Kobayashi Tetsu and Nakamura Yuji carefully held the heat gun in place, warming the resin bit by bit. With tweezers, they slowly pried away the softened material until what lay beneath was finally exposed.
A bare chip, mounted face-up. Its pins were connected directly to the circuit board with fine wires—naked, gleaming, completely unprotected.
Nakamura wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at Kobayashi. Only after receiving Kobayashi's encouraging nod did he continue, hands steady yet cautious.
This packaging method was called bonding. Unlike normal chip packaging, a bonded chip was installed face-up on the board, with wires drawn directly from the bonding pads to the circuit. Because the face-up die was fragile and unprotected, a blob of adhesive had to be applied over it.
This was the infamous "cow-dung chip."
The reason these pirate cartridges were called cow-dung cartridges was because of that unmistakable black or brown blob covering the chip. The blob served as a crude external enclosure, replacing the proper internal and external packaging steps used in legitimate cartridges. Cheap, flimsy, and easy to damage—but extremely low-cost.
No wonder genuine cartridges rarely appeared in Japan's grey markets. Nearly everything was cow-dung cards.
Staring at the dense array of forty pins on the exposed chip, Kobayashi's expression grew solemn.
Reverse-depackaging a finished cartridge like this was nearly impossible. Only with future-era tools could such chips be fully delayered and analyzed. For now, they had no choice but to identify each pin's function manually, then reverse-deduce the connected units' logic.
A long, tedious process—but not impossible.
After sending Masuko and Kitagawa home, Kobayashi and Nakamura continued working late into the night for two days straight.
Until noon on the third day.
Kobayashi was absentmindedly shoveling rice into his mouth when Nakamura suddenly let out a triumphant roar, arms raised high.
"Banzai! Got it!!"
Kobayashi's hand trembled. For a moment he had the urge to smack him.
Got what, you little gremlin!?
He held back and rushed over.
"You found it?"
"Found it! The logic addresses for the pins—and I've worked out the corresponding functions!"
Nakamura typed rapidly across two monitors, assembling code as he spoke.
"Incredible. Really incredible. I didn't think Nintendo implemented screen deformation this way!"
Kobayashi fixed his eyes on the reconstructed logic displayed on the screen:
[Scrolling explanation excerpt…]
(excerpt from Nintendo Game Programming Techniques Revealed, section on scroll handling)
"Impressive," Kobayashi exhaled.
Nintendo truly was on another level. He himself was, at best, an enthusiastic amateur—not a classically trained programmer. He knew what happened but not always why. Still, thanks to studying Kentarō's technical notes, he could gradually piece the logic together.
"So this is their trick for screen transformation!"
He slapped his forehead.
"I know where we went wrong!"
Nakamura blinked. "I haven't even fully read it yet!"
"No need. Nintendo's code just showed us the right path. Listen carefully—we weren't wrong to implement scrolling. Our mistake was trying to shift a single large image. The hardware simply can't handle that. We have to change strategies."
Kobayashi pulled over the whiteboard and scribbled quickly:
0F | 0E
1F | 1E
"Layer the background. Move only the portion designated as foreground. That's how you achieve smooth scrolling."
They couldn't see Nintendo's full code—those routines were sealed in the ROM—but deducing functionality through pin logic was enough.
Nakamura paused for a moment, then understanding dawned on his face.
"So that's why… no wonder!"
The two immediately dove back into the code.
This time, their approach differed.
They didn't try to split one large image. Instead, they divided the screen into two layers—foreground and background—each still mapped into the 00 and 01 coordinate spaces, but now independently handled.
Evening arrived.
The four Atlas members hooked up the rough assets and test program to the television.
Kobayashi gripped the flat SG-2000 controller.
"I'm starting."
"Yes!"
"Go ahead!"
He pressed the button.
The screen began to scroll.
Within the image, the fleshy tunnel shifted smoothly. The fighter craft glided through the beast's innards while stars in the background streaked past.
Silence—then Nakamura exploded in a low, trembling shout.
"Yes!! This is it! This is exactly what we needed!"
"Not bad," Kobayashi exhaled.
It worked. There were still issues—the scroll fell out of sync at high speeds, causing the foreground to lag and exposing blank areas—but that could be fixed through optimization.
What mattered was this:
They had successfully implemented scrolling.
"Kitagawa, the assets will depend on you now. We'll need clear separation between foreground and background."
Kitagawa gave a confident thumbs-up.
Of course.
With the president and lead programmer fighting this hard, he couldn't fall behind.
Besides—
Kobayashi paid him 150,000 yen a month.
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