Remember how I said I keep worrying that I've seen all this game has to offer and it won't be able to surprise us anymore, only for it to do something that completely dumbfounds me?

Well…

At the moment we're finding ourselves in bit of a tight spot, as Hiro needs as much money as possible to satisfy the Yakuza loan sharks taking Sarah away from us as well as pay for continuously upgrading her performance, because being the Zero Four King is the most important thing in the universe.;

So, as before, to get the cash, Hiro’s been working hard alternating shifts between clubbing rats and thieves and playing videogames at the arcade.

This is business as usual, and I've probably done it about 300 times at this point.





Life is becoming a bit boring and repetitive for Hiro, so I've been having him occasionally play the crane game again to see if we could trigger that girl to come back. Maybe that will stop him ordering all these weird sexual instruments from magazines.





... As usual, nothing happens anymore when I successfully capture a bear.

But, it occurred to me - what if he catches not one bear, but two?

Nope. That didn’t do anything…

Three?

Nope, nothing…

Four?

I was about to give up entirely, when I suddenly noticed something. The crane game… changed.





Those aren't toy bears… Those are … women's panties…

I swear I did not make this up….

If it were a joke, it would be too obvious. The one crude western stereotype you always hear about Japan that people swear is not true.

But here it was, in 1991, immortalised in a videogame.

It… is… a … panties vending machine….

Like with the bears, you use the crane to pick them up. These are remarkably easier than the bears, and I'm soon finding myself spending the better part of my Thursday evening collecting a large amount of virtual panties, in the hope they will trigger another cutscene where the girl walks in and Hiro has to explain his new found women's lace underwear collection.