Irashaimase"

A store clerk yelled as we entered the premise, your usual Konbini mart with dozens of variety of bento set to purchase for our late lunch. I and Ueno got out of the shinkansen bullet train and headed to the nearest Konbini store to get some food as the hustle and bustle of Tokyo hit both of us like a fish out of water. Tokyo city is a different place, even if both of us are in Japan.

I've noticed many advertisements are placed on the underground shinkansen, some of them were anime and 8-bit games with 2D cartoons representing them on the poster. Yes, in this era, the games in this world still rely on 8-bit 16-bit, and at most... 32-bit games. Games aren't as popular here back in my world, while the tech has kept up the culture didn't.

Tomatoman poster - an orange tomato? was player one and it was some sort of multiplayer game. odd choice of a hero. the company that made them...Squaresoft? is a familiar name but Alex was rather surprised that the famous Squaresoft from his era made such a crappy game called tomato man.

Whatever happened to the final fantasy?

The parallel world is messed up.

Ueno and I both choose the lottery Konbinni auction lunch that was being held in the station, which cost 300 yen per entry and we get a random loot box of lunch, Personally, I myself get a katsu bento, and Ueno had something better like an Unagi bowl. Only in Japan I guess, we bought some drinks as well, I bought myself some canned coffee and she a Pocari sweat bottle, I could never understand why people would like that electrolysis drink. Then again, i never did like seven up and even Sprite.

Our schedule is early, we could use this chance to explore Akihabara, although I wouldn't think it's the anime mecha of Tokyo of my time, it's still worth looking out for, see what's trending and what's not. What games would sell, what anime is getting popular and what fandom is booming on the shelves?

The kind of exclusive figurines they would sell, I'm rather curious as to what sort of merchandising exist here in this current timeline in Japan.

Ueno didn't really like Unagi, I can tell by her look, so I traded her Unagi bowl for my Katsu Bento. What kind of Katsu? Chicken of course. We both sat at a nearby table and said the prayer.

"Itadakimasu!"

A Japanese staple around here, as a former westerner? I can't get used to this. As Alex Kenichi? well..he's antisocial. So even though he's not used to this, both of our personality doesn't really practice this much, if possible..food is food. you just eat it. Ueno beams with delight as she ate her chicken and rises lovingly. She eats like a squirrel, munching everything so fast. It's unbelievable that I find this rather endearing. I began to question myself if I could ever fall for a high school girl despite being older in mind and soul. That thought never crossed me. But I think, for now, being really good friends works. As for what the future holds? who knows. 

I wouldn't think too much about relationships for now. Realistically, I never enjoyed the life of a high school student. Perhaps after Summer Comiket, I'll try to take it slow.

"Hey Ueno, can I try one of your chickens?"

Ueno move her chopstick towards the tiniest chicken piece and gave it to me, I stared at her at the size of the chicken bits she gave me. It's barely a piece, just parts sticking to one of the fried flour of that Katsudon.

"Really?" 

I look at her incredulously at the absurdity of her hunger. She felt that and tried to shy away as she took a mouthful of rice and chicken and ate it faster than ever.

Gulp* "I'm hungry Alex, don't interrupt me. I want to tour Akihabara as soon as possible! Hurry up and eat Alex! you're barely touching that Unagi of yours~!"

I stared down at the Unagi that was originally hers...and start eating. She's right I guess. I wanted to tour Akihabara too before we get check-in and head towards the studio. 

"Right, let's leave soon"

......................................

Akihabara is a buzzing shopping hub famed for its electronics retailers, ranging from tiny stalls to vast department stores like Yodobashi Multimedia Akiba. Venues specializing in manga, anime, and video games include Tokyo Anime Center, for exhibits and souvenirs, and Radio Kaikan with 10 floors of toys, trading cards, and collectibles. Staff dressed as maids or butlers serve tea and desserts at the nearby maid cafes.

 It lives up to its Electric Town name a lot more. Being a place where people would go to source PCBs, and components, get CDs duplicated, etc. A friend of mine told me it used to be like a mini Shenzhen. Some of that stuff still exists but these days Akihabara is more about targeting tourists who want anime and video game-related goods,

though there may have been a time not that long ago when it would have been a more attractive destination for even interested in those things. They are just literally everywhere in Tokyo now which I suppose makes Akihabara a little bit less special in a way. I love going to games centers but would always pass on the opportunity when we were in Akihabara just because you can find almost exactly the same thing in the neighborhood we were living in back in my timeline, just with fewer crowds and generally lower prices to use some of the machines.

Or so I thought...

