Later that day, after finishing everything he needed to do and spending the rest of his free time with his family, Zaboru finally returned to his personal workshop inside the Renkonan house.
By then, it was already past midnight.
The house had become quiet again. Ayumi was asleep, the twins were resting nearby, and Zenshin and Arumi had already gone to their own rooms hours ago. For most people, this would have been the obvious signal to stop working and sleep.
Zaboru was not most people.
He sat comfortably in front of his workstation, opened several internal ZAGE planning files, and grinned when the June schedule appeared across the main monitor.
"Okay... let's see."
The coming months were already packed. ZAGE still had multiple ZEPS 4 projects moving simultaneously across different teams, while ZEPS 3 had not been abandoned either. In fact, another major JRPG was scheduled for the older console around the same period: Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
Zaboru smiled when he saw the project name. "Heh. That one definitely got a lot of work."
He had no intention of discussing every improvement tonight. The Persona project had its own team, its own schedule, and enough changes to deserve attention later. What mattered now was the newer machine.
ZEPS 4.
Two games were positioned for June, and both were very different from what the console had received so far.
Zaboru opened the first folder.
A concept video immediately began playing.
Several mountain bikes exploded down the side of a massive mountain at ridiculous speed. Riders launched from dirt ramps, crossed narrow wooden bridges, smashed through branches, kicked at one another while racing, and landed tricks only a person with absolutely no concern for his own spine would attempt in real life. The footage changed again: a jungle route, a rocky canyon, a river crossing, a snow-covered descent, then a completely absurd volcanic course where riders tore across black stone while lava glowed in the distance.
Zaboru slowly grinned.
"Oh, I missed this game."
The title appeared.
DOWNHILL DOMINATION
For a few seconds, he simply watched the footage with his arms crossed, remembering another life.
Back then, Downhill Domination had never been one of the largest games in the industry. It wasn't the kind of title people placed beside the biggest RPGs, shooters, or action franchises whenever they discussed the defining games of an entire generation.
But to Zaboru?
It was one of those games that didn't need to be the biggest.
It just needed friends, controllers, and a free afternoon.
He remembered sitting together with other people, racing down insane tracks, trying to style on one another, deliberately slamming opponents at terrible moments, shouting when somebody stole a win near the finish line, and laughing whenever a rider crashed in a spectacularly stupid way.
Zaboru leaned back.
"Seriously... this game was underrated as hell."
What always surprised him was how rare this exact kind of game became afterward. There were other cycling games, other extreme-sports titles, and plenty of racing games, but very few captured that same combination of downhill speed, combat, tricks, strange characters, ridiculous shortcuts, and arcade nonsense.
It wasn't merely a mountain-bike simulator.
That would have been boring.
Downhill Domination treated bicycles the way an arcade racing game treated cars.
Speed mattered, but so did aggression.
Finding the best route mattered, but so did knowing when to risk a stunt.
A rider could be racing seriously one moment and then get knocked sideways by another player the next.
And the courses weren't just clean competitive tracks. They felt dangerous. Mountains, forests, rivers, villages, cliffs, jumps, broken paths, narrow bridges and absurd environmental hazards all blended together until a race became less about following a perfect line and more about surviving the descent faster than everyone else.
The characters helped too.
Zaboru scrolled through the roster documents.
Cosmo. Kalolo. Mai. Ajax. T-Bag.
And many more.
Each had a recognizable style and their own special techniques, giving the game enough personality that players could easily become attached to specific riders instead of treating them as interchangeable models.
"That part stays," Zaboru muttered.
He opened the current ZAGE build notes.
Naturally, the ZEPS 4 version was not going to be a simple recreation.
The core remained untouched: high-speed downhill bicycle racing mixed with combat and stunts. That identity was the entire reason Zaboru wanted the game in the first place. But the development team had been given room to make everything around that core smoother, crazier, and more responsive.
Bike handling had been refined so different surfaces actually felt distinct without turning the game into a simulation. Dirt, wet ground, snow, wood, loose stone and paved sections affected control differently, but the player was never supposed to spend half the race fighting realistic physics.
The game still needed to feel fast.
Very fast.
Trick chaining had been expanded as well. Players could link jumps, spins, grabs and environmental interactions together while descending, and riskier tricks created better rewards if they were landed properly. Combat had also been cleaned up so attacking another rider felt deliberate instead of random.
Zaboru smiled at one particular note.
Momentum attacks increased while descending at extreme speed.
"Hehehe. Good."
If somebody decided to slam another rider while flying downhill at a completely irresponsible speed, the victim should feel it.
Track design was where Zaboru had pushed the team hardest.
