Chapter 139: A New Turning Point
First of all, it was because the characters felt too valuable to waste.
To begin with, this was content created because he coveted Pokémon’s IP. That was why they had put considerable effort into creating the appearances.
So if they added just a little suitable story to them, they could greatly strengthen the individuality of each spirit.
‘Narrative can be filled in later through separate comics or animation, but there still needs to be a basic setting for creating that kind of content.’
Another reason was to draw in a different layer of gamers.
Insu ultimately wanted virtual reality, and for that reason, he had excluded artificial characters and stories from TLF Online as much as possible.
And it had produced some results, but there were also quite a few disappointed voices.
[I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.]
[Shouldn’t an RPG have a story?]
[It feels a little hard to immerse myself.]
[It lacks emotional impact.]
[Shouldn’t there be heroes or something?]
No matter what one did, it was impossible to satisfy everyone. So he had tried to boldly give that up. But the chunk he had to give up seemed larger than expected.
‘And I should draw in as many people as I can.’
Perhaps there were people who could not enter because of their first impression, yet if they actually tried it, they might find enjoyment in the world of TLF.
So he thought it would not be bad to provide content that gave people who liked story-based RPGs a familiar taste, as long as it did not break the larger framework.
However, this was not the JRPG direction, but a method similar to the fragmented events found in Western-style open-world games. Insu did intend to use Pokémon from his memories, but the center was always TLF Online.
The goal was to achieve huge success like Pokémon from his previous life, but since it would be released as content for an MMORPG with a much smaller user pool, achieving that in a short period of time was impossible.
It would only become possible after TLF Online broke through the limits of MMORPGs from his previous life, became a dominant game, and turned into a platform as powerful as Pokémon’s Game Boy.
In other words, even if he maximized Pokémon’s individuality as much as possible, it had to be on the foundation of TLF Online.
To compare it to fusion cuisine, it was like adding cream, an unfamiliar ingredient, to jjamppong. But that did not mean it suddenly turned into Western cuisine or cake. It remained jjamppong. In other words, the goal was cream jjamppong.
If you tried it, you would know that despite its color, the flavor did not stand out as much as expected, and it was delicious.
“Connect them to the legends and folklore of each region, or create short stories that tie together one spirit or a few types. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Ah. Yes.”
The team members nodded with slightly ambiguous expressions.
Aside from that, they continued planning the spirit content while considering many different aspects.
The year 1996 was almost racing toward its end.
‘It’s definitely changed a lot compared to when I first realized I was reborn.’
While looking through game magazines at home, Insu suddenly had this thought. That had been in 1988, so eight years had already passed.
It was certainly not a short time. But this era seemed to have undergone changes, or development, that were far more compressed than his previous life.
This was especially striking in the computer field. In 1988, there were few people who knew much about computers, mice were barely widespread, and black-and-white monitors and 286 computers were common.
But now, smooth color graphics, sophisticated systems, and even 3D graphics were rapidly spreading.
Of course, compared to his previous life, the level was still low. Even so, it had reached a point where he could think these games were enjoyable enough.
For 2D games, if one thought of them as slightly retro in style, they would not feel particularly out of place even as 2025 mobile games. 3D was still crude, but the gameplay had already matured considerably.
Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Metal Gear, Biohazard, The Elder Scrolls, The King of Fighters, and others were games that people who liked classics still occasionally enjoyed even in 2025, regardless of those who only played the latest games.
‘This came out.’
The reason Insu was immersed in this feeling was because he discovered the appearance of another item that opened a new era.
[“Your game now becomes reality.” Voodoo Graphics — 3Dfx’s innovative 3D acceleration technology brings the world of 3D to life. Magic that breathes life into every pixel. Experience the future of graphics now!]
(Translator’s Notes: Voodoo Graphics — Real-world 3D accelerator card released by 3Dfx in 1996, remembered as a major turning point for PC 3D graphics.)
A 3D graphics card had been released.
In truth, 3D graphics cards had existed before this.
It had been quite some time since 3D games began appearing, and since they used the latest technology, they were usually released close to the newest computer specifications. Even with the latest computers, situations where games failed to show perfect performance frequently occurred, so demand naturally arose for systems specialized in processing 3D graphics.
Moreover, consoles already used graphics-only chips, GPUs, and PCs had high expandability, so thinking of such an idea was not difficult.
But just because someone conceived of it did not mean a successful product would appear from the beginning. After several failed products that only gave a placebo effect, a proper product had finally appeared.
[This really is magic. Before, I couldn’t play the game at all.]
[Wow, it changes this much just from installing one thing?]
[I’m running a full Riftborn party with no lag at all. Insane!]
When he looked it up, the reaction was heated. It made sense. Instead of buying a brand-new computer worth several thousand dollars, installing a single three-hundred-dollar part made games that had stuttered like crazy run perfectly. People must have felt like it was using magic, just as the device’s name suggested.
Although the magic genre seemed a little niche, in a sense, it had revived old computers that were practically dead, so perhaps it was fitting enough.
