When Kentarō returned, Kobayashi Tetsu was tinkering with the Fujitsu machine in the garage.
As soon as they met, Kentarō rushed over.
"Tetsu, fantastic news! You should've seen the department head's face today. He was extremely unhappy—but completely powerless!"
Kobayashi Tetsu struggled to raise his head, finally escaping the bear-like embrace.
"Isn't he the department head? Shouldn't he be able to bury the game with just one word?"
"Yes, he could. But how could he do that without a proper reason? Because the game cut the line and got into the release schedule through connections? Come on! Tetsu, Sega cares about the financial report. If the numbers look good, who cares about cutting the line? Without a reasonable cause, if the department head pulls something like that, he'll have to bear the consequences!"
These words made Kobayashi Tetsu nod repeatedly.
Indeed—even a department head couldn't do whatever he pleased.
Because he personally had a conflict with a game, he couldn't just bury it.
If the game performed average, maybe… but what if it performed well?
He'd have to take responsibility afterward!
And Japanese people had always avoided taking risks.
"But that guy still gave us a problem. He wants Kobayashi Puzzle ported to arcade. Tetsu, have you thought about how to port it?"
Kobayashi Tetsu immediately straightened up.
This was proper business.
"Will he pay?"
"He'll pay."
"Hmm… and he wants it ported to arcade?"
"That's right."
"Is there a deadline?"
"Two weeks. Finish it and you get a reward. Fail and there'll be punishment."
Kobayashi Tetsu clapped his hands.
Well, that settled it!
If they were paying, why not do it?
Arcades of this era were actually more powerful than home consoles. Many people only thought of King of Fighters, Street Fighter, Sangokushi, or Xiyou when they thought of arcades, but compared to home consoles of the same time, arcade hardware was far superior.
Games on the Famicom had their graphics shrunk by more than half when compared to their arcade versions.
For example, the arcade version of Circus Charlie had more detailed graphics, smoother music, more stages, and far better controls than the FC version. Even the character animations were much more advanced.
Contemporary arcade color and sound capabilities completely crushed home consoles.
"But you can't just crudely copy-and-paste the game. Don't worry, leave this to me. Give me a few weeks—I'll definitely get it done!"
Kobayashi Tetsu already had a rough plan in mind.
Seeing Tetsu's confidence, Kentarō stopped asking.
Anyway, it was none of his concern.
---
"Kobayashi Doctor."
This was the line Kobayashi Tetsu left on the whiteboard.
And of course, the game referred to Dr. Mario.
The game was a typical Tetris-like puzzle game, but with major modifications.
Instead of the small square playfield, the game was moved into a medicine bottle. The player now had a concrete avatar—a doctor—replacing the original block preview in the upper-right corner.
The player drops capsules from the upper-right, lines them up, and eliminates viruses.
Compared to Tetris, where lining up a row clears it, Dr. Mario requires matching colors with the viruses to clear them.
The game had one flaw: many players using black-and-white TVs couldn't distinguish the virus colors.
This was actually just a rumor. Black-and-white TVs still had grayscale differences—if you looked carefully, you could tell the three colors apart.
But it was too much trouble, especially since the game was real-time with no pausing allowed. And Dr. Mario even punished pausing by hiding the screen so players couldn't cheat.
But now, porting it to arcade meant that problem disappeared—arcade cabinets depended on built-in hardware, and with a color monitor, the visuals would look fine.
Also, arcade storage was bigger than home cartridges.
A whole 16 KB—double the original!
Amazing!
Kobayashi Tetsu drafted a plan.
The gameplay didn't need to change; the original 200+ lines of code needed only slight adjustments.
But the visuals would require much more space.
First, as an arcade game, it needed simple electronic music. Fortunately, most arcade boards had built-in sound modules, allowing for larger sound files that could be further compressed.
"So, the main work is on the visuals."
Tetsu wrote quickly on the whiteboard.
Dynamic animations.
Three types of lively viruses that move and taunt the player, and make tragic expressions when eliminated.
These viruses must look mischievous and expressive, not just a few pixels standing still.
As for music, it'd be best to find a dynamic electronic track.
This was a big challenge. Take Super Mario Bros. for example—everyone remembers the level-one tune: dun-dun-dun-du-dun-dun...
But making repeating music catchy without becoming annoying was difficult.
Done well, it was energetic. Done poorly, it became noise torture that made players want to mute everything.
"I need someone who can compose… that's tough."
Kobayashi Tetsu scratched his head.
The best in this field was Nintendo. They used a special Famicom music format, NSF.
Through the console's sound chip, NSF compressed files could be played almost losslessly, supporting square waves, triangle waves, noise channels, and DPCM sampling.
Complicated explanation aside—Nintendo could compress cartridge music better than anyone.
Sega was still far behind in that area.
"Troublesome."
Tetsu sighed and decided to build the game framework first.
He could add sound and graphics later. He wasn't in a rush—Satō Hideki was the one who should be panicking!
---
Kobayashi Tetsu had disappeared!!
No one knew why, but ever since they last met at the family restaurant, Kobayakawa hadn't seen him for almost a week.
She kept telling herself not to think about it, that it wasn't her concern—but she couldn't help it.
Because—
She still had 200 yen!
The deposit refunded for the ice water last time. She had planned to return it to Tetsu, but she hadn't seen him at all.
This Thursday afternoon, since she didn't need to work in the school library, Kozakawa came to the shop to play games. In her pocket were two jingling 100-yen coins.
In the other pocket was a neatly folded booklet.
An elementary-level workbook.
"Yo!" Shimayori Yōsuke's voice suddenly called out. "Isn't this Tetsu-kun? Long time no see!"
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