Chapter 30: Competitors of Land of Adventure
Chapter 30: Competitors of Land of Adventure
Pana poured tremendous effort into things like creating character motion sprites for every skill, and in cases like the campfire, she even created entirely dedicated illustration screens.
Oh...
And honestly, even Ras found these illustrations extremely impressive.
The way the bonfire cast reddish shadows throughout the dark forest, the steam rising from the black pot hanging above it, and the firelight and shadows reflected across the adventurers’ faces were all expressed exquisitely despite using only a limited number of colors.
The atmosphere genuinely felt alive.
After spending an entire month polishing the game through testing, Ras was finally able to notify Barbal Soft that development was complete.
“The sequel is finally coming out?!”
Since Kandel had fully stepped away from sales work and returned to headquarters, Ras called the president’s office directly, just as Paul Roxy wanted before.
And immediately, he heard Roxy’s voice sounding so excited it practically resembled a cheer.
Sea King was already performing extremely well.
But Land of Adventure was the game that genuinely shocked the entire world, so there were many people desperately waiting for a sequel.
As far as Barbal Soft was concerned, simply releasing the sequel already guaranteed success.
At one point, they became unable to endure the waiting and directly called to ask whether a sequel was even in development.
And ever since hearing that it was, they had continued waiting impatiently for completion.
Now, at last, the news had arrived.
Moreover, Paul Roxy was not merely viewing Land of Adventure as a product.
He openly considered himself one of its fans as well, which naturally made his joy even greater.
“I’ll send someone over immediately!”
“Ah. Alright.”
Ras himself felt fairly pleased, but Roxy’s enthusiasm was so overwhelming that he ended the call feeling slightly exhausted.
About thirty minutes later, someone could be heard climbing the stairs.
Apparently, just as Roxy promised, he truly had sent someone immediately.
“Greetings. I’m Tshtet from Barbal Soft.”
The person who cautiously opened the door and entered was a heavily muscular man whose sheer size remained obvious even beneath his suit.
Judging by the yellow ears on top of his head, he appeared to be a Beastman, though Ras could not identify the exact race.
“Ah. Hello. Please wait here for a moment.”
Naturally, Ras could not simply hand over the diskettes based solely on the man’s word, so he first verified everything through a phone call.
Regardless of whether Ras himself was now a star developer releasing consecutive hit games, every employee here had worked themselves nearly to death for almost five months to create this game.
Naturally, he had no choice but to be cautious.
Fortunately, the man named Tshtet really was legitimate.
And since Barbal Soft explained that he would handle these matters exclusively going forward, Ras memorized his face carefully.
Then, half a month later, Land of Adventure 2 officially launched after receiving overwhelming praise from Barbal Soft’s employees.
Public reception was equally explosive.
Players who experienced the previous game had desperately longed for a new story, and the sequel—having dramatically strengthened the story elements—perfectly satisfied those desires.
Not only that, but players were astonished by the improved graphics and sound.
Even the first game’s quality had already been considered impressive.
Yet somehow, the sequel achieved even higher quality while still running on identical system specifications.
The expanded non-combat skills, the way they interconnected with characters, systems, and the world itself to create stronger realism, along with the new battle system, were all praised as even more shocking than the original.
“Good morning.”
“Ah, boss. You’re here?”
Ras arrived at the office while reading magazine articles filled with comments like those.
And the other employees already present were also holding and reading various things in their hands.
They were computer magazines as well.
Originally, Garazt—who majored in computers and always had strong interest in them—began reading them after following Ras’s example.
Then the other employees gradually started buying them too, each for their own reasons: wanting better understanding of their work, growing interested in computers, or simply wanting to see how people evaluated the games they personally helped create.
And all of them currently looked excited while reading reviews about Land of Adventure 2.
Even without realistic motivations like bonuses, nobody disliked seeing something they personally participated in receive high praise.
However, while casually flipping through pages with a faint grin, Ras suddenly froze after spotting one particular article.
This magazine had gradually expanded its gaming section and increasingly focused on games, so naturally it contained articles introducing games besides Land of Adventure 2.
That itself was not strange.
Still, Ras assumed Land of Adventure 2 would obviously be treated as the most important title.
But one article instantly captured his attention.
<Comparative Analysis of Land of Adventure 2 and Myth of Salvation!>
To Ras, this wording clearly implied the two games were being placed on equal footing.
And as he slowly examined the article contents and screenshots, his expression became increasingly serious.
There had already been many games imitating Land of Adventure.
But most merely copied it clumsily.
Some possessed fairly decent quality, but they still never escaped the label of “imitator.”
This, however, felt completely different.
Kanbuta Soft?
This game from an entirely unfamiliar company boldly abandoned the turn-based combat system Ras introduced.
Instead, it implemented real-time combat where players dodged enemies moving around the map, approached to swing swords directly, or launched long-range fire attacks from afar.
Of course, “real-time combat” sounded grander than it actually was.
In practice, it simply returned to the action and shooting-game styles that used to be popular.
As a result, it lacked the refined growth systems found in Land of Adventure.
Still, the intuitive and straightforward gameplay itself provided more than enough fun.
Not only that, but it also introduced puzzle elements—pushing rocks, pressing switches hidden in maze-like maps to open entrances, avoiding traps moving in fixed patterns—which created a completely different style of adventure compared to Land of Adventure.
