Tokyo, Sega headquarters.
Inside the executive director's office, the fax machine emitted a series of urgent beeps and spat out a sheet of paper that still carried residual heat.
The assistant hurried over, tore it off, and after only a single glance, barely managed to suppress his excitement. He jogged over and placed the fax on Takuya Nakayama's desk.
"Director, an emergency message from Redwood City! From Mr. Tom!"
"First batch of two thousand units sold out within two hours! Need another twenty thousand! Immediately! At once!"
Takuya Nakayama finished reading, the corners of his mouth lifting unconsciously.
He set the fax aside casually, unhurried, as if this long-anticipated good news were nothing more than a routine document in his day's work.
"Where's this morning's production and logistics progress report?" he asked without looking up.
"It's ready," the assistant replied at once, handing over another neatly printed report.
Takuya scanned the numbers. Every figure aligned perfectly with the plan in his head.
He picked up the phone, ignored Tom's telegram-like fax, and directly dialed the private line to the president's office in Redwood City.
The call was answered almost instantly. From the receiver came Tom Kalinske's still-excited, slightly hoarse voice.
"Takuya? Is that you? My God! You wouldn't believe what just happened here!"
"I can probably guess," Takuya chuckled, leaning back in his chair. "Did someone almost tear down your warehouse trying to grab a demo machine?"
There was a second of silence on the other end—then Tom exploded even louder.
"How did you know that?! Do you have cameras installed over here? That guy really drove off with our precious baby in a beat-up pickup! Two thousand units—less than two hours!"
"Calm down, Tom, calm down," Takuya said teasingly. "From Tokyo, I can practically hear the sound of you counting money. Don't rush—your ammunition has been ready for a long time."
"Ready?" Tom's voice was full of delight.
"That's right," Takuya said, flipping through the report, his tone steady and assured. "Twenty thousand brand-new arcade cabinets will arrive at the Port of San Francisco tomorrow. They were shipped directly from our contract factories in China."
"As for the System 32 boards and Metal Slug cartridges, the first batch of ten thousand sets will arrive by air the day after tomorrow. The remaining ten thousand will be delivered within the week. We've diverted essentially all of Japan's current capacity to you. To make this storm blow even harder in the U.S., we haven't even released a single unit domestically yet."
Tom was so excited he could barely string words together, repeating over and over, "That's incredible—just incredible—I seriously love you, Takuya!"
"One more thing," Takuya added, his tone shifting. "Put out a notice reminding those clever arcade owners that System 32 boards are not compatible with System 16 cabinets. Don't let them try to jury-rig conversions and fry the boards—we won't cover that under warranty."
"I get it. Kill that idea completely."
"But don't close the door entirely," Takuya continued. "If they really want to, they can place separate orders for the boards and game cartridges. We can even open up the cabinet hardware specifications—but only after these twenty thousand units are shipped."
He paused deliberately, then smiled.
"Though I doubt they'll find cheaper CRTs and power supplies in the U.S. than ours."
That confidence came from the vast Asian supply-chain network Takuya Nakayama had already woven.
For this batch of arcade cabinets, the core component—the CRT—was sourced from a Panasonic joint venture factory in Beijing.
In 1991, Japan led the world in CRT technology and cost control. Combined with low labor costs from factories in China, production expenses were driven down to astonishing levels.
Even more decisive was Sega's policy of settling all orders with these Chinese suppliers in U.S. dollars.
In an era when foreign currency was extraordinarily precious in China, any factory receiving Sega's dollar-denominated orders would prioritize them above all else, ensuring the supply chain never experienced delays.
After hanging up, Takuya Nakayama looked out over Tokyo's glittering nightscape, a faintly amused smile on his face.
The assistant, fired up by the scene, couldn't help asking, "Director, are we really not releasing it in Japan first? Shops in Akihabara have heard the news from the U.S.—the sales department's phones are ringing off the hook."
"Let them wait," Takuya said, turning around, ambition gleaming in his eyes. "Let the Americans build the hype to its absolute peak. Once Metal Slug completely dominates the North American market, then we bring it back home. The explosion then will be far bigger than it is now."
At the same time, in Los Angeles, inside a modestly sized arcade, the owner, Louis, wiped sweat from his forehead with a towel as he stared at the brand-new Metal Slug machine near the entrance.
This was the demo unit he'd gone all in to "snatch" from Sega's Redwood City warehouse two days earlier. Just getting it off that battered pickup truck had nearly thrown out his back—and that of his two-hundred-pound assistant.
Nearby machines were still looping the attract sounds of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but in front of this new cabinet, those former kings felt oddly forlorn.
A teenager in a basketball jersey eagerly dropped in a quarter.
"Metal Slug!"
The crisp, unmistakable electronic jingle instantly cut through the arcade's noise.
Almost at the same moment, more than a dozen heads snapped over.
The cabinet—hauled into the center of the arcade before noon by the impatient owner—had already drawn plenty of attention. Seeing the kid waiting beside it, most people decided to watch first.
On the screen, a chibi soldier with a headband started running, his movements so fluid they didn't seem possible for this era.
The boy jumped and fired; bullets sprayed out with zero delay.
When the first enemy was hit, letting out a comical scream and flipping backward as he fell, the first gasp rose from the crowd.
"Hey! Look how that guy died!"
"My God, the picture's so clean!"
