Zaboru grinned as he reached toward the first Blue-Ray case sitting on the desk. The cover immediately stood out from the others. A massive red wyvern dominated the artwork, its wings spread wide above a dense forest while several armored hunters stood far below it, making the creature look even more enormous. Across the center of the case was a simple title that Zaboru had been waiting years to finally see attached to a ZAGE console.
MONSTER HUNTER.
His grin widened. "Finally. Monster Hunter is going to make its appearance."
For Zaboru, this release was particularly interesting because the first Monster Hunter of this world would already be dramatically different from the original first Monster Hunter he remembered from his previous life. He had no interest in recreating that game's roughest ideas simply for the sake of historical accuracy. The original concept had been brilliant: players entered large environments, tracked enormous monsters, gathered materials, crafted stronger equipment, learned monster behavior, and gradually became better hunters not because their character gained fifty levels but because the player themselves became better.
That core philosophy was something Zaboru absolutely wanted to preserve.
But the original game had also contained several decisions that he considered unnecessarily hostile.
The most infamous was attacking with the right analog stick.
Zaboru still remembered it far too clearly.
He chuckled to himself. "Yeah… absolutely not."
ZEPS 4 Monster Hunter used conventional face-button attacks immediately. The right analog stick controlled the camera, exactly where Zaboru believed it belonged. Weapon movesets remained deliberately weighty and committed, however. If a player swung a Great Sword at the wrong moment, they could not simply cancel out of the attack halfway through because Rathalos had suddenly decided to murder them. Positioning mattered. Commitment mattered. Knowing when not to attack mattered.
That was the soul of Monster Hunter.
And Zaboru wanted the community to learn it properly.
For that reason, he had actually resisted the temptation to fill the first game with mechanics from later generations. There was no enormous roster containing decades of monsters. No Wirebug-style mobility. No absurdly elaborate endgame systems. No mountain of weapon variants pulled from future installments. The first game needed room to establish its identity before Zaboru started stacking twenty years of evolution on top of it.
It was closer in structure and accessibility to what he remembered from Monster Hunter Freedom, rebuilt around ZEPS 4 hardware and ZAGE's own design improvements. Hunting areas were larger and more seamless than the original versions he remembered, monster AI was considerably improved, loading between smaller zones was reduced heavily, environmental detail was vastly richer, and multiplayer infrastructure benefited enormously from ZAGE Network. But the basic experience remained simple enough to understand.
Choose a weapon.
Prepare supplies.
Accept a quest.
Find the monster.
Learn it.
Get destroyed.
Try again.
Eventually destroy it.
Then carve its body and turn it into a ridiculous hat.
Zaboru smiled.
Perfect.
He flipped the case over and looked at a promotional screenshot showing a hunter desperately drinking a Potion while Rathalos approached from behind.
Zaboru started chuckling again. "Hehehehe… I really can't wait for people to discover this."
One feature he had intentionally preserved was the healing animation.
A hunter could not sprint around while casually drinking a potion. They stopped, drank it, and then performed an embarrassingly confident flex after recovering health.
It was completely unnecessary.
Which was precisely why Zaboru loved it.
He could already imagine thousands of players screaming at their televisions as their hunter finished drinking, proudly flexed—
—and Rathalos immediately slammed into them.
"Hehehehe."
Of course, Zaboru had also corrected one of the most infamous frustrations he remembered.
Rathalos would still fly.
Rathalos would still occasionally leave the immediate battlefield.
Rathalos would still behave like an enormous territorial flying wyvern instead of politely remaining on the ground so the player could hit him.
But he would not spend half the damn hunt flying around the map refusing to participate.
Tracking information was clearer. Monster relocation patterns were easier to learn. Paintball-style marking remained useful. Rathalos would return to combat areas more reliably instead of deciding the real challenge of the hunt was making the player wait.
The game was still demanding.
It just tried to punish mistakes rather than patience.
Zaboru placed Monster Hunter carefully aside and picked up the second case.
The difference in tone was immediate.
A white-haired young man stood casually against a dark background, a massive sword resting over one shoulder. His red coat flowed behind him, and his expression suggested that the dozens of demons surrounding him were less a threat and more an inconvenience.
Zaboru grinned.
DEVIL MAY CRY.
"Alright," he muttered. "Time for this world to learn how to be an emo half-demon demon-slaying badass."
