Game Market 1983 Chapter 34

Chapter 34 : Case by Case (2)

At an Udon house near our company…

Mr. s.h.i.+ge and I were moistening our mouths with the warm water that was served to us.

It was a small restaurant; as I looked around at the antiquated interior, I spotted the portraits of 3 men hanging on one of the walls.

This seems like a family owned Udon house operating through 3 generations, I’m looking forward to the taste. At that moment, Mr. s.h.i.+ge asked me.

“But have you tried contacting yet?”

“Mmm? Contact who?”

“Woosh… you work-aholic… I’m talking about Miss Yuki. Miss Yuki!!!”

“Ahh…”

“Ahh…? You haven’t contacted her yet, right?”

“Yes, I had no opportunity to stop by Tokyo, so…”

“Y-You~ idiot. Did you break your fingers, you can call from here, why are you trying to explicitly do it after you’re in Tokyo!? Then give me that contact information~!! Let me get some action too.”

“Eh hey~ Look at the obvious age disparity, Mr. s.h.i.+ge. Saying that is-”

“So just try contacting her once~ It’s already been a week since the Dragon Emblem event. You have to take into consideration the person waiting after giving their contact info.”

“It’s because I was busy. I was actually planning to give her a call now that this Dragon Emblem crisis is over.”

“Yeah, you thought well. Work is work, but a social life is important too~ Now let’s talk about Super Marigee 3.”

f.u.c.k… Business talk is spewing out of this person’s mouth who said social life is important just now…

“Since we came to a restaurant, let’s talk after we order something.”

“Ah, right. Waiter~ Can you recommend some house specialties? Kitsune? Tanuki?”

“Our specialty on the menu is Tanuki~”

“Then 2 orders of Tanuki please~”

What’s this? Do I not have a say? I hurriedly shouted to the waiter.

“No, I’ll take a Kitsune, and add a Kyoza too~!!”

“Hai~ One Tanuki, one Kitsune and one Kyoza~!!”

In response to the waiter’s shout, a roar of acknowledgement was heard from the kitchen. The Udon noodles of j.a.pan were ideally chewy, hence I enjoyed them quite often.

“Oops, looks like I forgot about the Kyoza. I thought Kang-kun was a Tanuki (rac.o.o.n) but you were actually a Kitsune (fox)~”

Tanuki was a type of Udon with fried crumbs in the toppings; it didn’t suit my tastes very well. I’d rather enjoy the Kitsune Udon which had a soy and mirin flavored soup base with a fried bean curd topping. Mr. s.h.i.+ge watched this ordeal and grinned slightly to me before going back to topic.

“What do you think is the main flags.h.i.+p of Super Marigee, Kang-kun?”

“Mmm… Firstly, if the radish picking system is thrown away, over half the game would be worthy as a hit t.i.tle.”

Mr. s.h.i.+ge’s face instantly scrunched up.

“There won’t be any radish picking anymore… It won’t ever be picked!! I’ve been picking radishes off my rice cake soup because of that!!!”
The shock from Super Marigee 2 must’ve been tremendous for him. I surrept.i.tiously giggled in my mind as I answered.

“Super Marigee is all about jumping. Marigee’s nickname was also jump man in Donkey Kom.”

“Right. Jump… The jumping gameplay needs to be amplified.”

“How would…?”

Mr. s.h.i.+ge drew a light sketch of Marigee in the notebook and tapped the character with a pencil as he spoke:

“For example, the height of the jump depending on the objects stepped on… You know~ Like a trampoline on the playground for kids: a tumble element… Or adding white angel wings which would flap while Marigee descends.”

“Mmm… Adding snow white wings to an italian uncle with a mustache… it seems highly pedophilic.”

“…Right? It’s extremely easy to understand you, Kang-kun because you say everything like a rock-solid fastball. Although it hurts my heart sometimes…”

At that moment, the restaurant owner placed the two plates of Udon in front of us.

“Here is the Tanuki and the Kitsune Udons. Have a great meal~”

“Ah, yes we wi… Wow~ The garnish on the top is really cute.”

“Right? My granddaughter loves Udon so I cut the fish cakes into rac.o.o.n and fox shapes, and the reaction was good~ How is it? It’s cute isn’t it?”

“Kids would love something like this. You have a perceptive mind, sir.”

“I have to constantly wrack my brains to make a living. This Udon restaurant has been around for almost 100 years already. During the course of those years, we had to modify the recipe to satisfy the changing tastes of our customers and came up with the curry udon and fried udon during the 2nd generation. It’s hard to survive with just a plain old Udon nowadays… Now~ dig in before it cools down.”

“Alright~ thank you for the meal.”

I chopped the wooden chopsticks in half and was stirring the noodles when Mr. s.h.i.+ge who was right beside me stared intently at the bowl of Udon and muttered to himself.

“Tanuki… Tanuki… Marigee… Tanuki… Marigee…”

“It’s a rac.o.o.n Marigee!! What do you think!? Instead of mushrooms, Marigee would be able to transform by eating tree leaves. He would be able to traverse the skies by twirling this tail right here~!!”

He made my favorite meal, the Kook-Bap into a reptilian villain, and transformed a peach dessert into the peach princess, and now it’s a Udon dish… Anyways, I can’t have a proper meal with this guy…

—

That night. After leaving work, I was unconcernedly sitting in front of the telephone in my room. In front of the telephone was the piece of paper with Miss Yuki’s contact info.

