When Yamada Masaharu went to the game store, he was completely startled. There was a long line outside the store, stretching all the way to the street corner.
This was enough to show how popular game was today.
"So scary."
Fortunately, he had participated in his high school's baseball team, so he was quite fast on his feet.
Not long after Yamada Masaharu arrived, a swarm of office workers in black suits followed behind him.
"Ah~ damn it, so many people!"
...After finally squeezing into the store, a cold glint flashed under the game store owner's glasses.
"Hey, Miss, why are you the only one today?"
"Um... they asked me to come and help buy it, so they won't be coming," Yamada Masaharu said.
They were all old acquaintances. Although the game store owner never knew their names, he had often seen them act together.
"Oh, that one with glasses, the one with a slightly high hairline, didn't he always come by himself?"
The game store owner was referring to Furukawa Hirozawa.
More often, he saw Furukawa acting alone.
And Furukawa was a loyal fan of Pokeni. The game store owner thought Furukawa would be here first thing, but he didn't expect this young Miss to be the earliest.
"The one with glasses?"
Yamada took game from the shelf while wondering who the game store owner was talking about.
"Yes, the one who usually comes to buy game first thing. Most of the Time he is alone."
"Ah, you mean Furukawa-senpai."
The game store owner thought, ah, so his name is Furukawa, huh.
Yamada nodded, "He has a date with a girl, so he can't come for now."
Speaking of Furukawa-senpai, Yamada Masaharu was filled with anger.
He forgot his bros when he got a woman.
However, this was not the most important thing. The most important thing was that Yamada himself was still single. He had confessed to his first love some Time ago but was mercilessly rejected. The reason for the rejection was that she had never even realized that Yamada liked her.
His self-esteem was shattered.
"Eh?!"
The game store owner let out a surprised gasp when he heard Yamada's words.
He didn't expect such a shut-in to have a girl who liked him?
It had been so many years. The game store owner calculated that Furukawa had been buying game here for about seven or eight years, and he had never seen the guy bring a girl with him.
Sometimes he would have two or three male friends, but definitely not girls.
He originally thought such a person would remain lonely until old age, but he actually had a date with a girl?!
He lost an excellent customer.
The game store owner felt both bitter and sad, but there was an inexplicable emotion in his heart. He silently blessed Furukawa Hirozawa.
If such a customer is gone, then he's gone. I wish you find true love.
It's really not easy... It was already past 10 PM when Yamada bought the game disc and rushed home.
He was tired and hungry, and he felt terrible.
However, Yamada still prioritized calling his older bros to tell them that he had bought the game disc.
"Furukawa-senpai, I've already bought the princess mononoke disc you wanted."
"Ah, thank you very much. Can you bring it on Monday? I have a date with Miss Xue Zhu tomorrow."
"Okay, no problem. You two have a good Time. I'll play through the game by myself," Yamada said.
"Then I'll leave it to you. Have a good weekend."
With that, the other party hung up the phone.
Damn it!
Couldn't Furukawa-senpai tell I was being sarcastic?
Never mind, never mind.
After informing Kinoshita-senpai and Hayamikawa-senpai that he would bring the game discs on Monday, Yamada finally started to cook instant noodles to fill his stomach.
Although it was already around 11 PM, Yamada still decided to experience princess mononoke.
Otherwise, it would be too frustrating.
Aside from the long Time he had spent waiting in line, it was also frustrating that his favorite senpai had suddenly left the common folk and become a high-and-mighty normie.
This hurt Yamada a lot.
"Damn it."
"Forget it, this isn't good for Furukawa-senpai. I hope Furukawa-senpai and Miss Xue Zhu can be together happily, and maybe he can introduce a beautiful Miss to me in the future."
Yamada comforted himself while turning on the TV, opening the game box, and putting the disc into the game console.
Everything was ready, just waiting to have a good Time.
And just then, there was a knock on the door outside.
Eh?
Yamada suddenly looked up, his eyes filled with endless confusion.
He looked at the clock on the wall. It was already 11:10 PM.
Who would come so late?
He opened the door and saw that it was Furukawa Hirozawa standing outside.
"Eh? Furukawa-senpai, why are you here?" Yamada asked in surprise.
"I still couldn't resist coming. As soon as I heard that the princess mononoke disc was bought."
Furukawa Hirozawa said with a smile.
"Ah, so you specially came to get the disc?"
"Yes, I'm planning to experience it with Junna tomorrow."
Uh... Yamada didn't know what to say for a moment.
He was very happy that Furukawa-senpai came in person, but he always felt a sour smell of love.
"Haven't you already watched the princess mononoke movie? Do you still want to experience the game?"
"Yes, precisely because I've watched it, I want to know what's different about the game," Furukawa Hirozawa said with a smile, "And, I can also play game and deepen my relationship with Junna."
