Zaboru settled into the center of the sofa while the cameras adjusted around him. One camera focused on his face, another captured the television screen, and a third remained wide enough to record Hikaru Kurata, Junpei Hoshida, and the nearby Sonaya developers whenever they reacted to his comments.
Hikaru sat beside him with his arms crossed, already looking as though he expected Zaboru to create trouble before the game even began. Junpei sat on the other side, calmer but visibly eager to see how Zaboru would respond to the newest entry in the series.
The Game Station startup animation appeared first, followed by Sonaya's logo and the development studio credits. Zaboru watched quietly, tapping one finger against the controller while the livestream chat continued racing across the production monitor.
A few seconds later, the main menu appeared.
Zaboru immediately whistled.
"Whoa. This main menu is interesting."
The screen displayed Juan standing beneath a dark orange sky. He wore a battered cowboy hat, a long red-and-yellow coat, worn leather boots, and several sheriff-style badges mixed with outlaw equipment. His clothing no longer made him look like a clean lawman. He looked like someone caught between two identities—part sheriff, part wandering outlaw, and completely tired of both.
At his hip rested his iconic oversized red revolver.
JUAN.
The weapon looked even larger and more intimidating than before, with gold engravings carved along the barrel and a mechanical cylinder that seemed far too advanced for an ordinary western firearm.
Zaboru leaned forward with visible interest. "The art style already tells us a lot. Juan still wears the sheriff imagery, but everything is rougher now. He looks like someone who still believes in justice but no longer believes in the system that once gave him his badge."
Junpei smiled. "That was exactly the intention."
Zaboru nodded approvingly before looking back toward the camera. "For anyone who forgot the fourth game, let me summarize it."
He rested the controller against one knee and began speaking more seriously.
"Back in Sheriff Juan 3 Juan had already discovered that Shin, the leader of Ghost Cowboy, was once enslaved by officials connected to RockVile. That revelation changed him. He realized the people he had been ordered to hunt were not simply evil outlaws. Some of them were victims created by the same government Juan had spent years protecting."
"In Sheriff Juan 4, Juan returned to RockVile after abandoning his position as sheriff. His old friend Pedro had become governor and asked Juan to help cleanse the city of corrupt officials. Juan agreed because he still cared about RockVile, even though his faith in its government had already been destroyed after fighting Ghost Cowboy."
Zaboru glanced toward Junpei for confirmation before continuing.
Junpei gave a small nod.
Zaboru continued, "Then Juan helped Pedro fight the corruption inside RockVile, only to discover that Pedro himself had changed. Pedro had been influenced by an ancient artifact called the Greed Pendant. The pendant clouded his judgment and filled him with obsession, but it also amplified his intelligence and gave him the ability to create advanced steam technology."
Junpei added while smiling , "Including machines that allowed Pedro to control and redirect steam pressure directly."
Zaboru pointed toward him. "Right. Which was honestly a cool idea, even if the fourth game had some gameplay problems."
Several Sonaya developers laughed nervously.
Zaboru continued, "At the end, Pedro Magna became the final boss. Depending on the ending, Juan was either consumed by the Greed Pendant himself because he can't kill his friend or forced to kill his old friend. Judging from this game's opening, the true ending is clearly the second one."
Junpei smiled. "You remember it well, Zaboru-san."
Zaboru looked mildly offended. "Of course I remember it. I beat the game."
Junpei laughed. "You said it disappointed you."
"It did, but that doesn't mean I hated everything about it. I like the Sheriff Juan series, okay?"
Zaboru then paused.
A mischievous grin slowly appeared across his face.
Hikaru noticed immediately.
"Don't," Hikaru said.
Zaboru looked innocent. "Don't what?"
"I know that expression."
Zaboru ignored him and turned toward the live camera. "Actually, what if Sheriff Juan appeared in the next ZAGE Smash Bros.? That would be pretty cool, right?"
The chat exploded instantly.
"ZAGE WANTS SHERIFF JUAN!?"