He laughed quietly as he examined the cover.
This world's first Devil May Cry was effectively the equivalent of Devil May Cry 3 from his previous life.
Zaboru had deliberately rearranged the sequence.
In his previous world, Devil May Cry had gone through a strange evolution. The first game had established the foundation, the second had nearly murdered the series through sheer blandness, and Devil May Cry 3 had effectively rescued it by redefining Dante, combat depth, weapon switching, boss design, style systems, and the franchise's personality.
DMC in Zaboru's previous world followed a very specific story chronology: Devil May Cry 3, then Devil May Cry 1, followed by Devil May Cry 4, and finally Devil May Cry 5. And one thing Zaboru remembered very clearly was that Devil May Cry 2 effectively never mattered to that story at all. As far as he was concerned, that game was practically an unwanted stain sitting awkwardly between much stronger entries, doing almost nothing meaningful for Dante's larger journey.
And yes, Zaboru would absolutely avoid recreating that mistake in this world.
Especially the infamous combat problem he jokingly remembered as "Square Only Devil May Cry." DMC2 had made guns so absurdly safe and effective that far too many encounters could be handled by simply standing at a distance and repeatedly pressing the gun button. For a series built around stylish melee combat, weapon switching, aggressive movement, and expressive combos, that was almost the complete opposite of what Devil May Cry was supposed to be.
So in Zaboru's world, the story progression would remain clean: DMC3 → DMC1 → DMC4 → DMC5, while the abomination called DMC2 simply never happened at all. And Zaboru was perfectly happy keeping it that way.
Here, Devil May Cry began with the strongest foundation.
The story focused on a younger Dante, still immature, arrogant, reckless, and far more interested in mocking demons than behaving like some dignified hero. Vergil stood opposite him as the colder, disciplined twin obsessed with power. Their conflict gave the entire game emotional structure while still allowing Dante to spend most of the adventure behaving like a lunatic with a sword.
Zaboru had changed surprisingly little.
Because, as far as he was concerned, the core design was already excellent.
Rebellion.
Ebony and Ivory.
Style switching.
Crazy combos.
Devil Trigger.
Mission rankings.
Secret missions.
Bloody Palace-style combat challenges.
Boss Rush.
Enemy Rush.
High difficulty.
Weapon experimentation.
Ridiculous cutscenes where Dante could somehow turn getting stabbed into an opportunity to look cooler.
The combat needed to teach players that action games did not have to be about merely surviving encounters. They could be about performing.
A beginner could slash demons apart.
A good player could control the battlefield.
An expert could make the entire fight look choreographed.
That distinction fascinated Zaboru.
Devil May Cry would be one of the games that defined what people in this world would eventually call Hack and Slash character-action combat.
There was one change Zaboru absolutely insisted on, though.
Vergil was unlockable inside the original game.
No special edition required.
No buying the same game again later simply because players wanted to use the coolest rival character.
Once certain requirements were fulfilled, Vergil became playable with his own moveset, progression, and combat structure.
Zaboru smirked. "I'm not making people buy Devil May Cry again just because Vergil can finally sit in the character select screen."
He placed the case beside Monster Hunter.
Two games already.
Two completely different identities.
Then he reached for the third.
Darkness dominated the cover. Strange religious imagery surrounded a pale demonic figure covered in black markings, standing against an oppressive ruined world.
SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI III: NOCTURNE.
Zaboru immediately smiled.
"Hehehehe… let's hope the players don't mind suffering a little."
The Shin Megami Tensei series already had a respectable fanbase in this world. SMT I and II had established a reputation for difficult dungeon crawling, philosophical conflict, demon negotiation, alignment choices, and absolutely no sympathy for careless players.
Casual audiences respected the series.
They also occasionally hated it.
Nocturne would intensify that relationship considerably.
The game opened with Tokyo's destruction and rebirth through the Conception, transforming the familiar city into a brutal spherical wasteland populated by demons, cults, competing philosophies, and the mysterious Demi-Fiend.
Zaboru adored it.
It was strange.
Atmospheric.
Hostile.
Minimalist.
And extremely confident in its own identity.
The battle system revolved around Press Turn, one of the strongest turn-based combat systems Zaboru remembered. Exploiting an enemy weakness rewarded the party with additional actions. Missing attacks or striking resistances wasted opportunities. Hitting Null, Repel, or Drain could catastrophically destroy the player's entire turn.
