After all the necessary settings were more or less done, Caelan once again had all the testers accelerate through all difficulties,
and after making a few minor adjustments, he felt there was nothing left to modify. Now, the question was how to manifest it in reality.
The primary way to play Contra was with the original NES controller, but when Caelan manifested it, he found the feel was incredibly poor.
Even with extreme screen compression, the improved feel was minimal, and it consumed more mental energy.
For Caelan's current mental fortitude, maintaining it was a bit difficult, so he had to give up.
He tried a joystick, which was similar to the controller. To maintain the same arcade feel, it consumed even more mental energy than the controller.
So, for now, he could only set them to keyboard mode, like a computer emulator; no need for a specific feel, as long as it worked.
Looking around, Caelan found an unoccupied wall space. He manifested the Contra from his mind palace onto the wall and projected eight key buttons onto the desk.
Up, down, left, and right were arranged in WASD format. The first button on the right was attack, the second was jump, the third was start, and the fourth was pause.
Pressing the third start button, the familiar melody played. Although he had heard it many times in his mind palace, Caelan still felt an inexpressible emotion.
After all, this was truly the first time such a melody had appeared in this world.
The game's music also attracted students who were playing and watching chess.
Everyone looked over. Seeing the unfamiliar images on the wall, some people approached, curious about what new trick Caelan was up to.
However, some remained in place, merely glancing over, while others, engrossed in their chess games, continued their battle with their opponents, no longer paying attention to Caelan.
On the wall screen, five difficulty options appeared first. Caelan naturally chose the Easy difficulty. After selecting the difficulty, a character selection screen appeared.
Although the graphics were crude, it was still possible to distinguish a male and a female character. Their attire suggested they were both mages.
That robe... it should be a robe, right? The male character in the picture was fine, but what was with the female character? Her face was strange, but what was with that magic robe? How could those two long, white legs be completely exposed? It was scandalously beautiful.
Before the surrounding students could get their fill, Caelan had already selected the male character and entered the game.
The game's background was almost identical to the original, but the monster designs were slightly altered, barely recognizable as strange humanoid creatures. In fact, the graphics Caelan created were slightly better than the original.
Perhaps he never intended to develop high-quality graphics from the start, so the mental energy consumed to manifest it wasn't as high as imagined, not even as difficult as a controller.
On the screen, the male mage controlled by Caelan waved his staff, and a small fireball would fly out to attack enemies in front.
The humanoid enemies along the way would dissipate and die after a single hit, showing how powerful this male mage was. Although it was just a basic small fireball,
he could throw three per second! How many first-year students in the academy could cast like that? Not only that, but the male mage's physique seemed good too;
a casual jump would send him tumbling several times in the air... As the male mage controlled by Caelan advanced, an oval object suddenly floated down from the sky.
The male mage immediately shot it down, and a round orb with the character "Fire" written on it fell from the oval object.
After the male mage approached it, the orb was absorbed into his body. From then on, the small fireballs the male mage used for attacking began to turn into five small fireballs, spinning and flying towards the enemies (Contra F-bullet).
Later, another round orb with the character "Water" written on it was shot down, but the mage controlled by Caelan did not pick it up, instead jumping over it, which made the watching students incredibly curious.
However, they surprisingly held back from asking and continued to stare intently at the screen on the wall.
Only after another round orb with the character "Wind" written on it was shot down did Caelan jump over and absorb the Wind orb into his body.
Subsequently, the five spinning fireball attacks transformed into five wind blades flying in a fan shape towards the front, greatly enhancing the attack area.
Caelan thus controlled the male mage, using wind blades to directly kill his way to the stage boss. The stage boss's design was altered by Caelan into a strange, giant one-eyed monster head.
It looked terrifying, but its attack patterns were exactly the same as the original Contra. To make the demonstration better, and also to let them discover the close-range output mechanism themselves,
Caelan did not rush to the boss's face to output damage, but instead stood at a distance, dodging bullets while attacking the boss's weak point—its eye.
Not long after, with the sound of an explosion, the boss's entire head was blasted to smithereens, and then the victory background music played.
The male mage somersaulted through the air and jumped into the cave behind the monster.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, just fighting and killing, with the difficulty essentially consistent with the original. Even the mechanical elements in the screen were mostly retained and not changed.
Ultimately, Caelan, relying entirely on his own skill, used all five lives to reach the fifth stage, dying by the hand of a fire bomb (the original grenade mechanism).
The game screen displayed two lines of large text: "Your adventure has ended. Brave warrior, please try again."
The surrounding students who were watching all surged forward at once. Even many students who were originally playing chess stopped their games and joined the crowd:
"Wow, Caelan, what was that thing you just made?"
"Is it a new illusion you created? How come I've never seen it before? It looks so magical."
"Why didn't you pick up that Water orb?"
"Were those fire bombs that killed you thrown by enemies hiding under rocks? Why didn't you kill them?"
"Why didn't you pick up that Water orb?"
"They probably couldn't be hit, right, Caelan?"
"Can I play this thing of yours? Can I?"
"Why didn't you pick up that Water orb?"
"Quiet, quiet," Caelan pressed his hands down, and after everyone quieted down, he said, "This is something I've been working on recently. I call it a 'game,' and my goal is to bring everyone a little more fun."
A persistent voice asked again, "Why didn't you pick up that Water orb..."
"That Water elemental orb isn't very useful on Easy difficulty. Its attack effect is a straight line; although its attack power is small, it can slow down enemies.
On higher difficulties, with stronger enemy health and faster movement speed, it can unleash its power more effectively."
The people around him all nodded in a similar manner, regardless of whether they understood or not.
Caelan added, "This game can be played by two people. If you want to play, you can go ahead."
As soon as he finished speaking, two people had already taken their seats. A chorus of curses erupted from the surroundings.
"Huh, Caelan, why is it still one person?"
"That's because you haven't selected the two-player mode. Let me restart it for you... See the two-player mode below? Select that one."
"Alright! I want to choose the female mage."
"Get lost, the female mage is mine."
"You two stop arguing. In two-player mode, 2P... that is, the player on the right, is fixed as the female mage," Caelan said helplessly.
"Caelan, can you still manifest this thing?"
Caelan heard this, sank into his mind palace to calculate, and found that besides those chess boards, he could at most maintain three Contra manifestations simultaneously—the manifestation of chess boards consumed very little.
Caelan pretended to say, "I can still manifest two more, but I'm hungry now, I need to eat... It's been a long time since I've had Crimson Bear meat..."
"Gareth, take my coin and quickly go buy it for Caelan. I'll also treat you to lunch..."
Fuel the story with Powerstones.