In any case, this graphics card was an innovation.
It meant that the computer’s identity had shifted greatly away from calculator and toward multimedia device, or in other words, game machine. Even before this, many people already thought of computers as game machines, but that was merely a matter of usage. Now hardware for that specific purpose had appeared, making that excuse harder to maintain.
After all, a device that could also play games and a device made to play games were completely different things.
‘A graphics card, huh…’
For Insu, who knew the future, this could only be tremendously interesting. After all, right before Insu came here, the darling company of the era was NVIDIA, a graphics card company.
(Translator’s Notes: NVIDIA — Real-world graphics card and GPU company that became a central player in AI hardware by the 2020s.)
The AI industry of 2025 was pulling in all attention and resources to a degree similar to the IT bubble of the mid-to-late 1990s, and a very large portion of those resources was flowing into NVIDIA.
Of course, current 3D accelerator cards and later GPUs were different. This was not simply a matter of performance. The concept itself was different.
(Translator’s Notes: 3D Accelerator — Graphics hardware used to improve 3D rendering performance in PC games, especially important during the late 1990s shift toward 3D gaming.)
Later GPUs were parallel processing devices using many chips, while current 3D accelerator cards were single chips similar to CPUs, made to process only graphics professionally.
Naturally, one could not mine Bitcoin with these, nor could they be used in industries requiring independent computing power such as AI. They truly did nothing except 2D/3D acceleration.
So investing here did not guarantee that it would become a company like NVIDIA.
Moreover, in Insu’s previous life, this company called 3Dfx had likewise succeeded with the Voodoo card, yet ultimately collapsed and disappeared.
At its peak from 1997 to 1998, it controlled seventy percent of the market and had effectively become the dominant company, yet several strategic failures sent it plunging into the abyss in an instant.
Thinking of that made it difficult to readily invest, no matter how promising the industry seemed.
Of course, he could buy the company outright or purchase enough shares to exert strong influence over management, then make them avoid the failures he knew.
For a moment, Insu imagined what he would have to do if he took control of this company.
‘First, I’d need to avoid building their own production factories.’
There were several reasons Voodoo failed, but the biggest cause often cited was that they moved away from a design-focused strategy and tried to directly manufacture chips and cards themselves.
3Dfx probably calculated that they could also take the profits manufacturers were earning while improving efficiency and completeness through vertical integration. But that was an arrogant choice that understood too little about reality.
They had achieved a fairly dominant position, but they did not lack competitors, the technology gap was not large, and the entry barrier to the GPU industry was not yet extremely high.
So instead of quietly having their livelihoods taken away, manufacturers joined hands with 3Dfx’s competitors. And because 3Dfx attempted manufacturing without any know-how, they failed to produce proper products. They also lacked a proper distribution network, and with manufacturers’ brand power gone, competitors grew rapidly and overtook them.
Once they lost their monopolistic position, the independent API they used became poison, accelerating the speed at which users were taken away and causing a rapid collapse.
But even if they avoided such a major crisis, there was no guarantee they would succeed.
No one knew what variables might arise in business, and continuous technological innovation was necessary, while Insu’s knowledge was too fragmentary. In reality, 3Dfx’s collapse had more complex causes.
‘For now, I should watch a little longer.’
At minimum, it seemed he would need to wait until proper GPUs, rather than 3D accelerators, appeared before investing cautiously.
In any case, now that accelerators had been released, the 3D craze would likely accelerate even further. If Insu had no knowledge of the future, he might have become restless. After all, Parallel Soft had no 3D games and no plans to develop any.
But Insu was not particularly anxious.
It was certainly true that 3D was trending, but he knew it was not the absolute answer, and that its level was still very lacking.
Moreover, in the future, using commercial development engines would become mainstream for 3D, so there was no need to force themselves to build up technical skill.
Honestly, unless one’s technical skills were quite good, it would be difficult to show performance beyond Unreal Engine.
(Translator’s Notes: Unreal Engine — Real-world commercial game engine known for advanced 3D graphics and widely used in game development.)
And even if they wanted performance beyond that, rather than developing everything independently from now, it would be more efficient to cooperate with or acquire a development company with technology like Unreal Engine once the 3D environment matured, then begin from there.
‘3D, huh.’
Now that accelerators had come out, the development and transition of 3D technology would accelerate even more.
Although he was not recklessly challenging it now, Insu definitely planned to introduce it. It was partly because of his ultimate goal of virtual reality, but even before reaching that point, 3D technology would be necessary.
In truth, the earlier Insu had thought that since 2D online games were still selling well and becoming hits even in 2025, his MMORPG could also operate in 2D for quite a long time.
But that was because his experience in his previous life had not been broad enough. That was merely a characteristic of the Korean MMORPG market, not a globally universal pattern.
And if one examined it closely, the reason many 2D graphics MMORPGs remained in Korea was that older games had continued surviving for a long time. In reality, even in Korea, the proportion of games developed in 3D increased over time.