The first Friday of October, Sega Hardware Development Department.
Takuya Nakayama and Yu Suzuki stood outside a testing room surrounded by various instruments and cables, watching the busy engineers inside through the glass.
"Any issues?" Yu Suzuki asked quietly, his eyes fixed on the people conducting tests around the experiment table.
Takuya had his hands in his suit pants pockets and didn't respond.
His gaze passed over the crowd, landing on the back of Chief Engineer Nakamura.
Nakamura had been working continuously for over thirty-six hours; his bloodshot eyes were glued to the scrolling code on the terminal screen.
Suddenly, the scrolling stopped.
The entire testing room seemed to hit mute— you could hear a pin drop. Everyone held their breath.
Ken Nakamura's fingers hovered over the keyboard, paused for a full five seconds, then slammed the enter key.
On the screen, the green word "COMPLETE" popped up—huge, clear, carrying a sense of overwhelming relief.
"Success!" Someone shouted first.
In an instant, long-suppressed cheers exploded in the testing room.
Engineers hugged each other, slapping backs.
Ken Nakamura let out a long breath, his whole body slumping like his bones had been removed as he leaned back in the chair.
He turned his head, meeting Takuya's gaze, and forced a tired smile, nodding vigorously.
Takuya's lips curved unconsciously. He pushed open the door and walked in. "Everyone, great work."
"Executive Director Nakayama!" Ken Nakamura struggled to stand.
"Stay seated, Chief Nakamura." Takuya pressed his shoulder. "How do you feel now?"
"Like I could sleep straight through to next year." Nakamura joked, drawing friendly laughter. "All chip tests passed; performance and functions fully meet design goals."
"Excellent." Takuya's affirmation was concise and firm. "What about the parallel-developed components?"
"Ready long ago!" A young engineer immediately pulled a somewhat rough gray plastic shell from an anti-static box nearby, covered in test interfaces and flying wires, with a small black-and-white LCD screen embedded in the center. "This is our assembled Engineering Sample No. 1."
Takuya took it and weighed it. Heavier than expected.
"Power on."
The engineer connected the power and flipped the switch. The screen flickered, lit up, and displayed the simple "SEGA" logo.
"Test program?" Takuya asked.
"As you instructed, it's prepared." Ken Nakamura operated a nearby computer, flashing a program into it.
The screen flickered again, and the image changed. Pixel blocks slowly fell from the top.
"Heh, using Tetris for testing again—feels like tradition," Yu Suzuki leaned in to watch, smiling.
"Maybe." Takuya didn't look back. His fingers pressed buttons on both sides; the on-screen blocks moved, rotated, dropped, and cleared.
After a while, Takuya set down the prototype.
"Seems no issues, but subsequent full-system tests will still trouble everyone."
A week later, the Hardware Development Department's atmosphere finally returned to normal—still busy, but no longer that non-stop tension. Ken Nakamura looked much better. He placed a brand-new prototype in front of Takuya. No longer the wire-cluttered gray box, this was a preliminarily integrated black engineering sample—smaller, with a solid grip.
"Sample No. 2. All basic tests complete; runs stably." Nakamura's tone carried pride.
Takuya picked it up. Boot screen still the simple "SEGA" logo, but startup was faster. "Good. Notify everyone: Hardware can rotate shifts for now, but durability and stress tests continue."
"Understood!"
That afternoon, in the Sega Software Development Department's conference room, smoke swirled.
Takuya placed the black Sample No. 2 in the center of the table.
Around it sat men with varied expressions, led by genius programmer Yuji Naka.
His face was calm, just curiously examining the small device.
"Everyone, this is what we'll tackle next." Takuya spoke softly, but all eyes focused.
Yuji Naka looked at the spec sheet and performance metrics, eyes full of excited challenge.
But for programmers used to Mega Drive's power, it was still restrictive.
"Performance is decent, but limitations are big," Yuji Naka gave a fair assessment.
"Exactly." Takuya nodded, not arguing. "So I'm not asking you to develop a bunch of games for it right away."
He scanned the room. "I want you to build a toolset for it."
"Tools?" Someone asked, puzzled.
"A set that lets any developer—even third-rate small studios' programmers—get up to speed in minimal time and develop games at maximum efficiency."
Takuya's fingers tapped the table. "Use your vast experience to write function libraries, dev kits, even auxiliary tools running on MSX2 computers."
"MSX2?" Yuji Naka frowned. "Too outdated. Why not our own dev kits?"
"Because it's cheap and widespread."
Takuya's answer was direct. "I want this handheld platform's development barrier so low that a few passionate young people and one MSX2 can make games for us."
"We don't need one or two exclusives—we need a massive library that drowns competitors. Threshold must be rock-bottom."
The room fell silent.
Many were baffled by Takuya's demands.
They were top developers, used to pushing limits on best hardware—now asked to pave the way for third-rates and newbies.
Seeing the uncertainty, Takuya explained: "Let me give you the situation."
"Nintendo is developing a handheld with similar hardware specs to ours."
This made everyone sit up straight.
"I've discussed this with Chief Nakamura. At current tech levels, this prototype's hardware is the most cost-effective we can achieve."
"So post-launch, third parties will develop and release on both platforms. Then it comes down to which has lower dev costs and higher install base."
"I'm preparing launch titles and confident in initial sales beating Nintendo."
"But for sustained third-party support, these tools could be the key difference."
Yu Suzuki suddenly chuckled, breaking the silence: "Interesting."
Yuji Naka silently reached out, picking up the prototype.
He rubbed the shell, felt the key travel, eyes shifting between screen and ports.
After a long while, he looked up.
"I'll try pulling the core code from our old SG-1000 fast-scroll algorithm," his voice quiet but clear, "and see if I can optimize and port it to this platform."
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