Editing Rapid Fire King:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===1===

Takamura finished his game.

He had not made it to the end. He had failed to defeat the enemy on the final stage. That was probably due to not having played the game for nearly a month.

In that sense…

“It’s a lot like sports.”

He crossed his arms and nodded for no real reason.

The game over screen had appeared in front of him.

It said “Game Over”, not “The End”.

He had lost before reaching the end.

He nodded a few more times and looked up to see the screen asking if he wished to continue.

If he put another coin in and hit the start button while that screen was displayed, he could continue playing from where he had game overed.

But he chose not to.

He did not want to redo it. It was only a game, but he did not want to coddle himself.

He looked to his bag down at his feet and spied the edge of a baseball glove sticking out from where it sat somewhat open. He must have kicked it while playing the game.

The continue countdown ran out and the title screen popped up while he was pushing the glove back in.

He looked up at the title screen.

“Now, how much time do I have left?”

He checked his watch to find it was 8:18. The next train was at 8:20, so he knew he had to hurry. But at the same time, he started wondering something.

…''Should I really be playing games like this?

This was the spring of his third year in high school, so he had already started preparing for the entrance exams. And his school had the following rule:

“Students are not to visit arcades and other entertainment facilities on the way to or from school.”

The rules even stated he would be suspended if it was discovered he came here.

He looked around and sighed while thinking about how outdated an idea that was.

Most everyone here was wearing school uniforms. The middle schoolers on the way back from cram school seemed a little out of place.

There were also some adults in suits.

…''I wonder.

Were they all thinking the same things he was, or had they already found an answer and overcome it?

He viewed all the different people in the arcade while wondering that, but…

“…”

His gaze stopped on a certain point.

He was looking at the cabinets in the central area of the small arcade. He had spotted a familiar face there.

Of course, just because they were familiar to him did not mean they knew who he was.

…''The arcade’s owner and some regulars.

He could only just barely see their heads and necks from beyond the cabinets.

There were three of them there. The Owner was an elderly man, but the other two were men in their late twenties.

“The Yakuza and the Freeter, huh?”

Takamura used the surrounding noise to speak his nicknames for them aloud.

The Yakuza sat in a seat wearing the same flashy purple suit he always wore.

The Freeter was seated next to him. He was a skinny man in a jacket and glasses.

The Owner crouched next to the cabinet and opened the cover on the bottom of the cabinet in front of them.

He touched the circuit board visible inside the thick bottom section of the cabinet and made some kind of adjustment.

…''That’s the shoot ‘em up games over there, right?

Takamura could not see the screen from where he was.

So he was conflicted. Should he go see what they were doing, or should he leave?

But his curiosity won out.

He walked past the three of them and turned around in front of the cup-style drink vending machine next to the counter.

Those three were in front of the westmost cabinet in the central area. It did indeed contain a shoot ‘em up game.

The screen reflected the ceiling lights, so he could not see it very well. But he could see the title Super Rapid Fire written in red on the black screen.

However, that title vanished when the Owner crouched down again and stuck his hand inside the cabinet.

The screen blacked out. The title grew briefly distorted before disappearing.

“Huh?”

Takamura watched in confusion as some white English text appeared on the otherwise black screen.

The text on the screen looked like some kind of warning.

He could at least read the word “caution”.

At the same time, the Freeter reached toward the cabinet and moved the stick with practiced hand.

What were they doing?

“What is this?”

He moved to a different position.

He moved toward the counter so he could actually see the screen.

The English text changed as he did so. Eight lines of smaller text were arranged in a vertical list with the numbers 1 through 8 along the left side.

There was an arrow marker next to the numbers.

The Freeter moved the stick down.

The arrow marker moved down as he did so.

The arrow stopped next to the 8 of the bottommost entry.

The English text next to the 8 said “Very Hard”.

…''That’s a difficulty setting.

The game’s difficulty determined how hard it was to beat.

Takamura knew that arcade games like these came with a system for altering the difficulty.

There was a switch known as the test switch on the game’s circuit board inside the cabinet and pressing that switch allowed one to check the screen’s colors, check the stick and button inputs, and alter settings such as the length of a round in a competitive fighting game.

The difficulty setting was one such option. If the games were too difficult, they would drive away customers, but if they were too easy, the turnover would be too low and the arcade would make less money. And since the balance there differed depending on the level of the players in that region, it was difficult to standardize. That was why it was made so each arcade could adjust it themselves.

Takamura had seen this settings screen a few times with the competitive fighting games.

But he had never seen it before with a shoot ‘em up game.

And he understood that this shoot ‘em up game called Super Rapid Fire had just been set to its highest difficulty.