Saturday, 21 December 2001.
ZAGE Event Building Japan — ZEB Japan.
The ZAGE End-of-the-Year Event had become one of the company's longest-running traditions.
It had not always existed in its current form.
The first event had been held all the way back in 1992, when it was still known simply as the ZAGE Game of the Year.
Looking back, Zaboru considered the original name almost hilariously unnecessary.
During 1991 and much of 1992, the gaming industry had still been overwhelmingly dominated by ZAGE. ZEPS 1 had effectively become the king of the market, and most of the major software people were playing either came directly from ZAGE itself or from third-party developers building games for ZAGE hardware.
Sonaya's own 8-bit console, the Mugen Game Box, had only entered the market around the middle of 1992.
Competition existed, but it had not yet matured enough for ZAGE to seriously pretend that its own internal award ceremony represented the entire industry.
In practice, the early ZAGE Game of the Year often looked suspiciously like ZAGE handing awards to ZAGE games.
Even Zaboru eventually admitted that it was ridiculous.
As the Japanese and international game industries grew, independent gaming publications began creating more legitimate award systems of their own. Two of the most important were ZEMITSU in Japan and Compute X in the United States.
ZEMITSU published the increasingly influential gaming magazine Famitsu, and its annual awards eventually became known as the FAMICOM Game of the Year, one of the most respected gaming awards in Japan.
Zaboru strongly supported the change.
If awards were supposed to represent the best games of the year, then he wanted them judged outside ZAGE.
That meant ZAGE no longer needed to crown itself.
So the old ZAGE Game of the Year gradually evolved into something else.
The ZAGE End-of-the-Year Awards, and eventually simply the ZAGE End-of-the-Year Event.
Less about declaring which game was objectively the best.
More about celebrating games, developers, players, competition, and the entire culture that had formed around ZAGE over the previous decade.
By 2001, it had become enormous.
Most years, the event took place at ZEB Japan, although ZAGE occasionally hosted the celebration at its American facilities. The Japanese event remained the most famous, however, and every December it attracted enormous numbers of tourists from inside and outside Japan.
Some came for the games.
Some came for the tournaments.
Some came for Zaboru.
And a frightening number came almost entirely for merchandise.
ZAGE called the yearly collection Special Merc.
The merchandise was deliberately available only around the End-of-the-Year Event, and the range of products had become absurd.
At the cheapest end, there were simple things almost anyone could afford.
Pins.
Keychains.
Character stickers.
Posters.
Small plushies.
Special postcards.
Game-themed mugs.
T-shirts.
Caps.
Miniature arcade cabinets.
Limited ZAGE ID cards.
Even small packets of collectible character badges were sold cheaply enough that children could buy them with saved pocket money.
Then prices gradually became less reasonable.
Limited action figures appeared in several scales, with some of the most popular being enormous one-third human-size character figures. Highly detailed statues included removable equipment, alternate poses, interchangeable expressions, and individually numbered production certificates.
Collectors treated them like treasure.
Pokémon merchandise occupied an enormous area of its own.
Special Ruby and Sapphire products were everywhere that year, alongside limited Pokémon figures, plushies, decorative Poké Balls, and collectible merchandise unavailable through normal stores.
There were also exclusive Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, some produced specifically for the End-of-the-Year Event in limited quantities.
Those alone caused people to line up hours before opening.
But every year ZAGE also sold at least a few products that made perfectly reasonable people ask the same question:
Who the hell is buying this?
Last year had answered that question very quickly.
ZAGE had sold full-sized decorative statues of Doom Guy and RoboCop.
Not small figures.
Actual life-sized statues.
There had also been an enormous Charizard plushie, large enough that transporting one home had become a logistical problem.
They were ridiculously expensive.
Every single one sold.
This year included another series of insane collector products, many of which had required special delivery arrangements because ordinary customers could not reasonably carry them out of the building.
Zaboru had already joked that one day someone in merchandising would attempt to sell an actual working Metal Gear or even Gundam.
Nobody had laughed enough for his comfort.
Special ZAGE hardware also appeared every year.
ZEPS 3 consoles with unique shell patterns.
ZGBA handhelds with character designs.
Limited controllers.
Transparent editions.
