[CC#13] Adventure and Virtual Reality (Patreon)

I have been mountain climbing since I was a child. By mountain climbing, I don't mean what is known as alpine climbing, using ropes and other equipment, but ordinary hiking, where you walk along mountain trails toward the summit. These days, it is sometimes called peak hunting.

It started because of my parents' influence, but I began climbing alone when I was around 16 years old. The Hida Mountains, located in the Chubu region, roughly in the middle of Japan, are a range of mountains over 3,000 meters high known as the Northern Alps. I had been fascinated by the beauty of their mountain scenery ever since I was young.

Even though this was ordinary mountain climbing, the Northern Alps include Mount Okuhotaka (3,190 meters), the third-highest mountain in Japan, and Mount Yarigatake (3,180 meters), the fifth-highest. There are many steep rocky areas and unstable scree slopes where rocks have broken loose, making some routes accessible only to experienced climbers.

This happened when I was traversing the Tateyama Mountain Range, located northwest of the Northern Alps. Far ahead, beyond a long ridge stretching out before me, I spotted a black mass. It was a rain cloud rapidly developing, as if rising up from a deep valley on the western side. This cloud suddenly appeared in the blue summer sky, remained almost at eye level, and continued growing larger and larger.

These mountains are well known for sudden changes in weather, even when the sky is clear. I hurriedly put down my backpack and took out my rainwear. However, that enormous black mass was being pushed by strong southwesterly winds and came racing toward me along the ridge at tremendous speed. There were deep valleys on both sides of the ridge, so there was nowhere to escape.

For a moment, my legs froze, and I stood there in a daze, staring at this sight I had never seen before. It was just like a gigantic boss enemy in a game suddenly appearing right in front of me. I quickly came to my senses and hurriedly started putting on my rainwear. But the black cloud was already right in front of me. I couldn't get the zipper to fasten properly!

Before long, a roaring sound echoed around me, and I was swallowed up by the black mass. The moment I finally managed to close the zipper, I was suddenly exposed to an intense attack of heavy rain. To keep myself from being blown away by the tremendous wind and rain, which were like a storm, I grabbed onto a rock jutting out from the ridge.

Something incredible was happening inside the cloud. Lightning. It wasn't the usual sound of thunder. Repeated explosive blasts roared through me as if they were resonating directly inside my body, while blue flashes of light raced across the ground at my feet. I had been told that when lightning strikes, you should throw away any metal objects you are carrying, but there was no time to think about that. With the storm-like wind, the terror of the lightning, and torrential rain pounding down from every direction, all I could do was cling to the rock.

The explosions were so powerful that I had no way to cover my ears because I couldn't let go of the rock. I pressed my face against it and covered my ears by holding my upper arms against the sides of my head. Even with my eyes tightly shut, I could clearly sense the bluish-white plasma flashes momentarily turning everything around me completely white. I kept my entire body rigid and clung to the rock, waiting for that black mass to pass. It felt like an incredibly long time, almost as if it would continue forever.

At last, the rain cloud passed. What remained was me, completely soaked, my backpack, and the blue summer sky. When I turned around, the black cloud had dispersed and disappeared beyond a break in the ridge ahead. Although it had felt like an extremely long time, when I looked at my watch, I realized that the whole thing had lasted only a few minutes.

Various things that happened in the mountains sometimes put my life in danger. Solo climbing is not recommended in the first place. Nevertheless, I almost always climb alone. When I first started climbing by myself, it was not yet common for people to do so, and most climbers were adults over 40. Young solo climbers in their teens were rare. When I slept in the aisle of a crowded train with my backpack as a pillow, the men who were experienced mountain climbers would notice me and kindly share their rice balls and canned drinks with me.