He wanted routes that players would slowly learn over repeated matches. The obvious path might be safe but slower. Another path could send the rider through a narrow village alley. A hidden route might require jumping through a broken section of fence. Some shortcuts would save enormous amounts of time if executed correctly and completely ruin the race if missed.
That was the fun.
A beginner should be able to race.
An experienced player should look insane.
The single-player campaign would provide the progression, unlocks and character development needed to keep people playing alone, but Zaboru knew exactly what feature would make the game live inside houses, dormitories and gaming rooms.
Multiplayer.
He smiled immediately.
Split-screen had been one of the things he remembered most fondly from his previous life, so there was absolutely no chance ZAGE was removing it just because ZEPS 4 had strong online infrastructure.
"Local multiplayer stays. No argument."
Four people screaming in the same room was part of the experience.
Online multiplayer would simply expand that insanity.
ZAGE Network made it possible for players to race people outside their homes, create private rooms, challenge friends, and build competitive playlists without sacrificing the local mode that made the original concept so entertaining.
Then there was the truly stupid stuff.
Zaboru scrolled farther.
His grin returned.
One of his favorite things about the game had been how willing it was to stop pretending it was normal. Serious bikes and recognizable riders existed beside increasingly bizarre unlockables.
An alien?
Sure.
A llama?
Why the hell not?
Zaboru laughed quietly.
"If anything, our version is going to be even less normal."
He wasn't going to flood the game with nonsense from the beginning. The main progression still needed actual bicycles, upgrades, characters and courses.
But hidden deep enough?
That was different.
Players who completed strange requirements, conquered difficult events, or explored the game aggressively would begin finding things that made them question whether the developers had become bored at work.
And Zaboru had already contributed three unlockables personally.
He opened a protected folder.
Three bicycle silhouettes appeared.
Zaboru immediately started laughing.
"Oh, you beautiful bastards."
The first was silver.
The oldest.
The most important.
SILVER WRECKER.
His trusty bicycle in Japan.
The bike had been with him since before ZAGE became what it was now, before private jets, exotic cars, enormous offices, and billion-dollar projects became normal parts of his life. He had ridden it when he was nowhere near as rich as he was today, and somehow it had survived long enough to become almost legendary among people who knew him.
Of course, calling it the exact same bicycle from those early years was becoming philosophically questionable.
Zaboru had repaired it.
Reinforced it.
Changed components.
Customized parts himself.
Upgraded practically everything that could reasonably be upgraded.
Yet whenever he rode it, it still felt like Silver Wrecker.
That was what mattered.
He looked fondly at the model.
"My original partner."
The second silhouette was completely black.
DARK WANDERER.
The American brother of Silver Wrecker.
Sleek, jet black, reinforced, and built for the periods when Zaboru spent long stretches of time in the United States. If Silver Wrecker carried the feeling of an old veteran that refused to retire, Dark Wanderer looked like somebody had asked the veteran to produce a younger, moodier sibling.
Then came the newest member.
Gold and yellow.
Bright enough to make subtlety impossible.
GOLDEN FLASH.
Zaboru's London bicycle.
He laughed again.
"Yeah. This lineup is so stupid."
He loved it.
Silver Wrecker in Japan.
Dark Wanderer in America.
Golden Flash in London.
A billionaire with access to nearly any car he wanted had somehow created an international lineup of named bicycles like they were legendary weapons from an RPG.
And now all three would exist inside Downhill Domination as hidden unlockables.
Zaboru rested his chin on his hand, amused.
Naturally, they wouldn't simply appear in a normal shop menu.
That would be boring.
Each one needed its own ridiculous unlock condition.
He already had several ideas.
"Hehehe."
Zaboru moved the cursor toward one of the design documents, stopped, then closed it again.
"No. I'll let them suffer."
He could already imagine players discovering Silver Wrecker for the first time and wondering why this seemingly ordinary silver bicycle had suspiciously good statistics.
Better yet, people familiar with Zaboru would recognize it immediately.
He leaned back and laughed quietly.
Eventually he saved his notes and closed the Downhill Domination folder.
One June game handled.
One more remained.
Zaboru's expression changed almost immediately.
The next folder sat beneath it.
He stared at the project name for several seconds.
Then a slow grin appeared.
"Ohhh..."
He opened it.
The screen went dark.
A development build began loading.
Zaboru leaned forward, suddenly much more interested.
"Well, well, well…"
Something appeared on the monitor.
His grin widened.
"This is going to be a blast."
He watched for several seconds before quietly laughing to himself.
"But I really wonder how people in this world are going to react to this."
The footage continued playing across the monitor.
Zaboru said nothing else.
And the second game for June release of ZEPS 4 is...
To be continued.
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