Retro gaming is alive and well. Well, I say retro loosely because..to them, it really is next-gen stuff oh, and Arcade gaming. that's a thing that's thriving right now too. the big giant red building with the SEGA emblem. 

  Most major anime, manga, and gaming stores have a branch here, including the iconic Animate for all things anime and Yodobashi for your techie odds and ends, which still exist but...there's one aspect of the culture that I thought I would never revisit when I arrived here.

Otaku Kei Bunka or just plain "otaku-related culture" is still thriving, although not for the right reasons.

Ueno-san ate it all up. She loves it here. browsing every store she met along the way and buying mini plushies with the money I gave her to spend. As for me? I was just checking out the parts they sell. I say parts loosely because they mostly sell handheld devices that support mobile gaming. The console wasn't a popular thing here. There is the Gameboy I used to play but it didn't run on good ole twin double A batteries, nope. It runs on lithium. Just like a modern GBA.

None of the titles of these games makes any sense...for one, it reminded me of the many rejected Atari games that they made in the past. Mostly vapor ware shit that doesn't work. This sort of stuff passed as games these days? no wonder it doesn't have a big following and no wonder...Akihabara is more anime than gaming. the "gaming" part of culture isn't very lucrative at all.

The fact that they are still stuck in a 2D medium and haven't even entered the 3D era of gaming, this world has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to gaming, I could only blame it on the war ended in the 80s, Japan and the rest of the world are still recovering from the ongoing cold war, not trusting Japan, The Nuke did not happen in this world but that just prolonged the war and set humanity back.

Still..

I picked up a boxset of a game by the sega mega drive- Brand new it said on a nearby bin towards a rather bright and rather flashy game shop. And on the list of the games showed one of its a best sellers. Frogger  a 32-bit game using a cartridge system, an old man in the shop gleefully came toward me

"Hey there Youngman! Interested in the latest and best-selling game from the Megadrive family? but this one is for the Gameboy. You like ??"

I looked at the cartridge of Frogger, the icon of Konami, a familiar company. at least some things are the same as the timeline, albeit a little far behind. I used to remember playing this during my childhood at the orphanage when Uncle Fred, one of the caretakers booted up the PC, and we played all sorts of old games..he even had Doom on PC. We would spend all afternoon watching him playing the game while we ate lunch, cheering at him slaying demons and playing frogger on PC. good times.

the old man looked at him confusedly as the young man smiled rather affectionately at the cartridge..

"Hey there kid, you okay? Daijobu ka?"

Alex snapped back to reality and paid the money taking the box with him and said

"Thank you. I think I'm going to enjoy this game a lot"

Being here in Akihabara is nostalgic. that's for sure, perhaps not for the things that most of these Japanese people could relate but..Alex felt at peace here. It reminded him of what things could become, hope, and progress for the future. Not to mention the world trying to kill him, he always has that after all, but seeing this game doing well, a part of him is glad. Now if only he could find something like "Super Mario" then maybe...oh he found it. A cartridge of Super Mario, how nice~

" I'll buy this one too!"

he took the super Mario cartridge for the Gameboy, the old man smiled and said

"Ahh! that one is one of our best sellers of all time! kids love these two Italian plumbers! odd game if you ask me. Wanna but the Gameboy as well? we are having a sale!"

Alex just nodded and bought a brand new Gameboy with super Mario pre-installed inside of the Gameboy. It doesn't use a cartridge, This is how things get weird, surprisingly..the Gameboy is as good as a smartphone, lithium battery, its own UI, a memory card to download games, and a back slot for this smaller version of the cartridges. quite different from his world version, this is akin to a switch handheld but playing retro games.

"Sure thing. pack these two up. I'll buy the Gameboy as well. how much?"

the old man gave him a number on his calculator 35 000 yen. around 220 USD.  Not bad. I paid the money in cash and took the plastic bag and shove it into my laptop bag. the old man gave me a curt bow and thanked me as he goes on to attract new customers to his humble shop.

as I exited the shop I came face to face with Ueno. I barely recognize her. she has ditched her outfit and is wearing some sort of Idol t-shirt and covered with shopping backs from head to toe, how much stuff did she buy? Did she really think she's carrying all that back to Hokkaido? eh.. never mind. We could probably ask the hotel to courier them back home.

Ueno saw me walking towards her as her face smile brightly, I took some of the bags off her hands they weren't that heavy, surprisingly..most of the stuff are mostly plushies. I look at her confusingly and said

"Plushies?"

She just smile and said

"I won all of them! at the red building! they got all kinds of crane machines and I play and play and won it all!"

