As the heavy mahogany door closed behind Oguchi Hisao, the tense atmosphere in the office finally relaxed.
Takuya Nakayama leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping a rhythmic pattern on the desk. He listened to the footsteps of the team member who had been rushing around for two months to secure the supply chain gradually fade down the hallway.
With this battle, Sega had finally dug its heels into the ground.
But that didn't mean they could rest easy.
Hideki Sato looked up from the dazzling array of sales reports and casually picked up another stack of entirely different documents from the corner of his desk. These were third-party development applications that had been transferred from the Legal Department just that week.
The list was absurdly long.
Almost all the names were unheard of.
"Far East Planning," "Dream Workshop," even something called the "Heisei Wastrels Group."
The TV Tokyo special on the gaming industry that night, combined with the official endorsement from lawmakers, had created a chemical reaction far more profound than the millions of consoles sold and tens of millions of games shipped.
This shattered the last barrier in the Japanese mind regarding "respectable professions."
If game development could be praised as a "national strategy" on financial news programs, and even those usually aloof politicians were discussing electronic entertainment, what reason was there not to get a piece of the action?
Thus, at the dawn of 1995, a gold rush named "Game Development" erupted across the Japanese archipelago.
While office rents in Tokyo hadn't yet recovered from the bubble's collapse, cheap mixed-use buildings in Akihabara and Kanda were the first to bloom.
Programmers who had once only wanted to buy a console for home entertainment found the flickering images on their screens igniting a restless flame in their hearts.
In a ten-square-meter apartment in Gotanda, three programmers, recently laid off after their company's collapse, huddled around a used computer, the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts piled like a small mountain.
Unable to find suitable work after the company's closure, they were inspired to develop a game together after seeing mainstream media reports and analyses of the gaming industry, along with political support from some politicians.
They recruited a few dejected manga artists, their spirits crushed after countless rejections from publishers, and scraped together enough money to buy an old Sega Development Kit.
Their plan was to start with Galgames, using the artists' own rejection stories as inspiration for the game's narrative.
Thus, a game development project was born from this ragtag team.
Even small workshops that had previously specialized in accounting software or Pachinko machine control panels quickly amended their articles of incorporation, adding "Electronic Gaming Software Development" to their business scope.
"The quality is likely to be disastrous," Hideki Sato said, frowning deeply as he flipped through the hastily prepared project proposals. "Most of these applicants are opportunists. Some don't even have proper proposals yet, yet they dare to apply for an SDK."
"That's the market's problem, not ours," Takuya Nakayama replied, casually picking up an application form. The form, scrawled with messy handwriting, proposed a "Kanto Oden Stall Management Simulation" game. "As long as they don't cross the approval red lines—no pornography or anti-human content—and are willing to pay the royalty and buy the Development Kit, we'll issue them a license."
He tossed the application form back onto the desk, his tone coolly rational.
"This is how ecosystems work, Mr. Sato. A forest can't be just towering trees; it needs weeds and shrubs too. Even if ninety percent of these people end up dead on the beach and their games barely break even, if just one percent survives, we don't need blockbusters. As long as they sell tens of thousands of copies and recoup their development costs, it'll be a tremendous enrichment of our game lineup."
Moreover, these wild, influx of indie developers were objectively solving a major problem for Sega: the overcapacity of old-generation hardware.
The 16-bit technology that had been phased out by the Next-Gen Jupiter was practically useless to major corporations, but for these budding small teams, it was the perfect training ground.
They would bend over backward to squeeze every last drop of value from the Mega Drive and Super Famicom, filling the market vacuum left by the major players.
"Tell the licensing department the process can be streamlined, but not a yen less," Takuya Nakayama said as he stood up and walked to the window, gazing down at the bustling street below.
There, countless young people, their eyes gleaming with dreams of striking it rich, were flocking to Akihabara. The light in their eyes was identical to that of the Americans tinkering with Apple I in their garages all those years ago.
Only this time, the vehicle for their dreams bore the SEGA logo.
"Also, have the tech support department put together a 'foolproof' development document. Include all the development tools we've created previously," Takuya Nakayama said, turning around and adding the final spark to the frenzy. "If they want to pan for gold, we'll be the ones selling the shovels."
Tuesday, January 17, 1995.
The winter sunlight, pale and wan, filtered through the paper sliding doors and fell on the tatami mats.
Takuya Nakayama stepped out of the bedroom into the cool, quiet room. The wall clock had just passed seven-thirty.
The open-plan kitchen was steaming. Eri, wearing an apron, skillfully flipped the tamagoyaki.
The salty aroma of miso soup mingled with the scent of grilled fish, painting a familiar morning scene in their home.
"Is Kazuki still asleep?" Takuya asked, his voice hoarse with sleep as he casually reached for the remote on the coffee table.
"She was up late last night, probably wouldn't wake up even if thunder struck," Eri said without turning around, the clatter of her spatula against the frying pan ringing clear. "Go wash your face. Breakfast is almost ready."
Takuya grunted in acknowledgment, his thumb habitually pressing the TV power button.
He'd expected to see the usual morning news program.
But the moment the screen lit up, the bright studio lights and the anchor's professional fake smile were nowhere to be seen.
The image shook violently.
Gray-black pillars of smoke shot straight into the sky. The once-straight highway lay twisted across the devastated streets like a giant had stomped on a wafer cookie.
The siren's wail was distorted and piercing, stabbing at his eardrums through the thin speakers.
"—According to an emergency report from the Meteorological Agency, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the northern part of Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture at 5:46 AM this morning—"
The reporter's voice, usually steady and measured, was now rapid and tense. He even wore a yellow safety helmet.
Takuya's hand, holding the remote, froze mid-air. His entire body felt like it had been drained of its spring.
A dam in the depths of his memory burst open with a violent crash.
In the fragmented memories of 1995 from my past life, besides the release of Windows 95, the premiere of EVA, and the fierce rivalry between Sega and Sony, there was also a black puzzle piece, deliberately forgotten.
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