Chapter 167: Gun and Magic
Chapter 167: Gun and Magic
It was probably because he could not tolerate waiting for something to become fun.
In any case, because that was his taste, he had been looking forward to Gun and Magic after hearing about its upcoming release.
Meta Soft was famous for role-playing and simulation games. But that was not all. It was also the developer that first created Fighting Games. And because it was also putting considerable effort into Arcade games, quite a few people with tastes like Swift’s paid attention to and waited for games released by Meta Soft.
A game where you sweep away enemies with guns and magic? There’s no way I’m not playing that.
That was the promotional line for this game. Drawn in by it, he looked through the introduction and saw that there did not seem to be any annoying level grinding or gathering money to buy items.
When Swift returned to his rented room, he roughly threw his clothes onto the bed and immediately turned on the computer. Then, after hesitating briefly, he washed up first before opening the package.
These days, quite a few gamers collected packages too, but Swift simply tore open the box roughly. He had bought quite a few game softwares himself, but they were all just stored in diskette cases.
“Ah. There are several.”
Swift frowned when he saw seven diskettes inside the package.
Some gamers liked it when a game had a large volume. But many people, like Swift, disliked swapping diskettes because it was troublesome and broke immersion.
For such people, hard disks were truly useful items.
Swift chose and deleted something installed that he no longer played, then immediately installed the game. Installation itself was annoying, but based on experience, it was still better than swapping diskettes.
Once installation finished and he launched the game, an impressive main screen appeared.
Oh?
Against the background of a dark forest stood an arched entrance. Beneath it, the protagonist’s character appeared only as a silhouette, holding a pistol that was also shown in silhouette in one hand while blue flames burned from the other.
<Gun and Magic>
It was an image that was not complicated yet clearly showed what kind of game it was.
For Swift, who liked simple things, it left a good first impression. The game opening that followed also felt good.
“It’s a comic?”
Games where the story or setting mattered usually expressed them through illustrations and calmly displayed text, but this game felt entirely like a comic book. It used character- and event-focused panels, speech bubbles, and comic-style effects.
This was an idea from Casual Team 1’s Graphics Department.
The game itself was a fast-paced action game, but the story was also important, so while they were considering a short yet impactful delivery method, they eventually came up with this approach after much effort.
At first, they considered animation too, but animation that could run on an 8-bit computer required enormous compromises in both image quality and frame rate.
“At that point, don’t make it animation. Just make it a comic.”
That was the team leader’s reaction after seeing the sample, and the Graphics Team took those words literally and tried making it as a comic. It turned out better than expected, so it was adopted as is.
Of course, the reason they could use comics was also because the game’s background story and setting were simple enough.
In any case, as the protagonist, Swift headed toward the ruins said to lie deep within a remote forest, just as he had been commissioned to do. The game began when the companions he encountered there were killed by bandits.
“Oh?”
The background shown in the comic became the game screen as is.
Swift had thought it was somewhat unusual that the protagonist’s appearance was barely shown in the comic and that the images were drawn from a first-person perspective. But when even the game screen showed a first-person view where he could not see himself except for the gun and hand he held, he unknowingly let out a short sound of admiration.
<Press the Space key to take cover.>
And when one of the enemies aimed a gun barrel at him, the realism unique to the first-person perspective made him flinch for a moment.
Swift reflexively moved the mouse to counterattack. But the enemy’s movement was much faster, and it looked as though he would be hit at any moment.
At that instant, the screen froze and this guide message appeared.
Space?
Swift immediately followed it, and he saw the monitor screen move as a rock blocked his view. Then the sound of a gunshot followed.
“Phew?”
It was only a game, but the presentation made him tense up so sharply that Swift unconsciously exhaled. Then explanations appeared about how to attack enemies.
Easy.
It was extremely intuitive and simple. All he had to do was aim the crosshair on the screen at an enemy and click.
Swift shot enemies as he had learned, sometimes taking cover, and defeated the enemies swarming toward him.
As advertised, the battles certainly felt realistic. In particular, seeing enemies appear from various spots on the screen and approach him gave him a chilling sense of danger.
The shooting games he had played before were mostly third-person, and even when some were first-person, enemies either simply popped out or, if they moved, only shifted sideways rather than approaching. But this game gave a truly three-dimensional sense of reality.
Of course, from Ras’s perspective, having played ultra-high-spec games on Earth, the graphics would have looked incredibly crude. But to the people of this world, this could truly be called an innovation and a shock.
In any case, Swift became immersed in the game and enjoyed it as if he had truly become a gunslinger.
<All enemies have been defeated. The forest has regained its silence.>
When no more enemies appeared on the screen, this message soon appeared. Only then did Swift feel the tension leave him.
It definitely has immersion.
It had only just begun, but Swift already felt satisfied with buying this game.
After clearing the stage, the screen returned to the comic format and the story progressed.
