Saturday, 24 January 2002.
By Saturday morning, ZAGE's official YouTube page was already flooded with people waiting for whatever the company planned to reveal next. Throughout the previous week, ZAGE had shown eleven different ZEPS 4 games, but it had deliberately avoided giving the public a proper technical explanation of the console itself. Players had seen the machine. They had watched games running on it. They knew it looked absurdly powerful. Yet outside of scattered information and speculation, nobody truly knew what was sitting inside that black-and-silver box.
That finally changed.
A scheduled premiere appeared on ZAGE's official channel under the simple title:
ZEPS 4 TALK — WITH ZABORU, HIDEO KOJIMA & JOHN CARMACK
Technically, the presentation was prerecorded. ZAGE had recorded the entire thing earlier inside ZAGE Tower, edited it, and then scheduled its first public broadcast like a live event. But as far as viewers were concerned, everyone was watching it together for the first time.
The countdown reached zero.
The screen faded in.
Zaboru Renkonan was sitting in the center of a large presentation room inside ZAGE Tower, accompanied by Hideo Kojima on his right and John Carmack on his left. Behind them stood a large television, and directly underneath it sat the final retail version of ZEPS 4. Its broad black body contrasted sharply against the silver metallic trim running along its edges, while thin blue lights quietly glowed across the front. Beside it rested the standard wireless controller and the unusual remote-shaped controller people had already spotted in the first teaser.
More interestingly, eleven physical ZEPS 4 game cases had been arranged neatly across the table beside them.
Monster Hunter. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Halo: Combat Evolved. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. Super Mario Sunshine. Devil May Cry. Need for Speed: Underground. ZAGE Kart. Pokémon Colosseum.
All eleven games already had finished retail discs.
The camera moved toward Zaboru.
He immediately smiled.
"Yo! Everyone! Nice to meet you!" Zaboru raised one hand enthusiastically. "Today, we're finally going to talk about ZEPS 4. Hell yeah!"
He immediately lifted his fist into the air.
"Hell yeah!"
For approximately one second, neither Kojima nor Carmack reacted.
Then both men seemed to remember that they had apparently been instructed to participate.
"H-Hell yeah," Kojima said awkwardly, raising one arm.
"Hell yeah," Carmack followed, lifting his own hand with considerably less enthusiasm.
Zaboru stared at both of them.
Then he burst out laughing.
Kojima immediately lowered his arm and covered part of his face while Carmack sighed. "You can't blame me, Boss. I'm an engineer. I'm not used to doing this in front of a camera."
"That was terrible," Zaboru said between laughs.
"You told us to do it!"
"I know! That's why it's funny!"
Kojima shook his head. "Please continue the presentation before you make us do something worse."
Zaboru laughed again before turning toward the camera. "Okay, okay. Anyway, these are Hideo Kojima and John Carmack. They're both very smart people." He glanced toward them. "Unfortunately, neither of them knows how to act naturally when a camera is pointed at them."
Carmack leaned back in his chair. "I regret agreeing to this."
"You didn't agree. I asked you."
"That explains it."
Kojima quietly nodded in agreement.
Zaboru grinned before finally moving toward the actual presentation. "Anyway! You guys watched all the trailers this week, right? Eleven games." He gestured toward the game cases behind him. "Not too shabby, huh?"
He paused deliberately.
"And yes."
His grin widened.
"I already know what you're asking."
He pointed directly toward the camera.
"Where is the sports game?"
Kojima chuckled.
Zaboru continued, "Don't worry! We didn't forget it. I know you saw people swinging that strange controller around during the first teaser. And I know you guys have been asking what that game is, what that controller does, what ZEPS 4 can actually do, what kind of hardware it has, how powerful it is, whether it has internet, whether your old games work…"
He took a breath.
"Basically, you guys have too many questions."
Carmack nodded. "That is technically accurate."
"So today," Zaboru continued, "we're going to answer most of them. Not all."
Kojima looked toward him. "Why not all?"
"Because secrets are fun."
Kojima sighed.
Zaboru laughed. "But today we'll finally show you what ZEPS 4 actually is."
The camera switched toward the console.
For the first time, viewers received a long uninterrupted look at the retail machine instead of short dramatic shots from advertisements. The console was wider and heavier-looking than many had assumed from the teaser. Its design was unmistakably practical—a solid horizontal machine meant to sit comfortably beneath a television rather than something designed only to look futuristic. The upper surface contained two cartridge slots clearly intended for older ZEPS software, while the front contained the Blue-Ray disc drive, controller-related ports, indicators, and the glowing blue power line.
Kojima stood from his chair and approached the console.
