Shigeru Miyamoto unconsciously murmured the name under his breath, his finger pausing on the page.
The name stirred a flicker of instinctive curiosity in him as a game designer.
"What kind of game is this? Why have I never heard of it?" He looked up at his assistant. "Why does the briefing say nothing at all—just a name and a line about 'enthusiastic market response'?"
His expression didn't look like interrogation so much as that of a child who had discovered a novel new toy.
The assistant quickly bowed and explained, "Miyamoto-san, I found it strange as well, so I specifically checked the latest issues of Famitsu and several arcade-focused magazines. There's absolutely no information about this game in our domestic market."
He paused, then offered his own speculation. "I suspect—could it be that Sega released it only in the North American market this time? And over there, they just assumed Japan had launched simultaneously and that we already knew about it, which is why the report didn't bother introducing the game in detail."
The explanation was reasonable.
Japan's console and arcade games were almost always released globally first—or at least simultaneously—and the major media were used to keeping their eyes fixed on the domestic market. Few people went out of their way to pay attention to what kind of "exclusive" arcade games might exist overseas.
"Is that so?"
Miyamoto nodded. The spark of curiosity in his eyes was quickly drowned by fatigue.
He rubbed his temples, a wave of dizziness washing over him again.
Just last month, right here, he had collapsed face-first onto these very manuscripts.
If his assistant hadn't discovered him in time, the consequences would have been unimaginable.
Afterward, President Hiroshi Yamauchi had personally arranged for a private doctor, who had ordered him—without room for argument—to take mandatory leave.
But after lying in the hospital for less than a week, his mind had been filled entirely with the nearly completed The Legend of Zelda. Ignoring everyone's objections, he had rushed back to work.
The incident was kept strictly confidential within Nintendo. Everyone else believed he had merely gone on a long overseas business trip.
"Alright," Miyamoto said, casually setting the briefing aside. The stack of papers happened to press down on one corner of the Hyrule map. "When you have time, get in touch with North America and find out exactly what this thing is. Get a detailed report for me."
To him, it was nothing more than a trivial interruption.
At present, nothing mattered more than getting the first SFC Legend of Zelda onto the market as soon as possible.
For that goal, he had already wagered everything—his heart and soul, even his health.
He refocused his attention on the final comprehensive testing of the game.
One week later.
On Miyamoto's desk finally lay a detailed game report faxed from North America, all about Metal Slug.
And while this report made its way back and forth between Nintendo's offices on opposite sides of the globe, the twenty thousand units of Metal Slug that Takuya Nakayama had promised had already arrived in the United States via a combination of air and sea freight, rapidly completing nationwide distribution at an astonishing pace.
At this moment, arcades large and small across America were almost completely occupied by that highly recognizable metallic clack! of a round being chambered.
The neon sign of Metal Slug became the brightest light in dimly lit arcades.
In front of the machines, there were always crowds three layers deep or more, and the metal guards around the coin slots rang incessantly as excited players knocked them with twenty-five-cent coins.
A teenage player had just been killed because he failed to notice an enemy appearing behind him. Instead of sympathy, the crowd behind him burst into laughter.
The next coin was already being shoved in, impatiently.
This kind of pure, direct joy—filled with explosions and humor—spread like a virus among teenagers. For the first time, empty spots appeared in front of machines like Art of Fighting and Mortal Kombat, which had once required long lines.
It wasn't that they weren't fun anymore.
It was just that the new machine was simply too exhilarating.
This shift finally stabbed Nintendo in an unexpected way.
Redmond, Nintendo of America headquarters.
Minoru Arakawa stared at the freshly released weekly sales reports and market intelligence, his brow furrowed into a knot.
Sales of NES game cartridges—and even MD consoles and games—had shown a noticeable decline.
The drop wasn't large, only in the single digits, but for the consumer peak season approaching the end of the year, it was an unusual signal in itself.
"Howard, what's going on?" Arakawa placed the report on the desk, his voice tinged with confusion. "Why the drop?
"There haven't been any special circumstances these past two weeks, have there?"
Howard Lincoln looked just as serious as he handed over another document.
"This is our customer traffic analysis from several major distributors," Lincoln explained. "Including Walmart and Toys 'R' Us. They've all mentioned the same phenomenon: during the golden hours from three in the afternoon to seven in the evening, the proportion of teenage customers has dropped noticeably."
"Dropped? Then where did they go?"
"Arcades," Lincoln enunciated the word slowly.
Arakawa's pupils constricted sharply.
In an instant, he remembered the briefing he had casually tossed aside the previous week.
That flashy, superficial thing he had mocked Sega for producing.
Now, that very thing was acting like a massive pump, siphoning away his target users from their living rooms one by one—convincing them to willingly turn the allowance that should have been spent on Super Mario into coin after coin of twenty-five cents, feeding it to a machine called Metal Slug.
"Bring me last week's report on Sega's new arcade machine—and all the latest related intelligence," Arakawa said urgently.
Lincoln was already prepared and immediately handed over the documents.
Arakawa snatched them up, his gaze locked onto the page.
"System 32 new motherboard—visual performance far ahead of its time—first batch of two thousand units sold out in two hours—
"Sega completed distribution of a further twenty thousand units within two weeks—"
When he had read these words before, all he had felt was disdain.
But now, as the latest market intelligence on Metal Slug overlapped with the downward curve on the sales chart, every single word felt like a slap, burning hot across his face.
He had made a mistake.
A strategic, unforgivable mistake.
He had underestimated his opponent—and underestimated the power of the arcade market even more.
Tom Kalinske and that Takuya Nakayama weren't engaging in some flashy, superficial publicity stunt at all. This was a long-planned, precisely executed saturation attack.
Their target had never been the meager profits of arcades.
They were using a revolutionary arcade game to seize players' attention away from home consoles entirely.
"Damn it…" Arakawa muttered under his breath, crushing the report in his fist until the paper crumpled out of shape.
War had already been brought to his doorstep—without his knowledge—and delivered in the very way he despised most.
"Just wait," Arakawa said through clenched teeth. "In another month, when the SNES arrives in North America with the new Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, players who've burned through their excitement will definitely leave the arcades and return to their living rooms."
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