Konami remained indifferent to the loss of four members of the Rectangular Wave Club.
After all, Jun Funabashi—the most talented of the four—hadn't even joined Konami yet. Of the other three, only one was a Konami employee, and he had yet to achieve any notable success.
Of course, a formal condemnation was still necessary.
Konami issued a stern statement in Video Game News, denouncing Atlas's headhunting tactics and vowing that if Atlas continued to cross their line, they would face the consequences.
Kobayashi Tetsu didn't even bother to respond.
Atlas Office
Kobayashi Tetsu received two editors from Kadokawa Game Magazine. After three years of growth, Kadokawa Game Magazine was no longer the small publication it once was. It had become a major industry player, rivaling FAMIMAGA in fame and influence.
The only real difference was their allegiances: FAMIMAGA leaned toward Nintendo, while Kadokawa Game Magazine favored Sega.
The two editors who visited today, Koyakawa and Black Flame Dragon, were both old acquaintances.
Inside the office, they shook hands before Black Flame Dragon set his voice recorder on the table, his demeanor strictly professional.
"Atlas has been making a series of moves lately—poaching talent and acquiring several game companies. Given the development plans Atlas announced recently, can we assume you're preparing for something big?"
"Don't be so formal," Kobayashi Tetsu said, spreading his hands. "We've known each other for so long. Let's keep it casual; I don't want this to be so serious."
Kobayashi Tetsu briefly explained their recent activities, which naturally included a summary of their development plans. This served as a promotional opportunity for both sides.
Since just talking was boring, Kobayashi Tetsu stood up and took them on a quick tour.
"Currently, Atlas has about five development teams: Department 1's Nakayuu Group, the Second Division's Iwata Group, the Third Division's Goddess Group, Department 4's ARC Group, and the Fifth Division, which is the newly formed Team Ninja. We also have two separate teams for art and music."
ARC was short for Arcade. As the team that developed Street Fighter, Department 4 was, of course, focused on arcade game development.
Black Flame Dragon had heard the names Naka Yuji and Iwata Satoru before, but the Third Division's Goddess Group remained somewhat mysterious.
Since its formation last year, they seemed to have achieved little.
Kobayashi Tetsu, however, wasn't too concerned.
It was understandable for the Goddess Group to move slowly; RPGs weren't easy to develop.
Kobayashi Tetsu decided to take two editors along and visit the Goddess Group.
"Ah—President!"
Koji Okada sprang to his feet instantly.
Kobayashi Tetsu nodded slightly, his gaze sweeping over the computers in the room.
Koji Okada hurriedly explained, "Actually, the development of Megami Tensei is basically complete. We've tested most of the bugs, and it's ready for release at any time. But right now, we're trying to overcome one specific problem."
The key to this problem was, precisely, the need to solve it.
Black Flame Dragon looked at Kobayashi Tetsu, who frowned slightly.
"Okada-kun, the rule at Atlas is: if you encounter any difficult problems during development, don't try to shoulder them alone. Report them immediately so everyone can pool their wisdom to solve them together."
He tapped the desk lightly. "This is the first and last time I'll let it slide. Go on, tell me what the problem is."
Koji Okada could only manage a strained smile in response to Kobayashi Tetsu.
He knew Kobayashi Tetsu had said this before, but how could he possibly bring himself to ask for help? If he couldn't solve a problem on his very first project after joining the company, how would he ever survive future development cycles?
Now, facing Kobayashi Tetsu and the editor from Kadokawa Game Magazine, Koji Okada finally spoke. "It's like this... to enhance the game's impact, we want to incorporate cinematic cutscenes."
Kobayashi Tetsu nodded. "Increasing the cartridge capacity isn't that hard, is it?"
The Famicom could use Nintendo's MMC enhancement chips, and Sega had corresponding chips as well. Kobayashi Tetsu didn't see this as a major hurdle.
Koji Okada's smile grew even more strained.
"The problem isn't the cartridge capacity. The problem is, we simply can't implement it technically."
He decided to launch the game and demonstrate it to Kobayashi Tetsu.
Kobayashi Tetsu crossed his arms and looked at the screen. Black Flame Dragon and his companion also stared, their eyes glued to the monitor.
The game started, and as expected, a simple cutscene appeared: two figures facing off against a city backdrop.
Black Flame Dragon stared intently at the screen, his eyes glued to the display.