Metallic finishes.
Engraved anniversary models.
Some were tied to individual games while others celebrated ZAGE itself.
None offered major performance advantages over ordinary hardware.
They simply looked cool.
That was enough.
Collectors bought them immediately.
The merchandising floors alone could have justified the size of the event.
Yet merchandise was only one part of it.
By Saturday morning, ZEB Japan was overflowing with costumes.
The Cosplay Party had become another major tradition.
There was technically a formal competition later in the day, but the entire event building effectively became one enormous cosplay gathering long before judging began.
People arrived dressed as nearly every imaginable ZAGE character.
Cloud Strife.
Sonic
Tifa.
Spawn.
Samus.
Link
Zelda
Mario
Deadpool
Kasumi.
Doom Guy.
Ryu.
Ken.
Tekken fighters.
Pokémon Trainers.
Yu-Gi-Oh duelists.
Various Naruto characters.
Resident Evil monsters.
And many more
Somebody had even constructed an enormous wearable Nemesis costume that required two friends to help him get through doors.
Naturally, newer games had already begun appearing too.
Several people dressed as Jenosa Arma despite Scurge: Hive having only been available for several days.
Most wore the blue combat suit and armour.
Several carried replica Laser Blasters.
A few had built glowing blue Laser Swords.
Zaboru had seen one especially dedicated cosplayer recreate Jenosa's fiery tied-back hair so accurately that even Team FUMA developers had stopped to take photographs.
Not everyone competed.
Most people simply wanted to dress as characters they loved.
But for those who did enter, the annual ZAGE Cosplay Champion competition had become serious business.
Judges considered craftsmanship, accuracy, creativity, performance, stage presence, and how much of the costume had actually been created by the participant.
Winning came with substantial rewards.
Money.
Games.
Limited merchandise.
Special event access.
And, perhaps more importantly to some competitors, permanent bragging rights.
The gaming side of the event was even larger.
Rows upon rows of ZAGE booths filled multiple sections of ZEB Japan.
Some contained current releases.
Others were dedicated to classics.
Visitors could essentially walk in one direction, discover a game they liked, sit down, and play.
Then walk another twenty metres and discover something completely different.
Zaboru wanted the event to feel less like a corporate exhibition and more like a giant gaming playground.
There were no absurd fees for trying games.
No complicated registration for ordinary play areas.
People simply played.
Families sat together.
Children discovered games older players had grown up with.
Arcade veterans challenged younger players.
Developers occasionally sat beside strangers without announcing who they were and played their own games with them.
That was one of Zaboru's favourite parts.
Elsewhere, several areas were labelled ZAGE Insight.
These booths were aimed more directly at what Zaboru affectionately called the Game Nerds.
Instead of simply showing finished games, developers demonstrated how those games were actually made.
Programmers explained basic AI systems.
Artists demonstrated character modelling and animation pipelines.
Level designers opened development tools and showed how stages were constructed.
Sound designers broke down effects and music.
Technical developers explained optimisation tricks used to make games run correctly on ZEPS 3 or ZGBA.
Some sessions focused on older games and showed how primitive development methods had evolved over the years.
Others demonstrated Unreal Engine directly.
Because Unreal Engine itself had been created by ZAGE, developers could show visitors not simply how ZAGE used an engine, but how internal engine teams actually designed tools for other developers.
For aspiring game creators, those booths were sometimes more exciting than the merchandise.
Young students arrived carrying notebooks.
Some stayed for hours.
Developers answered questions as long as they could.
Zaboru strongly encouraged that.
If even one teenager left ZEB thinking, I want to make games, then he considered the booth successful.
Then there were the tournaments.
Competitive gaming had been part of ZAGE culture for years, especially fighting games.
Throughout the year, tournaments took place across arcades, regional events, national competitions, and international circuits. The End-of-the-Year Event served as one of the biggest celebrations for champions who had already proven themselves.
Winners were recognised publicly on stage.
And each official champion received one of ZAGE's strangest traditions:
The ZAGE Champion Card.
The cards had existed since 1992.
Each one was unique.
It displayed the player's real name, competitive name, the game in which they became champion, the year of victory, and their favourite playable character.
The cards were professionally manufactured, individually registered, and impossible to purchase normally.
