Though Hiro’s still living paycheck to paycheck to service the car loans and Sarah's insatiable lust for performance modifications, we're starting to see the fruits of our efforts.
At the Grass Races we're actually starting to tally up some wins, especially against Familia's and Starlets. The CRX is still giving us some grief, but I'm sure a few more mods might sort him out.
I won't go into detail about the mods I'm applying and the details of most of the races, since it's mostly game mechanics and screens you’ve already seen. But we’re on much more of an even keel now with Sarah at the helm. We're winning about half of our races, so more or less breaking even.
In the meantime, Hiro continues to diligently work. He spends most of his time at the Economy Centre since it pays better - but every now and then pops into the Arcade, hoping to run into the bear loving girl for a chance to Comaneci. Unfortunately no luck thus far.
Incidentally, I found (and bought, because I'm a sucker) an old magazine ad for this game I found on Yahoo Japan, and it features an illustration of her prominently next to Hiro, so I'm holding out hope she's going to show up again.
But! With our new found successes in grass races and the better part of two years spent battling rats and thieves in the Economy Centre, we're starting to see a change in Hiro's battle technique...
… He actually is winning battles!
I didn't actually think this was possible after I don't know how many times Hiro woke up beaten and bruised, deciding not to tell anyone about the prolific thief problem in fear of losing his job. I figured it was just a repeated joke.
But now, most of the time he's beating them, and each time it comes with a tidy cash bonus.
We can even stomach taking to this guy now.
:
Hiro-Ku, that’s a big help! Yes it’s a part time job bonus. It’s worth 200,000 yen.
Incidentally I love the battle win music. It's probably as close to completely ripping of the Final Fantasy victory music as you can get without invoking lawyers. But this was clearly done with love. The developers of this game must have been big Final Fantasy fans to include a whole battle system as a homage, given they were tasked with creating a drag racing game.
Sex toys aside, I find it fascinating that this game was clearly quite referential to the pop culture at the time. I haven't played many J-RPGs, but details like these make it feel quite modern compared to what I usually expect from games in 1991.