Note to self, Ueno is a natural crane master. Never bet against her in a traditional Japanese crane arcade. Although he is rather curious about how good she is. Why not? I smiled as I thought of a rather interesting thing.

"Ya know Ueno...I heard there are better crane games further ahead...wanna head there later after we check in to the hotel? We need to head to the studio soon tonight. It's almost time.

"Okay!"

Alex looked at the amount of plastic bags. He maybe thought she spend at least a hundred bucks or 15k yen on everything.

"How much did you spend on all that plushie?"

Ueno pondered for a moment and count how many coins she poured into the machine and said

"Oh..around..9000 yen?"

Not bad.

.............................................

"Zero-chan! your grandpa sending us some sort of consultant? "

A guy with a weird black eye patch or some sort of Chunibyou disease probably is eating some sort of noodle cup ramen while coding on the PC. The gaming market is beginning to emerge, and consoles are the next-gen thing, albeit the consoles aren't that good. the guy still works on the codes behind the PC. 

"Okay, load up the test"

Inserting the cartridge game the upload was completed. the screen on the test television shows the title of the game

"Alicesoft-Rance"

The Rance series follows the titular character, Rance, as he saves a number of kingdoms, defeats demon invaders, and causes mischief in the in-game world, "The Continent." He has appeared in most of the main series games as the playable character, accompanied by his loyal slave, Sill Plain.

The main playable and the titular character of the Rance series. He is a powerful warrior who was created to the "kichiku" or just "Brutal" character archetype. He was based out of a town in the Free Cities Alliance, where he accepts jobs from Keith's Guild when he is low on money. He lives in the "Rance Castle," which he had built after the events of Rance Quest. The games generally feature quests and other missions that he embarks upon to gain or regain the money he has lost.

That's...how it's supposed to go in the game but the current Rance game isn't the titular Eroge title. It was just your average RPG game without the spice and storyline that makes the game great. Not to mention there isn't any sort of artwork and it's all simple 2D sprites. gone are the exquisite pixelated artwork. even the battle system was taken from an existing paper-cut RPG. The main character shares the same name but doesn't have the titular brutal personality that makes him famous even around the world. This is a copycat bland RPG made to flood the market with cheap and fast products, something quite common in the indie scene.

"Yosha! this will be our masterpiece!!"

Zero, his team members could only shrug their shoulders. He is related to someone really high up on JAMP and did not want to offend him, but his team members are afraid to voice their reason. While Zero is quite talented on his own, some of his ideas tend to plagiarise from other people and while that isn't really a bad thing, he didn't exactly make anything unique on his own.

Zero isn't stupid he could sense there was some sort of apprehension in the room but choose to ignore it. It was his company, Even if this consultant came, He wouldn't change much even if his grandfather did say he has full authority to change stuff. So what? A single person can't do anything to him anyway, can he?

Yoshida-san was one of his coders then said

" Zero, this won't sell well. We need more art assets. Current games are changing. We need to change as well, why don't we go back and ask for Ichika for the art"

Zero just slapped Yoshida-sans' hand away when he tried to advise him

"Ichika is a fool, this is the gaming industry, We don't need anime or any of his artwork. What for? games are supposed to be fun! that means gameplay and concept! the art doesn't matter if the gameplay holds up!"

Yoshida could only sigh and said

"But the gameplay doesn't really hold up, this turn base system...isn't this plagiarised from that game we just played last week? what was it called..."

"Final Fantasy, they call it the turn base system, and their story was good. This game doesn't even have a proper story. You can't just make a game with some battle system similar to a turn base and a level-up system and the plot is about a hero's journey to kill the demon king. that will get stale really fast"

Zero could only scoff and said

"It's called a grind dummy, real Japanese gamers would love to do the grind, it's Japanese Integrity! If you can't even grind the game, you don't deserve to win it. Isn't this one of the unwritten rules? I'm the leader of this team. So I decided that the game is good enough! We don't have much time, Comiket is around the corner. We have to release a build soon!"

Yoshida-san then said

"But I really hate grinding.."

Gasp*

Zero can't believe what he just heard

"You take that back!! Are you even a real Japanese?! You're not even Asian aren't you!"

clap clap clap*

the sound of clapping came from behind near the exit of the studio.

"Hey Alex, this place is really dark and creepy. Are you sure this is the place? "

Zero looked back and found that a blonde teenager came walking from behind with a young girl. Highschool kids? He was expecting someone to come, are they the Consultant his grandfather sent? His grandfather did say his name was Alex, but isn't this guy a tad bit too young to become some sort of Consultant?

