The Calm Before the Storm
The exam period had passed like a raging storm, and now the PC bang was packed with university students reveling in their newfound freedom. Though if you looked at them slumped in their chairs, eyes bloodshot and faces pale from exhaustion, they didn't exactly look like they were enjoying freedom—but free they were, technically.
With summer break now deep into its second half, excited cheers suddenly erupted from one corner of the PC bang.
"Rip out all the Galaga machines!"
"This place belongs to our game now!"
"Behold! Under the guidance of Lady Yoon I-seo, we mere lambs need only follow!"
The brand-new game was finally complete.
"What are we calling it?"
"Oh, right."
She hadn't even thought about the name. The original title rolled off the tongue perfectly, but since this was a knockoff game, changing it at least a little was basically law...
"How about Strikers 2094? I added the year for the setting."
"...Not bad, actually."
And so, a shooting game that somehow skipped an entire generation in the middle of development was released.
"Um, this doesn't match the screen ratio of the Galaga cabinets at all?"
"...Go get some plywood and a saw."
The next-generation shooting game made its debut the following day.
There was a man who loved arcades more than anything. The kind of guy who would head straight there the moment classes ended. But at some point, the arcade began to change.
He had been utterly addicted to setting high scores on Galaga, triggering score overflows like it was nothing. So he didn't particularly care for this new thing called a rhythm game that was being sold as the future of entertainment. The constant whirring, the noise, the way it felt completely disconnected from the true soul of arcades—it was hard for him to look at it favorably.
Then one day, when he visited the arcade, he was stunned. In the exact spot where Galaga used to stand, a brand-new machine had been installed.
The man was furious. Pong and Space Invaders had already been pushed out by rhythm games, but he had believed Galaga would at least survive. That hope had just been shattered.
As he turned to leave, muttering that he'd have to find another arcade, something else caught his eye.
A sound that went pew pew—but not in a cheesy way. Music that somehow resonated with a man's heart poured out of the cabinet. On the screen, various types of fighter jets he'd never seen before streaked across in dynamic formations, instantly capturing his gaze.
Almost against his will, the man stepped up to the machine and inserted a coin.
The credit screen appeared, then transitioned. An initial menu showed several fighter jets viewed from above, neatly lined up with their attack power, speed, and skill descriptions clearly listed. He picked one that looked decent and started the game.
The first stage felt similar to Galaga. Other than the background constantly scrolling downward, it looked like they'd simply swapped out the textures. 'Is this it? They just changed the surface?'
But shortly after, he realized how wrong that thought had been.
Power-up items, bombs, and medals dropped from defeated enemies. Most of all, the player's fighter jet was completely free from movement restrictions, which was enough to throw the man off balance.
While he was still adjusting to the new system, a sudden warning indicator flashed in front of him. Immediately after, a massive helicopter with propellers and miniguns on both sides appeared. Unlike the slow, rice-grain-shaped bullets the other enemy fighters had fired, these were small, fast projectiles that came streaking toward him.
But he dodged them with pure willpower!
He successfully destroyed the minigun section, avoided the desperate final attack pattern, and proved that all those hours spent on Galaga hadn't been wasted by clearing Phase 1 in record time.
Then he was shocked again. A mech—specifically, an insanely cool mech—burst out from the crumbling giant helicopter. It wasn't a humanoid like Gundam. This was a machine that screamed 'I am a practical weapon of war,' proudly unleashing a barrage of bullets.
But he dodged those with willpower too!
After clearing Stage 1, Stage 2 began. This time the battlefield changed to the sea. Battleships and boats were added to the enemy roster, and the battleship's high health made him think it wouldn't be easy to take down. But with enough grit, anything was possible!
He died once because the battleship kept pumping out bullets, but he still had two lives left. As he pressed on, another warning indicator appeared, followed by the boss—a colossal battleship. Or rather, it looked more like a boat, or maybe a hovercraft. He destroyed it quickly anyway. Even though it fired a lot of bullets, they were slow, so it actually felt easier than Stage 1.
Phase 2 started with the deployment of a water strider-shaped machine. But he took that down too! The giant tank in Stage 3 and the mech in its Phase 2 only cost him one life each. The man started getting cocky.
