unavailable, so you had to buy pirated game motherboards. At that time, most of the game arcades in China used pirated game motherboards.

A pirated game motherboard costs about 3,000 yuan, popular games cost 4,000 yuan, and game motherboards such as mahjong and poker that have a "try to change Audi into Alto" nature are more expensive.

These pirated game motherboards were basically made on Hong Kong Island. After all, Hong Kong Island at that time was called the Silicon Valley of Asia. Electronic technology was very advanced and could crack and imitate foreign game motherboards.

If you calculate it this way, using a pirated game motherboard, the price of a complete arcade machine will be around 5,000 yuan.

Li Weidong invested 200,000 yuan for his unlucky brother and built a game arcade with more than 30 arcade machines. This was definitely one of the largest arcade arcades in Qinghe at the time.

In Li Weidong's view, his unlucky brother Li Weimin couldn't do anything well and didn't have enough to eat. Li Weidong would rather spend money to support Li Weimin than come to the company to harm him.

But if that's the case, it's hard to guarantee that Li Weimin won't cause trouble everywhere, so Li Weidong decided to simply find something for Li Weimin to do, and it's something he likes.

Li Weidong's favorite thing now is of course playing games in arcades, and in two years' time it will be playing online games in Internet cafes.

In this case, Li Weidong simply opened a game arcade for Li Weimin so that he could play as much as he wanted in his own arcade.

After the rise of online games in two years, I opened an Internet cafe for Li Weimin so that he could continue to indulge in online games and avoid causing trouble to his company.

Online games don’t cost much to survive. A full set of LOL skins costs more than 50,000 yuan. In CSGO, knives and gloves costing more than 10,000 yuan are considered expensive. Buy a few ruby ​​knives and you’ll be lucky.

It can also appreciate in value.

No matter how prodigal you are, it's not a big deal to go play Fantasy Westward Journey. Even if you do it every day, no matter how unlucky you are, you can always get some top-notch blood.

This is better than letting Li Weimin destroy tens of millions of equipment!

Moreover, Li Weidong is doing business and travels out all day, and his parents at home also need someone to accompany them. Spending 200,000 to open a game arcade and tie Li Weimin to his parents can also take care of his aging parents, and Li Weidong can feel at ease.

Game arcades in the 1990s were high-investment, high-return businesses.

In ordinary game arcades, the price of game coins ranges from four to six dollars, which mainly depends on the production cost of the game coins.

Game arcades that cost one dollar and six coins have relatively inferior game coins, while game arcades that cost one dollar and four coins have much better quality coins.

Assuming that one dollar can buy five coins, and you sell 1,000 game coins a day, you can earn 200 yuan, which is equivalent to more than half a month's salary of ordinary people. You must know that the national per capita salary in 1994 was more than 300 yuan.

money.

For a game arcade with 30 arcade machines, selling 1,000 game coins a day is simply too easy. During holidays, when primary and secondary school students flock in, they make even more money.

In the game arcade, there are many game masters who can pass the level with one coin, and one yuan of game coins can play for an entire afternoon. If you calculate this, the arcade owner cannot make much money.

In fact, for game arcade owners, as long as they turn on the game console, regardless of whether the players play or not, the boss has to pay the electricity bill, which incurs costs. Therefore, what the boss fears most is not that game masters can clear the level with one coin, but that the game console is empty.

No one is playing. As long as there are people playing on the game console, the boss is making money.

Opening a game arcade in the 1990s was definitely a sure-profit business. If Li Weidong was reborn in this era, he might also open a game arcade.

However, Li Weidong was very worried that his unlucky brother Li Weimin had lost money in this profitable business.

Based on Li Weidong's understanding of his younger brother, this guy has his own game arcade, so he will probably play enough by himself first, and maybe he will have more fun than those customers.

…

The business of the game arcade is very good. Many primary and middle school students pass by after school and will go in to play one or two game coins, or watch their friends play one or two game coins.

In the 1990s, minors were not prohibited from entering places like game arcades, and even karaoke and dance halls allowed minors to enter.

It was not until the 21st century that the "Law on the Protection of Minors" was revised and it was stipulated that minors are not allowed to enter commercial singing and dancing entertainment venues and Internet access service business premises. This refers to KTVs and Internet cafes.

As for game arcades, they are no longer included in the list. However, the "Measures for the Administration of Game and Entertainment Equipment" promulgated by relevant national departments clearly states that, except for statutory holidays, electronic game equipment, game consoles, etc. installed in entertainment venues and other business premises are not allowed to be used.