It created a combat system where understanding enemies mattered more than grinding blindly.
And because enemies followed many of the same rules, one mistake could turn an apparently safe encounter into a disaster within seconds.
Zaboru smiled darkly.
SMT III had only two initial difficulties.
Normal.
Hard.
There was no Easy mode.
Not because Zaboru believed easier difficulties were inherently bad. Plenty of ZAGE games offered them. But he wanted Nocturne to preserve a specific identity: surviving this world was supposed to feel dangerous.
However, he had changed one part of Hard Mode that he remembered finding more irritating than challenging in his previous life.
Shops did not arbitrarily become absurdly expensive.
Zaboru considered that boring punishment.
Hard Mode instead made enemies meaningfully more threatening. Enemy aggression increased. Encounters could become more dangerous. AI exploited weaknesses more effectively. Ambushes were nastier. Damage values were less forgiving, and poor party construction became significantly more painful.
Hard Mode should challenge how the player played, not simply demand they waste more time grinding money.
Autosave was also absent.
ZEPS 4 could obviously support it.
The console had internal HDD storage, Memory Card EX support, fast system access, and more than enough software capability.
Zaboru intentionally did not use it.
Nocturne required players to reach appropriate save points and manually secure their progress.
If they became greedy and explored for another forty minutes without saving, then encountered the wrong demon formation and died?
That was their problem.
Zaboru grinned. "One bad encounter and suddenly you're staring at the title screen questioning your life choices."
He could already imagine the community stories.
Someone spending an hour negotiating demons.
Someone finally creating the perfect fusion.
Someone getting overconfident.
Then some random enemy attacks first.
Critical.
Weakness.
Extra turn.
Another weakness.
Another extra turn.
Death.
Controller lowered slowly.
Existential silence.
Zaboru laughed to himself before looking at the Demi-Fiend on the cover. "Hehehehe… Demi-Fiend is going to slide directly into your demon ass."
He set Nocturne down.
The fourth case was far more immediately recognizable.
The Pokémon logo dominated the top.
But the artwork underneath looked nothing like the bright, adventurous imagery normally associated with the franchise.
A young trainer wearing a long coat stood beside Espeon and Umbreon against a harsh desert landscape, with strange machinery and shadowy figures behind him.
POKÉMON COLOSSEUM.
Zaboru smiled.
"This one is going to surprise people."
Pokémon was currently deep inside its third generation. Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire were already enormous successes on ZGBA, while Emerald had not yet released. Most players knew exactly what to expect from the core games: choose a starter, travel through towns and routes, collect Pokémon, defeat Gym Leaders, challenge a criminal organization, complete the Pokédex, and eventually face the Pokémon League.
Colosseum deliberately rejected much of that structure.
There were no traditional wild Pokémon routes.
There was no conventional Gym journey.
The protagonist was not an innocent child beginning their first adventure.
He was a former member of a criminal organization.
The game opened with him stealing equipment and literally blowing up part of his former gang's base before escaping across the desert.
Zaboru still loved how immediately different that felt.
The central mechanic involved Shadow Pokémon—Pokémon whose hearts had been artificially closed and corrupted by an organization that turned them into weapons. Instead of simply catching normal wild creatures, the player frequently had to Snag Shadow Pokémon from enemy trainers, then gradually purify them through battle, companionship, and specific activities.
That alone changed the emotional relationship with collecting.
The player was not simply filling a Pokédex.
They were rescuing Pokémon.
Double Battles also dominated the game, forcing players to think more deeply about team combinations, support moves, targeting, abilities, and battlefield synergy. Ruby and Sapphire had already introduced Double Battles, but Colosseum used them as the central combat language instead of a novelty.
Zaboru tapped the case lightly. "This is exactly what Pokémon needs beside the main games. Same world, same creatures, completely different mood."
It was darker without becoming inappropriate for younger players.
Cities looked harsher.
The criminal elements felt more dangerous.
The protagonist carried himself more like someone with an actual past.
Even the environments—desert settlements, industrial facilities, underground areas—helped separate Colosseum from the colorful routes of the handheld games.
ZEPS 4 also allowed Pokémon to finally appear with dramatically stronger presentation. Fully modeled Pokémon fought in large 3D arenas with far more expressive animations than the ZGBA could ever provide. Attacks exploded across the battlefield with lighting, particles, environmental reactions, and actual scale.