[Seriously, who expects anyone to come to a remote place like this? Why are there bandits here?]
After defeating the last bandit, the protagonist grumbled like this. Then he went around checking the condition of his companions.
Unfortunately, all of them were dead.
Well, no one could be alive after being shot in the head and heart.
[What now?]
Going back was difficult too.
They had already gone too deep, and all the horses were either dead or scattered. In the end, the protagonist decided to continue toward the village that had been his original destination.
The protagonist packed his belongings and entered the dark forest path, and a message appeared saying Stage 1 Clear.
Then the word <Score> appeared.
Of course, in shooting action games, scoring was indispensable. But it was quite different from what Swift expected.
First, the clear time was displayed, followed by the number of enemies defeated, the number of bullets used, the number of spells used, the number of times he was hit, and so on. At the end, under the overall evaluation category, the message B Class appeared in large letters.
“What is this, a school report card?”
Swift frowned for a moment because it reminded him of the time he had brought his school report card home and gotten scolded.
But it was definitely memorable. It stood out far more clearly than mere numbers.
Existing scores were only displayed as numbers, so they were hard to remember and felt weak. But when an alphabetical evaluation appeared like this, he could immediately understand roughly where he stood.
This was a system Ras had introduced.
In action games, interest tended to fall once all stages were cleared.
Losing interest in a game was a serious problem.
That was why scores existed.
They encouraged players to clear the same stage with better scores, maintaining interest.
That made players spend more coins or increased playtime. And over time, this score system gradually developed further, so Ras introduced an advanced system he remembered.
As Swift had already felt, this alphabetical evaluation was highly intuitive.
And because it resembled school grading systems, it also had the effect of making people want to achieve better scores.
Ras also added a reward system to this.
Swift did not know yet, but after progressing to a certain point, there would be items and magic that could only be obtained by clearing specific stages above a certain evaluation.
In truth, none of them were necessary to clear the game, but Ras had included as much content as possible.
This was partly consideration for gamers, but since there were already online-supported games and competitive games, he needed to increase playtime in this way to reduce unfavorable comparisons.
After all, even if fun was subjective, when there was one game that could be enjoyed for months after purchase and another that lost its flavor in two days, people usually chose the one they could enjoy longer.
And once Swift learned that scores appeared like this, he was influenced by it and began playing more carefully and with greater focus.
“Oh. This round really felt like I became a gunslinger.”
Of course, it could not be compared to real combat where one’s life was on the line.
But once he realized every mistake was a deduction factor, it also increased the thrill.
The game already had greatly heightened realism thanks to its first-person perspective, so when he cleared a stage with such focus, he could feel heat rising up his back.
Then, once he began using magic from Stage 3 onward, it became even more interesting.
<Freezing magic can stop approaching enemies.>
Magic was one method of dealing damage, but it also had special effects.
The freezing magic he had just used stopped the native warriors rushing toward him like a flood, saving Swift from danger.
But rather than things like this, flashy area spells are definitely better.
Useful magic was good, but Swift liked things like Fireball.
In Stage 9, when crazed beasts charged toward him, he hid and began a long cast while shouting, “Hurry! Hurry!” with his mouth. The thrill he felt when he barely finished casting and threw a huge mass of fire to burn away the beasts that had almost reached the front of the screen in one strike was truly exhilarating.
However, “Time Stop,” which he used in the battle against the Giant Forest Octopus, the mid-boss of Stage 13, was utility magic, yet he liked it even more than Fireball.
This Giant Forest Octopus repeatedly attacked by stretching out only its long legs, making it difficult to damage. But when it exposed its weak point, its main body, he stopped it with this magic and poured in the rocket launcher and flamethrower he had been saving until then. When he brought it down, he genuinely thought this was the strongest magic.
Like that, Swift enjoyed the game without noticing the passage of time.
So much so that he felt bitter having to turn off the computer for work the next day.
Swift was not the only one who felt this game was god-tier.
<It’s definitely innovative.>
Spirit Space was in the middle of active discussion about this game.
The main evaluations focused first on its technical skill and freshness.
Those who knew a certain amount about computers marveled at the technical ability to depict multiple objects moving simultaneously and approaching from a first-person perspective.
<No, how did they do this? If it was all sprite processing, that makes no sense.>
But the method Casual Team 1 had used was neither conceptually extremely difficult nor entirely unprecedented, so there were people who noticed it.
<Isn’t this the method used in “Space Racing”? You know, making animation by changing image output speed.>
<Ah. Is that it?>
<But isn’t the level way different from Space Racing?>
But an idea was only an idea.
No matter how simple an idea might be, implementing it was an entirely different matter, so they could not easily dismiss Meta Soft’s technical skill.
Footnotes:
Translator’s Notes:
Sprite — In computer graphics, a two-dimensional image or animation object displayed independently from the background. Sprites were heavily used in early video games because they were efficient for limited hardware.