Chapter 43: Case by Case
On that fateful night, after leaving the office, I sat in front of my room's telephone, feeling a sense of unease. A piece of paper with Yuki's contact information lay before me.
"Why am I so nervous about making a simple call!?"
To an outsider, I might have appeared pathetic, but for someone who had lived through 2015, making a call to someone else's house felt incredibly awkward.
If only I had a mobile phone, I could have sent a text message first, but here I was, hesitating to make a phone call out of the blue. I slowly turned the dial on the telephone.
With a clinking sound, the rotary dial rotated, and before long, I could hear the dial tone coming from the receiver.
"Hello?"
Uh… that's the voice of a young woman…!! I cleared my throat and said, "Uh, is this Yuki?"
"Oh, Yuki? I'm Yuki, but just a moment~"
Ah, she's the older sister... I could hear her calling for Yuki on the other side of the line, and soon, the familiar voice reached my ears.
"Yes, this is Ishikawa Yuki."
"Ah… I… we met at the Dragon Emblem event, right? I'm Kang Junhyuk."
"Ah~!! Junhyuk-san~ Hello."
"Yes, I'm sorry for the delayed contact, I've been busy."
"It's okay; I thought you might have forgotten about me since you didn't contact me."
"No, I didn't forget, it's just that I received your contact out of the blue, so it was a bit awkward..."
"I gathered my courage to give you my contact back then, you know?"
"I'm sorry. Instead, when I come to Tokyo next time, I'll treat you to a meal."
"When are you coming?"
Normally, a Japanese person might respond with a simple "No, it's fine," but she unexpectedly asked straight up.
Since I had business with Pentagon Soft for the upcoming sequel to Final Frontier, I promised to get in touch before my next visit to Tokyo before finally hanging up the receiver.
"Oh… even when I've come to the '83s, talking to a woman is still nervewracking... It's not a problem to chat with female employees at the headquarters... it's strange."
I sighed softly and turned on the computer's power switch.
Beep~ Diddly-diddly-dee~~
Computers of this era are truly fascinating. I initially found everything quite awkward when using a non-Windows-style PC with a prompt interface, but now I've become completely accustomed to it.
I loaded the coding I was currently working on with a prompt command and then fell into thought for a moment.
I had already been planning the expansion scenario for Dragon Emblem before its release, so I seamlessly transferred it to an expansion cartridge. Recently, I've been working on another game.
This time, the genre is... a bullet hell shoot-'em-up action game, I decided.
While I created Dragon Emblem, my name was not publicly associated with it, so this time, I planned to develop the new game under my name with a Mintendo license.
&
A few days later, a presentation for the new game development was held in the Mintendo headquarters conference room. The audience included Mintendo employees as well as some journalists from Famitelecom.
The initial announcement was about Shige-san's Super Marriage 3. The game's background design featured a unique production that felt like watching a one-act play, inspired by the curtain call of a stage play.
Particularly, the appearance of Super Marriage with a raccoon tail, which had been added since the Udon incident, was deemed cute even among the attendees at the presentation.
In Raccoon Marriage, if you pressed the jump button repeatedly after running at a certain speed, Mario could fly high into the sky. When they demonstrated this surprise feature, everyone burst into laughter at Mario soaring through the air.
Shige-san explained how they used this element to create hidden routes in each stage, allowing players to skip to other stages or obtain unique items.
"So, it seems that the foundation of the Marriage series is full of items pouring out in the third one... Like turning into a raccoon, hidden routes in every stage..."
Finally, Shige-san's presentation ended with Mario's transformation into a Tanuki statue.
"Great~!! That's fantastic. This is what Super Marriage is all about!! Shige, you finally got it together."
President Kamauji clapped enthusiastically with a satisfied expression. Gunpei-san, who was in charge of the presentation, calmed the atmosphere in the hall and introduced the next game.
The next game was the family version of Konkomi, a game currently enjoying great popularity in arcades, and Double Dragon.
Both games were two-player co-op, and since they were already popular in arcades, the mood in the conference room continued to heat up. At that moment, journalist Junpei from Famitelecom asked Gunpei-san a question.
"By the way, when is the release of the new handheld gaming device you announced for Carin's Legend a while ago? And how much will it cost!?"
Gunpei-san responded with a slightly embarrassed expression, "We're considering releasing it during the Christmas season at the end of the year. We're doing our best to adjust the price as the user's expectations are high, but the exact price hasn't been decided yet. We'll probably have more details to share next month."
"Wow!"
