Sunday 9 May 2001, in some "All Purpose Building" in Japan.
Right now, inside this building, a small gathering was already happening. The place was not exactly grand, and nobody would mistake it for a professional technology expo, but it had everything needed for a suspiciously passionate underground meeting: tables, desks, extension cables, CRT monitors, half-open toolboxes, soldering kits, snacks, soda cans, handwritten signs, and most importantly, many "homebrew" consoles placed around the room like sacred artifacts.
This was the gathering of Unlock.
Unlock was a global homebrew community, but today's event was only for the Japan region. Even so, the room was already filled with plenty of people. Most of them looked like normal hobbyists at first glance, but the moment someone looked closer, it became obvious that these people were not normal at all. One guy was proudly carrying a modified ZGBA with three extra buttons taped to the side. Another was explaining to someone why his custom ZEPS 2 cartridge adapter only smoked "a little bit" during stress testing. Somewhere near the corner, a man wearing a baseball cap was arguing that every console should have Linux support, despite nobody asking him.
The atmosphere was lively, chaotic, and strangely friendly. Nobody used their real names. That was one of Unlock's basic rules. Everyone used their monikers or nicknames from the website, which made the entire room sound like a gathering of minor villains from an arcade game.
One guy said, "Hey, yo, did you see that it's actually possible to homebrew X-Box so it can play ZAGE games too? Oh, and my name is Duvan. Nice to meet you."
The man across from him immediately nodded. "Yo. Ah, you mean the homebrew Z-Project X? That's from the ZANIAC team, right? Those guys are always obsessed with turning every non-ZAGE console into something that can play ZAGE games. And apparently, they already succeeded with Microsoft's X-Box in a short time. They're insane. Talented, but insane. Oh, and my name is Rantisu, by the way. Nice to meet you, Duvan."
Duvan grinned. "Yeah, those guys are crazy. I heard they tried to make iPlay run ZGB games last week."
Rantisu frowned. "Did it work?"
"Kind of."
"What does 'kind of' mean?"
"It booted the menu then crashed."
Rantisu nodded seriously. "That's still progress."
Similar conversations were happening across the building. People showcased their homebrew setups, modified consoles, fan-made tools, and "adjusted games," which was a polite way of saying heavily modded games that might make a lawyer faint if shown in court. Some people were explaining their projects with the seriousness of university professors, while others were clearly just proud they had managed to make a console do something it was never designed to do.
One table had a modified ZEPS 2 running a strange rhythm game using a controller made from a kitchen cutting board. Another table showed a ZGB that had been turned into a tiny music machine. Someone else had created a ZEPS 3 save manager that looked surprisingly polished, except for the warning message that said, "If this deletes your save, please forgive me."
Meanwhile, there was a tall man around 187 cm wearing glasses, blonde hair, and a mustache. He also wore a large hoodie to hide his muscular frame, though the hoodie only made him look like a mysterious foreigner who had definitely been lifting suspiciously heavy things. He looked around the room with shining curiosity.
This was none other than disguised Zaboru.
Today, he was not Zaboru Renkonan, the creator of ZAGE, president of one of the most powerful video game companies in the world, and the man whose consoles half the room was currently cracking for fun.
Today, he was CODEX Reloaded.
And CODEX Reloaded was extremely excited.
'Damn, there are a lot of showcases here... Some people are actually selling their modded games too. This is awesome,' Zaboru thought as he looked around the room.
This was his first time visiting this kind of "shady" community gathering in person, and he loved it more than he expected. There was something raw about it. Corporate events had polish, press rules, security, and people pretending to laugh at jokes they did not understand. This place had tangled cables, questionable soldering, nervous laughter, and someone in the back loudly yelling, "Don't touch that adapter unless you want to see God!"
Honestly, Zaboru found it refreshing.
He moved from table to table, studying each device with growing interest. Some projects were amateurish, but others were genuinely impressive. One person had built a custom ZGB cartridge reader that connected to a PC. Another had made a simple programming tool for hobbyists who wanted to make small ZEPS 1 games. A group of students had modified a ZGBA to output video to a CRT monitor, though the image had a strange purple tint he was really amazed that a lot of these are so unhinged.