Actually, I was still climbing mountains while I was working on Mega Man. Normally, I would spend about a week on a climbing trip, but I couldn't take that much time off, so there were times when I forced myself to do it over just a Saturday and Sunday weekend. On Friday night, I would take an overnight train from Kyoto and arrive at the foot of the mountain early the next morning. I would climb all the way to the summit of Mount Yarigatake that day and stay overnight at a mountain lodge. Then I would start descending early the following morning and return to Kyoto that night. It was an extremely rushed mountain trip.

It is hard to imagine having that kind of physical strength or following such a reckless schedule today, but even so, I needed it to maintain my motivation for work. These days, mountain climbing has become more popular, and there is plenty of good equipment available. But 40 years ago, I climbed mountains with an old Karrimor-style canvas backpack, which was extremely heavy, and enormous mountain boots.

This extraordinary physical endurance was actually related to mountain climbing. When I was a student, I received an unfamiliar diagnosis called "bradycardia" during a physical examination. My heart rate was significantly lower than the average. After further examination, I was told that it wasn't an illness, but what is commonly called an "athlete's heart."

By continuing strenuous exercise at high altitudes where the oxygen is thin, my heart had become larger and stronger in order to adapt to that environment. It could pump a greater volume of blood with each beat and work more efficiently. I wasn't good at speed events such as sprinting, but I was always among the top performers in marathons. This was also due to that physical characteristic.

I was around 22 years old when I created Mega Man. I believe I was able to complete Mega Man under those extremely demanding conditions precisely because I still had the benefit of that powerful endurance. When I was working on Mega Man2, the Willow project was also progressing at the same time. Even I am surprised when I look back and realize just how extraordinary a workload I managed to get through.

Whenever I look at modern open-world games, I always remember those times when I climbed mountains. Solo mountain climbing is exactly like playing a solo game. In reality, there are no enemies attacking you, but the enjoyment of adventure is still there.

For me, mountain climbing is not about healing my mind or experiencing the beauty of nature. It is an activity where I face myself, searching for some new discovery within my own mind. There are moments when I discover unknown aspects of myself, such as my ability to make split-second decisions, my planning skills, and my endurance.

When you realize that you have lost your way, what do you do next? At the moment when you weigh time, distance, physical strength, and weather conditions and make the best possible decision, your mind processes a huge amount of information simultaneously and three-dimensionally, at a speed you have never experienced before. Then you put the result into action. That is my adventure.

Sometimes I make decisions that other people find difficult to understand. But within my own mind, those decisions make perfect sense, and I can already see what lies ahead. However, explaining that to someone else is extremely difficult. I believe this is exactly what planning ability is all about.

The easiest way to explain an interesting game is to share an experience of having fun with another person (the person you are explaining it to). That is why proposals based on successful game genres are easy to understand and are more readily accepted. However, coming up with a new concept and explaining why it is interesting is an extremely difficult task. After all, nobody says a game they have never played is interesting.

Going on an adventure means proving your own ideas to yourself. That is why I climb alone. It is the moment when I test whether I can make the right decisions in situations where I have no choice but to do so. That is what real mountain climbing means to me.

What I look for in virtual reality is something beyond realistic visuals. The visual impact is only the introduction. I want to see the pursuit of what true reality really means. Images that look real, real-time communication, online shopping. The environments created by virtual worlds will soon become an ordinary part of everyday life. But what lies beyond that?

Time. Distance. Physical strength. Weather. There are endless possibilities in what we can achieve by taking these kinds of information into account and using them to guide our actions toward a goal. If we were to make this into a game, I think we would need to create the appropriate environment and build a system in which the players themselves make the choices.

If you simply present the player with an objective, it becomes a "fetch quest" game. But allowing the player to come up with their own objectives and take action creates a very high degree of freedom in the gameplay. However, there is one thing that is essential. That is a summit. Without a final destination, players will become unable to leave that environment.

A virtual world provides an environment that is extremely convenient for players. However, once they achieve their objectives, there is no reason to remain there. Just as having mountains makes everyday life richer, what I want from virtual reality is a world where playing in a virtual environment makes our real world richer and more enjoyable.

(Automatic translation by AI)