"I'm back, kids!"
Kobayashi Tetsu returned from Kobe and spread his arms wide toward the group working in the garage.
Yuji Naka scratched his cheek.
He didn't know why, but somehow Kobayashi's tone felt… ominously meaningful.
"I even brought gifts."
Kobayashi reached casually into his bag.
"Kobe beef?" Yuji Naka asked.
"No, something more exciting than beef—a piece of code."
He slid a floppy disk into the computer. At once, several faces leaned in.
Of course, Masuko and Kitagawa had no idea what they were looking at.
Yuji Naka scanned a few lines cooperatively and looked surprised.
"This looks like a whole bunch of conditional statements added to the program… What's it for?"
"It's for customizing computer intelligence. With this, we can make in-game characters insanely strong. This trip to Kobe wasn't wasted."
Kobayashi spoke as he turned to Yuji Naka. "How's the game coming along?"
"The framework is mostly done. Map loading, racing, collisions—all functional. But we don't have any assets yet."
Kobayashi grabbed the controller and tried it out.
Without assets, only a few vaguely motorcycle-shaped placeholders ran around the track.
As expected from such an early prototype, it felt nothing like a real game.
But pits and jumps had already been implemented.
Kobayashi ran a few laps—no real difficulty.
"Yuji, next we need to integrate this code into the game. We'll give monsters—or rather, enemy bikes—actual intelligence. We're going to make them come alive!"
Yuji Naka nodded hard.
Come alive!
They worked straight until evening. Together, Kobayashi and Yuji managed to roughly merge the Kobe program into the game. It was still just a test version—no assets, no difficulty tuning, and a ton of redundant code occupying space. All of that would need to be optimized later.
The two exchanged a look, the kind that needed no words.
"Try it?"
"Try it."
They handed the controller to Kitagawa.
"Kitagawa-kun, give it a go. Experience the new build."
"Since we wrote the program, we already know how it behaves. We can't test it properly."
"Right. Or Masuko-kun could try too."
Poor Kitagawa was caught in the crossfire. He gave a simpleton's smile and took the controller.
Still the same early test build—no visuals, no art, only basic tools.
The moment he accelerated, three surrounding bikes suddenly converged toward him as though pulled by magnets. Even with crude placeholder graphics, Kitagawa yelped in shock.
What were they trying to do to him!?
He had barely moved when he was violently rammed, thrown, stunned, picking up the bike again—over and over in a miserable cycle.
Kitagawa gritted his teeth and kept playing.
He finally found an opening when all the other bikes crashed spectacularly, and he managed to escape the pile-up—only to be rammed again not fifty meters later.
Face red, hands clenched around the controller, he could only roar:
"How is anyone supposed to play this!?"
Not fun at all!
He glared at the two culprits. Kobayashi shook his head with a sigh.
"Yuji-kun, how could you be so cruel? Making the difficulty this high!"
"…Me?" Yuji Naka froze, then bowed his head at once. "Yes. I apologize. I made the difficulty too high. I'll keep optimizing it the next few days."
Originally unrelated bikes were now not only attacking each other but also accelerating to speeds that let them easily catch the player. It was impressive, to say the least.
Of course, this was because the test version had no collision protection or safety routines, causing poor Kitagawa to be rammed nonstop.
But Kobayashi had now seen the true effect of the program.
If a developer intentionally raised the AI difficulty, the player would never win. A computer could execute frame-perfect operations forever—something humans simply could not do.
Just like TAS runs—Tool-Assisted Speedruns—where programs perform pixel-perfect inputs. Humans could sometimes replicate short sequences, but sustaining such perfection for tens of minutes was impossible.
Meaning: if they wanted to, they could absolutely create a difficulty level no player could ever beat.
But—
Kobayashi was about to lecture.
Masuko and Kitagawa were still stunned. Yuji Naka had already pulled a whiteboard close.
"Even if we can tune the game so the player can't possibly win, there's no reason to. Difficulty is fine, but we shouldn't design obstacles just to torture the player. Or, to put it another way: enemies can be strong, but they must be strong within a range the player can overcome."
When Kobayashi finished, Yuji Naka clapped loudly.
"Exactly. President, your insight is truly admirable—your words enlighten me. Incredible!"
Kobayashi accepted the praise with perfect composure.
Masuko and Kitagawa exchanged looks.
Look at you. Acting all high and mighty just because you reacted fastest.
Yuji Naka returned a sheepish smile.
—Excerpt from The Memoirs of Yuji Naka:
"Yes, President!"
Work on Excitebike continued, and Kobayashi also re-opened recruitment ads, planning to expand the team.
To prepare, he even visited Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.
Pager services had begun spreading in Japan, but current pagers were still limited—expensive, able to display only minimal text, often requiring short messages or simple call-back numbers.
Because pagers relied heavily on voice operators, maintaining service was costly—meant to reduce human workload, ironically by charging more.
Kobayashi checked the prices and was shocked.
A pager and its number cost nearly 400,000 yen.
With additional communication fees, the total setup came to 700,000–800,000 yen, plus several tens of thousands per month in service fees.
"Oh wow—less than a million? That's cheap!"
Decision made.
Buy!
How could he run around without a pager? He couldn't stay in the Atlas garage every day waiting for a phone call.
Back at the garage, Kobayashi placed four pagers on the table.
The four gathered around them, eyes sparkling with curiosity.
"Fun, right? Never seen these before, huh?"
As he spoke, Kobayashi taped slips of paper with their respective numbers onto the backs of each device.
"Remember these. This number is yours. If you're out and need to contact each other, these will be invaluable."
They all nodded.
Yuji Naka raised his hand.
"President, does this mean this pager is now mine?"
"The pagers are company property. But as long as you don't quit, you can use it freely. Atlas will reimburse part of the monthly fees. Anything above that, you cover yourself."
Yuji Naka nodded vigorously.
What more needed to be said!?
With pagers provided, he would devote his life to Atlas!
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