“Why? You don’t think you can do it?”
“N No~!! I can. It’s just it’ll cause a bit of a headache for me if I can’t claim any responsibility…”
“On the contrary, the current situation is precisely the reason why you should do it. We will have no answer when we get hit with a legal sanction so please proceed. I will bear all of the responsibility.”
“Yes sir~!!”
“Morita… Your voice is too loud…”
“Ah, sorry. Hayashi…”
Although I am anticipating what kind of shooting game these 2 otaku’s will brew up…
&
After this incident, Mr. Shige and I encountered each other in the halls but seldom exchanged greetings.
It was like this before with Dragon Warrior too; Mr. Shige was incredibly sensitive with the topic of games. Even at the presentation conference, the way he gazed at me was akin to staring at a rival rather than work colleagues.
In truth, I wasn’t disappointed with Mr. Shige’s response. From another point of view, it could be said that the best developer in Mintendo was acknowledging me as a rival…
Nevertheless, how many units did Super Marigee sell again?
I was bored being alone at home, so I opened up my Game & Watch device out of curiosity. Before long, the melodious theme music rippled out of the device as if it was waiting in anticipation.
-Ba-Bam~ Hidden mission cleared. You’ve completed the ‘Secret game developer’. Ensuingly, you will gain a 200% increase in recognition when you reveal your identity amongst gamers.-
-Ba-Bam~ A new game ‘Psychic Battle’ is in development. Viewing the status of the employees working on the project is possible-
-Ba-Bam~ Mr. Yamagauchi from your company, Pentagon, has begun the development for Final Frontier 2.-
-Ba-Bam~ Kumamoto Shigeru of Mintendo is harboring a fiery competitive spirit towards you.-
Small happenings that occurred in the game industry all popped up as notifications since the last time I used the device. After checking off a few important notifications, I looked up the information about Super Marigee 3 in the search bar.
Holy… To think that the retail sales alone were 40 million, unbelievable…
I let out a small sigh at the tremendous sales figure of Super Marigee 3 as I picked up the telephone receiver and started turning the dials. After a brief tone, a man’s voice was heard.
“Who’s you?”
Who’s you… what kind of manners is that? I took a brief moment to gather myself before speaking.
“Mr. Pumala, is Chandra available?”
“Chandra is work. Want to speak?”
“Yes, please.”
A moment later, Pumala’s unintelligible murmurings were heard and the voice of Chandra followed soon after.
“Is this Junhyuk? We have nothing to do nowadays after making the promised cartridges. We have to work to send money back home. Is there anything we can do?”
“That’s exactly why I called. Chandra, I want to request something from you.”
“Request~? Chandra will do any request Kang Junhyuk has. What kind of fun idea are you cooking up again?”
“Hear me out before telling me if you can do it or not.”
“Okay, tell me.”
After hearing my explanation, Chandra replied in a bright tone.
“That’s possible~!! Chandra can do that.”
“Really? That’s great then.”
“But there is one problem, Kang Junhyuk. It’ll be hard to go into mass production with that method. It’s too difficult to match Mintendo’s production rate in Chandra’s small workshop.”
Of course… It was not a workload which could be done in the confines of a pen-like environment without even proper ventilation and a minimal number of employees.
This was a bit earlier than I’d planned, but it wasn’t a bad period to progress my plans. I quickly took out a memo pad and grabbed a pen.
“Chandra, call out a list of the production machineries that you’d need.”
“Mng? Why is that?”
“Uh, I’ve decided to set up a factory.”
“What!?”
The economy of Japan in 1987 was already more or less bloated to it’s fullest, and had begun it’s waning process. This process had already begun after the threat of the ‘Plaza Convention’ in 1985.
The Japanese government had been regulating the Japanese currency value when all of a sudden, they consented to the ridiculous proposal by America: “The dollar has to be stabilized in order to revive the world economy.” This resulted in the disastrous outcome of a decline in the value of the Japanese Yen by a half.
Following the Korean war, Japan had re-emerged as a country of major exports and received the support of allied countries to become the 2nd ranking nation in the world. However, the Plaza Convention had caused the value of the Yen to drop beneath the dollar known as the “Yen Incident” and their export companies oversees had been steadily falling like dominoes starting from last year.
To try and recover from this sudden development, the Japanese government makes a terrible move again…
&
I was able to acquire a production factory facing bankruptcy with the same strategy I used to take over Triangle Soft.
This place was actually one of the many low-level subcontracted companies producing cartridges for Mintendo, and President Yamauchi had also been waiting for the company to bankrupt itself.
“What!! The Raitex factory had been bought!? Who!! What bastard was it!!”
“I have no clue. I don’t know the specifics but the Raitex owner declared that he wasn’t the owner anymore.”
“Fucking hell!! I planned to buy it after it went completely bankrupt~!!”
“I told you that it would’ve been for the best to buy it when the competitive rates were up than waiting too much…”
“Shut your mouth!!”
