Demo Complete

A light punch connected, followed immediately by the command input. Terry turned and drove forward with a shoulder strike—Power Charge.

Then, an incredibly swift Crack Shoot viciously kicked the airborne Geese to the edge of the screen.

It was a combo sequence that had long been etched into his soul in his previous life, fluid and efficient.

On the screen, nearly a third of Geese's health bar vanished in an instant.

The entire office fell into brief dead silence.

A few seconds later, voices of irrepressible amazement broke out.

"Whoa—!"

"That combo! That was gorgeous!"

"You can play like that?!"

The developers who had just been frustrated over being unable to pull off moves now stared wide-eyed, as if they had witnessed the doorway to a new world.

Yu Suzuki watched without blinking, a complicated glint in his eyes—amazement, but also deeper contemplation.

Takuya did not immerse himself in everyone's admiration. After finishing the demonstration combo, he voluntarily stepped aside.

He walked over to Team Leader Shimizu and several core programmers, turning his gaze to another monitor connected to the board, where backend performance data was being displayed in real time.

"How smooth are the state machine transitions?"

"When both sides are entering commands rapidly, what's the input delay like? Are command sequences being registered properly?"

"How accurate are the Hitbox and Hurtbox detections? Were there any deviations during those moments just now?"

He calmly raised a string of technical questions, swiftly shifting his focus from player experience to the underlying implementation.

Team Leader Shimizu pointed at the stream of data on the screen, his voice unable to hide his excitement.

"It's basically meeting expectations, Takuya!"

"The state transitions are extremely smooth. You can barely feel any stuttering."

"The hitbox logic is also basically accurate. Every attack detection in that combo triggered precisely."

"As for performance, with two characters fighting, the frame rate is stable, and input delay is within the ideal range."

The successful validation of the core mechanics allowed everyone involved in the project to breathe a sigh of relief.

It proved that the technical concept Takuya had previously proposed was entirely feasible in practice.

Several team leaders with technical backgrounds nodded one after another, looking at Takuya with a few more traces of sincere admiration in their eyes.

This young man not only possessed forward-thinking ideas, but also the technical skill and execution needed to make them real.

However, amid the optimistic atmosphere, Tanaka, a programmer who had been conducting stress tests in the corner with his head down, suddenly frowned deeply. He was repeatedly attempting a specific offensive and defensive scenario, his fingers tapping rapidly against the controller with soft clacking sounds.

"Hm? Wait a second..." Tanaka muttered, then tried again.

Controlling Geese, he precisely timed it and entered Geese's special move—Atemi Throw—on a specific frame as Terry's punching animation began.

After several consecutive attempts, a baffling image froze on the screen.

The display showed that Geese's hand had not actually touched Terry's incoming fist. The areas representing their attack detection zones, the Hitboxes, had not even visually overlapped, with a nearly imperceptible gap between them. Yet strangely, the Atemi Throw animation had triggered successfully. As though seizing him through the air, Geese grabbed Terry and smoothly threw him backward.

"What's going on?" A colleague who had just relaxed leaned over for a look. "He can throw without even landing a hit?"

Tanaka shook his head and slowed the replay down again. "Look here..."

The commotion drew everyone's attention. Takuya immediately walked over, his sharp gaze locking onto the slowed footage. "Stop."

The image froze. Sure enough, on the crucial frame where the throw triggered, Geese's Hurtbox appeared to expand unnaturally for an instant. Or, more accurately, the grab detection range of Atemi Throw clearly extended beyond the area depicted by its visual animation.

"It's a hitbox issue." Takuya made his judgment immediately, his voice steady and emotionless. "The detection range on a particular frame may have overflowed."

The problem might not have been complicated, but its appearance was like a tiny yet piercing burr, instantly puncturing the relaxed atmosphere from moments ago. Everyone fell silent, staring at that small flaw on the screen.

It silently revealed how many unpredictable detection loopholes might be lurking within such complex character interactions and state-transition logic. It was also like an omen, reminding everyone that as more characters—more characters with unique moves—were added to the game in the future, tracking down and fixing bugs would become an immense task requiring meticulousness and patience. Yu Suzuki had also moved over to watch from behind. The smile had vanished from his face, replaced by the scrutinizing gaze unique to a designer.

The demonstration and initial technical validation came to an end.

Without wasting any time, Takuya immediately gathered Team Leader Shimizu, several core programmers, and the planners for a quick summary meeting in a small conference area.

"The demo's core gameplay and fluidity have been validated. That's crucial, and it's a huge success." Takuya first affirmed the team's results, bringing some renewed excitement to everyone's faces.

"However," he continued, turning toward Tanaka, who had discovered the problem, "the Atemi Throw bug Tanaka found must be fixed immediately. It has top priority." He looked at the programmer responsible for detection logic. "Thoroughly inspect the detection data for every move. Make sure the visual presentation and actual detection match exactly."

"Understood!" the programmer answered at once, his expression serious.

"After resolving this issue," Takuya continued assigning tasks, "the next stage will focus on fixing all known potential problems, then putting our full effort into creating and implementing new characters."

"According to the plan, prioritize completing Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi. Build a basic playable version with at least three selectable characters as soon as possible. We need more data for the next round of adjustments."

The tasks were laid out clearly and methodically.

Then Takuya looked around at everyone, his expression becoming especially grave.

"Everyone, please remember one thing. From the moment we add the second and third characters—or even while we're adjusting the balance between Terry and Geese—we will immediately face a challenge that is more troublesome, and more central, than the technical implementation itself."

He deliberately paused, allowing everyone to absorb his words.

"That is—game balance."

Takuya emphasized those words.

"How can we ensure that Terry, Andy, Joe Higashi, and any more characters who may appear in the future each have distinctly different fighting styles and unique moves, making them feel completely different to play, while still maintaining a subtle overall balance in strength?"

"How do we prevent one character from becoming so powerful that everyone only uses them, like in so many action games now? Or another character being so weak, or so flawed in design, that no one uses them at all, turning them into wasted development resources?"

"Going further, how do we design a system where characters can counter one another, each with their own strengths and weaknesses? For example, how can fast characters deal with powerful ones? How can characters with projectiles be countered by close-range fighters? We want players to have a rich variety of strategic options, rather than everyone finding some so-called optimal solution and falling into the dull loop of 'infinite Gale Fists' or 'one Atemi Throw conquers all.'"

"This—this grasp of balance will be the key factor determining just how far Fatal Fury, this unprecedented fighting game, can go and how long it can remain alive."

His words were like a perfectly timed bucket of cold water, swiftly cooling the pride and relief that had just risen in everyone's hearts after the Demo's success. The developers who had been marveling at the flashy combos and smooth systems only now truly realized that creating an entirely new genre of game involved challenges far beyond technical breakthroughs.

Balance—a term that might occupy only a single line in the meeting minutes—concealed an unimaginable amount of testing, countless parameter adjustments, and perhaps even the complete scrapping and redesigning of entire move sets.

Yu Suzuki stroked his chin. This time, he was no longer mocking himself, but had sunk into deeper thought, his eyes flickering. As a veteran game producer, he clearly understood better than anyone else the enormous workload and design difficulty contained within those three words: "game balance."

A programmer muttered under his breath with bitter amusement, "So... does that mean our daily routine from now on will be arguing over spreadsheets and player feedback?"

Someone beside him failed to hold it in and burst out laughing, easing the tense atmosphere slightly.

Takuya also showed a rare faint smile and nodded. "To some extent, yes. Welcome to the real world of fighting game development."

Their journey in developing fighting games had only just taken its first solid step, and the road ahead was filled with the unknown and challenges.