Steve, who had been about to stand up, froze on the spot after hearing Ethan's words.
"Link... Arena?"
"That's right. We've prepared multiple different multiplayer battle modes for Fire Emblem."
Ethan pulled an expansion disk drive out from beneath his seat.
"The first mode requires one of these expansion disk drives."
He connected the drive's cables one by one before taking out two Fire Emblem floppy disks.
"As long as you insert two game disks into the same NovaBox, this hidden mode can be activated."
As Ethan inserted the second floppy disk into the disk drive, the game suddenly reloaded itself. When it returned to the title screen, in addition to Continue from Suspend and Continue from Save, an entirely new option had appeared.
[Link Arena]
"Steve, as you know, GAMENOVA has recently been putting a lot of effort into developing our own esports programs."
Steve accepted the controller Ethan handed him, his eyes widening in astonishment. How had he forgotten about this?
The expansion disk drive!
It was the new accessory GAMENOVA had released not long ago alongside The King of Fighters. He had never expected Fire Emblem to secretly support it as well.
"I thought the next time I'd see this would be with a Fire Emblem expansion disk. I didn't realize it could also read two copies of the same game?"
"That's right. It can recognize the save data stored on both disks and allows players to use them in the Link Arena."
Ethan immediately entered the Link Arena and selected Team Formation.
Depending on the selections made in the Player 1 and Player 2 team slots, the game dynamically loaded the save data from the two floppy disks.
Each player could only use the save stored on their own disk.
"The selected characters will retain all of the data they have in the main story save."
"All of it? You mean, including their levels, stats, equipment, items... and even the support relationships you just mentioned?"
Looking at the list of available characters and their displayed information, Steve's expression became even more shocked.
That meant the stronger a character had been trained during the main campaign, the greater the advantage they would have in multiplayer battles. This was a completely different model from fighting games.
After all, in Street Fighter and The King of Fighters, although every character had unique abilities and playstyles, whenever they were selected, their performance was always identical.
There would never be a situation where two people both picked Guile, yet one Guile had better stats than the other.
"The real battle... begins before the match even starts..."
Steve finally understood the purpose behind this design.
Aside from the tactical decisions made during each battle, the greatest strategic depth in Fire Emblem came from resource allocation, or more precisely, character development.
How to grow the strongest possible army with limited resources was itself part of the competition.
"Wait, Ethan, I brought my own game disk. Let me use my save file against you."
Thinking of that, Steve waved toward his assistant, who handed him his floppy disk. After all, he was someone who had reached Chapter 12 with every unit still alive, and he had his own competitive pride.
If they were really going to battle, using the team he had personally trained would naturally give him better familiarity and stronger stats. Just as he was about to select his favorite swordsman, Rutger, as his lead unit, Steve suddenly shuddered.
"Oh, right... if someone dies in the arena..."
"Oh, don't worry about that. In this mode, the save file is read-only. We're simply borrowing the data."
The Link Arena was purely a simulated battle mode. Weapons wouldn't lose durability here, and fallen units wouldn't suffer permanent death
So naturally, no experience points could be earned either, otherwise, this would practically become some kind of life or death dark duel.
"Haha... Actually, that could work too."
Ethan suddenly chuckled. That really might be worth making into its own expansion pack. A mode where deaths were truly permanent might actually prove even more popular among hardcore players.
After both sides finished selecting their teams, the screen was suddenly covered by a blue grid. Then, a single plain tile materialized out of thin air at the very center.
Centered on that tile, the map began expanding outward in every direction, this wasn't loading an existing map. At least, not according to Steve's memory.
Chapter maps had never loaded like this before, nor did he remember ever playing on a battlefield like this.
"Ethan... this map... is it randomly generated?"
Sometimes Steve genuinely felt that his identity as a game reviewer was a complete joke. He had spent so much time playing the game, thinking that clearing it with every unit alive meant he had already explored every aspect of it.
But reality had proven otherwise, because he hadn't even scratched the surface. Steve was just an amateur.
"Yes. To ensure fairness and minimize the informational advantage of memorizing maps, every match generates a small battlefield at random."
Ethan paused before continuing. "Of course, maps from the main campaign can also be used. It simply depends on what both players want."
Once the map generation finished, both armies were placed at opposite ends of the battlefield. The victory condition was naturally to eliminate every enemy unit.
Although Steve didn't fully understand all of the hidden mechanics, he was still someone capable of leading a large army through Chapter 12 without suffering any casualties, so his tactical thinking was far from that of a complete novice.
Almost immediately, he scanned the battlefield, identifying several key strategic locations. The entire map was divided into a U-shaped layout by a mountain range running through its center.
Other than Pegasus Knights and Wyvern Riders, every other unit could only pass through the few plains chokepoints below.
As long as he secured those positions first, he could coordinate his snipers and mages to harass Ethan's forces continuously.
"This map is actually randomly generated... It's practically magic."
The more Steve studied the battlefield, the more amazed he became by its ingenious design. It felt as though it had been created specifically for multiplayer battles from the very beginning.
The moment he heard the map was randomly generated, he had expected to see some crude arrangement of randomly stitched-together terrain.
But he couldn't have been more wrong, as this generator had definitely been deliberately designed by Ethan.
There wasn't a single traversable region on the map that was unreachable. Every tile that wasn't ocean or mountain always had a valid path accessible to ground infantry.
He wasn't even sure if it was just his imagination, but even the placement of forests, forts, and other strategically important terrain seemed to follow certain underlying patterns.
At least at first glance, the map's balance was excellent.
"You can think of it as one of my little experiments."
Ethan smiled, having no intention of elaborating on the algorithm behind it.
Random map generation would become an important technological branch in the future, so starting to iterate on it early was definitely not a bad thing.