At Sega of America Headquarters, the air conditioning in the president's office was cranked up, yet Tom Kalinske still felt unbearably hot.
He slammed a sales report freshly faxed from the sales department onto his desk with such force that his coffee cup jumped.
"Brilliant!" Tom grabbed the ice water on his desk and took a long gulp, his voice hoarse from excitement. "The Sega CD—the Sega CD! We sold 30,000 units this week alone! That's more than the total for the past three months combined!"
The Sega CD, as an add-on for the Mega Drive, had always struggled in the United States due to a lack of games that appealed to American players and its high price point.
After all, there weren't many American hardcore gamers interested in Japanese RPGs or galgames. Even a masterpiece like Chrono Trigger failed to captivate most Americans, let alone Sakura Wars.
Who could have imagined that a few dinosaurs would breathe life into it?
"Expected," Takuya Nakayama said, sitting on the sofa and flipping through another report on cartridge sales. "As long as the content is solid, hardware barriers don't exist. More importantly, haven't the cartridge sales figures been truly astonishing?"
Bernard nodded with a wry smile, pointing to the bolded number: "Two million units sold in the first week. That's because our latest shipment is still stuck at the Port of San Francisco, customs clearance pending. The warehouse is swamped with calls, and some distributors even parked their trucks outside the San Francisco warehouse, refusing to leave until they got their hands on the stock."
Two million units.
This wasn't just a number; it represented two million Franklin dollars flying out of American wallets, converging into Sega's astonishing cash flow.
And this dinosaur storm was just reaching its peak intensity.
The night in Los Angeles had yet to fade. In a brightly lit executive suite at the Hilton Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, Weekly Famitsu's senior editor, Masashi Matsui, stuffed cold sandwich bites into his mouth while frantically pounding on the clunky fax machine.
The room was thick with cigarette smoke, the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
"Damn it, why is this American fax machine slower than a tortoise?" Matsui cursed, his voice thick with frustration.
Beside him, photographer Kobayashi Masaru was loading roll after roll of film into lightproof bags, dark circles under his eyes. "Stop complaining, Matsui-san," he said. "Do you know how many people in Tokyo are waiting for this story? The Editor-in-Chief nearly deafened me on the phone earlier, threatening to make us swim back to Japan if we don't get the photos back before tomorrow's printing."
Indeed, this assignment had come too suddenly, and it was driving them mad.
Just a week earlier, Sega's Tokyo headquarters had sent a brief fax to every major gaming magazine, containing a single line:
[ Jurassic Park for Mega Drive and Sega CD will be released simultaneously with the movie in North America and major global markets. ]
The news had stunned the entire Japanese gaming industry.
To get first-hand information, Matsui and Kobayashi hadn't even finished packing before the Editor-in-Chief kicked them onto a flight to Los Angeles.
Upon landing, they hadn't even adjusted to the time difference before rushing straight to the CineramaDome.
"Tell me the truth, Matsui-san," Kobayashi said, pausing his work to light a cigarette. "Do you really think that game is that amazing?"
"I don't know if it's that amazing," Matsui replied, his gaze fixed on the headline he'd just typed on the screen—Dinosaur Storm: Sega's Ambitions in Hollywood. A wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "But I do know Sega's game is going to be a massive hit. You were there—did you see Spielberg slinging his arm around Executive Director Nakayama's shoulders? They looked like long-lost brothers. That's Spielberg we're talking about! And the game graphics—"
Matsui paused, the scene from the demo area surfacing in his mind.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex, driven by the Mega Drive's not particularly powerful processor, somehow managed to move with a lifelike fluidity.
There was no stiff frame-dropping, just a tension in the muscles that left even a veteran editor like him dumbfounded.
"Mark Cerny is a monster," Matsui marveled. "I heard he developed this technology. Just how many hidden gems does Sega have up their sleeve?"
"No matter how much we hide it, this issue of the magazine is definitely going to sell like crazy." Kobayashi sealed the last photo, a group shot of Takuya Nakayama, Tom Kalinske, and Spielberg at the premiere, with the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton looming in the background.
Tokyo, Weekly Famitsu editorial office.
Before four monitors, several of the magazine's usually caustic senior editors gripped their controllers, their expressions as intense as if they were disarming a bomb.
On the screen, a Velociraptor, using the cover of the grass, cunningly circled around to the protagonist's flank.
"I see through your tricks, you bastard," muttered the editor in charge of action games, his thumb hovering over the jump button. But instead of charging straight forward like a typical game AI, the dinosaur hesitated, its hind legs tensing before it pivoted sharply and lunged with a sideways bite, using the momentum to change direction.
Click.
The screen turned crimson.
"This hit detection... is this for real?" The editor tossed the controller onto the desk, not in frustration, but in begrudging admiration. He rubbed his aching wrist and turned to Editor-in-Chief Hirokazu Hamamura. "Can the Mega Drive even run this? Did Mark Cerny stuff a coprocessor into the cartridge?"
Hirokazu Hamamura remained silent, making a bold circle on the scoring sheet.
"9 points. The visual expressiveness surpasses the limits of a 16-bit console, and the fluidity of the movements doesn't seem like something from this era."
The other three editors announced their scores one after another.
9 points, 9 points, 9 points.
Total score: 36 points. Platinum Hall of Fame.
In Japan's gaming industry, the combination of "Western production" and "film adaptation" usually equaled "electronic junk." But this time, Sega, following Urgent Crisis and Captain Hook, once again shattered that association with sheer quality.
As soon as that issue of Famitsu hit the shelves, the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex logo on the cover caught everyone's attention.
Accompanied by Masashi Matsui's special report from Los Angeles—Spielberg's Astonishment: When Dinosaurs Break Through the Screen—the entire Akihabara gaming district buzzed with excitement.
Outside Messe Sanoh Game Shop, a crowd of students fresh from school swarmed the demo station.
"Hey, look! That Tyrannosaurus Rex is drooling!"
"For real? Let me play! Don't die so quickly!"
"This game is way too hard! That jump had to be timed perfectly—it's pure hardcore action game mechanics."
The manager stood behind the checkout counter, beaming as he surveyed the rows of empty shelves. Sega's latest shipment had been substantial, but it couldn't keep up with the players' fervor.
Many hadn't even seen the movie, yet they were captivated by the game's oppressive atmosphere and notoriously high difficulty level.
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