Chapter 80: Meta Hardware’s Full-Scale Start and Joy Systems

“Let’s try it too.”

“Okay.”

Ras took Ella and headed toward a machine with relatively fewer people around it. A boy in his late teens, who had kept failing and losing money, took someone else’s arrival as a chance to give up. He was a wise boy.

“What do you want?”

Like most men, Ras knew that even if he won a stuffed toy, he would have no use for it, so he decided to take Ella’s request from the start. Winning what his girlfriend wanted was enjoyable in itself too.

“Huh? Then... that one. Win me the rabbit doll.”

Ella did not particularly love stuffed toys, but she had more interest in them than Ras did. After thinking for a moment, she pointed at the pink rabbit she had kept glancing at.

“Okay. Wait just a little.”

Ras was confident. He had won crane games several times on Earth, and he had also tested this crane game before release.

“Uh... huh?!”

However, perhaps there was already a staff member at the arcade who had realized the art of arranging prizes, because the rabbit was not easily caught. He did manage to grab it, but it seemed to be caught on something and would not lift.

When Ras failed the first time, he simply looked at Ella and laughed. But as his failures continued, laughter stopped coming easily.

“You don’t have to win that for me.”

When Ella saw that Ras’s back was soaked with sweat, she felt sorry for him and whispered that into his ear. But it only made Ras feel even more miserable.

In the end, he changed strategies. He first pulled out the dolls around the rabbit one by one to break up the scrum, and only then did he barely manage to catch his target.

“There are too many.”

Ras tried to give all five dolls he had won to Ella, but she shook her head with a troubled expression and only accepted the rabbit. Thus, Ras ended up with four unwanted interior decorations.

Perhaps Ella became interested as well, because she tried a few times. However, likely because she had no experience, she kept failing. And since the play fee was more expensive than other games, she gave up on her fifth attempt.

“It’s fun, but it’s too expensive.”

She was now a proper working adult earning a decent salary.

But she had not forgotten all her old memories. Back then, the money that could buy a meal’s worth of bread was being thrown away several times to win a doll she did not particularly need, and she felt a strange sense of guilt over it.

But just as there were people like Ella in the world, there were also many people who did not spare money for enjoyment.

And the magic of the crane numbed people’s sense of money and made them keep inserting coins into the slot.

In truth, when the Arcade Game Land branches were first instructed to place these strange machines, they were puzzled, and some even felt resistance.

But when they tried replacing the coin boxes and saw the piles of coins inside, they were astonished and came to think, as expected of the chairman.

Even after that, the heat around the crane game cooled slightly compared to the beginning, but people continued seeking it out steadily. In particular, it was significant that it could attract a slightly different type of customer from existing video games.

And Arcade Game Land was already practically a showcase in the arcade game market.

When operators saw these crane machines and the crowds gathered around them, they immediately thought, this is it, and tried to introduce them as well.

And that directly led to Meta Hardware’s sales.

“Orders are continuing to come in.”

Utaro reported this with a bright expression.

In truth, like Ras, or rather even more than Ras, he had felt anxious about the funds being invested into a new product he could not be sure of.

But when the trucks and drivers they introduced began fulfilling their roles and diligently delivering crane machines nationwide, his anxiety melted away like snow, and joy arrived in its place.

With even the second product succeeding, Meta Hardware became somewhat stable.

Honestly, there were plenty of companies that kept themselves going with just one hit product.

But successfully launching two products in a row within a short time meant the company had considerable capability.

However, Meta Hardware’s goal was still the computing industry.

Instead of stopping in satisfaction, Ras decided that it was now time to make a proper computer-related product. Considerable revenue continued coming in from joysticks and crane games. Now, they had gained enough durability to withstand several failures from risky attempts.

“Ella. Tell the Meta Hardware development team to submit new product proposals.”

“Okay. Got it.”

Ras’s thoughts were passed through Utaro to the Meta Hardware development team.

It could have been a sudden instruction. But the development team was not particularly flustered. It had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠quite some time since the crane game machine was developed. And since Ras had effectively designed the whole thing himself, they had had plenty of time to think about new products.

Of course, among them were some who liked receiving salaries and playing around without thinking much.

But not all of them were like that.

And from the ideas accumulated by those enthusiastic people alone, enough proposals for Ras to examine arrived on his desk.

Ras examined them one by one in detail.

Not bad.

Among them, there were strange items like an automatic diskette insertion device, but there were also quite a few usable ideas.

For reference, the automatic diskette insertion device was exactly what it sounded like.

It was a machine that inserted diskettes from a large diskette container one by one according to an internal program. Its core feature was said to be a simple indexing function, and while that sounded plausible, it was an idea worse than simply attaching labels to diskettes.

Aside from that, there were ideas such as a ballpoint-pen-shaped mouse, meaning a tool that made drawing easier and resembled a type of tablet; a computer recorder that digitized sound and saved it as data; high-capacity diskettes; and even a proposal to manufacture and sell a mass-market hard disk.

