-The IRL time that this story corresponds to—circa 2017, is chosen for some very specific reasons: It was when Vivendi almost succeeded in their attempted hostile takeover of Ubisoft, after they've already purchased the Gameloft subsidiary in 2016. And the AC franchise also took a two year break between 2015 and 2017, due to Unity and Syndicate's lukewarm reception. Thus, the "going on holiday after losing a custody lawsuit" premise that kickstarts the whole story.

-Oh, and since being a Gold Crystal holder on PC Continent = being a major publisher with your own digital distribution platform? At this point, it's still the Golden Pentagram, instead of the Golden Hexagram. Soon, a certain "Epic Mega Engineer" would throw a wrench (pickaxe?) into the established order...

-Lynka is based on the Atari Lynx. Her exploding phantoms is my take on the "ComLynx" thing, where a maximum of 17 Lynxes can be connected together by cables, while her regular "Link" ability and eyes phantom comes from a trivia—the ComLynx was originally designed to run over infrared links, and codenamed "RedEye".

-Her older sister, Maria, is the Atari 7800, named after the MARIA graphic chips of the console, and Maria's abusive behavior towards her is paralleling how Atari screwed over Epyx, the company that created the Lynx, with an unfair deal and caused their bankruptcy.

-One notable trait of the 7800 is its full backward compatibility with the 2600, and Maria's obsession with restoring the glory of Tari, as well as her fanatical worship of Rei, is a representation of that. The "usurper" she killed references the Atari XEGS, a weird console/computer hybrid that was compatible with the Atari 8-Bit computers, released a year after the 7800.

-In a sense, Maria and Lynka can be seen as the two extreme ends of Rei's personality: her aggressive, cold, proud HDD, and her submissive pushover human form with a hidden resilience.

-Flare is based on the Atari Jaguar. She is named after Flare Technology, the producer of the console. Her twin daggers reference the Jaguar's two 32-Bit chips, "Tom" and "Jerry", while her dust allergy comes from a design flaw of the Jaguar—its cartridge slot doesn't have a dust guard. The idea for this entire story actually spawned from the trivia of "Hey, the first Rayman game was originally supposed to be a Jaguar exclusive!"

-Ryll is based on the Panasonic 3DO. Her name is a pun on the console's full name, 3DO R.E.A.L Interactive Multiplayer. Her chains are referencing 3DO's "Daisy Chain" function—there's only one controller port, but up to eight controllers can be plugged into each other, while her "Crystal Chains" move is a homage to Crystal Dynamics, the first licensed developer for the 3DO, who also created one of the bestselling games for the console, Gex.

-Aqua Heart's EXE Drive, Bach Synthesis, in which she creates blinding illusions through the clanking of her chains, is a reference to the 3DO being the first console to feature a "light synthesizer" that converts music into visual patterns, and a music generating program for the 3DO, C.P.U. Bach (made by Sid Meier!). Her beetle-like wings is a homage to the horror game "D" on 3DO; finding jewel beetles in that game will trigger a rainbow LSD effect, followed by a flashback.

-The 3DO's business model was that multiple companies would manufacture their own 3DO consoles, earning money entirely through selling hardware, instead of selling hardware at a loss and making a profit by charging licensing fee from software developers. Trip Hawkins viewed the 3DO as a chance to make the console market more like the PC market, free from the strict regulations of big console manufacturers, which is why the nation of Panason in-story is a failed attempt at building a more democratic government, with its Council of Oracles and determination to fight the "Tyranny of Purple and White".

-Asa is based on the Neo Geo AES. Her full name, Minerva Asayama, is a reference to Athena Asamiya, a SNK mascot character, while her blueish purple flame is the same as Iori's. Amber Heart is basically SNK Engrish: The Character, and the blue streaks in her amber hair references the color of the Neo Geo logo. The four flaming orbs around her were based on the four ball buttons on the AES controller.

