"Damn, you're right. I've been so swamped I'm losing my mind. I actually worried a zombie in a coffin might suddenly jump out and start tap-dancing," Tom said with self-deprecating humor. "Looks like I really do need those two aspirins."
"Just keep your eye on Nintendo. As for Atari..." Takuya twirled his pen, a hint of amusement flickering in his eyes. "Let's just treat them as after-dinner entertainment. After all, having a loser in the market to make us look better isn't a bad thing."
"Speaking of the new console," Takuya Nakayama steered the conversation away from Atari's "zombie" and flipped open another report on the corner of his desk. "How's Mark Cerny's progress? I saw in the Jurassic Park project's weekly report that the inverse kinematics program is up and running?"
Tom Kalinske chuckled on the other end of the line. "That guy's a genius. You know, when he got the Tyrannosaurus Rex moving, the entire development team was stunned. He's already cracked the toughest nut. The rest is just filling out the skeleton with flesh—that's the artists' and level designers' job. No challenge left for him."
"Good." Takuya lightly tapped his fingers on the desk, producing a series of brisk tap-tap-tap sounds. "Now that we've tackled the hardest part, let's not let him sit around and get rusty. I need to borrow him."
"Borrow him?" Tom paused. "You want him to go to Japan?"
"The next-generation console project at Headquarters has already begun, as you know." Takuya lowered his voice, his tone becoming meaningful. "While the overall direction is set, turning those wild ideas into reality requires more than just Department Manager Nakamura's overly meticulous hardware engineers. We need a top-tier programmer who understands the underlying hardware and has a sufficiently unconventional mindset to serve as a lubricant. Mark is the perfect candidate in the world."
"You want him to handle the architectural design?" Tom quickly realized. "That's right up his alley. If we keep him in Redwood City just doing maintenance work, I'm afraid he'll get bored and hack into the Pentagon's servers. Just ask him directly. If he agrees, I'll release him."
After hanging up the transoceanic call, Takuya didn't hesitate. He immediately dialed the internal line for the Mark Cerny Development Team.
Beep... Beep... Beep...
The dial tone droned for a full half-minute.
Takuya remained patient. He knew that when a genius like Mark got caught up in coding, a ringing phone was as insignificant as a mosquito's buzz.
Just as Takuya was about to hang up and redial, the receiver was snatched up. A slightly irritable voice with a heavy nasal tone barked, "This is the development team. If you're ordering pizza, I want double pepperoni. Otherwise, you'd better have something urgent to say in the next ten seconds."
"It's me, Takuya Nakayama."
The breathing on the other end froze for a beat, followed by the clatter of a keyboard being pushed aside.
"Oh, Managing Director." Mark's tone instantly shifted back to normal, tinged with a hint of guilt. "I thought it was the front desk asking about dinner orders—what can I do for you?"
"First, turn off the speakerphone if it's on," Takuya said calmly. "And check if anyone else is around."
"Just me and two computers compiling code." A soft click came through the line. "Now it's just me listening."
"Listen, Mark. Japanese Headquarters has initiated the next-generation console development project."
Takuya wasted no time, immediately outlining the research and development direction and current progress of the next-generation console, as previously agreed upon with Department Manager Nakamura, Yu Suzuki, and Yuji Naka.
Silence fell on the other end of the line, broken only by the crackling of electricity through the transatlantic cable.
Takuya didn't rush him. He knew that a genius like Mark Cerny needed time to digest this radical hardware combination.
The proposed architecture was like cramming a Ferrari engine into a heavy tank—both insane and imbued with a violent aesthetic.
A full minute passed before Mark's voice finally crackled through the receiver.
"MIPS—with a custom Silicon Graphics chip? And you're even planning hybrid 2D/3D rendering?" Mark's words tumbled out in a torrent, bordering on incoherence. "This is utterly reckless! You're trying to brute-force graphics processing with the high throughput of a RISC architecture? This will drive the assembly language programmers to their breaking point!"
"That's why I came to you," Takuya said calmly. "Mediocre hardware only needs mediocre engineers. Only something this 'crazy' is worthy of your mind. So, are you interested in putting a leash on this beast?"
"Damn it," Mark cursed, followed by a sharp clap. "This sounds a hundred times more exciting than teaching that clumsy Tyrannosaurus Rex how to walk. You know, I've basically solved all the major problems with Jurassic Park. The dinosaur's skeleton is complete; all that's left is for the art team to slap on the skin and the level designers to fill in the gaps. This repetitive work is a complete waste of my life."
"So, that's a yes?"
"Of course! If I don't go, you'll probably turn that expensive MIPS chip into a useless piece of hardware that can only draw squares on a screen." Mark's voice was brimming with barely concealed excitement. "Give me a few days to hand over my responsibilities. I'll transfer all the documentation and toolchains to my deputy and let him worry about the remaining dinosaur textures."
The sound of a chair being violently pushed back echoed through the phone line, making it clear that the genius on the other end couldn't sit still any longer.
"I'll be at Haneda Airport next Tuesday."
Haneda Airport on Tuesdays was a bustling hub of activity.
Mark Cerny, dragging a suitcase plastered with stickers, appeared at the arrivals gate.
After a day of adjusting to the time zone at his hotel, Mark arrived promptly at the Hardware Development Department of Sega Headquarters early Wednesday morning.
When his gaze fell upon the Model 2 prototype on the lab bench—its circuit boards exposed, whirring like an untamed beast—his still-sleepy eyes lit up with an almost frightening intensity.
"What is this—?" Mark tossed his luggage into a corner and lunged toward the bench, forgetting even to greet anyone.
Yu Suzuki, who was debugging rendering code, didn't mind the interruption. He pointed to a stream of flickering data on the screen. "Look here. Though it's only a few dozen polygons, the dynamic effects achieved by layering sprites save nearly seventy percent of the computational power compared to pure 3D rendering."
"Genius! Using 2D logic to break through 3D's computational bottlenecks!" Mark grabbed a pen from the desk and began sketching architectural diagrams on the whiteboard with furious speed.
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