Zaboru stared at it and asked, "Why is everything purple?"
The student proudly answered, "Because the red channel exploded."
Zaboru nodded. "Understandable."
Eventually, he found one of the most famous groups in Unlock's Japan region.
ZANIAC.
The name alone already made people look over. ZANIAC was known as a team of complete madmen who loved modifying every console into something related to ZAGE. Their main obsession was forcing non-ZAGE consoles to run ZAGE games, because apparently, to them, a machine that could not play ZAGE games was not yet complete as a lifeform.
And now, they had brought something new.
"OKAY, GUYS!" one of the ZANIAC members shouted. He had a decent-looking face, long hair, and the wild confidence of someone who had definitely injured himself with a soldering iron before but learned absolutely nothing from the experience. "My name is UTAGE! This one with four eyes is GUMINI, and that guy with the afro hair is Kamaru. Together, we are ZANIAC!"
GUMINI adjusted his thick glasses and muttered, "Four eyes is not my official title."
UTAGE ignored him completely. "But no! Today we are not focusing on Z-Project X. That project is already stable in our threads. If you want that, go read the guide, don't be lazy!"
Someone from the crowd shouted, "Your guide is 112 pages!"
UTAGE shouted back, "That's because knowledge is heavy!"
Kamaru nodded seriously. "And because Gumini writes like a cursed textbook."
GUMINI looked offended. "My documentation is precise."
"It has three pages explaining the emotional state of the motherboard."
"That is an important context."
The crowd laughed.
UTAGE raised both hands dramatically and shouted, "Today, we will show you the new weapon of 2001! THE X-GUNS!"
The crowd immediately became louder.
Zaboru blinked.
'X-Guns?'
The name alone intrigued him, and he leaned closer without thinking.
Then the ZANIAC team pulled the cloth off their showcase table.
There it was.
An X-Box console.
Except it was no longer just an X-Box.
The machine had been painted in an army color palette, with rough green, brown, and black patterns across the surface. It honestly did not look bad at all. In fact, it looked disturbingly cool, like some kind of military-grade console prototype that should absolutely never pass safety inspection.
There were also extra parts attached to the side, a modified top panel, a crude loading mechanism, and something that looked suspiciously like a reinforced disc channel.
UTAGE shouted, "You guys definitely know X-Canon, right?"
The whole room burst into laughter. People clapped, whistled, and shouted jokes.
"X-CANON!"
"MICROSOFT ARTILLERY!"
"DVD WARFARE!"
"THE BUG THAT BECAME A LEGEND!"
Zaboru had to press his lips together to stop himself from laughing too loudly.
UTAGE grinned like a man who knew he was about to commit technological comedy. "That's right! You already know! Microsoft fixed the X-Canon bug, but we can never forget what they gave us. They accidentally created history. They accidentally created a dream. They accidentally created... a weapon."
GUMINI quietly said, "A very stupid weapon."
"A beautiful weapon!" Kamaru corrected.
UTAGE pointed dramatically at the modified console. "So we asked ourselves, what if the X-Canon bug was not a bug? What if it was a feature? What if we could improve it? What if we could make it shoot multiple discs at once?"
The crowd went wild.
Zaboru's eyes widened behind his glasses.
'No way.'
UTAGE placed one hand on the console. "Behold! The X-Guns!"
The crowd cheered like they were watching a major hardware reveal instead of three suspicious men unveiling a modified console that might violate several laws and at least two common sense principles.
Kamaru stepped forward and opened the top panel of the machine. "Because DVDs are expensive as hell, we will use CDs as ammo."
Everyone giggled.
A man in the crowd shouted, "Budget military!"
Another shouted, "Poor man's artillery!"
Another shout "WAIT!, That's CD it's Porn!"
Kamaru nodded proudly. "Exactly. we respect the economy and Porn? Don't worry about it." this make everyone really amused and laugh
Then he opened the X-Gun from the top and revealed a crude but functional disc-loading chamber. "Yeah! We actually made this X-Box openable!"
GUMINI raised one finger and said, "Technically, every X-Box is openable if you have tools."
Kamaru glared at him. "Not like this."
UTAGE added, "This one opens with dignity."
"It opens with three screws and fear," Gumini muttered.
