Iori Yagami

On the screen, a red-haired man wearing an open-chested shirt and a strange red leather belt between his legs is laughing maniacally.

He grabbed his opponent's head with one hand, and purple flames exploded instantly, turning the scene eerie and violent.

Iori Yagami.

This never-before-seen character, with his arrogant "I'm the best in the world" attitude, immediately captured the hearts of all the rebellious teenagers.

He and that Kyo Kusanagi were natural enemies.

One red, one purple; one righteous, one evil. The mere tension between the two characters as they stare at each other on the character selection screen is enough to make players sweat with their coins.

"This plot is incredible!" the blond kid yelled, frantically rubbing the joystick as he played. "Kyo Kusanagi's dad has been brainwashed!"

This game directly uses the mature script from its predecessor, The King of Fighters '95.

Rugal, who self-destructed at the last tournament, is not dead. This mysterious invitation, named "R," has once again brought the fighters together.

This old guy not only fitted himself with a semi-mechanical prosthetic limb, but also, in order to humiliate Kyo Kusanagi, he even kidnapped Saisyu Kusanagi and brainwashed him into becoming a mini-boss.

On the screen, Saisyu Kusanagi, his body wreathed in eerie flames, brutally murders his own son.

This scene of "filial piety and parental love" left the onlookers sighing.

When the final battle arrived, Rugal tore open his shirt, revealing the terrifying power known as "Orochi Power," and the entire arcade fell silent for a moment.

The oppressive feeling pierced straight through the screen; the powerful 2D processing capabilities of the System 32 Board vividly depicted the rampaging Power Wave on Rugal's body.

Although Rugal ultimately succumbed to the power and self-destructed, the concept of "Orochi" remained deeply ingrained in the players' minds like a thorn.

It's obvious to everyone that Rugal is nothing more than a pitiful wretch who has been devoured by the backlash of power, and there's an even deeper conspiracy behind it all.

To coincide with the game's promotion, the manga of the same name, written by Natsumoto Masato, was also serialized simultaneously in the magazine "Shonen".

Although the magazine's sales can't yet compare to a monster like Dragon Ball due to its target audience, newsstand owners have noticed that students are frequently coming specifically to flip through the magazine, just to catch a glimpse of Iori Yagami's past or to research the mysterious "Orochi Clan."

This is exactly what Nakayama Takuya wanted.

The game is no longer just a pastime to be played and then discarded, but a world with a captivating story.

From arcade games to consoles, from comics to merchandise, as long as players are curious about the storyline and empathize with the characters, Sega always has something for players to discover.

Seeing the coin insertion rate rising sharply on the report, Nakayama Takuya picked up his pen and put a heavy checkmark next to "The King of Fighters 2".

Tokyo in March still carried a chilly spring breeze, but in Sega's underground Hardware Development Department lab, even with the air conditioning on full blast, the heat was unbearable.

Dozens of prototypes were running simultaneously, the combined hum of their cooling fans sounding like a swarm of tireless worker bees.

Sato Hideki, sporting deep dark circles under his eyes, clutched a can of already warm coffee in his hand, his gaze fixed intently on the oscilloscope in front of him.

Since the batch of customized R3000S chips arrived at headquarters two weeks ago, the entire Hardware Department has been in a "wartime state."

Assembly, power-on, firmware flashing, error reporting, correction, power-on again.

They've repeated this process countless times, even to this day.

"Data flow is stable, bus bandwidth utilization is 65%, temperature is 42 degrees Celsius, within the safe threshold." Sato Hideki's voice was hoarse, yet brimming with barely concealed excitement. "Suzuki- san, you can switch signals now."

Standing in front of the testing platform, Yu Suzuki didn't say anything, but quickly typed a series of commands on the keyboard.

The monitor flickered, went black, and two seconds later, a blue Sega logo appeared, followed by the familiar Bajiquan starting stance.

On the screen, Akira Yuki, dressed in a white taekwondo uniform, stands with his legs slightly bent in his signature pose.

If the character of Akira Yuki running on the regular R3000 was a "puppet" with standard movements but slightly stiff joints, then the character on the screen now seems to have been infused with a soul.

The afterimage when punching is no longer a simple texture stretching, but a real polygon calculation.

"That's the power of hard commands."

With a sudden push of the joystick in his hand, Yu Suzuki Akira Yuki on the screen instantly launched a combo attack called "Inner Gate Elbow Strike," the movements flowing smoothly and without any hesitation.

In order to make this operation run smoothly on the original chip, the programmers, who already had a lot of thinning hair, had to write a bunch of complex software instructions to simulate the calculations. Not only was the output rough, but the efficiency was so low that it made you want to smash your keyboard.

Now that we've switched to the custom R3000S, those complex algorithms that were previously a bottleneck have been directly transformed into native instructions at the chip's underlying level.

It's like taking a tractor struggling in the mud and suddenly putting it on a newly paved asphalt track, and then casually installing a Ferrari engine on it.

"What's the frame rate?" Hisao Oguchi had been standing silently in the back, suddenly asked.

"A stable 60 frames per second, with occasional fluctuations above 58." The tester next to me looked at the real-time monitoring data, his voice trembling. "And—this hasn't even been optimized; it's just the original code that's been directly copied and run, but with a more refined model."

Yu Suzuki released the joystick, exhaled a long breath, and his shoulders, which had been tense for months, finally relaxed.

"Looks like those tens of millions of dollars in customization fees weren't wasted." He turned around and gave a thumbs-up to the team behind him.

In the past few months, many people have privately complained that since there are custom chips available, why bother developing with the original R3000 first?

The feeling of dancing on a performance bottleneck is simply torture.

But now, seeing the seamless migration and immediate performance boost of Virtua Fighter 2, everyone understands the good intentions of Yu Suzuki and Executive Director Nakayama.

If they waited until the chips arrived before starting, they'd still be writing the low-level drivers. Where would we see such a smooth live demo then?

These three or four months of "useless work" were actually a race against time to save lives.

"How's it going with Sega Racing and Gundam Battle Operation?" Hisao Oguchi flipped through the schedule in his hand. As Nakayama Takuya's right-hand man, he was more concerned about whether the deals could be finalized on time.

"They're all migrating now. With Virtua Fighter 2 paving the way, they'll only get faster over there." Yu Suzuki pointed to several workstations nearby that were compiling code at full speed. "Especially the racing team. I heard that after switching to the new chip, they finally dared to add that real-time light and shadow reflection effect."