Chapter 38: The True Debut of Pac-Man and Tetris

Fifteen days after the renovations finished, they carried out the office move by renting trucks and workers. It cost a fair amount of money, but if he made the employees do it themselves and someone got injured, that would ultimately cost even more. Of course, the company’s development materials were handled separately. Since everything fit inside a few diskette cases, it wasn’t difficult.

“Hello? What are you doing here?”

Apparently curious about someone moving in, several children lingered near the office. Ras figured it might be good to get along with local kids, so he casually tried talking to them. But instead of responding, the children immediately ran away.

What was that? Do I look scary or something?

Even back on Earth, Ras had never really been viewed with suspicion by children or strangers. Since coming to this world, he had actually been the one constantly cautious because of the many intimidating-looking demi-human races around him. Experiencing this now felt oddly strange.

Even after the move was complete, the children occasionally still appeared. But since they only watched from a distance, Ras quickly got used to it.

“So this is it? Wow...”

The moment Pana stepped through the office entrance, she gasped in admiration at the clean interior. The walls had been freshly painted, the floors had been replaced with new wood, and the ceiling looked spotless. Combined with the neatly arranged desks, the place genuinely looked like a proper company office.

The other employees who entered behind her were equally pleased. The previous office had barely been cleaned and felt almost like a storage room, so the contrast was dramatic.

Not only was it clean, it was spacious. Besides the office itself, there was also a break room, a sleeping room, and even a shower room, making it feel positively luxurious. In truth, these additions reflected Ras’s sinister intention of making employees work overnight if necessary, but none of them realized that yet.

There was also plenty of remaining space, including several empty rooms divided ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠only by partitions.

Ras planned to use those later if they hired additional staff and formed new teams, labeling them things like “Development Team 2.”

After completing the move, Meta Soft resumed development on Project War. Since naming projects before release had unintentionally become a tradition, Ras decided to simply use the project’s main concept as a temporary title during development.

On the blackboard installed in one corner of the office, “Project War” had already been written in large letters.

Ras busily hammered away at the keyboard, writing code. By now, he had become so accustomed to programming that most code flowed out almost instinctively. But it wasn’t realistic to expect everyone else to work at that level.

Stretching his shoulders and flexing his hands, he glanced toward Garazt and the new recruit.

“You should do it like this here.”

Garazt looked at the newcomer’s monitor, held his chin thoughtfully for a moment, then immediately reached toward the keyboard.

“Ahhh! Right! Wow, you’ve seriously improved a lot.”

Apparently, the new programmer Kelliper had originally ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been Garazt’s senior. Since he had been a strong student himself, understanding the solution after seeing it wasn’t difficult. But seeing Garazt — who had once been a much younger junior he personally taught — now working so skillfully genuinely impressed him.

Whether jealousy existed somewhere inside him or not, the important thing was that he showed none of it. That alone suggested he was a reasonably decent person. Of course, it was technically possible he was simply terrifyingly good at hiding his true thoughts, but unlike fiction, people like that were extremely rare in reality.

It was a fairly heartwarming scene, but inwardly Ras sighed.

Although Kelliper was adapting and learning enthusiastically, there was no avoiding the fact that Garazt’s own work speed slowed while teaching him. Which naturally increased the coding workload Ras himself had to handle.

He could have simply told Garazt to ignore training and continue following the original task distribution. But since they worked under deadlines for efficiency’s sake, someone had to cover the lost productivity, and that inevitably became Ras.

The employees at Meta Soft were certainly passionate, but simply telling people to “work on your own” wasn’t enough to keep things functioning properly. In fact, Ras himself wasn’t any different. It was something he had learned through experience.

Meanwhile, in contrast, the graphics team had already finished training, so even the newcomer Jenny was now handling graphic work fairly skillfully. Thanks to the reduced workload, Pana was visibly happier, and the two members of the graphics team spent their time whispering together in low voices in a pleasant atmosphere. Apparently they had already been fairly close even before joining the company together.

While development continued like this, Barbal Soft contacted them to announce that the arcade ports of Tetris and Pac-Man had been completed.

“Apparently Beat Heater will take longer since they have to manufacture dedicated machines. They’re saying the earliest we’ll see it is about three months from now.”

Ras felt slightly disappointed because he really wanted to see people in this world become mesmerized by the kind of flashy rhythm game machines he vaguely remembered from old Earth arcades.

“Even if it takes longer, I hope they make it properly.”

At the same time, though, he was slightly worried about how well this world’s technology could actually realize such an idea. Still, based on the rough concepts he had heard, it sounded fairly promising.

And not long afterward, the two games officially debuted in arcades.

“This time we sold around two thousand units.”

Ajabran, the sales director of Panchi Games, scratched between his upright ears as he spoke. The 42-year-old Beastman was one of the company’s founding members.

Initial sales weren’t especially impressive. They were only slightly above the company’s existing market share. This was because arcade boards were expensive products, and arcade owners tended to be extremely conservative about introducing new hardware.

Even then, sales had increased thanks to people who moved based on information that the games were already famous within the rapidly growing computer game market.

“Well, we just have to wait. People never move until they see signs first, right?”

