Tetsuya Mizuguchi scratched his head. "That's exactly what we're struggling with. The physics feedback from drifting through corners in rally racing is captivating, but street racing offers a stronger sense of immersion. The development team has been divided for two days, with neither side able to convince the other."
"Why force a binary choice?" Takuya countered.
He stood up, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and pointed at the intricate network of expressways surrounding Tokyo. "Have you seen Bayonetta?"
"Of course!" Tetsuya's eyes lit up, and the lead designers behind him nodded in agreement.
The manga was practically mandatory reading among car enthusiasts. The midnight Tokyo expressways, the Devil Z roaring at 300 km/h—just the thought was enough to make adrenaline surge.
"That kind of heart-pounding sensation—threading through dense traffic at breakneck speed—is something closed-circuit racing can't match." Takuya turned and leaned against the glass. "But that's not enough. Simply dodging cars and running laps can get tedious after a while. Since this is a game, we need to give players some trouble—or, to put it another way, some excitement."
Tetsuya Mizuguchi instinctively pulled out his notebook. "Are you suggesting increasing the complexity of the road conditions?"
"No, I'm talking about adding opponents." A smirk played on Takuya's lips as he gestured dramatically. "Imagine you're racing down the highway in an illegally modified sports car. Suddenly, red and blue lights flash in your rearview mirror, and a police siren wails. At that moment, your goal isn't the finish line anymore, but how to use the traffic, the exits, and even the police cars themselves to shake off those rabid patrol cars hot on your tail."
The conference room fell silent, followed by a flurry of hurried breaths.
"Pursuit... Pursuit Mode?" Tetsuya's voice trembled with excitement.
"Exactly. And we can even reverse it." Takuya spread his hands. "Why should players always be the fugitives? Let them drive a Lamborghini painted like a police car, ramming those speed demons off the road. The thrill of legal violence—doesn't that beat simply crossing the finish line first?"
This direct pitch shattered the development team's psychological defenses.
The young team members' expressions shifted from surprise to ecstatic delight, like wolves starved for three days suddenly spotting a lavish banquet.
"This... this is amazing!" The level designer nearly snapped his pen in his excitement. "We can have a closed-circuit racing mode, an underground midnight highway mode, and even a police chase mode! And if we could incorporate the drifting sensation from rally races on muddy terrain—"
"Stop, stop, stop." Takuya, observing the team already daydreaming about their grand plans, had to pour some cold water on their enthusiasm. "Your ideas are fantastic, but reality is harsh. A single CD-ROM only holds 650 megabytes, and we can't afford to waste it."
He tapped his fingers on the table to regain everyone's attention. "High-fidelity car models, complex track data, and even compressed CD audio tracks—all of these are major memory hogs. Especially if we want to include open-world street scenarios, the texture data will grow exponentially. You need to make tough choices and ensure players get the richest experience possible without compromising our game's core essence. I want it all on one disc. No matter how many modes you cram in, everything must fit on a single disc. Otherwise, swapping discs just to change a car or track would be a terrible user experience."
Tetsuya Mizuguchi took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
He scribbled notes in his notebook at a furious pace, his brow furrowing and smoothing rhythmically as his mind raced to calculate the perfect balance between gains and sacrifices.
"Understood." A moment later, Mizuguchi closed his notebook, stood up, and bowed deeply. "We'll reassess the resource allocation. Though we may have to abandon some unrealistic fantasies, we want the core gameplay—all of it!"
Watching the team rush out of the office clutching their proposal like precious gold bricks, Takuya Nakayama shook his head with a smile.
This kind of unbridled ambition was exactly the drive Sega needed right now.
For a full week after Tetsuya Mizuguchi's visit, no other development teams came knocking.
Just when Takuya was beginning to think the other teams would stubbornly hole up, determined to squeeze out a proposal using their own wits alone, another team finally arrived.
It was the group responsible for the Pokémon spin-off series.
Leading them was a round-faced producer named Eiji Ogasawara.
Ever since they created Pokémon Great Adventure for the Mega Drive, it was as if they'd opened their Ren and Du meridians. During the lulls between mainline RPG sequels, they specialized in developing various light Pokémon games that consistently charmed players of all ages, solidifying their position as Sega's top "kid-oriented" developers.
"Managing Director, this is our next-generation proposal," Eiji Ogasawara said, placing the proposal on the table.
Takuya glanced at the cover, and his eyebrow instantly shot up.
[ Paper Pokémon Adventure ]
The words immediately brought back memories from his past life.
He didn't even need to open it; the image of that red-hatted plumber transforming into a 2D character and wobbling through the illustrated world of Pokémon Great Adventure already surfaced in his mind.
This time, the protagonist would be Pikachu.
"Explain your approach," Takuya said, flipping through the proposal.
"Here's the situation, Managing Director," Eiji Ogasawara said, his confidence bolstered by the fact that Takuya hadn't immediately tossed the proposal back at him. "We consulted Mr. Celni in the Hardware Development Department. He showed us the specs for the new console. While its 3D capabilities are impressive, if we were to build a fully 3D Pokémon world with the current polygon count... to be honest, it's a bit terrifying."
He pulled out a test image from the folder.
The image showed a Bulbasaur pieced together from rough polygons, its sharp edges making it look like a green geometric monster, completely losing the roundness and cuteness of the original artwork.
"If we released this, parents would complain that it's too scary for kids," Eiji Ogasawara said with a wry smile. "So we figured, since we couldn't get the 3D models to look smooth enough, we'd just scrap 3D models altogether."
Takuya Nakayama raised an eyebrow and pointed at a concept illustration in the proposal. "So you just flattened them?"
"Exactly! Flattened!" Ogasawara exclaimed, gesturing enthusiastically. "The backgrounds are true 3D—depth, perspective, lighting and shadows. But the characters are all high-precision 2D hand-drawn art, processed to look like paper cutouts. This way, we avoid the 'blocky face' problem from insufficient polygons, and we can push Sega's hardware to its absolute limit in terms of 2D sprite handling."
Takuya studied the concept illustration.
In the scene, a lush forest of 2D cutout sprites thrived within a 3D environment. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting dappled shadows. At the center stood a paper-thin Pikachu, its edges faintly highlighted in white, reminiscent of a children's pop-up book.
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