The Age of Mobile Gacha Games.
The joke that someone made 2 trillion won with a single attack by pulling a blade from between a girl’s chest stopped being a joke a long time ago. After that, countless game companies jumped into developing mobile games.
Especially for the console gaming industry, the pressure to shift toward mobile was even greater.
There was a reason why people said that even if you managed to barely produce a AAA title, it could still end up earning about the same as a mid-tier mobile gacha game.
Of course, the comparison isn’t entirely fair.
A blockbuster console game takes years to develop and is sold for 69,000 or 79,000 won per copy, either as a CD or digital download. Meanwhile, a mobile gacha game could easily make 200,000 won in revenue from releasing a single limited-time character.
It was a matter of different expectations between markets.
A AAA game costing 80,000 won needs to provide at least 60 hours of full-price entertainment. But with mobile games, even if you spend 119,000 won on 40 gacha pulls and don’t get the limited character, you just think, “Well, that sucked.”
Many developers began to think the same thing: If you’re not sitting on a rock-solid IP, wouldn’t it be more profitable to just make a mobile gacha game?
There once was a console game featuring robots.
It had held a solid position since the early days of consoles, but the kids who played the first installment of the series were now nearing their 40s or 50s.
There were no new players coming in. And if even one small part of the game was made wrong, people would go, “These guys can’t even do nostalgia right.”
—Hey, let’s make a gacha game too!
Maybe it was inevitable that developers, while still making console games, would try mobile ones to expand profitability.
—If you can gacha summon cute girls, who says you can’t gacha summon robots?!
Perhaps that was their logic. For people who just wanted to enjoy it on mobile, it didn’t really matter.
All that mattered was that it was fun. After all, the entire world was playing gacha games now, and package game sales were nowhere near what they used to be in the ’90s or 2000s.
Sometimes, you just think, “Well, if you want to make money, what choice is there?”
And so—
Robots and mechs from IPs that had never made it into gacha games, or hadn’t been adapted into games at all, started to appear.
From robots born in the ’70s to the most recent popular anime mechas—
As long as you could pull them. As long as you could train them. As long as you had the summon tickets, it wasn’t impossible to summon even those legendary beings.
It was just a bit disappointing that after clearing six S-Rank Towers, you could only summon one of them. Still, summoning even one more was a win.
So, he summoned it. Before the Tower collapsed, he completed the summoning within it to confirm the power of that being.
But then—
“No way… I didn’t expect it to deflect a nuclear missile the moment it appeared.”
No one else saw it.
The cutscene that appeared on my smartphone screen—
A nuclear missile flew in from the left side of the screen, and my fifth summon, summoned through the power of the Summoner, smashed it to pieces with a massive punch.
It wasn’t destruction in the real world.
Within that cutscene, the nuke became “an in-game enemy,” had its entire HP wiped out in one hit, and vanished in a burst of pink light.
And below that disintegrated nuke—
[Neuro-Cyber Overman Appears!!]
With its fist raised to the sky in a finishing pose, my fifth summon.
A towering 70-meter-tall humanoid mech.
…While most summons, even the rare ones, could be Full Limit Broken and Fully Refined for under 3 million won, this one alone had cost over 10 million won.
“Anyway, can you go back inside for a second?”
[Wait, Master! I must show the world’s villains the power of my first summoning!]
The voice ringing out from my smartphone was male, though there wasn’t actually a male pilot inside the mech.
[This Ultra AI Super Agent has crossed dimensions to appear in this reality—surely I must show my creators how I deliver justice!]
The smoke slowly cleared, and the guy stood proudly on Illinois with his arms crossed and his legs spread apart.
As the smoke slowly cleared, the mech stood boldly atop Illinois, arms folded, legs spread wide.
[I am the one who punishes all evil! My name is…!]
“Captain Earthman.”
[WHAT!?!!]
“That’s what we’re going with. So, shall I force-recall you into the hangar, or do you want to shrink down and come back to my room peacefully?”
[…You are a formidable new partner. But your sense of justice! Your hero’s path! I respect it!]
Whoosh.
Just as the smoke was about to fully clear, the mech turned and waved its hand.
Flash.
Its chest emitted a flash of blue light, and it disappeared into the smoke.
One thing remained.
The nuclear missile disintegrated into a pink mist, while Illinois, summoned in auto-combat mode, stood still atop Devil’s Tower, perfectly balanced.
Beep Beep Beep.
A call came through.
He was so flustered, he didn’t even use the secure channel he usually contacted me through—he called from his personal number.
[M-Master! What on Earth just happened…?!]
“Calm down. I have one question.”
President Luigi.
“The nuclear missile. What happened with that?”
[…]
“I assume you didn’t launch it yourself. What, did someone steal the nuclear briefcase?”