"WHAT THE HELL!?"
"CROSSOVER CONFIRMED!?"
"ZABORU IS TRYING TO ACQUIRE SONAYA LIVE!"
Hikaru closed his eyes and sighed. "Please don't joke about things like that. It isn't funny."
Zaboru laughed. "Who said I was joking?"
The Sonaya employees became even louder.
Junpei covered his mouth, clearly trying not to laugh too openly in front of his president.
Hikaru stared at him.
Zaboru finally raised both hands. "Fine, fine. Let's play before Sonaya's legal department attacks me."
He selected New Game.
The difficulty menu appeared next.
ROOKIE
SHERIFF
OUTLAW
JUAN
Zaboru immediately selected JUAN, the highest difficulty.
Junpei raised an eyebrow. "You're choosing that without knowing the controls?"
Zaboru grinned. "The game is named after him. It would be disrespectful to choose anything else."
Hikaru only sighed.
The screen faded to black.
A low, solemn guitar melody began playing. Wind swept across an empty desert while the narrator's voice filled the room.
"Juan was once a righteous and proud man who loved his birthplace, RockVile, more than anything."
The screen showed a younger Juan standing beneath the city gates, wearing a clean sheriff's uniform while townspeople smiled around him.
"He believed the badge represented justice. He believed the law protected the innocent. And he believed RockVile was a city worth defending."
The image changed.
Ghost Cowboy riders moved beneath the moon, their silhouettes crossing the desert like spirits.
"But that faith began to fracture when Juan fought the outlaw organization known as Ghost Cowboy."
Shin appeared, standing alone inside a ruined settlement.
"Their leader, Shin, was not born an outlaw. He had once been a slave come from outside continent, broken and discarded by officials connected to RockVile itself."
The camera slowly moved toward Juan's stunned face.
"When Juan learned the truth, he could no longer see the badge the same way. The law he had served had created the very people it ordered him to destroy."
Juan removed his sheriff's badge and left it behind on a wooden table.
"So Juan walked away."
The screen transitioned to Pedro standing before cheering citizens as the new governor of RockVile.
"Years later, his old friend Pedro asked him to return. Together, they would cleanse RockVile of corruption and build something better."
For a moment, the music became hopeful.
Then the Greed Pendant appeared.
Its golden surface pulsed with a faint, unnatural light.
"But power has a way of revealing what already hides inside the heart."
Pedro's face slowly changed. Steam-powered machines filled the city. Pipes covered buildings, soldiers marched through the streets, and massive mechanical towers rose above RockVile.
"The ancient Greed Pendant sharpened Pedro's mind and poisoned his purpose. His desire to save RockVile became a desire to own it. His dream of progress became domination."
The scene changed to Juan standing before Pedro Magna's enormous steam-powered form.
"In the end, Juan was forced to raise his weapon against the friend he had returned to save."
A single gunshot echoed. Zommed to red revolver JUAN
Pedro fell.
The screen became black again.
"RockVile survived."
A long silence followed.
"But Juan did not remain."
The screen showed Juan riding alone through the desert, leaving his hometown behind.
"He no longer trusted governments. He no longer wanted to wear a badge. Yet he could not abandon the belief that someone still needed to protect those who could not protect themselves."
A vast industrial city appeared beyond the desert.
Metal towers rose into the sky. Railways crossed between buildings. Steam engines, mechanical horses, factories, and neon signs filled the horizon.
"So Juan searched for a new purpose."
The city's name appeared.
METALFIELD
"And in MetalField, destiny was already waiting."
The screen faded into a stylized animated cutscene.
Juan rode slowly beneath a dark crimson sky. His red-and-yellow color palette stood out against the dusty landscape, and the animation had a charming cartoon-cowboy style mixed with much darker shadows and industrial imagery.
Zaboru's eyes brightened immediately. "Oh, this looks good."
The camera followed Juan as he entered a small settlement outside MetalField. He dismounted, walked toward an old bounty board, and studied several wanted posters moving in the wind.
