"Well, this kind of fast-paced, high-speed bullet-hell shooter is actually pretty interesting."
Sam started playing, casually shooting down a few enemy planes.
To be fair, while it looked like a completely unoriginal reskin on the surface, Ethan had indeed found plenty of room for improvement.
The faster gameplay, the smoother scrolling, and the more fluid combat all delivered a satisfying rush.
Playing it felt like Xevious Pro.
"But without any gameplay innovation, those nostalgia fans are going to have... oh, let me deal with this elite first."
Sam was about to give his evaluation when a new enemy appeared ahead.
Unlike the cannon-fodder fighters from before, this one was painted red and clearly had a different aircraft model.
Although it was Sam's first time encountering an elite enemy, it certainly wasn't his first day playing games.
In a flash, the battle was decided.
Accompanied by a crude pixelated explosion effect, something appeared to fly out from the center of the blast.
"A score item?"
Sam carefully maneuvered his fighter and fired another burst. After confirming it wasn't some sort of death-trigger attack from the elite enemy, he cautiously moved in to collect it.
A new sound effect came from the arcade machine's speakers, informing Sam that he had apparently received some kind of upgrade.
He didn't need to ask Ethan what had happened.
The improvement was immediately visible.
A fuzzy radio transmission crackled through the speakers.
The communication gradually became clearer.
Sam realized it seemed to be coming from the aircraft carrier where he had started the game. They were dispatching two additional carrier-based fighters to the front lines.
Then two fighters, noticeably smaller than his own, suddenly emerged from the bottom of the screen.
They traced beautiful arcs through the sky before taking positions on either side of him and flying in formation.
Wingmen!
The two wingmen stayed tightly alongside the protagonist, responding to every one of Sam's commands almost in perfect synchronization, as if they were truly his closest comrades.
"Open fire!"
Inspired by the stirring communication he had just heard, Sam slammed the fire button.
Immediately, all three aircraft unleashed a dense barrage of bullets.
The two wingmen might have been smaller, but their firepower was no joke.
The rapid chatter of machine guns echoed nonstop as they wiped out an entire newly spawned enemy squadron in the blink of an eye.
Right on cue, another fuzzy radio transmission came through the speakers.
It was praise from his fellow pilots.
Ethan's version of 1942 had introduced numerous improvements over the original.
One could say he had pushed it to the very limits of his current capabilities.
Almost none of the processor's performance was being wasted.
And fitting something like those communication voice effects into a game during an era when cartridges and ROMs only held a few dozen kilobytes of data was thanks to an audio compression algorithm he had hastily written himself.
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As he was thinking about this, Ethan suddenly heard Sam let out a heart wrenching scream.
Turning to look, he saw that a heavy bomber had appeared.
Although Sam's skills were excellent, unfamiliarity with the game had cost him. He accidentally got clipped by an attack.
The two wingmen suddenly surged forward.
Breaking away from Sam's control, they flew fearlessly toward the heavy bomber that was about to destroy them.
Boom!
The sound effect rang out.
The two wingmen erupted into fireballs, sacrificing themselves to finish off the bomber whose health was already nearly depleted.
Sam's eyes widened to the point of splitting.
The comrades who had been fighting alongside him moments ago had thrown away their lives because of his own mistake!
He immediately charged into the massive fireball.
In a daze, he spotted another item and crashed into it without hesitation.
The item was labeled POW.
Having played countless games, Sam instantly understood what it meant.
Power-Up.
"I'll fucking kill every last one of you!"
The machine guns on his fighter suddenly upgraded from two barrels to four, compensating for the firepower lost with the wingmen's sacrifice.
Sam's eyes had completely gone bloodshot.
Adrenaline surged through his body as his heart rate skyrocketed.
He hadn't felt this way since the first time he played Xevious.
Watching Sam become so immersed, Ethan suddenly felt a little guilty.
To ensure that ordinary players wouldn't be able to spend a single coin and play for an entire afternoon, he had made a few subtle adjustments to the difficulty.
Arcade games were different from home consoles.
Coin insertion rates were a crucial factor in profitability.
Only an arcade machine that could continuously earn money for its owner was a good arcade machine.
Otherwise, if it ended up becoming a critical success but a commercial failure, that would be a genuine disaster.
Under Ethan's design, the stronger a player performed, the more enemies the stage would deploy, ensuring that players always remained under pressure.
Besides making money, this design was also key to maintaining player engagement.
To offset some of the frustration caused by losing everything upon death, he had also added a mechanic that allowed players to sacrifice abilities in exchange for survival.
Within the game itself, this became the wingmen's heroic sacrifice that Sam had just witnessed.
It had to be said that Ethan's difficulty curve design was absolutely top-tier.
Even a seasoned veteran like Sam had been unknowingly manipulated by the system and sent straight to his death.
Staring at the words Game Over on the screen, Sam took a long time to calm down.
"I was wrong. Completely wrong."
"This isn't some reskinned game at all."
Sam stared at Ethan with blazing eyes.
"This is a genuine next-generation shoot-'em-up!"
He would bet anything that this weapon upgrade system would become the standard design framework for future aerial shooters.
Ethan had created another miracle.
Ethan merely smiled and said nothing.
In truth, this system still concealed an even greater trump card that Sam hadn't discovered yet.
But he wasn't in a hurry to point it out.
Little details like that were most enjoyable when players uncovered them on their own.
[Ding!]
[Mission: Gain the Investor's Approval, Completed]
[Reward Obtained]: All Attributes +5 (existing attributes only)
[Completed on time. Additional punctuality reward granted]: Skill Gift Pack ×1
An increase of five points to all attributes didn't seem like much at first glance.
But for Ethan, many of whose attributes were still only in the single digits, it was more than enough to double them.
His recently unlocked Graphics skill, in particular, also received a substantial boost.
It seemed that the more abilities he mastered, the greater the benefit he gained from increases to all attributes.
"Cross disciplinary synergy, huh? Looks like I'll need to distribute my stat points more evenly in the future."
Ethan slowly opened his eyes again.
Never before had his thoughts felt so clear.
Everything he had ever learned was now helping support everything else to varying degrees.
Applicable experience was automatically extracted and generalized across different fields.
Even though Ethan hadn't actually learned anything new, he felt as though his programming foundation had undergone a huge leap.
This kind of improvement existed on an entirely different level.
"Sam, stop playing. We've still got work to do."
After recovering himself, Ethan grabbed Sam, who was already reaching for another coin to continue playing.
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