Crash!! President Yamauchi must’ve been genuinely mad as he threw the ashtray from his desk across the room and started a tantrum. Mr. Gunpei was trying his best to calm him down.
Now… Now… I came here to meet Mr. Gunpei regarding Psychic Battle, but this mood is too lively. Of course, I was the one who caused it…
“This won’t do… Even If I’ll have to suffer some losses, I will acquire the rest of the factories before they get snatched up.”
“President, that’s…”
Seeing Gunpei’s perplexed expression, President Yamauchi’s face started to pale.
“N..No way…”
“Yes. It’s the same situation with 2 other factories we had in our list.”
“How could this be~ fuck!!! Who the hell was it!! Find this damned bastard immediately!!!”
“Y..Yes, sir.”
“Huff… Huff”
President Yamauchi started gulping water as if trying to simmer down his burning insides, but he was still huffing after. Maybe it’d be better to come back later… I silently shook my head as I walked out of the President’s room.
A moment later, Mr. Gunpei came over to my New Console Development department with a very tired look on his face. I handed a cup of cold water to him as I asked.
“Why is President Yamauchi fuming like that?”
“It’s completely understandable. He lost a prey that he’d been stalking while trying to save a few pennies…
“Prey?”
“Due to the huge success of the Family cartridges, our own factories aren’t able to keep up with the demand. So we’d been assigning work to various small-scale factories, but the number of factories closing down is ever increasing due to the economy…”
“Ah… So President Yamauchi had been trying to wait until the factories closed down.”
“That way, he could purchase them at the clearance price… But a strange event happened.”
“A strange event?”
“Someone had bought these factories that were on the verge of closing down. On top of that, they had also taken care of the workforce for the companies so the owners were head over heels when they sold it. This person seems to possess a large amount of financial capital. The problem is, this person mass bought these factories but left the operations to the previous owners. The factory owners wouldn’t open their mouth as if they swore a vow even if I asked them so…”
“That really is a big problem…”
That’s… Because I’m busy and I can’t manage them from over here… In truth, not even those factory owners had met me face to face. Buying all the factories were taken care of through attorney Nakamura, who’d helped me with taking over Triangle Soft in the past.
Mr. Nakamura had cautioned me against investing too much money in a depreciating business, but foreseeing the obvious outcome of these factories not being managed well if I hired new workers, I purchased the entire factory’s labor force along with their owners to avoid the hassle of management.
Thanks to that, about 3,000,000 Yen had been taken out of my balance in a month, but it didn’t matter. The reason was because I would recover about 1,000,000 soon enough. How would it come in? Just like this.
“But Kang-kun, what is the topic that you wanted to discuss?”
“Ah, I want to ask something regarding Psychic Battle from you, Mr. Gunpei.”
“Ah~ You’re talking about the last game from the presentation conference. Even at a glance, it truly seems like an amazing game. But from what the Inventions people are telling me, it’s impossible to implement with the current Family hardware. Is that true?”
“Mm~ about half of that is true.”
“I didn’t think the Kang-Kun that I know would start something without future thinking, but half? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I need a specialty chip that will boost the capabilities of the Family.”
“A specialty chip? Where do you plan to put it in?”
“Of course, it’ll be inside the cartridge. It’ll be an apparatus that would increase the calculation speed of the Family device.”
“Hmm~ This is… Theoretically possible. But it hasn’t ever been implemented before…”
“That’s fine. I know a company that can produce this specialty chip.”
“Really? Who are they?”
“They’re a company called Raitex. I heard that Chandra, one of their employees, invented a specialty chip that could boost the capabilities of the cartridge.”
“Raitex!?”
“Wouldn’t you know about them, Mr. Gunpei? They’re one of our subcontracted companies…?”
“Raitex is one of the companies that President Yamauchi tried to absorb… If he’d acted a bit sooner, we would’ve acquired that technique for ourselves…”
In the end, Mintendo had no choice but to pay upwards of 1,000,000,000 Yen to mass produce this chip that could boost the performance of the cartridge.
Mr. Gunpei had spent several sleepless nights trying to copy the technique to making this chip, but the results were ultimately a failure due to the anti-copying system implemented by the Indian native.
President Yamauchi was opposed to the release of Psychic Battle that couldn’t be released with the conventional cartridges, but due to the popularity resulting from FamiTong Magazine’s advertising and the expectations of consumers, he couldn’t easily order a cease in production.
“Kang-kun, do you really have the confidence that this game will scorch the floor? The price of production became too high after including your specialty chip or whatever, we’d have to sell at least a million units just to break even.”
“President Yamauchi…”
“Mmm? What is it…”
“Have I ever disappointed you before…”
“You’re right… The reception at the conference was great, and Shigeru is working incredibly hard after feeling the pressure from you. It’s expected to be a hit, but…”
“If you’re worrying that much, I’ll alleviate some of that for you.”
“Mmm? How?”
“I will only be using 1/10 the marketing fee of Super Marigee 3.”