Open or provide services to minors.

So today, minors can enter the game arcade on non-statutory holidays, but they can only watch but not play. Even if they are playing a dancing machine or Taiko Master, it is against the rules. There are no restrictions on statutory holidays.

.

In the 1990s, the country's "Law on the Protection of Minors" had not yet been amended, so minors could still freely enter and exit various commercial entertainment venues.

What's more, in the era when game arcades were the hottest, primary and middle school students were originally the main customers of game arcades. On the contrary, high school students did not have time to go to game arcades due to their heavy academic workload.

The same is true of Li Weimin's arcade. After school every day, many primary and middle school students come to play games.

Children don't have much money, and those who can spare one dollar are considered wealthy. Most of them just spend 20 cents or 40 cents to buy one or two game coins and have fun.

However, the game arcade is always about accumulating small amounts into large sums. It entertains one to two hundred primary school students a day and can sell dozens of game coins.

…

It's time for school to end again, and the arcade is full of children carrying schoolbags.

Li Weimin sat in front of the counter, not bothering to count the pile of dime parts. He just threw the money into the drawer and locked it. Then he took a few game coins and planned to find a machine to play with.

Two "Dinosaur Fighters".

However, at this moment, a crying voice came to Li Weimin's ears. Li Weimin looked along the sound and saw a fat man who looked like a primary school student, standing in front of a machine crying.

Li Weimin immediately stepped forward and asked, "Why are you crying?"

"They defrauded me of my money!" The crying little fat man pointed at the two teenagers playing games in front of him.

These two people are older than the little fat man, probably middle school students.

The so-called money fraud is actually robbery.

It is nothing new for older children to take a fancy to something belonging to a younger one and snatch it away. Even if an adult finds out about it, they will only criticize it a few times, but they will not take it seriously, let alone regard it as robbery.

In places like game arcades, there are even more similar situations.

Many teenagers do not study well and have no intention of studying, so they skip classes and spend time in the arcade. But if they have money to buy game currency, they have to blackmail other students.

If there is a lack of family education again, such truant teenagers are likely to eventually become gangsters, and even embark on the path of breaking the law and committing crimes.

When Li Weimin was young, he was also bullied by senior children. Later, Li Weidong, the elder brother, helped his younger brother and had a fight with him. From then on, no one dared to bully Li Weimin.

At this moment, when I saw the crying little fat man, I instantly remembered myself as a child, and my sympathy suddenly overflowed.

So Li Weimin walked up to the two teenagers and asked sternly: "Did you two defraud him of his money?"

After all, Li Weimin was an adult. It was okay for two middle school students to bully an elementary school student, but when they saw an adult, they were still scared. What's more, Li Weimin was the owner of the game arcade, so the two middle school students were so frightened that they dared not speak.

"Give the money back!" Li Weimin said with a straight face.

The two middle school students had no choice but to obediently return the remaining money to the little fat man.

At the same time, Li Weimin took two more game coins, stuffed them into the little fat man's hands, and then said: "They played with you two coins, I will compensate you!"

When he got the money back, the little fat man smiled happily.

Li Weimin said to the two middle school students: "You two, you are not allowed to do this kind of thing here in the future. If I find out that you defraud other people's money again, I will beat you out!"

…

The two middle school students who skipped class left the arcade in despair.

However, they did not go home, but went to find their "boss".

The so-called "boss" is actually a little ruffian who lives nearby. This little ruffian probably watched too many Hong Kong movies in the video hall and gave himself the nickname "Brother Long".

Brother Long is 17 or 18 years old this year, and he is still a child in the eyes of adults. His parents divorced when he was a child, and his parents started their own families. Brother Long naturally became a drag, so he belongs to that kind of family education.

missing situation.

Long Ge began to skip classes in elementary school. He only attended junior high school for one year and stopped attending. Then he began to "mix society" in the neighborhood and gradually became a gangster in the neighborhood. He would fight every day and occasionally do something.

I would be called to the police station from time to time when it came to stealing, but since I was not yet an adult, I could only give him a few words of education and then let him go.

Brother Long also has several younger brothers, all of whom are middle school students who skip classes. Most of these truant students are in the second grade. They even think Brother Long is cool, and Brother Long also enjoys the admiration of his younger brothers.

So Brother Long and his younger brothers are actually a group of middle school boys.
To be continued...