Chain reaction

"Dragon Quest? Yes, we have it. We're currently running a promotion, and you can purchase it for ¥4,500, which is a ten percent discount."

The employee was very happy; finally, a customer who wanted to buy Dragon Quest had arrived after such a long time.

Upon hearing this, the customer took out five ¥1,000 bills and handed them over. "Here you go, I'll take one box."

The buyer wore glasses and looked like one of those seasoned otaku types. At the same time, he seemed to be holding a newly unsealed manga magazine in his hand.

"Here's ¥5,000 for you, and ¥500 in change, along with your Dragon Quest cartridge. Thank you for your patronage," the employee said with a slight bow, as the customer prepared to leave.

Watching the departing customer, the gaming enthusiast inside the employee couldn't help but speak up: "If I may ask, why did you want to buy Dragon Quest? Because you saw others playing the game and thought it looked fun?"

The customer turned back, lifting the manga book in his hand and said, "No, it's because of this manga I read. It said playing this game allows you to learn about the subsequent story in advance and experience the story by playing as the hero. I just wanted to give it a try."

"I see. Let me tell you, besides the touching story, the game itself is also super fun."

"Is that so?" The customer responded somewhat uncertainly.

He was also a gamer.

But he preferred Contra a bit more.

Because it was more thrilling to play.

He had seen the gameplay of Dragon Quest before, but he felt the visuals were a bit dull and boring, not as good as Contra's graphics.

The reason he came to buy today was solely because the story in the manga abruptly stopped.

In the manga, the hero had just reached the stone tablet deep inside the cave and learned about his secret identity.

Then, upon leaving the cave, the hero encountered an attack from the Dragon King's minions, seemingly intending to take out the still weak hero first.

And that's where the story stopped.

Damn it, why do you manga artists always like to end a chapter at the most critical moment?

Can't you just finish the part you're supposed to draw?!

At that time, he felt quite conflicted, eager to know the subsequent story but not knowing what to do.

He even started considering sending razor blades to the author.

Then he noticed the message below the end of the manga: Same-name electronic game now hot on sale, experience the full story, and know the entire story of Dragon Quest in advance. Welcome to purchase.

Upon seeing this message, he immediately became energized, clutching the newly bought manga book and began searching the nearby streets, eventually arriving here.

The customer left with the game cartridge, and the employee returned to the store manager somewhat happily.

"Boss, look, people are still buying Dragon Quest."

"Hmm, it's just one person; it doesn't really mean much."

The store manager still didn't believe in the sales of this thing.

There had been no progress for the past month or two.

In Gamestar' sales statistics, it had only just reached 40,000 in three months, while game console sales had already reached 200,000. Contra and Tetris had both surpassed 100,000 in sales, with other games following closely behind.

He didn't believe that Dragon Quest could suddenly become a hot seller.

The store manager wasn't a gamer; he didn't understand the fun of games, but he thought he knew how to sell things.

If a product wasn't selling for a long time, then basically, it was dead.

However, just as the store manager finished speaking, another kid holding a manga book walked in.

"Big brother, do you have Dragon Quest game cartridges here?"

The employee immediately ran out happily and said, "Yes, yes, yes! Today we have a promotion on Dragon Quest, it's ten percent off, only ¥4,500!"

"Really? It's actually ¥500 cheaper! Then big brother, I'll take one box!"

The store manager's expression froze.

Another one?

They couldn't even sell one box in a day.

And it didn't end there.

One after another, several customers came in, and the first thing they asked for was Dragon Quest.

They almost all had one thing in common: they were holding the latest issue of the manga magazine, Haruhi.

The manga card of Dragon Quest ended abruptly at the most critical moment, driving people crazy.

And then they also noticed the few lines of small text at the end.

You can experience all the storylines and even experience the entire story from the perspective of the hero, which seemed even more enticing than the manga.

So they started looking all over the street for places to buy game cartridges, even without asking about the price. As long as you had it, they would pay.

At the same time, this sudden surge also drove up the sales of game consoles.

Some avid manga readers didn't have game consoles. In order to play Dragon Quest, they would readily buy a game console along with the game cartridge. This increased consumption power was quite rare.

One person, two people, three people.

Until more than a dozen people came in one after another asking for Dragon Quest, the store manager couldn't remain calm.

"Hey, take down the discount notice!"

The discount was originally to quickly sell out the game cartridges.

But now it seemed that many people were starting to become interested in Dragon Quest.

He didn't know what caused these people to suddenly start buying Dragon Quest.

But he knew that if he continued the discount, he would lose ¥500 for each game cartridge sold, which meant he would lose nearly ¥10,000 in just a short time.

This made him very distressed.

Apart from this store, other authorized stores were also playing out similar scenes.

The store managers who had previously complained about the backlog of Dragon Quest cartridges were now all smiling.

Dragon Quest had the highest profit margin among game cartridges because it was the most expensive, selling for ¥5,000 per box. The cost price was 70% of the retail price, so selling at the regular price would earn them ¥1,500 in profit.

In just a short time, they had sold a lot.

Meanwhile, online discussions about Dragon Quest were also rapidly increasing.

The initial small circle of discussion was gradually expanding.

About three days later, the new week's sales data was presented to Takayuki.

Console sales had reached 240,000 and were almost increasing at a rate of 10,000 per day.

With increased promotional efforts in surrounding cities, this upward trend in sales was even more pronounced.

Contra sales reached 150,000, ranking first.

Tetris followed closely with 140,000, ranking second.

Then came Super Baseball with 120,000, ranking third.

And in fourth place was Dragon Quest, with 100,000.

In just three days, Dragon Quest had almost doubled its daily sales to over 20,000.

From the previous bottom-ranking 40,000 in sales, it had climbed to 100,000.

Other games were basically hovering around 50,000 to 90,000 in sales.

Seeing this data, Takayuki finally couldn't help but smile.

Dragon Quest had finally made it.

He had waited too long.

In fact, role-playing games had always been the mainstay of console sales. Before the dominance of shooting, racing, and sports games, whoever could make a good role-playing game represented absolute dominance.

It wasn't until after 2010 in the future that this trend began to change slightly, but role-playing games were still popular, just with slightly lower status.

It seemed that the manga's promotional effect was indeed very good.

But this also had a certain element of chance; otherwise, in the past life, only a few games like Dragon Quest would have risen because of it.

Apart from Takayuki, now Daigo Ikeda was also very happy.

Because recently, sales of manga magazines had also suddenly increased a bit. At a time when sales data for other competitors was slowly declining, suddenly their sales increased. This was an uplifting piece of news.