Chapter 178: Cassettes are easy to find, but arcade boards are hard to come by.
Cheng Tian first searched online for a bunch of Dragon God (Long Tu) emoji packs and sent them all to his master.
Then he copied and pasted concepts like memes, their origins, and internet phenomena related to his older brother, sending them all to his master without caring if the old man understood them.
One could say that the phenomenon of a meme persisting, spreading, and even directly overriding the original meaning of text is enough to warrant a thesis on the popular concepts of internet communication.
This is true for 'Kun' and even more so for 'Hakimi.'
However, Cheng Tian wasn't good at explaining these things and could only hope his master would understand them on his own.
After dealing with his master, Cheng Tian finally responded to the customer parents whose children were clearly craving his treats.
Cheng Tian's sugar paintings were not only beautiful in appearance, but he also used good ingredients, making them quite delicious and free of any strange additives.
Sometimes, children might not necessarily love Cheng Tian's sugar paintings; they might just be using them as an excuse to eat candy.
After all, he was just a vendor selling sugar and craftsmanship. Cheng Tian hadn't reached the point where customers would urge him to set up his stall because his fried rice was too delicious.
Since he was free anyway, Cheng Tian decided to set up a stall. After all, the craft passed down by his master couldn't be neglected by him. He also planned to expand his list of sugar paintings.
He wouldn't make Dragon God (Long Tu) paintings, but dinosaur paintings were definitely worth considering.
Before that, however, Cheng Tian still went online to inquire about the possibility of purchasing the items required to unseal his Soul Equipment.
Original Adventure Island 3 cartridges were actually quite easy to buy; a quick search on X-Tao (Taobao) would bring up a ton of them at various prices. The problem was that Cheng Tian, looking at a screen, couldn't confirm if they were genuine cartridges or if a genuine original cartridge was in 90% new condition or better.
However, due to financial issues, Cheng Tian, who had lost touch with those regular friends, unhesitatingly chose to bid directly, and he bid on seven or eight of them in a row, spending thousands of dollars without batting an eye.
One major reason Cheng Tian liked to save money was so that he could confidently and casually spend when problems, like the current one, could be solved with money.
After all, in modern society, most problems that can be solved with money are not problems, and he could completely afford this kind of expenditure.
But then the problem arose when it came to the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs arcade board.
This item was not something that could circulate normally in the market, and due to historical issues in China, even the arcade halls that had this game back then mostly used modified arcade boards, which were cheaper and allowed for manual adjustment of difficulty, rather than original boards.
Moreover, it could be seen from the item unsealing requirements that the Adventure Island 3 cartridge needed to be "90% new or better," but the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs arcade board only needed to be "functional."
This indirectly indicated that the latter was significantly rarer.
After searching for a while, he couldn't find any sellers online. But that made sense; given the size of an arcade board and the sensitivity of ancient electronic components, shipping it would likely render it useless if it got bumped or jostled, making it difficult to sell.
However, after closing the webpage, Cheng Tian immediately started searching for phone numbers.
As someone who could get his hands on old game consoles, Cheng Tian naturally had his own channels and knew some game collectors within the community. Cheng Tian didn't expect to buy an original board directly from them, but rather wanted to find some clues.
In China, the number of collectors who like to collect original cartridges for various console platforms is actually not small, and they are mostly people who transitioned from middle-aged to older gamers, with a strong sense of nostalgia. It was too difficult to pry something out of their hands.
However, relatively speaking, the number of collectors specializing in arcade games was significantly smaller, mainly because the financial scale required for this was clearly another level higher.
To collect arcade games, you need to be able to rent a large warehouse long-term, have the ability to transport arcade machines, and ideally, even open an arcade hall to recoup costs and show them off.
Cities beyond the third tier were basically out of the question. As a completely declining physical industry, arcade halls in these places had completely become distribution centers for coin pushers, claw machines, fishing games, racing games, dance games, and Maimai machines. You wouldn't find traditional arcade machines here, but you would definitely find burly men wearing gloves enthusiastically pounding machines, girls in short skirts and black stockings striking various alluring poses while dancing to K-pop, and onlookers standing around watching these two types of players.
Old arcade games had long been relegated to the corners, and to further save space, they used those 1000-in-1 boards. Before inserting coins, you'd choose a game, possibly flipping through dozens or hundreds of pages to find the one you wanted to play, and a single game occupying a single machine was already extremely rare.
Only in first and second-tier cities might there be arcade halls surviving with a "retro" theme.
He made three consecutive calls, and all targets pointed to the same city—Tianjin.
As someone who was self-sufficient and had no dependents, only needing two or three changes of underwear and socks, a backpack, a mobile phone, a handheld console chosen randomly from a PSP, PSV, 3DS, NDS, or Switch depending on his mood, a power bank, and an ID card, Cheng Tian could travel anywhere in the country at any time.
So, after sending a mass message to those three parent groups saying, "I'm busy these two days, won't be setting up the stall," and promptly bailing, he packed his bags, bought a ticket online, and then, with a small bag on his back and headphones in, he rushed downstairs with great enthusiasm, heading straight for the train station.
Cheng Tian preferred traveling by train over plane, mainly because he really disliked the long waiting times before flying.
And thanks to the world's number one high-speed rail system, his city was only about four hours away from Tianjin, with no transfers needed. A second-class ticket cost less than three hundred yuan, and there were tons of train schedules, making it clear that a plane was out of the question.
While waiting for the train, Cheng Tian also performed a "big eater" show at the McDonald's next to the station, ordering a full set of everything. After gorging himself, he left the store to the applause of countless passersby and diners, entering the station with the last McFish sandwich in his mouth.
Cheng Tian had originally planned to use the four hours on the train to indulge in his NDS, making progress on Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, which he had put off for a long time, and admiring the protagonist Shanoa's fair and smooth back, which looked like it needed cupping. However, less than three minutes after the train started, Cheng Tian fell asleep, clutching his bag and with his mouth open.
He wasn't sure if he was just tired or had carbon monoxide poisoning.
And when he woke up, the train announcement informed him—
Tianjin South Station, arrived.