"First," he said in English, somewhat carefully but clearly, "let us begin with something simple."
He lifted one of the game cases.
Monster Hunter.
Kojima opened it and removed the disc.
The camera moved closer.
The disc looked similar in size to a DVD or CD, but its underside reflected a noticeably different blue-violet hue.
"This," Kojima explained, "is not DVD."
He held the disc between two fingers.
"ZEPS 4 uses a new optical disc technology developed by AKAI and ZAGE. We call it Blue-Ray Disc."
Several specifications appeared beside him on the screen.
ZAGE BLUE-RAY DISC
Single Layer — 25 GB
Dual Layer — 50 GB
Kojima smiled slightly. "A single disc can store twenty-five gigabytes. With dual-layer production, fifty gigabytes."
He paused.
"Yes. Fifty."
Carmack laughed quietly from his seat. "I think people understand that is a lot."
He held up Monster Hunter again. "This means developers no longer need to think about their games in terms of a few hundred megabytes or several gigabytes. High-quality audio, larger environments, more animation, higher-resolution textures, cinematic sequences, multiple language tracks—all of those things consume storage."
Zaboru added from behind him, "And if developers somehow manage to fill fifty gigabytes…"
He shrugged.
"I'm impressed."
Kojima laughed. "Please don't challenge them."
"I absolutely challenge them."
The screen briefly displayed the internal disc mechanism of the console, showing the Blue-Ray laser assembly before transitioning into a graphic comparing available storage.
Kojima continued, "The console also includes internal storage. ZEPS 4 ships with several hard drive configurations depending on the model and market."
The specifications changed.
INTERNAL HDD
80 GB
160 GB
250 GB
"You can install certain game data, download content, store media, save screenshots and gameplay clips, download games from Z-Store, and of course store system information and game saves."
Kojima then held up a small memory card.
"And Memory Card X continues to exist. Internal storage does not mean we abandoned portable saves. Memory Card X can still carry save files between machines, keep backup data, and has several other uses."
Zaboru nodded. "Some people like taking their save to their friend's house. We don't want to make that unnecessarily annoying."
Then Carmack stood.
"Now," he said, "we'll get into the part I was asked here for."
Zaboru smiled. "The scary numbers."
"The hardware."
"Same thing."
The screen behind them changed completely.
A rendered image of the ZEPS 4 motherboard appeared, followed by a clean technical diagram.
Carmack pointed toward the first component.
RAIJIN PROCESSOR
3.4 GHz
4 CPU Cores / 8 Threads
Dedicated Vector & Media Coprocessors
"The central processor is internally called Raijin," Carmack explained. "It operates at 3.4 gigahertz and uses four physical processing cores capable of eight hardware threads. We also built dedicated vector and media processing hardware around it so developers don't have to waste the primary cores doing everything."
The diagram highlighted several areas.
"General game logic, physics, AI, animation, decompression, audio processing, networking, world simulation—all of those workloads can be divided considerably more effectively than they could on ZEPS 3."
Zaboru leaned toward the microphone. "Translation: lots of things can happen without the console dying."
Carmack looked at him.
"That is an aggressively simplified explanation."
"But accurate?"
"…Mostly."
Zaboru grinned.
Carmack moved to the next specification.
AMATERASU GRAPHICS PROCESSOR
600 MHz Custom GPU
16 MB High-Speed eDRAM Rendering Cache
"This is Amaterasu, the ZEPS 4 graphics processor. It was designed specifically for the workloads we expect next-generation games to require. Programmable effects, more advanced lighting, complex materials, larger numbers of objects and characters, high-quality shadows, particles, reflections, skeletal animation, post-processing and significantly more complicated 3D environments."
Several clips appeared—not trailers, but direct technical demonstrations.
One showed a metallic object beneath several moving lights. The highlights changed naturally across the material while shadows shifted underneath it.
Another showed hundreds of independently animated objects moving simultaneously across a large environment.
A third demonstrated water with reflections and distortion.
Then the screen displayed a detailed human face under different lighting conditions, followed by cloth moving independently from the character wearing it.
Carmack continued, "The 16 megabytes of embedded high-speed memory is not your main system memory. It acts as an extremely fast rendering helper. Certain framebuffer, depth, blending and display operations can be performed without repeatedly pushing everything through slower memory paths."
Zaboru looked toward the camera.
"Again, translation: pretty graphics."
Carmack sighed.
"Yes, Boss. Pretty graphics."
Zaboru gave a thumbs-up.
The screen changed again.
UNIFIED MEMORY
768 MB GDDR3
256-bit Memory Interface
Approximately 44.8 GB/s Bandwidth
This time even Kojima glanced toward Carmack.