'Maybe I'm actually pretty good at this?'
That thought was brutally crushed when he reached the boss of Stage 4. Specifically, it was the mech in Phase 2, not the armored train in Phase 1. The pattern where it straddled two separate rails with its legs and unleashed a dense bullet curtain got him. He reached for another coin, but...
Stare.
He flinched at the eyes boring into his back and turned around. The people who had come to try the new machine—the only one of its kind—were teaching him about the "seat rotation culture" that had started with rhythm games.
It had been a long time since the man felt the same nervous excitement he'd had as a kid entering an arcade for the first time to play Galaga.
"Ah, you're not supposed to do it like that."
...It seemed he'd even recalled some not-so-great memories.
Regardless, the shooting game had once again brought crowds back to the arcades. Yoo Seop proudly showed Yoon I-seo the sales figures like he was reporting to the emperor and performed another round of the three-kneels-and-nine-bows ritual. The arcade was brightly lit and thriving once again.
...It felt like it would stay that way forever.
Meanwhile, an invisible war continued to rage.
The Dongjo Ilbo, having been humiliated once before, kept launching attacks against games, while the Kyung Han Shinmun used Yoon I-seo as their figurehead to counterattack. This back-and-forth had been going on for over a year.
Yes, a full year. From the scorching summer of 1994 all the way until the middle of 1995, this debate had continued without end.
After winter break ended, Yoon I-seo and her club members had focused on maintaining the arcade and updating the game while mostly taking it easy and concentrating on their studies. Everyone thought things would stay relatively peaceful.
Yoon I-seo was now a third-year student. Thanks to relatively easy coursework, academics weren't a huge burden, but her graduation thesis and project carried significant weight for her.
Her plan was simple: drop a bombshell with her graduation thesis, get hired by a major corporation, and if she was lucky, land a job at a foreign company! Graduate school? Being a grad school slave didn't appeal to her... This was a thought she could only have because she'd seen success stories in her previous life where a single thesis had changed everything.
Of course, she had no idea that replying to a single email could let her drop out of university right now and head overseas. That was why she thought this way.
Anyway, she had been so busy with future planning and thesis work that her interest in the arcade had waned recently. As a result, she hadn't heard a single thing about what the anti-arcade faction had been up to lately.
[Righteous Student Guidance Parents' Association Launched]
[Establishment of New Digital Review Regulations... Is Digital Censorship Beginning?]
[Opening Mass Culture Is Japanese Cultural Invasion... 'A New Form of Imperialist Aggression']
All sorts of parents' groups (that were really just gatherings of cultural hardliners in disguise) had formed. Korea's long-standing tradition of the censorship beam had been made mandatory. Even the subculture art style used in the BGA was taking splash damage from the old folks' siege tanks. It was an all-out assault from every direction.
But Yoon I-seo had been so busy preparing two theses at once that she barely had time to breathe. When she received a letter titled [Invitation to Appear on Late-Night 100-Minute Debate], she nearly fainted on the spot.
"Wait, I tried so hard to never appear on that show again. Why do they only call me when I'm swamped?"
She could probably push her thesis back a bit, but still...
"If this were a reincarnation story, wouldn't I get some special reincarnation perks or clichés? Like, I'd say 'Ah, this is what we call a game,' and everyone would go 'Ehhh?! Yoon I-seo, you're amazing~?!'"
It was so unfair. Why couldn't she, Yoon I-seo, just live a peaceful life!
Well, she had already received plenty of reincarnation perks, but let's not dwell on that.
Anyway, if she rejected the debate invitation, she could only imagine how disgusting it would be if some unhinged panelist showed up instead. In the end, she sent a letter accepting and headed to the broadcasting station a few days later. She listened to the same explanation as last time.
Honestly, she had mostly come to check out the other panelists rather than listen to the briefing...
"Oh my, nice to see you again."
"...Why is CEO Park here...?"
The panel was exactly the same as last time!
Since the topic this time was 'Are Games Harmful?', she figured that if she prepared thoroughly like before, she could easily win. Maybe this was a chance to improve public perception of games...?
But looking back later, the incident that would eventually be known as the Arcade Gate had only just reached its midpoint.