They were not simply trophies.
As long as the physical card still existed and remained registered to its original owner, the champion could present it at an official ZAGE Store and claim one unique eligible ZAGE game for free which mean free game for life.
The benefit could be used according to ZAGE's Champion Card rules, but the practical value was almost secondary.
The real value was status.
Especially among professional fighting-game players.
Owning one card meant you had won something significant.
Owning several meant everyone immediately knew who you were.
Some veterans had already accumulated multiple Champion Cards across different years or different games.
Displaying them had become the competitive gaming equivalent of carrying medals.
Zaboru loved the tradition because it made champions part of ZAGE history.
Naturally, the End-of-the-Year Event contained one more tradition.
One that fighting-game champions simultaneously loved and hated.
They could challenge Zaboru Renkonan himself.
He challenged the champions to fight any fighting games ZAGE made.
Then he kept winning.
Year after year.
Game after game.
Street Fighter.
Tekken.
Dead or Alive.
Guilty Gear
SoulCalibur
MARVEL VS ZAGE
Nobody had managed to defeat him in a complete match.
Zaboru play really insanely he can adapt to anyplaystyle and change the playstyle he wants he remember all the characters moves and frames basically he almost invincible.
But the professionals were catching up.
They trained far more seriously than the competitors Zaboru had faced in the early years.
Some specialised almost entirely in one game.
And last year, something unprecedented finally happened.
During Tekken 2, the infamous player known as Hayabusa, whose real name was Endo, became the first competitive player to take an entire round from Zaboru on the End-of-the-Year stage.
Not a lucky hit.
Not Zaboru messing around.
A genuine round.
The room had exploded.
Zaboru had still won the complete match, but he had been smiling afterward more than Endo.
For him, losing that round had been exciting.
It meant the competitive scene was becoming stronger.
And now Endo had spent another year improving.
Everyone knew he would be back.
Whether he—or somebody else—could finally defeat Zaboru remained one of the biggest questions surrounding this year's tournament section.
By midday, ZEB Japan was almost impossibly lively.
Music filled the halls.
Arcade sounds blended into crowd noise.
Cosplayers walked between booths.
Children carried plushies nearly as large as themselves.
Collectors guarded limited merchandise like priceless artefacts.
Tournament players warmed up.
Developers explained game systems.
Tourists took photographs of practically everything.
Cameras from YaDo and Nickelodion moved constantly throughout the building, broadcasting sections of the event live for viewers who could not attend in person.
Several ZAGE-owned media channels also carried coverage throughout the day.
The result was less like a normal corporate year-end celebration and more like ZAGE had temporarily transformed an entire building into a festival dedicated to games.
And that was exactly what Zaboru wanted.
The End-of-the-Year Event had started almost ten years earlier as a slightly ridiculous ceremony where ZAGE mostly congratulated itself for winning awards against a market it already dominated.
Now it had become something completely different.
Players.
Developers.
Cosplayers.
Champions.
Collectors.
Families.
Aspiring game creators.
People who had travelled internationally just to experience it once.
Zaboru stood on an upper floor overlooking part of the main hall, watching thousands of people moving below.
He smiled.
This was much better than another trophy ceremony.
Saturday belonged to everyone.
Sunday traditionally carried the closing portion of the event.
There would be a performance from Zaboru Renkonan himself and his band Zaraki.
Then his annual speech.
But that was tomorrow.
For now, Zaboru rested both hands against the railing and looked down at the crowded floor beneath him.
Somewhere below, somebody screamed after winning a fighting-game match.
A Charizard cosplayer nearly collided with a Resident Evil zombie.
Several children ran past carrying ZGBA systems.
And one unfortunate employee was attempting to help a customer figure out how the hell they were supposed to transport an enormous limited-edition statue home.
Zaboru chuckled.
"Yeah…"
His smile widened.
"This is great hehe"
To be continued.
Please give me your power stone and if you want to support me and get minimum 50+ advance chapter and additional 1 chapter a week for 4$ considering subscribe to my patreon patreon.com/Zaborn_1997
Or buymecoffee https://buymeacoffee.com/Zaborn_1997 which same with patreon
current Patreon/buymecoffe chap 1377