Furukawa Hirozawa's face was beaming with a happy smile.
For this man, being able to play game with the girl he likes, there probably isn't anything in the world that could make him happier, right?
...Ah... damn it, Furukawa-senpai showed off again.
After seeing Furukawa Hirozawa off, Yamada sat back down.
He just felt that the whole room was filled with the sour smell of love.
However, his mood was inexplicably completely different from before.
Ever since Furukawa-senpai came in person and took the game.
Yamada Masaharu's whole world brightened up.
"Ah~ Sure enough, Furukawa-senpai is Furukawa-senpai, even if he has a girlfriend..."
Hmm... should she be considered a girlfriend?
He didn't know if Furukawa-senpai had confessed to Miss Xue Zhu yet.
"But even so, Furukawa-senpai still loves game."
He originally thought that after he had Miss Xue Zhu, he would lose his reason to play game, but he didn't expect that his love for game was genuine, and not just a common toy to relieve loneliness and make himself more comfortable.
This made Yamada Masaharu feel incredibly relieved.
The moonlight was hazy, it was a good Time to play game.
If he didn't play game, was he going to wait for a Miss to throw herself into his arms?
So Yamada happily started playing game... princess mononoke! Start!
The screen went black, and the familiar Pokémon logo appeared on the screen.
Below it was the iconic tagline:
[game is life]
[Here, embark on an unprecedented journey of life]
However, what was slightly different from previous game was—
This Time, the prompt was presented in an ink wash style.
It was like ink floating on the water, or wisps of smoke rising in the sky.
After the text appeared, it slowly dissipated. This feeling was truly artistic.
Yamada Masaharu, just seeing this opening, hadn't even entered the game yet, but he had already let out endless exclamations.
Pokémon truly put their heart into it.
To match princess mononoke, they adopted such an artistic and classical expression.
In fact, what he didn't know was that as a Chinese person in his previous life, Aoki Haruhi had played more ink wash style game than he imagined. He was even very persistent about the ink wash style.
It's just that there haven't been any particularly well-executed classical Chinese style game.
It was hard to come by a princess mononoke, so of course, he had to see it through.
The screen lit up again, as if at dawn, the sunlight piercing through dark clouds. The brightness of the screen also kept changing, gradually getting brighter.
At the same Time, bird calls and the sound of flowing water came from the screen... In the picture, there was a large green forest, with distant mountains hidden in a sea of clouds.
Nearby was a small black stone fortress, with wisps of smoke rising from the rooftops.
A pastoral scene was fully captured.
Joe Hisaishi's music slowly played, beautiful and melodious. In Yamada's mind, there was a bright moon.
Below it were rolling green forests.
Endless vastness and beauty.
It was as if some mysterious power had impacted Yamada's soul.
Making people yearn for it.
Ah, as expected of Master Joe Hisaishi's soundtrack, this is too beautiful.
Combined with the starting interface in front of him, it's simply perfect.
"If there's a place like this in reality… no, there must be a place like this in reality," Yamada Masaharu thought to himself.
He remembered reading a report about the location scouting for princess mononoke; Hayao Miyazaki even took Joe Hisaishi and Aoki Haruhi to scout locations for princess mononoke.
"Ah, if all of this is real, then this place in reality must be incredibly beautiful."
He wanted to experience it too.
He pressed the button and selected [New Game].
The game officially began... The camera barely switched; instead, the text on the main interface was hidden, and then the entire game's start screen slowly floated up.
It was at this moment that Yamada Masaharu was surprised to discover—
What he had originally thought was a 2D image for the initial interface was actually a real 3D scene.
The camera slowly advanced and then continuously zoomed in, like your eyes, floating in the air, leading you to witness this world.
Subtitles slowly emerged from the bottom, truly giving the feeling of watching a movie in a cinema.
[A long Time ago]
[This land was covered by a vast forest]
[On this land]
[Lived the gods who had existed since ancient Time]
The camera slowly descended, and at this point, there was a scene transition, from the original long shot, the vast mountains gradually transformed to the ground.
It swept over the dense treetops, glided past the tree trunks, and slowly landed on the ground.
Yamada Masaharu was astonished for a moment, feeling a bit lost. Was this a 3D scene or a 2D image, or had Hayao Miyazaki's animation simply been placed directly into the game?
He couldn't figure it out at all.
From the camera language at the beginning, it seemed like a 3D effect, but when the camera transitioned into the forest, and the details slowly appeared, it gave him the illusion of watching a 2D animation.
How was this even done?
Although Yamada Masaharu was not a game developer, out of a programmer's instinct, he was extremely curious about it.
In reality, this segment was created by splicing two animations together.
The first segment was indeed as Yamada Masaharu saw it: a 3D world scene built by Pokémon 3D, except this scene couldn't be traversed by characters; it could only be used for CG.