Carmack smiled.
"ZEPS 4 contains 768 megabytes of unified GDDR3 memory."
He emphasized the word.
"Unified."
"The CPU and graphics system are not locked into rigidly separated memory pools. Developers can allocate memory depending on the game. If one project requires more texture memory, they can prioritize that. If another requires more simulation or world data, they have flexibility."
He pointed toward the bandwidth figure.
"A 256-bit interface gives us roughly 44.8 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth."
The demonstration changed.
An enormous environment appeared with long sight distances, hundreds of individual objects, moving lights and numerous characters. The camera flew through it smoothly.
Then another demonstration displayed dozens of high-resolution textures loading almost instantly across different surfaces.
Carmack continued, "This is one of the reasons ZEPS 4 games can maintain significantly more environmental detail than previous consoles without constantly swapping small amounts of data in and out."
Zaboru smiled. "Basically, when you saw those trailers and wondered why the games looked like they shouldn't be running on a console…"
He pointed at the specification screen.
"That's why."
The display then showed resolution targets.
DISPLAY OUTPUT
720p — Primary Game Target
1080p — Supported for Compatible Games, Menus & Media
Carmack explained, "Our primary development target is 720p. We would rather developers deliver stable performance and high visual quality at 720p than force every game toward a resolution it does not need."
The screen showed several direct comparison demonstrations between ZEPS 3 and ZEPS 4 rendering capability. A simple ZEPS 3 environment appeared first, containing comparatively limited geometry and lighting.
Then ZEPS 4 rendered the equivalent environment.
The difference was brutal.
Far more geometry.
Higher-detail textures.
Dynamic lighting.
Longer viewing distances.
Denser environments.
More characters.
More particles.
More complex shadows.
More convincing reflections.
More detailed animation.
The screen transitioned away from hardware.
"Now," Carmack continued, "hardware means very little if the software surrounding it is terrible."
Zaboru nodded. "Exactly."
The ZEPS 4 home interface appeared.
It was clean and horizontal, with major categories arranged across the screen and context-sensitive vertical options opening beneath whichever section the user selected. Moving between sections produced subtle animated transitions rather than loading separate screens.
Carmack picked up the controller.
"ZEPS 4 is designed as a connected machine from the beginning. ZAGE Network is integrated directly into the operating system."
A friends panel appeared.
"You can maintain a persistent friends list, send text messages, communicate through voice chat with a headset, invite people into supported games, view profiles and see what your friends are currently playing."
The interface displayed several friends simultaneously.
Carmack continued, "And we're building this around ZAGE ID. If you already use a compatible ZAGE account through Steam, ZAGE Forum, Z-Store, or supported AKAI services, you can align those identities under the same ZAGE ID."
Zaboru added, "So we don't want you making twelve different accounts just because you own twelve ZAGE things."
Carmack nodded. "Your services connect to the same identity."
The demonstration showed a user signing in and immediately seeing their profile, friends list and linked services.
"Connection quality is also a priority," Carmack continued. "We are expanding the same general server infrastructure philosophy we use with Steam. Obviously your local internet connection still matters, but our objective is to make the ZAGE Network side of that connection as reliable and responsive as we reasonably can."
The interface moved toward several built-in applications.
"You can browse the internet directly from ZEPS 4. YouTube is integrated as an application. Z-Store is built into the system. ZAGE Forum has its own interface. Supported streaming channels such as YaDo Anime Channel and Nickelodion can be accessed through the machine."
The Media section opened.
"You can also play supported music files, view photographs, play video files, use physical media, and access compatible Z-Pod libraries."
Zaboru spread his hands. "It only does everything."
Carmack looked toward him.
"You have been waiting to say that."
"Yes."
Kojima laughed.
Zaboru stood and approached the console next.
"Now let's talk about something I personally care about a lot."
He placed one hand on the top of the machine.
"Backward compatibility."
The camera zoomed toward the two cartridge slots.
"Those are not decorations."
Zaboru picked up an old ZEPS 1 cartridge and inserted it directly into the first slot.
The system immediately detected it.
ZEPS 1 SOFTWARE DETECTED.
Then he inserted a ZEPS 2 cartridge into the second slot.
"ZEPS 1. ZEPS 2. Both work through the actual cartridge slots."
He removed them.
"ZEPS 3 uses discs, so obviously those go into the disc drive."
Kojima added, "ZEPS 4 contains hardware and software compatibility layers specifically intended to preserve older ZEPS software."
"Your old library still matters," Zaboru said. "We don't want you buying a new console and suddenly looking at one hundred games in your room thinking, 'Well, I guess those are dead now.'"
He picked up another small device.
