Saturday.
A warm, breezy afternoon.
Kobayashi Tetsu lay sprawled across the sofa, sleeping with such serene stillness he looked practically dead.
When he finally stirred awake, the first thing he saw was Yuji Naka squatting in front of him, staring with the solemn expression of a funeral director.
"What the hell are you doing!?"
Tetsu jolted, nearly kicking Yuji Naka in the face.
Yuji scrambled back, bowing apologetically.
"Kobayashi-kun… what should I do?"
Tetsu blinked. "Are you a robot? Why are you asking me what to do? Do whatever you want."
Yuji Naka was obviously not a robot.
But right now, he genuinely felt lost.
"Kobayashi-kun, look… I come in to work every day. But there's nothing to do. We're not making anything. Every day it's just gaming, sleeping, and eating when we get hungry. It's been a whole week like this—isn't it too decadent!?"
Tetsu scratched his head.
"A guy actually asking for work? First time I've seen that in my life."
"Well," Yuji sighed, "today's your first."
"I don't have anything for you right now. Look, open the computer and do something—anything. You can code, you can compose. Make a little game for yourself. Or go play our competitors' titles and see if there's anything worth learning!"
Tetsu waved a hand.
He had to leave—he couldn't coexist with a workaholic like this.
After shooing Yuji away, Tetsu returned to his desk.
Beside him lay a small notebook—Kentarou Kobayashi's programming notes.
Twenty years of IBM engineering experience distilled into this booklet.
Tetsu had self-studied some vintage programming back in the modern era, but that was nowhere near enough. A man so devoted to learning could hardly pass up a treasure like this.
To say nothing else—if Kentarou published this as a book, it could easily sell for tens of thousands of yen per copy.
Yuji, meanwhile, sat before his own machine, staring blankly.
He actually liked this leisurely life—but there was one problem:
He had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.
He thought and thought, until his eyes drifted toward the whiteboard—still marked with the keywords he and Tetsu had written when brainstorming before Tank Battle launched.
"Speed."
"Music."
"Simplicity."
"Simplicity is joy."
Yuji stared at the words for a long time.
Suddenly, an idea formed.
He turned toward Tetsu.
"Kobayashi-kun?"
Before he could continue, Tetsu snapped back irritably.
"Don't bother me! Do whatever you want!"
Yuji drew a deep breath.
All right then—he'd do whatever he wanted.
---
That afternoon, Yuji was uncharacteristically quiet.
Tetsu spent the hours poring over Kentarou's notebook.
The contents were priceless: real-world programming tricks, hardware quirks, and solutions engineers had discovered in the '70s and '80s—knowledge that later generations simply no longer had access to, after assembly and BASIC faded from mainstream use.
The manual was genuinely irreplaceable.
Tetsu studied until his shoulders ached, then stretched, ready to grab dinner.
He glanced toward Yuji, surprised he was still here.
"Hey, we're not a big corporation. No corporate disease here. You can clock out whenever you want. Why wait for me?"
Walking closer, he froze.
Yuji was writing a program.
The screen had been sitting on a green page for quite some time—it was clear he was stuck.
Tetsu leaned in, picked up the keyboard—
(no mouse; computers didn't come with those yet)—
Scrolled up, studying the earlier lines.
"I see… you're trying to make a music game?"
Yuji shook his head.
"I don't know what that is. I'm just wondering… can I combine rhythmic music with movement, and make a very simple game out of it? Look here—I've drafted the framework. But the first problem is that the 'transition point' is impossible to design."
Tetsu folded his arms and looked at the code Yuji indicated.
A glance was enough to understand.
Games in the '80s were evolving through three stages.
Stage One:
Fixed screens and fixed gameplay.
Tetris, the original Mario Bros., Plumber Mario, etc.
Stage Two:
Near-seamless movement—scrolling technology.
Instead of linking screens with a teleport transition, the background itself moved like a slowly unfurling scroll, creating a large continuous stage.
Like Super Mario Bros. (the famous "Super Mario 2" in some regions).
Like Contra.
These used scrolling.
Stage Three:
True large 2D worlds enabled by better storage media.
For example, Uncharted Waters in the early '90s—astonishingly released on the SFC.
But right now, in 1983, the industry was still in the first stage.
No scrolling.
Just teleporting room to room.
What Yuji envisioned was impossible without scrolling.
Scrolling existed in basic form in arcades, but home consoles wouldn't implement it properly until 1984.
Tetsu thought a moment and shook his head.
"What you want can't be done on current hardware."
Yuji slumped, disappointed.
But then—
Tetsu spoke again.
"Have you ever played Snake?"
Yuji blinked. "You mean that arcade Snake?"
"Yeah. Snake can grow infinitely long even though the playfield is fixed. In other words, if you can't expand outward, try expanding inward."
Tetsu improvised wildly:
"You can build something Snake-like. Then combine it with the music—press certain buttons at certain beats. It won't be a true music game, but at least you can experiment. When the tones play, bind low notes to down, high notes to up, mid-range to function keys…"
He grabbed the keyboard and typed a few lines of example code.
"Instead of controlling a snake, you control a… square. The square moves around the field, and by following the music's rhythm, its trail eventually draws shapes or words on the screen. That'll complete the game."
Yuji nodded rapidly.
Amazing.
This—
This was the power of Atlus' president!
…even if Atlus currently had only two people.
Please Support me by becoming my patreon member and get 15+ chapters.
[email protected]/Ajal69
change @ with a
Thank You to Those who joined my Patreon