-Also, "strongest Goddess of her generation"? The Neo Geo AES has the most powerful hardware of the 4th Gen, easily beating the SNES and Genesis, which contributed to its lofty price tag and its status as a luxury niche console for hardcore gamers. Thus, her nation was very xenophobic and aggressively isolationist—a double reference to Neo Geo America's very gung-ho, belligerent advertisement posters in the early 90s.

-Rubis is based on the Famicom/NES. Her attire is a fusion of the ribbon in Blanc's concept art, and Taisho period female student uniforms—because hey, if Ultradimension's Lowee has a pseudo-Edo period aesthetic, maybe Hyperdimension's Lowee has a Taisho Roman aesthetic? Her weapon, a revolver, is actually how Famicom's light gun accessory looks like, as opposed to the more sci-fi looking NES Zapper.

-Dameko is based on the Gameboy. Her name comes from "Dame-Game", a derogatory nickname given to the handheld by Nintendo employees, which means "No-good/Useless". She succeeded Rubis and became the Super Famicom/SNES CPU, before retiring and going back to represent some kind of GB variants. Her Candidate, Rokushi, is the Virtual Boy, who became the N64 CPU when she was guilt-tripped into taking over Dameko's position. Her name is basically "Rokujuushi" (sixty-four) minus the "juu" (ten).

-Dameko's purple cloak is based on the color scheme of GB Advance, and the allusion to her posing as the Candidate of Blanc's predecessor, Delphinus, is also a reference of that. Her giant mecha, "HANDY Booster-Plus", is inspired by the two of the most bulky GB accessories in existence, the Booster Boy and Handy Boy.

-A GB plugged into these two accessories looked just like a little kid sitting inside the cockpit of a huge mecha, so I took the imagery and ran with it—the Handy Boy being the mecha's wing attachment that can function as a hang glider on its own, and the Booster Boy being the mecha itself.

-Now, about the G-Dimension, where our three resurrected CPUs came from? The most concise summary is that it generally followed the history of the IRL North American game industry until 1991, then goes down a rollercoaster ride to hell in the 4th Shift Period, and is current stuck in a perpetual cold war, because of several noticeable deviations based on the "what ifs" of gaming history.

1) Lastation never becomes a nation, and is merged into Planeptune. Basically, the Sony of this timeline, after getting screwed over by Nintendo, managed to form a successful partnership with Sega (which almost happened IRL, before Sega of Japan turned the offer down), and never became an independent console manufacturer.

2) Aktivis, Rei's Oracle, first holder of the Gold Crystal, would have been killed by Filina, but ended up fusing with Elizabeth. Okay, this is probably the biggest and weirdest deviation: basically, Activision/Mediagenic was about to go bankrupt in 1991 due to the Magnavox-Philips patent lawsuit, and that was when Bobby Kotick took over and revived the company.

In this timeline, the company survived...by merging with EA. I made that shit up for entertainment value, since, due to the deep financial shit that Activision/Mediagenic was about to drown in, no sane game companies in that period could possibly want to buy it. But if you are really stretching it, there was, indeed, a talk of merger between the two companies, before EA started its attempted hostile takeover of Ubisoft in 2004 (Source: Yves Guillemot, in an Game Informer interview).

3) Since Histoire doesn't exist in the G-Dimension, let's take that EA/Sega partnership in the 90s further, shall we? EA's successful jump to console through the Sega Genesis was what drove Trip Hawkins, EA's founder, to start the 3DO company. Initially, EA supported his 3DO venture, but when the console began to flop, they withdrew their support in favor of the Playstation, and Hawkins had never forgiven EA for that.

Elizabeth's status as an Oracle of Panason and representative of Lastation City, who betrayed Ryll and finished her off, is a very loose parallel of that. But, because Lastation is part of Planeptune in this dimension, she was doing this on behalf of Venus, the Genesis CPU, and would go on to become Planeptune's Oracle.

"Write what you want to read", they say. Well, since I'm obsessed with gaming history and trivia, what I want to read and have set out to write is heavily inspired by reality, despite the obvious deviations. I've been trying very hard not to make it into a regurgitation of video game history books, and create an entertaining narrative that can stand on its own; I don't know if I've succeeded.

But, hopefully, it's been a good ride.