To be able to play an opening animation of this quality on the MS... he felt it was already impressive!
Kobayashi Tetsu closed his eyes slightly, thought for a moment, and then seemed to understand.
"You mean you're planning to add more layers to the background, making the current scene a dynamic, moving background."
Okada Koji felt as if he'd been granted a great reprieve and nodded eagerly. "That's exactly the problem. We've tried many different methods, but we just couldn't achieve the effect we envisioned."
Kobayashi Tetsu rubbed his forehead, a headache starting to form.
"That's because the MS and FC hardware simply don't support the kind of effect you're imagining! I understand what you're trying to do—you want multi-layered scrolling, meaning two or more scrolling layers. But the MS and FC only support a single scrolling layer, so of course you can't do it."
After all, they were inexperienced developers. Seeing Okada Koji and his team so wishfully thinking they could solve this problem, Kobayashi Tetsu actually felt like giving them a slap.
Kobayashi Tetsu asked, "How are you handling this right now?"
"Initially, we planned to use special sprites to replace this scene," they replied. "But we quickly realized the sprite limit wasn't enough to cover the visual effect we wanted. On the MS, the maximum number of sprites supported on a single screen layer is 8x8, and achieving this kind of visual effect already heavily taxes the FC's processing power. Since sprites alone couldn't do it, we had to switch to another method."
Kobayashi Tetsu nodded.
This made perfect sense. Why did the characters in Contra have to lie down in that specific pose?
It certainly wasn't because "there wasn't enough space," as some marketing hype claimed.
The real issue was a lack of display space. In a single screen layer, aside from the static background, only a limited number of moving 8x8 sprites could be displayed at once.
To ensure the characters could move and bullets could be shown normally, they had to minimize the space each character occupied as much as possible.
This is why many players of Contra noticed a strange phenomenon: if the TV's refresh rate was too low, the characters and enemies would sometimes disappear, leaving only the bullets on the screen.
This was an optimization made by Konami to ensure a smooth gameplay experience by conserving limited display resources.
Since the hardware could only support a maximum of 8x8 sprites moving on the same plane at any given time, Konami had to assign the 24 frames of animation to different characters and their various body parts, all while pushing the limits of human visual perception.
Bullets were displayed constantly to ensure players could always see them and avoid dying from invisible projectiles. In contrast, characters were displayed intermittently.
If a player were to pause the game frequently, they would discover that every single frame of Contra is actually incomplete. This was done to ensure that each frame contained exactly 8x8 active sprites, maintaining the maximum visual fidelity possible for the player. Konami pieced together these incomplete frames to create the final effect the player saw.
Kobayashi Tetsu wasn't surprised that the Megami Group would think of using sprites to solve this problem, but he knew it was impossible to achieve.
However...
After a moment's thought, a flash of inspiration struck him.
It wasn't permanently impossible.
While the hardware performance had a fixed upper limit, humans could use software optimization to simulate a comparable effect.
And the first game in all of Japan to solve this problem was Ninja Gaiden.
Ninja Gaiden was the very first game on the FC to use cutscenes—bar none.
To achieve the cutscene effects, Ninja Gaiden creatively split the screen horizontally and implemented multi-layered display. This ultimately created cutscenes where characters and the background moved simultaneously, yet the foreground, midground, and background remained visually distinct.
In simpler terms, the developers used programming to simulate a three-layer parallax effect on the FC, which only supported a single scrolling layer. This allowed them to divide the screen into three layers—foreground, background, and characters—all moving in unison.
This wasn't true hardware-level parallax scrolling, but rather a "fake" parallax effect achieved through software optimization. Yet, the actual visual result was no less impressive than contemporary titles on the Super Famicom or Mega Drive.
Once this technical hurdle was overcome, the only remaining challenge for implementing cutscenes was the limited cartridge capacity.
This is why the original Ninja Gaiden, despite its brutal difficulty and being developed by the then-unknown Tecmo, managed to sell three million copies worldwide. It was because Ninja Gaiden truly revolutionized the visuals on the FC for its time.
Even though the Mega Drive had already launched in 1988, Ninja Gaiden—despite its simpler graphics, lower resolution, and more limited color palette—still held its own against contemporary Mega Drive games in terms of actual visual impact and gameplay performance.
And as it happens...
Team Ninja is now part of Atlus!
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