From those characteristics, Ras immediately recalled a particular game from Earth.
This is basically The Legend of Zelda?!
People of this world probably viewed it simply as an incredibly creative game.
But Ras felt astonished for entirely different reasons.
Just like the earlier Mario-like game, this once again proved that even possessing Earth’s knowledge did not mean he could underestimate the people of this world.
At roughly the same time, inside Kanbuta Soft’s office—
“YEAHHHH!”
After hearing the sales numbers relayed from the distributor, Ejjuka threw both hands high into the air and screamed wildly.
“Damn it, you scared the hell out of me!”
Eji, who had been reading a magazine, flinched violently from the sudden shout before snapping back irritably.
Meanwhile, Ranshtain sat in front of his computer with arms crossed, already listening to Ejjuka’s phone conversation beforehand, so instead of being startled, he merely smirked while watching the two of them.
“No, they said forty thousand copies! How am I supposed to not scream at that?!”
Ejjuka remained fully excited without shrinking back at all.
Eji scratched at his face briefly, then gave up and waved the magazine he had been reading while replying.
“Well, I guess our game really did succeed. The magazines are already comparing it to Land of Adventure 2.”
Although he tried acting calm, Eji himself was also greatly encouraged by the success.
If not, he probably would have physically tackled Ejjuka for startling him like that.
The two constantly bickered even while developing games.
“Really?! Then maybe it won’t stop at forty thousand copies—maybe four hundred thousand!”
Since Eji humored him slightly, Ejjuka looked ready to ascend directly into the heavens.
Ranshtain, disgusted by that ecstatic expression, finally interrupted.
“That’s getting ahead of yourself. Even Land of Adventure only sold three hundred thousand copies. Four hundred thousand is pushing it.”
Still, Ejjuka had not thrown out the number thoughtlessly.
“No way. Do you know how much computer ownership has increased lately? I heard it rose fifty percent in just a few months. And people are saying magic support devices are probably about to get replaced by chips and circuits too.”
“Oh! Seriously?”
Eji, who loved hardware almost as much as software, reacted immediately.
This was technologically significant, but economically even more important because magic support devices were absurdly expensive.
At minimum, people expected computer prices to fall by nearly thirty percent, which meant all the previously suppressed demand might explode outward.
“Well, if that happens, it changes things.”
Ranshtain puckered his thick lower lip and nodded.
Since Orc facial structures differed greatly from humans, even subtle expressions often carried slightly different meanings.
“Perfect! Forget four hundred thousand—we’re hitting five hundred thousand! No, a million! Ah, right! Let’s ride this momentum and immediately start the sequel too!”
At that point, Ejjuka became so overwhelmed with excitement that even Eji could no longer go along with him.
Even Ranshtain’s expression immediately turned cold as both glared at him together.
“No. Absolutely not! We practically coughed blood just trying to meet the deadline! We’re resting first. Are we seriously going to die making games?!”
“Yeah, you lunatic. If you want to die, die alone.”
The sheer weight of Ranshtain’s deep voice and glaring eyes caused Ejjuka to shrivel instantly.
In any case, the three members of Kanbuta Soft fully enjoyed the joy of their success.
And after them, more and more people began entering the industry after witnessing the new era Ras opened, creating innovative games and finding success themselves.
As the game market expanded, computer ownership increased alongside it.
And as ownership increased, the game market itself grew even larger in return.
A cycle had begun forming.
As the industry expanded, the amount of money flowing into it naturally grew as well.
The computer market already contained many competing manufacturers.
But once money began gathering there, naturally the competition intensified further.
Computers represented concentrated cutting-edge technology.
Because the industry itself revolved around technology, much of the money invested for competitive advantage flowed directly into technological development, accelerating progress dramatically.
Long before Ras directly created things like graphics cards, he had already begun influencing technological advancement itself.
And there were even people directly inspired by Ras personally.
Back when he posted recruitment notices to various universities while searching for researchers to develop graphics cards—
At the bulletin board of Davan Comprehensive University, famous for engineering studies—
Well, CPUs really are getting overloaded.
A young Dwarf whose height resembled an elementary school student’s but whose body was covered in dense muscles and rough reddish-brown beard filling half his face stood reading Ras’s notice carefully.
In truth, among people researching computers at universities, very few showed interest in Ras’s proposal.
The reason came down to differing perspectives on computers themselves.
Ras and ordinary users placed tremendous importance on games.
Researchers, however, mostly viewed computers as advanced devices for research and industry.
To them, current graphical capabilities already felt more than sufficient.
As long as computers could display calculation results and basic shapes, there was no real need to further strengthen graphics functions.
If performance improvements were necessary, they should focus on processing power instead.
And since improving CPUs naturally improved graphics too, Ras’s proposal simply seemed meaningless to them.
But this Dwarf—Karkov—thought slightly differently.
And he also knew someone else who might share his perspective.
While considering how computers themselves would need to be designed to incorporate this “GPU” concept, he walked down the hallway.
“You there?”
The sign outside the clubroom read Ancient Magic Research Society.
Inside, however, only empty bookshelves and a few computers sitting on crude desks lined the walls remained.
In truth, the club itself had already been abolished long ago, and several students were merely using the room without permission.
“Oh? You’re back?”
A tall young man with slightly brown skin and a mustache responded to Karkov a beat late.
He had been completely focused on doing something at the computer.