When a Tyranitar entered battle, it felt huge.
When Entei attacked, the arena filled with flame.
When Pikachu was hit hard enough, the animation actually communicated impact.
Zaboru chuckled. "Yeah. People are going to lose their minds the first time they connect their ZGBA team and see their Pokémon fighting like this."
Connectivity between ZGBA and ZEPS 4 had been integrated heavily into the design. Players could transfer compatible Pokémon, battle using their existing teams, and interact with the broader Pokémon ecosystem instead of treating Colosseum like some isolated spin-off.
Zaboru placed it beside Nocturne.
Four games.
Then he picked up the fifth.
Bright blue sky filled the cover.
Mario launched through the air with a strange water-powered device strapped to his back while a tropical island stretched beneath him.
Zaboru smiled immediately.
SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE.
"There absolutely needs to be Mario on a new ZEPS console."
To Zaboru, Mario remained one of the strongest possible launch-window franchises because the character communicated something important immediately: accessibility.
Monster Hunter could intimidate new players.
Nocturne could beat them senseless.
Devil May Cry could expose how terrible they were at action games.
Mario welcomed nearly everyone.
Super Mario Sunshine was particularly useful because it also demonstrated the hardware beautifully without feeling like a technical showcase disguised as a game.
The tropical setting of Isle Delfino gave ZEPS 4 an opportunity to display bright lighting, large environments, reflective water, detailed architecture, animated crowds, distant scenery, particles, shadows, and fluid environmental effects.
And unlike the original GameCube version from Zaboru's previous life, there was absolutely no technical reason for this version to remain visually constrained by early sixth-generation hardware.
ZEPS 4 was vastly stronger.
Zaboru and Team NOVA had enhanced the game heavily while preserving its visual identity.
Textures were dramatically sharper.
Character models contained more detail.
Water simulation had been rebuilt.
Shadows were cleaner.
Draw distance expanded enough that major island landmarks remained visible from far across the environment.
Heat haze appeared subtly above sun-baked surfaces.
Water sprayed from FLUDD with far more convincing particles and surface interaction.
Paint and goop spread across environments with richer deformation and reflections.
But Zaboru had been adamant about one thing.
Graphics were not allowed to interfere with responsiveness.
Mario needed to feel like Mario.
Running, jumping, diving, wall-kicking, spinning, ground-pounding, and manipulating FLUDD had to remain immediate.
The central FLUDD mechanic created a fascinating variation on Mario movement. The Hover Nozzle gave players limited aerial correction, making exploration more forgiving while allowing level designers to create wider gaps and stranger platforming routes. Other nozzles altered movement further, and several secret stages removed FLUDD entirely, forcing players back into pure platforming.
Zaboru especially liked those.
Because they reminded players that the water device was useful—
—but Mario himself was still the real mechanic.
The structure also made Sunshine an excellent ZEPS 4 showcase for children and families. It was colorful enough to attract younger players, mechanically deep enough for experienced players, and visually impressive enough that someone watching from across the room could immediately understand that this was not ZEPS 3 anymore.
Zaboru rotated the case in his hands and smiled. "Mario is basically cheating for console launches and he actually top tier ZAGE mascots hehehe."
He placed Sunshine alongside the other four.
Five games now sat in front of him.
Monster Hunter.
Devil May Cry.
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne.
Pokémon Colosseum.
Super Mario Sunshine.
Even those five alone already covered wildly different audiences.
Monster Hunter offered cooperative hunting and long-term equipment progression.
Devil May Cry offered fast technical action.
Nocturne provided a brutal atmospheric JRPG.
Pokémon Colosseum expanded one of the world's largest franchises into a darker 3D adventure.
Mario offered a colorful platforming showcase that nearly anyone could understand.
And there were still seven cases remaining.
Zaboru slowly looked toward them.
His grin returned.
The next case rested partly beneath Sunshine, hiding most of its artwork.
He reached forward and pulled it free.
For several seconds, Zaboru simply stared at the cover.
Then his expression changed.
"Oh…"
A different kind of excitement entered his eyes.
"Hehehehe."
He turned the case slightly beneath the office lighting.
"Now this one…"
Zaboru leaned back against his desk, already imagining exactly what would happen when players saw it running for the first time.
"…this one is going to be interesting."
And the next ZEPS 4 launch title was—
To be continued.
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