"Well then, let's finish this new game presentation with the next game. I have great expectations for the director of this new game. As you all know, he was the one who proposed the idea of Ori Hunting and has been actively assisting as an associate director in various Mintendo games, our hidden developer, Kang Junhyuk."
"Wow! The original idea provider for Duck Hunt?"
"Shige-san said he's a highly capable guy, and he's Korean."
"Korean...? Come to think of it, they said the planner for Dragon Emblem was Korean too, right?"
When Gunpei-san introduced me, President Ani sighed inwardly. I slowly rose from my seat, retrieved a floppy disk, and approached the podium.
"Hello. I'm honored to introduce my first game to such a large audience. As Gunpei-san introduced, I have only played a supporting role so far and haven't created a game that stands out as the main director. Recently, Dragon Emblem caused quite a sensation, right? As a fellow Korean, I wanted to create a game that would satisfy family gamers. The genre is a somewhat unfamiliar one called 'Bullet Hell Shoot-'em-up Action.'"
"Bullet... Hell... Shoot? What's that? Shooting?"
"Action, right? But if it's a battle, does that mean two players fight?"
As the audience murmured due to the ambiguous genre name, I inserted the floppy disk into the demonstration device and powered it on.
"Is there anyone who'd like to try it out for themselves?"
At that moment, Junpei, who was sitting in the back, raised his hand quickly.
"Junpei Ishimoto-san, please come forward."
Junpei came to the stage with a slightly embarrassed smile.
In fact, I had informed Junpei in advance when I met him before the event. When I call a volunteer to the stage, he should eagerly raise his hand and come forward...
Of course, anyone else would have been fine, but Junpei, who could demonstrate at a certain level of difficulty without dying too easily, was the perfect choice.
"Please pick up the controller placed in front of you, and first, enjoy the first stage we made as a demo. Ah~ the game is called Psychik Battle."
"Psychik Battle? A battle of psychic powers... Not bad, right?"
As the Mintendo logo passed, accompanied by the cheerful BGM and the words "Psychik Battle," the audience in the conference room became increasingly interested.
When Junpei pressed the start button, three charming female protagonists appeared, and character selection began.
"Girls!? I thought it was a shooting game?"
"They could be pilots, you know."
"Oh... I see..."
Until then, there was a strong perception that shooting games inevitably involved flying aircraft, likely influenced by games like 1945 or Twinbee. However, with the sudden appearance of beautiful women, people seemed to interpret them as pilots.
But the character Junpei chose continued to soar through the blue sky with a splendid cutscene and entered the stage.
"Ah!! So that's what they mean by psychics!!"
Psychik Battle was a side-scrolling shooting game. To make a comparison, it could be said that it took some inspiration from the arcade game "Tengai," which many people had played at least once.
Junpei smoothly controlled the character, moving back and forth. When he pressed the A button, blue missiles were launched at the enemies.
"Hmm... The entrance to the stage is unique, but the content is just a regular shooting game."
Of course, this guy openly criticizes games made by his friends. Well, that's why it's even more trustworthy, but...
"Why don't you try playing a bit more?"
Shooting games didn't require a special strategy. Anyone could easily adapt to the straightforward gameplay of dodging enemy missiles while shooting them down.
The enemies targeting the protagonist were psychic individuals too. The screen was quickly filled with various psychics, and they were firing countless bullets.
"Uh... Ugh...!?"
At first, Junpei easily dodged one or two bullets, but he gradually started making strange groaning sounds as he stared at the screen filled with bullets.
Well, I've heard this kind of groaning sound at the game center before. When Junpei gets incredibly focused on one thing, he unintentionally makes a strange groaning sound.
My presentation proceeded quietly, except for the weird groaning sound from this guy.
The speed of all the bullets in Psychik Battle was not constant.
Some bullets came fast and hit hard, while others approached very slowly, taking your breath away. But what would happen when the screen was filled with them?
"Ughhh!!! Aaargh!!!"
Junpei screamed in agony, but he miraculously dodged all the bullets coming at him.
"Wow~~ That's amazing! Wasn't he a Famitelecom journalist? The game's content is great, but how can he avoid all those bullets?"
"Well... that's true? My head is spinning..."
"Ughh!! Bombs!! Bombs!! Do we have bombs here?"
When he couldn't find any more space to dodge, Junpei urgently shouted towards me. In shooting games, bombs were often used for emergency evasion, granting the character a brief moment of invincibility.
"Rotate the D-pad once and press the B button."
"D... Rotate the D-pad?"
That's right. Psychik Battle was the first command-input shooting game.
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