Chapter 123: Nekketsu Fighting Legend Had One of the Earliest Character Creation Systems
An MMA fighter, a boxer, a kung fu practitioner, and a judoka, each representing a different style and Nen type, paired into teams of two. On the temporarily borrowed floor-200 ring, they completed a 2v2 team bout that was, in terms of raw ability, not even close to evenly matched.
That said, it was understandable. Just finding four ability users who matched those four specific styles was already a significant achievement. Expecting a genuinely balanced fight on top of that was asking rather too much.
Ross didn't enter the ring. He let the four of them go at it freely while he kept the Navigation Arrow running the whole time.
He didn't hide any of this from Kastro. Let him watch.
And when the winner was decided, the Navigation Arrow responded.
Drawing on his thorough understanding of the game and the experience he had accumulated from acquiring earlier cartridges, Ross successfully completed the pre-ritual for the new cartridge.
This acquisition worked differently from the others, though. No new cartridge printed from scratch. Instead, a new cover label appeared, taking up exactly half the surface of his existing Nekketsu New Record 2-in-1 combo cartridge.
[You have successfully observed a 2v2 bout between a fighter, a boxer, a kung fu practitioner, and a judoka.]
[You have triggered the acquisition pre-condition for a game cartridge.]
[You have successfully recovered a complete game: Nekketsu Fighting Legend.]
[Your Nekketsu New Record cartridge has officially been upgraded to a Nekketsu Series Combo Cartridge.]
[Nekketsu Series Combo (2-in-1): Nekketsu New Record + Nekketsu Fighting Legend.]
[Your collection count and cartridge slot count remain unchanged.]
Ross let out a string of genuinely uncontrolled noise. Pure delight, completely unbothered.
"Thanks, man. You have no idea how much you just helped."
In an excellent mood, he slapped Kastro on the shoulder repeatedly.
Kastro, who had been watching the entire thing from start to finish, had his face fully occupied by confusion and curiosity.
"Mr. Ross... if I may ask, what exactly is that?"
He had seen clearly enough: Ross had activated some kind of ability by satisfying a certain set of conditions and received the object now in his hand. But it only made him more puzzled.
"It's a physical game cartridge. Called Nekketsu Fighting Legend."
Ross paused, then looked over at Kastro with a faint gleam in his eye.
"Want to play?"
Some things about Ross never changed. No matter where he was, he never missed an opportunity to try to recruit another potential gaming companion.
"This is... for me to play?"
Kastro was genuinely taken aback. In his reading, something Ross had gone to such lengths to obtain through a Nen ability, even if it could be "played," probably shouldn't be casually offered around.
"Of course you can, but only if you actually want to. No pressure."
Apparently having learned from past experience, Ross had started adding that disclaimer whenever he extended a gaming invitation.
Game time, then.
Kastro watched Ross insert the cartridge into his handbuilt custom console with full ceremony.
Instant boot. Instant run. Nekketsu Fighting Legend's opening theme, even filtered through the limited hardware of an 8-bit console, immediately put something charged and energetic into both of them.
Unlike other Nekketsu titles, the true protagonists of Nekketsu Fighting Legend were player-created characters. Without a specific password entered, you couldn't select Kunio, Riki, or any of the established story characters. Both the 1P and 2P slots ran on original created characters.
Which meant: character creation first.
All the pixel art for created characters used fixed sprites, but three variables were entirely up to the player: name, birthdate, and blood type.
Ross suspected most people, like his younger self, had mashed through the inputs blind on their first time, probably ending up with a character named something like "YangYang" in that five-character name field with no idea what any of it meant. Just hammering forward and playing.
Buttons pressed at random, no idea that what you entered at the start actually determined significant portions of your character's build. If you happened to notice a pattern, it was through sheer repetition and rote memory. The smarter approach, once people figured it out, was to copy the stat inputs directly from NPC data to get the stronger special moves.
It wasn't until he went back and researched the game properly as an adult that Ross learned: name, birthdate, and blood type were inputs that materially shaped every aspect of the created character, including their class, skills, stats, teammate compatibility, and combo techniques.
Name determined class directly. Birthdate determined skills directly. Those two were the most critical variables.
Ross had tested his own name years ago. His name's phonetic value corresponded to five, which mapped to the Kung Fu practitioner class: shirtless on top, black pants on the bottom.
It was only much later that he learned the Kung Fu practitioner was actually modeled on Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do.
In Nekketsu Fighting Legend, beyond the four fixed class-exclusive attack patterns, there were ten additional special moves across the entire roster: Mach Kick, Mach Punch, Mach Stomp, Jump Elbow Strike, Jump Guillotine Drop, Boulder Defense, Spinning Charge, Burst Kick, Tornado Attack, and Jump Spin Kick.
Each player character received a fixed combination of these based on their birthdate. The formula produced twenty possible combinations, numbered zero through nineteen.
Any given combination contained at least one special move and at most three.
The formula was: (birth month + birth day) mod 20.
For example, Ross's birthday was December 6th. Running the formula: twelve plus six, mod twenty, gave eighteen. Combination eighteen was Mach Kick, plus Spinning Charge, plus Burst Kick, the exact same combination as Kunio's birthday, November 27th.
With Ross's help, Kastro entered his own surname, Shi. The corresponding class: Judoka. His birthday was October 19th, putting him at combination nine: Mach Punch plus Spinning Charge.
Kastro couldn't read any of the Japanese characters on screen, of course. But if that old rascal Ging had been here instead, he would probably have spotted the relationship between the syllabary and the Hunter alphabet at a single glance. Language prodigies were something else entirely.
Ross didn't bother explaining all the underlying mechanics to Kastro. He didn't need to understand it. He didn't even need to do much in the actual game, just stay mobile and keep himself out of range. Ross could handle the enemies cleanly on his own.
They carved through four rounds of elimination brackets together, and finally came face to face with the game's final boss.
The Tiger Brothers.
As a stat-boosted boss unit pair, the Tiger Brothers came with overwhelming numbers and attack AI that practically lived in the player's face.
In the old days, Ross would have been fighting sweat on his palms at this point. But now, his extensively refined bag of nasty tricks, legitimate techniques at this point, could exploit their AI patterns with casual precision.
Over the course of the run, Kastro had rapidly evolved from stumbling and uncertain to a genuine evasion specialist.
The Tiger Brothers went down. S-rank landed in their faces, no suspense about it.
What came next in the notifications, however, went well beyond what Ross had expected.
[Detected: you have achieved an S-rank Entertainment Mode clear in Nekketsu Fighting Legend, satisfying the pre-condition for Secret Realm Key acquisition.]
[Detected: you already hold Intermediate Access for Nekketsu New Record.]
[Detected: both Nekketsu Series games share a single cartridge (combo).]
[Going forward, the Nekketsu Series will share a single Secret Realm stage. Secret Realm access will be based on the highest access level held across any Nekketsu Series game in your possession.]
[Your current Nekketsu Series Secret Realm access: Intermediate Access.]
[You may only run one Nekketsu Series game at a time.]
[Detected: Nekketsu Fighting Legend features a character creation system.]
[If the player uses their own name, birthdate, and blood type as the basis for creating their Nekketsu Fighting Legend character before entering the Nekketsu Series Secret Realm, that unit will be recognized as an avatar of the player's true self. The player may obtain that avatar's permanent mapping without fulfilling any prior conditions.]