“Wow~ Why am I getting nervous over this!?”

If a random person was looking at me, they’d think that I was p.u.s.s.ying out in front of the telephone, but I, who had been living in 2015, felt incredibly awkward at the idea of calling someone else’s house.

If there were mobile phones, I’d at least have the option to text first, but to think that I’d have to call forthrightly… I held the receiver and briefly hesitated before slowly turning the dials on the telephone.

With a click click click, the sound of the turning spring rang out, and a tone was starting to be heard from the other end of the telephone.

“h.e.l.lo?”

F…First of all, It’s a young woman’s voice…!! I groomed my voice for a short moment and spoke.

“Is… this Miss Yuki?”

“Ah, Yuki? I’m Yuki’s older sister, please wait a moment~”

Urgh… she had a sister… After a while, a voice calling Yuki could be heard over the receiver, and a familiar voice was soon heard.

“Yes, this is Is.h.i.+kawa Yuki.”

“Ah… That… We’ve met each other in the Dragon Emblem event. This is Kang Junhyuk.”

“Ah~!! Mr. Junhyuk~ h.e.l.lo.”

“Yes, well I was busy with work so I couldn’t call sooner.”

“So that was the case… I thought you had forgotten about me because I haven’t heard from you.”

“N…No, I haven’t forgotten at all. It was a bit awkward for me to call a number that I’d been abruptly given…”

“It also took me an immense amount of courage to give you my number that time!?”

“Sorry. I’ll make up for it by treating you to a meal the next time I’m in Tokyo.”

“When are you coming?”

The average j.a.panese would say ‘It’s fine~ You don’t have to’ as a response, but she’s unexpectedly cutting right to the chase with her question.

Coincidentally, I had business at Pentagon Soft in regards to the sequel for Final Frontier. I promised to contact her before coming to Tokyo and was finally able to put down the receiver.

“Ah… this really is… I’m still having trouble speaking to girls after being transported to 1983… I had no trouble speaking with company employees… How strange…”

I let out a small sigh and turned the power b.u.t.ton on the computer.

Beep~ Dipiriri~

A computer in this period was very entertaining. It was awkward for me at first to use the prompt system instead of Windows at first, but I was completely familiar with it now.

Inputting a command in the prompt, I brought up my current code and fell into a brief stupor.

The sequel scenario for Dragon Emblem had already been thought up of before its release so it was transplanted without any hiccups. And recently, I’ve been developing another game.

The genre for this should be… a ma.s.sive scale shooting war action? This was what I had in mind for now.

I made Dragon Emblem, but since my name wasn’t a.s.sociated with that, I’ve decided to publish this project under Mintendo’s license while using my name.

—

A few days later. In the conference room of the Mintendo headquarters, a presentation about a new game in development was shown. Aside from the Mintendo employees, there were even a few reporters from the FamiTong magazine.

The first presentation was Mr. s.h.i.+ge’s Super Marigee 3.

The background design for the game was exhibiting a unique animation and looked just like a play in a theater using the Dan man pole’s curtain call.

Especially for the appearance of Super Marigee, who was introduced with a racc.o.o.n’s tail, inspired by the Udon meal we had, the people gathered in the conference room were chatting about its cuteness.

The racc.o.o.n Marigee was able to traverse high up into the sky after spamming the jump b.u.t.ton when the character is running at a certain speed. As this scene was shown, everyone chuckled at the scene of Marigee flying through the air.

Mr. s.h.i.+ge added that he used this element to implement various scenarios in the different stages where hidden routes were there which made it possible to skip stages or get one’s hands on rare items,

‘The latest Marigee series is pouring out the foundation that would serve as the signature feature for the Marigee series here… A tree leaf that allows one to transform into a tree lead, or different pathways that are hidden in each stage…”

Finally, with the feat of Marigee turning into a buddha statue from a rac.o.o.n, Mr. s.h.i.+ge ended his presentation.

“Good~!! Very good. Yes, something like this is Super Marigee~!! s.h.i.+ge, you finally woke up from your stupor.”

President Yamauchi clapped like a maniac walrus with a pleased expression. Mr. Gunpei, who was mediating the conference had to calm the atmosphere down before introducing the next game. The next game was a game that was pulling huge popularity in arcades Family’s Hondurai model, and Double Dragon was introduced.”

Both were able to support 2 players, and since it was a t.i.tle that was pulling ma.s.sive popularity in arcades, the atmosphere in the conference room was getting heated by the moment. At that instant, FamiTong reporter Junpei asked Mr. Gunpei.

“Do you know when the new mobile game console would be released, that was announced at the event of the Legend of Karin’s release? And the price!?”

Mr. Gunpei responded with a tentative face.

“We are inspecting the situation for this year’s Christmas season. Given the high expectations of our players, our Mintendo is doing the best we can do to control the price, but a set price has not been determined yet. We would be able to convey some accurate information in about a month.”

“Woahhh!!!”

“Then we will end this new project conference with this next t.i.tle. The director for this game has made me very antic.i.p.ating. Like everyone knows, he proposed the duck hunt idea, and along with Mr. s.h.i.+geru, this is the black horse of our Mintendo, introducing our secret developer, Mr.  Kang Junhyuk.”