Through the camera work in this segment, a differential transition was made. Because the entire game uses the animation rendering adjusted by Aoki Haruhi, from a holistic perspective, it looks just like watching a movie.
When the camera moves down, it can maintain a stable 2D feel within it.
So, when transitioning from 3D to 2D, it became very easy. The latter half of the transition was completed by Ninjin Makoto through computer graphics.
A solid 2D animation.
In other words, from the very beginning of the game, it was a true combination of 3D + 2D.
Even though this was an animation, it showcased Pokémon 3D's extremely sophisticated game development technology and wisdom beyond ordinary imagination.
If it weren't for Aoki Haruhi, probably no one in this entire Time would have thought of using such a splicing transition method to complete the opening animation.
As for rival companies, they probably couldn't figure out the mystery even if they racked their brains... The following part is entirely 2D, displayed through actual scenes from a portion of the animated film:
In the dense forest, the camera continuously zoomed in, revealing lush and varied plants.
In the distance, a flowing River sparkled with bright points of light, as if someone had broken apart and crumbled light, scattering it into the river.
And nearby, a small squirrel scurried up a tree trunk.
Birds spread their wings and soared high from the branches.
Everything was a beautiful sight.
But just then, a sudden anomaly occurred—
Trees fell one after another, and at the same Time, a massive monster, covered in countless terrifying curse-worms, moved through the forest.
Wherever it passed, flowers and trees quickly withered and died, turning into a pool of mud.
The monster's body was covered in curse-worms. These worms looked terrifyingly strange, like earthworms, but completely black.
The monster's overall appearance was that of a round spider.
On the surface it crawled over, it left a long, black trail, like corrosive, rotting mud… "Terrifying."
Seeing this, Yamada Masaharu couldn't help but hug his arms and rub them to warm himself up.
At the same Time, goosebumps rose all over his body... The scene abruptly stopped, the music swelled, and in the center of the television screen, large characters read—
princess mononoke
The camera shifted, revealing a vast green jungle and a village hidden among the mountains.
Some man-made watchtowers stood on the roads outside, behind which were some earthen houses, scattered in an orderly fashion, looking particularly ancient and beautiful.
Unlike onmyoji, princess mononoke gave Yamada Masaharu a feeling that was even more ancient.
To be precise, it was rustic.
The subtitles read:
[In a tranquil town in the East]
[People lived a peaceful life, free from worldly strife]
[However, all of this will undergo immense change due to the arrival of a certain event.]
Immediately after, the camera switched again. This Time, a young boy stood in the frame, wearing a blue top and with a plump bun tied at the back of his head.
The camera was a tail-chase camera, meaning a third-person perspective, but positioned diagonally above and behind the male protagonist.
The boy walked through the green jungle, and a winding, earthy yellow mountain path stretched into the distance.
At this point, the game truly handed over control and action rights to the player.
The next part was a tutorial.
It was actually very simple, first teaching Yamada Masaharu how to use the joystick for walking, running, jumping, turning, and so on… Looking at the game screen in front of him, Yamada Masaharu still doubted his eyes.
Because no matter how he looked at it, this game was like watching an animated film.
He truly had the illusion of sitting in a movie theater, experiencing Master Miyazaki Hayao's princess mononoke.
The colors of the screen, the overall art style, and the character designs—all of its construction gave him a very 2D illusion.
The outlines were very clear, the normal maps were prominent, and the lighting was exceptionally soft and harmonious, but lacked a sense of realism.
It felt as if he was in an animated world.
"Can this be called a 3D game?"
And an action game at that.
How could Yamada Masaharu not believe it?
In fact, up until now, Yamada Masaharu hadn't quite understood what this 3D action game was all about.
In his imagination, a 3D real-Time action game should be like pokémon 3d world.
But for a single-player RPG, he wasn't so sure.
However, now that the beginner tutorial was underway, he had a slight glimmer of understanding—
The so-called 3D action game probably simulates the feeling of a real person playing in a 3D world, right?
It's just that this visual made it impossible for him to associate it with 3D... But this doubt only lasted for less than about a minute.
When Yamada Masaharu followed the beginner's guide and moved the right joystick, the entire game scene also rotated.
To be precise, he was rotating from the male protagonist Ashitaka's perspective, looking at every place in his line of sight.
As his field of vision changed, the scene also changed, but all of this was very continuous and natural.
It was as if Yamada Masaharu himself had turned around in the real world.
"Wow, it really is 3D!"
Yamada Masaharu couldn't help but exclaim.
Hayao Miyazaki's continuously changing, beautiful animated world, full of fantasy.
It suddenly came to life.
To embark on an adventure in such a world.
Oh my goodness.
Isn't this too interesting?!
Pokémon 3D was practically like magic.
Yamada Masaharu was instantly conquered by this game; all his previous doubts vanished, and he had infinite anticipation for the adventure to come
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