Editing Rapid Fire King:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===3===

Takamura circled around the central cabinets to reach the back of the east side of the arcade.

The closer he got, the louder the game noises were. The explosions and other sound effects were louder than the music.

The screams he could hear mixed in with those noises were sound effects from the action and fighting games.

Fighting games were exactly what they sounded like: games where two characters fought until one remained standing.

Takamura liked fighting games for a reason.

…''What you need to do is really simple.

You hit the other character without getting hit yourself.

He saw fighting games as a game where you moved your character on the screen to beat up the computer-controlled opponent character.

The two characters were displayed on the screen from the side.

Tilting the cabinet’s stick up would make the character jump up. Tilting it down would make them crouch. And of course, tilting it to either side made them walk in that direction.

With most fighting games, there was a button for punching and one for kicking. Some games only had a punch button, some split the punching between strong, middle, and weak, and others did the same with the kicking.

The character would move differently depending on which button was pressed.

For example, the weak punch might make them jab, the middle might make them throw a straight punch, and the strong might make them use an uppercut.

And the movements differed again if they were jumping or crouching when the button was pressed.

The character movements were all animated.

You controlled those animations to beat up your opponent.

Endurance meters were displayed at the top of the screen on either side. If you punched your opponent and did enough damage to bring their meter down to zero, you would win with a KO. But if you were hit enough to bring yours to zero, you lost.

It was all a fictional martial arts match, but the gap between fiction and reality was filled by the sense of challenge provided by paying a coin for the attempt and by how much focus it required.

It felt great when you won and it felt awful when you lost. Takamura thought it was a lot of fun ''as a game''.

And he was not bad at it. But…

…''I’ve barely ever played against another person.

He had heard fighting games were more fun if you played them against a friend or someone else instead of against the computer. The cabinet had two sticks and two sets of buttons and the game used close-quarters combat rules, so both characters were displayed on the screen at once.

A competitive match could be played just the same as one against the computer. However…

…''I don’t really have any friends who do this kind of thing.

“Everyone around me is the athletic type or a unique kind of girl who thinks video games are for delinquents.”

He wanted to try it. It sounded fun as a game and he would not have to think so seriously about defeating or being defeated when everyone knew it was just a game from the start.

This was meant to be enjoyed, not taken seriously.

That was how he viewed video games.

He sat down at the furthest back of the arcade cabinets. This was the only game in the arcade that he could beat with just the one 50-yen coin.

Unlike normal fighting games, you played as a robot in this one. Instead of the usual punch and kick buttons, this one was more like a robot anime, so the buttons were for shooting beams, launching spears from your metal arms, and hitting your opponent with a drill.

You just had to use those many weapons to win.

So he decided to take it easy. After all, fighting games required you to clear several stages – and thus defeat several opponents – to reach the ending, but each stage only required winning two out of three matches.

Losing that one time did not come with any penalty to your health or attack power.

So…

…''I can lose once on each stage and I don’t have to rush.

''It’s so easygoing,'' he thought. ''There’s no downside at all to losing once against each opponent.

So he inserted his coin with an equally easygoing attitude.

He inserted just the one coin.

And he hit the start button.