His hand stopped on one.
WANTED: KILLO THE REPTILE SKIN
The poster showed a large reptilian outlaw wearing metal armor and carrying twin rifles.
Juan removed the poster and stared at the reward amount.
Then he sighed.
"Time to earn some money."
He folded the bounty poster, placed it inside his coat, and returned to his mechanical horse.
The camera moved behind him as he galloped toward the horizon.
Juan muttered quietly, "Another day. Another job."
The cutscene shifted seamlessly into gameplay.
Zaboru leaned forward.
The game became a side-scrolling 2D action platformer, but the environments used strong pseudo-3D graphics. Buildings, cliffs, moving trains, distant enemies, and industrial machinery filled multiple layers of the background, giving the stage impressive depth without abandoning the classic structure of the earlier games.
Juan landed beside an abandoned rail station.
A small control prompt appeared.
Zaboru moved him forward.
The controls responded immediately.
Juan could run, slide, jump, wall-kick, crouch, roll, and draw his revolver with almost no delay. His movement felt really smooth
Zaboru smiled. "Good. This one better."
Junpei leaned forward slightly. "That was one of our biggest priorities."
The first enemies appeared from behind several crates. Mechanical bandits wearing reptilian masks opened fire.
Zaboru immediately drew JUAN and fired three quick shots.
The first bullet struck an enemy's weapon, knocking it away. The second hit a hanging metal sign, causing it to swing down and strike another bandit. The third destroyed a steam pipe, covering the area in hot vapor.
Zaboru laughed. "Oh, this is already fun."
The chat continued flying by.
Zaboru continued through the stage, quickly discovering that the game mixed action, platforming, and environmental puzzles. In one section, he had to redirect steam through several pipes to activate an elevator. In another, he shot rotating targets in the correct order while avoiding moving platforms and enemy fire.
The pseudo-3D presentation made the backgrounds feel alive. Trains moved in the distance, workers fled from gunfights, and mechanical birds crossed the sky while factories released clouds of smoke over MetalField.
Then the camera suddenly shifted.
The screen moved into a full first-person perspective.
Zaboru's eyes widened.
Several enemies appeared on balconies and behind windows, forcing him to aim JUAN directly with the analog stick.
"Whoa! It turns into an FPS here?" Zaboru whistle and it's not bad.
Junpei smiled proudly. "Only during selected sections."
Zaboru quickly adjusted and began firing. The transition was surprisingly smooth. The first-person sequences did not feel like a separate game awkwardly attached to the platforming. They worked more like controlled shooting galleries used to change the rhythm of the stage.
Zaboru shot one outlaw's rifle from his hands, hit an explosive barrel behind another, and then fired at a suspended chain that dropped a metal platform onto the remaining enemies.
He laughed loudly. "This is insane, guys! I love it!"
The Sonaya developers visibly relaxed.
Some even began smiling with pride.
Hikaru remained composed, but the faint satisfaction on his face was impossible to hide.
Zaboru moved through the rest of the first stage almost effortlessly. Even on JUAN difficulty, he adapted quickly to the enemy patterns, platform timing, and shooting mechanics. He found one hidden route, solved an optional puzzle, and collected a silver sheriff token concealed behind a breakable wall.
Junpei stared at the screen. "Most first-time players miss that."
Zaboru shrugged. "The wall looked suspicious."
The stage ended with Juan leaping from a collapsing railway platform onto the back of his mechanical horse. Behind him, the entire station exploded as a train burst through the wreckage.
The results screen appeared.
STAGE COMPLETE
ACCURACY: 99%
DAMAGE TAKEN: MINIMAL
SECRETS FOUND: 1/1
Zaboru frowned at the final number.
"Only one?"
Junpei Chuckle "just Barely started Zaboru-san."
Zaboru picked up the controller more firmly.
"All right. This one is fire, let's continue!."
The livestream chat exploded again as the next stage began loading.
To be continued.
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