"And then we have this."
It was an adapter.
"If you have games from ZGB or ZGBA, you can use the handheld adapter."
He inserted a ZGBA cartridge.
The television instantly recognized it.
Zaboru grinned. "There you go."
Kojima nodded. "Depending on the game, some titles can also use additional connectivity features between ZGBA and ZEPS 4."
The presentation moved back toward the interface.
Carmack selected the Profile icon.
"This is your personal ZEPS 4 profile."
A user avatar appeared, followed by a large information panel.
"Your profile records several things automatically. Games you own. Recent games. Playtime. Friends. Online status. Progress information for supported software."
He moved toward Need for Speed: Underground.
The moment the cursor rested over the game tile, the background changed.
A customized car sped through a nighttime city while neon reflections moved across wet asphalt behind the transparent menu elements.
Carmack smiled slightly.
"Yes. The interface does that."
Zaboru pointed excitedly. "Beautiful, right?"
"It is technically unnecessary," Carmack said.
"But beautiful."
"Yes."
Kojima chuckled. "When you highlight a game, developers can supply background video, music, artwork and other presentation elements. So each game can make its section of the interface feel different."
Carmack opened the profile again.
"But the profile is more than appearance."
Kojima leaned slightly forward.
"The more interesting part is this."
The screen displayed a new category.
ZAGE TROPHYS
Several icons appeared underneath it.
Kojima smiled. "Trophys."
Zaboru nodded enthusiastically. "Basically, achievements."
He picked up the controller. "If you use Steam, you already understand the general concept. Games can have specific objectives outside normal progression. Finish a chapter. Defeat a difficult boss. Find something hidden. Complete a challenge. Do something ridiculous the developers decided you should suffer through."
Kojima smiled. "And each achievement becomes a Trophy attached to your ZAGE profile."
Different Trophy icons appeared.
Then one final icon emerged.
A shining metallic trophy.
PLATINUM
Zaboru grinned.
"And this is the fun one. If you complete every standard Trophy in a game, you earn the Platinum Trophy for that title."
The interface displayed a profile containing several fictional Platinum awards.
"So besides finishing games," Zaboru continued, "now you can prove to your friends that you have absolutely too much free time."
Kojima laughed.
Carmack added, "Trophies are linked to your ZAGE ID rather than simply being stored as ordinary save progress."
Kojima suddenly looked toward Zaboru.
"Boss, what happens if someone copies their friend's completed save onto a Memory Card X?"
Zaboru smiled.
"We thought about that."
He pointed toward the screen.
"If you copy someone else's save file, the save can still work. We don't want to block normal save sharing."
He selected ZAGE Kart as an example.
"Let's say your friend already unlocked every character in ZAGE Kart. You're visiting someone else's house and don't want to spend hours unlocking everything again. Fine. Copy the save. Put it into their machine. Boom. Full characters."
He raised one finger.
"But."
The screen displayed:
EXTERNAL SAVE DETECTEDTROPHY EARNING DISABLED FOR THIS SAVE
"You cannot earn Trophies using progress that belongs to someone else."
Zaboru shrugged. "A Trophy is supposed to represent something you achieved. Otherwise Hideo could copy my save and suddenly pretend he is amazing."
Kojima sighed
Zaboru laughed.
Carmack explained more seriously, "The system identifies save ownership and profile association. Imported saves remain usable, but Trophy progression is restricted when authenticity cannot be verified."
Zaboru nodded. "So freedom for players, but trophies still mean something."
He looked toward the camera.
"And yes, I know what some of you are thinking. What is the Trophy usage other than that?."
His smile became suspicious.
"One day, Trophies might have another use."
Kojima immediately looked toward him. "What use?"
"Secret."
"You always say secret."
"Because it works."
Kojima sighed.
The presentation had already gone far beyond what most viewers had expected. ZAGE had revealed the optical format, hard drive configurations, processor, graphics hardware, memory architecture, output resolutions, network system, media features, accounts, backward compatibility, profiles and the Trophy system.
And yet one object had remained almost untouched throughout the entire presentation.
The strange controller.
Finally, Carmack reached toward the table and picked it up.
It was long and narrow compared with the conventional ZEPS 4 controller, with several buttons running across the front and a wrist strap hanging from the bottom.
Carmack turned it over in his hand.
Then he looked toward Zaboru.
"And Boss…"
Zaboru immediately smiled.
Carmack lifted the controller toward the camera.
"What exactly is this thing for?"
Kojima looked toward Zaboru as well.
For a moment Zaboru said nothing.
Then his grin slowly widened.
"Well…"
He leaned forward.
"That is for…"
To be continued.
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