The speaker was a black-bearded human man with deeply carved wrinkles and heavy features that matched his booming voice. Cheims, now fifty-three years old, was the company president.

He was still an active developer himself, and even now he sat at a rough desk studying blueprints while pondering improvements.

So while Barbal Soft and Meta Soft felt slightly disappointed by the initial results, Panchi Games — the party actually in the most urgent situation — calmly waited because they understood the conservative nature of the market.

And that patience was not wasted.

Vivanche Elementary School in eastern Ranchert.

A boy around ten years old carrying a shoe bag while walking down the long downhill road in front of the school was named Beyrn.

At an hour when students — no, even teachers — should have been happiest because school had ended, Beyrn was walking with an irritated expression on his cute face. One might wonder what kind of worries a child that age could possibly have, but every living person in the world had their own concerns.

That said, Beyrn’s problem wasn’t actually serious enough for others to worry about.

Beyrn had an older brother two years above him. And recently, they had been fighting over computer usage. At that age, a two-year age gap was overwhelming, so he naturally couldn’t win physically. But he cleverly relied on their mother to force his brother to give up the computer.

The problem was that their mother wasn’t always around, and his brother’s fists were very real. Worse, lately she seemed displeased that Beyrn spent too much time gaming instead of studying, making it difficult to rely on her support anymore.

Damn it! What should I do? I want to play games.

So Beyrn walked home worrying about a problem with no obvious solution. Then he noticed a huge crowd of children carrying book bags and indoor shoe bags just like his own.

What’s going on?

Soon he realized the crowd was gathered around the arcade machine outside the general store in front of the school. He could already see the flashy machine at the center of the crowd, and since he passed by this route every day, he remembered that children were always gathered around those machines anyway.

But today there seemed to be even more people than usual. Curious, Beyrn moved closer.

Originally, Beyrn wasn’t especially interested in arcade machines. Or rather, he was interested, but he simply didn’t feel like spending ten Piece of allowance money on games he could already play for free at home on the computer.

Even now, he was only curious, not intending to actually play. But the moment he saw an Orc child around his own age intensely pressing buttons on the screen, Beyrn’s large eyes widened into circles in shock.

It’s Pac-Man!

The round yellow character with its enormous mouth constantly opening and closing, along with the colorful ghosts that looked both cute and frightening, was unmistakably the Pac-Man he played at home.

His older brother liked complicated games like Sea King, but Beyrn found Pac-Man far more enjoyable since all you had to do was run around and eat tiny dots. His favorite moments were when he ate the large dots and punished the ghosts.

But this version of Pac-Man felt different somehow. Not worse — better. The characters looked sharper, the movement smoother, and even the maze itself looked cooler. Most importantly, there was music and the sound effects were fantastic.

As if hypnotized, Beyrn pushed through the crowd and placed his own ten Piece coin onto the towering stack of coins beside the arcade machine.

After waiting a long time, Beyrn finally climbed onto the tall stool and sat in front of the machine. He became so focused it felt as though he was being sucked into the screen itself.

“Oh! This kid’s pretty good!”

Since he had already played on PC at home, he managed to survive much longer than the other children. The young spectators around him exclaimed in admiration. Encouraged by that, Beyrn concentrated intensely for a long ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠while before eventually making a mistake and dying, forcing him to step down.

Ahhh, I could’ve done better!

It was fun, but also frustrating. After hesitating briefly, Beyrn stacked another ten Piece coin onto the coin pile. And after repeating this several more times, the boy completely emptied the allowance money he had been saving for weeks to buy tin soldier toys.

But Beyrn wasn’t the only one making that mistake. Across the Republic of Smite, countless children and adults became entranced by the Pac-Man and Tetris arcade machines and continued feeding them coins, while arcade owners celebrated their suddenly increased profits and rejoiced at their successful investments.

And naturally, this directly translated into increased arcade board sales. When it was obvious how much money the shop next door was making, there was no reason not to imitate them.

The reason for this success wasn’t merely the gameplay of Tetris and Pac-Man themselves.

A major factor was that people already familiar with the PC versions became interested in the improved arcade releases, drawing crowds. That in turn attracted curious arcade regulars and even non-gamers.

Of course, retaining those newly attracted players depended heavily on the actual gameplay quality of the two games.

Regardless of the reasons, Panchi Games seized the opportunity and desperately intensified their promotional efforts to expand the boom even further. Meanwhile, the production department frantically manufactured arcade boards to keep up with the explosive surge in orders.

“It’s a huge success!”

News of that success soon reached Meta Soft as well. Once again, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠information came through the excited President of Barbal Soft. Ras felt slightly burdened by how Roxy seemed almost happier about the success than his own, but considering Barbal Soft’s revival was largely driven by Meta Soft, it didn’t really feel strange.

“It’s thanks to all your hard work, President.”

Ras appropriately offered some flattering words in return. And honestly, it wasn’t entirely empty praise. Game distribution in this world still relied heavily on active salesmanship.

Of course, the games sold because they were genuinely fun. But if Barbal Soft hadn’t promoted them as enthusiastically as if they were their own products, Ras couldn’t confidently say they would have succeeded to this extent.