The crowd laughed again.
Kamaru loaded around twenty CDs into the top chamber. The discs clacked together in a way that made half the room excited and the other half instinctively step back. Then he aimed the machine toward a "body target," which was basically a standing pillow wearing a cheap shirt with a marker-drawn face. Someone had written "BILL" on the forehead.
Zaboru covered his mouth.
'These guys are absolutely insane.'
UTAGE shouted, "Target acquired!"
GUMINI adjusted something near the side panel. "Motor stable. Disc feed... mostly stable."
"Mostly?" someone shouted.
GUMINI looked at the crowd calmly. "If you want perfection, buy official hardware."
Kamaru raised a hand. "Three! Two! One! FIRE!"
The machine made a loud, ugly mechanical sound. It whirred, groaned, clicked twice, then suddenly fired the first disc.
WHACK!
The CD struck the pillow target.
The crowd shouted.
Then came the second disc.
WHACK!
Then the third.
WHACK!
Fourth.
Fifth.
The machine began launching CDs in rapid succession, not perfectly straight, but fast enough that everyone understood the terrifying stupidity of what they were witnessing. One disc hit the pillow. Another bounced off the target's shoulder. One flew slightly upward and smacked into a cardboard box behind it. Another spun across the floor like an angry silver beetle.
The pillow target shook violently.
Someone shouted, "BILL IS DOWN!"
Another screamed, "MICROSOFT HAS BEEN DEFEATED BY X-GUNS!!"
The fifth disc struck the pillow hard enough to slightly tear the fabric.
The room exploded.
People clapped, laughed, cheered, and yelled as if they had just witnessed the birth of a new sport. Kamaru raised both hands triumphantly, while UTAGE bowed like a stage magician. Gumini, meanwhile, was already writing down notes.
Zaboru was stunned then laugh so hard.
He was amazed by the firepower, but even more amazed by the sheer madness behind it. The ZANIAC team had taken a bug, turned it into a joke, then turned the joke into a functioning disc launcher.
'These guys are unhinged,' Zaboru thought, desperately trying to stop his laugh. 'Who in their right mind creates something like this?'
Then he paused.
'Actually... they might be really great at AKAI.'
The thought came naturally. AKAI often needed strange thinkers, people who were not afraid to tear apart existing devices, rebuild them, and ask dangerous questions like, "Can this machine become something else?" The ZANIAC team was chaotic, but inside that chaos was real engineering instinct.
Of course, Zaboru would need to keep them far away from safety-critical consumer products unless someone supervised them with a fire extinguisher and legal documents.
But still, talent was talent.
Then something unexpected happened.
The X-Gun made another strange noise.
GUMINI's eyes narrowed. "Wait."
UTAGE froze. "What do you mean, wait?"
Kamaru slowly looked at the machine. "Why is it still spinning?"
The room became quiet.
The X-Gun clicked.
Then it fired one final CD without warning.
The disc flew sideways, completely missing the target, bounced off a metal chair, ricocheted into the air, and shot straight toward Zaboru.
For one split second, Zaboru simply stared at it.
Then his body moved by instinct.
He caught the CD between two fingers.
The entire room went silent.
Completely silent.
Everyone stared at him.
Zaboru, still disguised as CODEX Reloaded, looked at the CD between his fingers, then looked back at the crowd.
For a moment, his brain screamed.
'Shit.'
That reaction was too clean. Too fast. Too Zaboru.
Someone in the crowd whispered, "Did... did he just catch a flying CD?"
Another person muttered, "What the hell is CODEX Reloaded?"
Duvan's jaw was open. Rantisu slowly removed his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on, and confirmed that yes, the impossible thing had indeed happened.
UTAGE pointed at Zaboru with trembling excitement. "BRO! ARE YOU A FINAL BOSS!?"
Kamaru shouted, "HE PARRIED THE X-GUN!"
GUMINI adjusted his glasses and said, "That reaction speed is statistically abnormal."
The room exploded again, but this time the excitement was aimed at Zaboru.
Zaboru slowly lowered the CD and forced himself to laugh awkwardly. "Ah... lucky catch."
Nobody believed him but still ZANIAC began to explain their X-Gun again.. While some trouble are brewing
To be continued.
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