[Well…]
President Luigi, flustered, gulped before answering.
[Did you… see anyone behind that missile?]
“Huh?”
[An S-Rank villain went full Ironblood.]
“…….”
S-Rank villain. Ironblooded.
“Did they fly in personally with the nuke?”
[Yup.]
“…”
[Do you have any idea how it was neutralized? Including the radiation being completely erased…?]
“Hmm.”
A brief headache, but I could only answer one way.
“Purification.”
[Purification…?]
“The light of justice that purifies evil resolved everything. Yes.”
I minimized the phone app for a moment and opened the combat log from the battle in question.
“…I thought it was just a nuke, but there was someone there.”
One enemy unit listed in the combat record.
“Was the villain’s alias perhaps [Ghost]?”
[That’s correct.]
“I see.”
That being would now only be remembered by name and ability—within the combat logs of the game on my smartphone.
“Well, it’s fine. Who would’ve expected someone to personally carry a nuclear missile?”
It was already in the past.
“And the fact they timed it to strike right as I was leaving the Tower after clearing it… still, let’s try to stay calm.”
What’s done is done.
“Clearing three S-Rank Towers—that’s what matters more.”
[Indeed, it does!!]
Something leaped in through the ventilation shaft.
“Well, I’ll send you a message then.”
After ending the call with President Luigi, I pointed at the monitor while speaking to my fifth summon, now standing on two feet in front of Kiharu.
“…People think you’re from O-dam.”
[I am not from Gun-O! Not from Gun-O!]
White, blue, red. The colors were mixed, but to anyone familiar, he resembled a certain Giant of Light.
[In any case, it’s an honor! You chose me among countless champions of justice, and I shall not let you regret it! For even in this world, evil still thrives, and I, the emissary of justice, will fight to defeat, rehabilitate, purify, and enlighten it!]
Flash!
He struck a dramatic pose—currently standing at just 17 cm tall.
[Neuro-Cyber Over—]
Grab!
[Graaaugh!]
“You shouldn’t say things like that carelessly, squirt.”
Kiharu clamped his head with a paw, silencing him.
“What’s the codename gonna be, nyah?”
“He keeps shouting Justice, so why not just go with that? Fits anyway—he’s basically a Hyper Super Ultra AI.”
The reason I chose this one among countless so-called super robots—
“Nice to meet you, Justice.”
[So this is what you call a codename! Very well, then! From now on, I—Justice—shall act under this new title, in the name of justice itself!]
He didn’t have a separate pilot. This being was more like a Giant of Light—a superbeing in mech form.
‘If he had a pilot, summoning both the mech and pilot would’ve been complicated…’
Being from a digital world, an AI-based entity, made that possible.
“Drei.”
“Yeah?”
“Can we trace the one who launched that nuke?”
“Should take about 3 minutes. Want me to inform the president?”
“No.”
I pointed to Justice.
“I’m sending him.”
* * *
[At that moment, somewhere in a high-rise in San Francisco.]
Crash!
Ceramic shattered. A balding man clenched his trembling fist.
“What the hell was that?! Dammit!”
“Mr. Chairman, please, calm down…!”
“Calm?! You think I can calm down?! I—I actually pressed it!”
The man, referred to as Chairman, slammed his fist repeatedly on a red button in front of him.
“What the hell are the Rockefellers and Rothschilds doing?! All the groundwork we laid until now—!”
“I-It seems there’s a sort of internal coup happening within the family as well…”
“Damn it!!”
The button wasn’t connected to anything, but it was symbolic.
“You know how much we’ve managed from the shadows in this country?! And now it’s all ruined because of this one failure!”
“I—I don’t think they know yet. We’ve already cut off all internet access…”
“An S-Rank is gone! Ironblooded! Disappeared without a trace! You saw it too!”
“Well, y-yes, but…”
“Damn it… What’s the president doing?!”
“He’s in shock, can’t seem to make a clear call yet. Since the operation was done with Russian personnel, he seems to be pointing blame that way…”
“Fine. But this must never get out. No one can know that we tried to use a secretly-raised S-Rank Hunter to manually launch a nuclear missile. Everything we’ve built—”
Flash.
Something in the secretary’s inner pocket sparked.
“You little… don’t tell me…?”
“N-No, sir! This is just—huh?!”
The secretary pulled out an old smartphone.
The screen flickered in gray static, and then—a shadowy upper torso appeared.
[Found you. Source of distortion.]
“You—you’re…!”
A flash of light flared—
[Justice!]
Fwoooooosh!
A rainbow-colored blast shot from the smartphone.
The Chairman and the secretary squeezed their eyes shut in terror.
So they didn’t see it.
The thing inside the smartphone, punching forward, reaching beyond the screen into their world.