Perhaps because this company’s first product was a joystick, there were many ideas related to peripheral devices.

And the one Ras was most interested in was the hard disk. The reason he had been especially harsh toward the automatic diskette insertion device was also because hard disks existed.

This world already had hard disks too. No, he did not know how it had been on Earth, but here, hard disks had actually appeared before diskettes.

The problem was that they were extremely expensive. They were not at a level where they could be attached to personal PCs and sold, so they had not become popular.

But just as this proposal said, the computer market had already grown significantly. And as could be seen from the Hammer Computer case, consumers did not greatly spare money when buying high-performance computers.

So if the price was lowered through mass production, there seemed to be enough chance of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠success.

Moreover, according to the information attached to the proposal, the Kanish Kingdom had recently developed technology that made hard disks smaller and reduced noise.

This might work.

If they bought this technology or borrowed it by paying royalties, they might be able to make a decent product.

After thinking for a while, Ras wrote an order to find out the necessary funds and preparation time, and to ask the Kanish Kingdom side that possessed this technology about their terms.

Manufacturing carried high risks, and larger-scale items like this were even more so. Because of that, it was hard for him to immediately decide to do it, but he decided to consider it positively.

But they wrote this proposal because they’re confident they can make it, right?

Ras wanted to trust his company’s developers, but because he did not know much about hardware, it was hard for him to judge development feasibility, which made him uneasy. If he spent a large amount of money on it only for them to fail to make it, it would truly be a complete disaster.

In the end, Ras had to add an instruction at the end of the order telling them to analyze development feasibility and required time as well.

Returning to Metallic Jumper, this game gave great joy to gamers and Meta Soft.

But not everyone was happy.

Competing developers, especially Joy Systems, the developer of the game console Talados, felt that even more strongly.

Joy Systems had been nervous ever since Hammer Computer came out. Talados’s greatest advantage was its superior graphical performance compared to PCs, but that advantage had become meaningless.

Moreover, Fighters’ Club, which came out not long after the release of Hammer Computer, actually showed a higher level of completion in terms of graphics.

For Joy Systems, it was a shock.

But they did not despair.

They still had the advantage of being much cheaper than Hammer Computer, and more than anything, Joy Systems’ president, Kokaton, was not a man who would collapse from adversity of this level.

“Then all we have to do is win over customers with even cooler games!”

Joy Systems had quite a few game developers under its wing. Before Hammer 1, many customers sought Talados because of its overwhelming graphics performance and low price. And there were many developers who saw potential in this rapidly growing market.

Aside from that business perspective, there were also quite a few developers who wanted to create games with cooler graphics.

Because of that, Kokaton judged that if they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠competed with cooler and more varied titles, they could sufficiently overwhelm Hammer Computer. At least in the field of games.

Perhaps thanks to that determination, Talados games gradually began escaping from the simple, low-quality games Ras had played before, and decent games started appearing.

Of course, the genres of the games being developed were similar. This was not because the developers on that side lacked ability, but because of differences in the system. With consoles of this era, developing role-playing games or simulations that required large amounts of data was difficult, and playing them was inconvenient as well.

Still, because role-playing games were such a huge boom, a few kinds did come out.

However, this limitation was not purely a disadvantage. Everyone had different tastes. People who liked sports games, action games, and shooting games actually cheered.

As they built up their position like that, the company also began stabilizing to some extent. So they came to think that PCs were PCs, and they just needed to do well on their side.

Then, while keeping a close eye on Meta Soft, which had created masterpieces such as Fighters’ Club and Tetris 2, they heard the news that it had released a new title.

“Metallic Jumper?”

Kokaton immediately obtained it and played it.

And he received a huge shock.

That did not mean he was shocked by its gameplay like other gamers. Of course, that aspect was not entirely absent. This was certainly an incredibly fun game.

But more than that, the problem was the game’s genre. It was a side-scrolling action game, the very genre they were currently pushing hard.

On the console side, where shooting games were strong, side-scrolling ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠action games naturally appeared. It was hard to call them a subgenre or derivative genre outright, but they had many similarities in that they progressed in one direction, terrain and enemies appeared accordingly, and the player controlled one character to defeat them.

Side-scrolling shooting games had already existed for a long time.

If one replaced the airplane with a character walking on the ground, that alone could already be called a side-scrolling action game.

In any case, those on the console side, including Kokaton, felt that Metallic Jumper was eyeing their market. To put it more strongly, they felt it was a kind of invasion.

If it had merely been that kind of game, they would not have reacted this much.

But its high level of completion amplified their sense of victimhood.

“It’s fun... It’s too fun!”

Kokaton shouted while roughly scratching his short hair.

Vice President Ataros also had a serious expression. He could almost see side-scrolling action game fans and shooting game players leaving Talados and moving to Hammer Computer.