"A gaijin got lost or something? who's that Japanese girl? woah..she's beautiful"

Zero could only sneer at the kid, Who does he think he is? If he really is the consultant, then his grandpa has really gone senile.

A typical Nadeshiko beauty just walks in with some damn gaijin kid. Who does he think he is?

The boy called Alex looked towards the screen and look at the rest of the people in the room as they stare back at him, the boy then said

"So this is Alicesoft? heh! Pathetic"

Zero's anger just went up and wanted to hit the guy but Yoshida san holds him down and stopped him. His anger hasn't subsided so he lashes out in anger and said

"Well, who the fuck are you?! "

The kid just look at him, without any emotion and just said

"Me? I'm the kid who's gonna crush your company. Your grandpa sent fix whatever this is. "

Pointing towards their game in disgust, his attention was already on another table as he sat there comfortably and said something to the girl, the pair basically ignored the rest of them.

Zero anger then flared up

"You're gonna do what?!"

The kid still ignored the rest of the team, some of the team members got anxious and try to distance themselves from zero and Yoshida-san, while the kid took out his mobile phone and dialed a number

"hey..old man, your kid is being a pain in the ass, this isn't gonna work..hmm? okay...okay...sure, hmm... Kid thinks he owns the company though...oh?...okay..okay...So I get the magazine anyway? ..okay, I won't hold back so all of it will be mine too got it? Alright, deal. "

He turn off the phone and looked toward the group

"So..which one of you is Yoshida?"

the rest of the team pointed towards Yoshida-san a relatively normal-looking Japanese college student, with glasses. Surprisingly he's calm in this situation. Zero beside him on the other hand was fuming.

" The owner of this company asked me to make a game in a week's time, he recommended you to join my team, I'll even pay you by the hour, Oh, add an addendum. At the end of the day, the whole team is gonna choose which game we debut on comiket. If everyone choose my game? I'll be the new owner of this place"

 

"WHAT?! " shouted Zero

"That's what he said. Go check up on Hojo yourself, I don't have time to deal with your college angst, Yoshida-san with me, you familiar with Windows SDK?"

Alex started to motion Yoshida-san to a corner of the room, there isn't a computer there was just a table, and took out an odd-looking Laptop with an Alien emblem on it, He has never seen a build like this. Is it custom? Alienware- a sticker of Radeon Rx6800. What sort of company is Radeon? Yoshida-san never heard of it.

"Don't worry, I don't even need a computer. Just this table and seat are fine, I can make a game using my laptop"

Everyone then looks at him like he just said a pile of shit. What sort of laptop could even make a game? Is he really a consultant? Zero stormed off and dialed his phone. He's calling his grandfather Hojo and the line got through.

*dududu*

"Grandpa! what is up with this-

"- I am disappointed in you Anzai, Are you still using that ridiculous name Zero? I meant what I said, If you can't debut properly with a good game, why should I even fund you? go back home and start farming, or go look for a job in corporate"

He couldn't even retort before the line went dead, His grandfather said his piece and turn off his phone. He's always doing things on his whim, but this time it affects him.

Alex took out some paper from his bag, he came prepared with some concept art he drew from the train

on the note top and left a note on the laptop screen stating-

" Eroge title 1- Grisaia no Kajitsu- The fruit of Grisaia"

concept art one by one flows out on the image of the laptop as Yoshida-san stared at the artwork. This technique and art style reminded him of Kyoto Ghoul. Not to mention the kid has a working title on some weird application he's using with the Program that called itself "Unity" it simplifies the process of game making. Also, why Eroge? is he making a hentai game? what?! no wait..that's not even the most unbelievable thing right here.

This kid actually made his own Development kit?! who is this guy?!

"Okay, this will be a brief meeting, we will then head to my hotel and work from there. I don't really feel comfortable in this place not to mention I don't see the need for us to be here.SO! for now, this is our team member, myself and I will be the game designer, the coding and the artwork will be left for me, Miss Ueno here will voice all of the heroines in my game, All I need from you Mr. Yoshida is...be yourself, oh..and Lend me your voice for my voicebank. We need to record it for the game dialogue, Don't worry about acting lessons or anything like that, I can just autotune your voice if push comes to shove and tweak it manually with a Vocaloid, you could be Heroine 5 and 6 too with some mods"

Yoshida san didn't understand a single thing as the girl beside him simply laugh.

"Don't worry Yoshida-san, just have some fun!"

He could only nod and left there standing, even more, confused than ever.

"W..wait...Eroge, that means..we're making a hentai game?!"

Alex just nodded, and the girl beside her gasp in surprise

"Yep...problem?"