The scene quickly spiraled out of control.
Explosions chained together across the screen—tanks, planes, watchtowers blasted apart in fire and debris—yet the game never stuttered.
The boy's fingers hammered the buttons, adrenaline surging, his mouth opening and closing nervously.
"Heavy machine gun!"
The iconic, booming voice rang out. The character's weapon transformed into a massive machine gun, bullets pouring out like a waterfall, instantly sweeping the screen clean.
Cheers and whistles erupted from the crowd.
"That's it! That sound!"
"So damn good! Better than fireworks!"
The first player died when he mistimed a jump and fell into the river below, where a giant fish leapt out, swallowed him whole, then spat out a neat pile of bones.
The crowd froze—then burst into laughter.
"You can die like that?!"
"This game's hilarious!"
Another coin clinked into the slot as a second teenager jumped in as Player Two.
Behind the counter, Louis had been wincing at the memory of the cash he'd slammed down—but now he just stared at the coin slot, its red light flashing nonstop, the flesh on his face trembling with a grin.
What he saw wasn't a game machine.
It was a money-printing machine.
Scenes like this played out across arcades in major cities all over the United States within days.
In Texas, a burly man dressed like a cowboy slammed his fist beside the cabinet—not in frustration, but sheer excitement—as he yelled at the screen, "Give me another tank!"
On Florida's sunny coast, a group of surfers, shirts off after catching waves, crowded around a Metal Slug machine, arguing over whether the submarine stage was better or mowing everything down in the little tank.
In New York, the East Coast distributor who had taken three hundred units in one go had his phone completely overwhelmed.
"I don't care how you do it—get me ten more! Money's not an issue!"
"What? No stock? I don't care! My customers are about to tear my place apart fighting over the only two Metal Slug machines!"
Those owners who had hesitated over the System 32 board price now regretted it bitterly.
They finally understood: in front of a machine that made players line up to feed in quarters, that price difference meant nothing.
One day late on the floor meant piles of cash going straight into someone else's pockets.
Redmond, Washington.
In the president's office, Minoru Arakawa held a cup of coffee, studying the massive map of North America on the wall. Colored pins marked NES sales outlets, dense and sprawling—an empire in red.
Vice President Howard Lincoln knocked and entered, placing a market briefing on the desk.
"Sega's made a new move," Lincoln said calmly. "They've launched an arcade game called Metal Slug. The first two thousand units sold out in two hours at the distributor conference. Market response—very enthusiastic."
Arakawa didn't even turn around, his gaze fixed on the New York region.
"Arcades?" He took a sip of coffee, tone flat. "Howard, Nintendo doesn't play the business of stacking quarters anymore. That's Capcom and Namco's territory."
"I know, but this one's unusual," Lincoln said, adjusting his glasses. "The report says its visual performance far surpasses all current arcade games. Sega even released a new board called System 32 just for it."
"A new board?" Arakawa finally turned, but there was little interest on his face—only faint mockery. "Tom Kalinske never changes. Always chasing flashy gimmicks. Two thousand units sounds like a lot, but to us, that's just a single city's cartridge sales for one day."
He sat behind his desk and flipped through the briefing. When he reached the exaggerated descriptions of graphics and smoothness, he even let out a soft laugh.
"Making players stand around marveling at visuals in noisy arcades? Super Mario World and our upcoming The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past let them relax on their sofas and enjoy an entire afternoon of adventure at home. Isn't that far more pleasant than smoky, crowded arcades that smell of cigarettes and beer?"
Lincoln nodded, offering no argument.
He understood—and agreed with—the president's strategic focus.
Nintendo's empire was built in living rooms, not in dim, clamorous arcades.
"Understood," Lincoln said, gathering the documents and leaving the office.
Arakawa leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping idly on the desk.
Two thousand units sold out—it was impressive.
But so what?
Arcades were still just arcades.
In his eyes, Sega's move was little more than a last gasp.
They had fallen behind the Super Famicom in home console performance. Once The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past launched, SFC sales would surge, and the weaker Mega Drive would be pushed aside. Sega would have no choice but to retreat to its arcade roots to save face.
It looked more like strategic frustration than foresight.
He failed to realize that the hardware technology and design philosophy behind the arcade game he dismissed were quietly opening the curtain on an entirely new era.
With a wave of his hand, as if brushing away a bothersome fly, Arakawa cast the report from his mind.
His enemy had always been the black Mega Drive in living rooms—not the flashing neon of street-corner arcades.
And so, this intelligence was treated as routine market noise, slipped into an ordinary folder, and sent back across the Pacific with the regular North American reports to Nintendo's Kyoto headquarters.
In the intelligence department, an assistant carefully sorted the compiled documents.
By the time a briefing labeled "North American Arcade Market Trends" was placed on Shigeru Miyamoto's desk, Sega's additional ten thousand Metal Slug units had already been fully deployed across the United States, devouring quarters at a ferocious pace.
Miyamoto's desk was covered in design drafts for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the map of Hyrule dense with notes and markings.
He took a sip of long-cold coffee, brow furrowed.
Accepting the report, he merely intended to skim it as a mental break.
His eyes drifted casually across the page.
"Metal Slug—"
And then he stopped.
Please Support me by becoming my patreon member and get 30+ chapters.
[email protected]/Ajal69
change @ with a
Thank You to Those who joined my