President Makoto Yamashina of Bandai sat in the front row, raising his glass in a toast. Beside him, Chuta Mitsui wore a calm expression that lasted less than two seconds before his barely suppressed smile betrayed his true feelings.
"Department Manager Sato is too kind," Takuya Nakayama began, his tone as relaxed as if he were chatting about the weather. "Not long ago, people believed that movies and games existed in separate realms, never to cross paths. But Jurassic Park taught us that audiences' wallets are interconnected across all forms of entertainment."
The audience chuckled knowingly.
"Hollywood has paved the way. Our job is to widen the road," Nakayama continued, unbuttoning his suit jacket. He looked relaxed. "In the future, screen size will no longer be a barrier. Movie screens, TV screens, even the tiny black-and-white screens on handheld devices—all are gateways to engagement. We don't need to compete for the same slice of the pie. Our goal is to make the entire pie bigger."
He paused, his gaze sharpening momentarily before softening into a warm smile. "Whether you're making movies, selling toys, or coding games like us, as long as we can get audiences to willingly open their wallets, collaborations like this—no matter how many times we repeat them—will never be too many."
No sooner had the words been spoken than Makoto Yamashina was the first to start clapping.
Immediately after, applause surged through the banquet hall like a tsunami.
There was no profound theory, no sentimental sentiment. In this economic winter, the words "let's make money together" sounded sweeter than any poetry.
Several days had passed since the extravagant victory banquet at the Imperial Hotel, but the aftershocks of Jurassic Park continued to reverberate.
The lines at the theater box offices had thinned, but the cash registers in surrounding shops still rang incessantly.
As the first film in history to gross over a billion dollars worldwide, the Tyrannosaurus Rex's long tail effect was astonishingly powerful, each second ferrying more dollars into Sega's overseas accounts.
The financial reports delivered by the finance department were stunningly impressive, enough to make the board of directors drink champagne like water for three days and nights.
But on Takuya Nakayama's desk, this gilded financial report was casually tossed aside, unable to even hold down the thick stack of blue folders beneath it.
For him, dinosaurs were already "past tense."
Counting money while resting on one's laurels was a capitalist's affair. As a time traveler, he naturally wouldn't indulge in such things.
He shifted his focus back to the development of the arcade Model 2 board, the next-generation console, and the various game development teams.
Hardware Development Department.
A tangled web of multicolored wires snaked across the exposed circuit board of the Model 2 prototype, while fans crudely taped to the chips emitted a tractor-like roar.
Despite its precarious appearance, this haphazard assembly was currently the sacred treasure of the entire Hardware Development Department.
Though still powered by a standard R3000 chip—the off-the-shelf version, not the custom-compatible one from Silicon Graphics—and lacking the polygon-processing power of the final design, it served as a crucial foundation for their work.
"Don't look at it like that, Mr. Suzuki," Takuya Nakayama said, tapping the slightly warm heatsink and stopping Yu Suzuki's hand, which had been reaching for the overclocking settings. "It's already pushing its limits. We need to prioritize stability and lifespan. Even if we replace the chip later, we need a reliable development platform for the teams now."
Yu Suzuki reluctantly withdrew his hand, pointing at the wireframe animation on the screen, which consisted of only a dozen or so frames. "This performance is still cutting it close."
"That's precisely why we're having you focus on the 'invisible' work first," Takuya Nakayama replied, slamming a new progress chart onto the table. "Collision volume detection, physics feedback logic, input signal latency calibration, and that damned AI behavior tree—all of this can be developed independently of 60 FPS rendering. Lay the groundwork now, and once the Silicon Graphics chips arrive, we can swap them in, fine-tune them, and get the system running."
As for the deeper graphics optimizations, that was Mark Cerny and Yuji Naka's battlefield.
The two were currently sequestered with a group of elite engineers, their hairlines gradually receding, undergoing a kind of secluded cultivation.
Their mission wasn't to make a game, but to create tools.
In the 3D era, asking ordinary programmers to write assembly code directly for the hardware, without useful graphics libraries or compilers, was like telling someone to dig through Mount Fuji with a spoon.
Sharpening the axe doesn't delay the chopping.
This principle holds true everywhere, but in the game industry, where every second counts, resisting the urge to start hacking wildly is the real challenge.
It was said that Silicon Graphics headquarters on the other side of the Pacific had entered a state of war, with engineers frantically working to ensure compatibility between the custom chip's instruction set and existing software.
This was the kind of thing that couldn't be rushed.
After leaving the Hardware Development Department, Takuya Nakayama headed to the neighboring office of Tetsuya Mizuguchi's racing game development team.
Everyone was seated before their monitors, their fingers dancing over the keyboards like sculptures come to life.
Amidst this sea of static figures, one figure stood out like a sore thumb.
Dressed in a slightly baggy white shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he held two file folders under his arm and a stack of fax papers in his hand, shuttling between workstations with purposeful strides.
He'd help the art team allocate resources one moment, then dash to the design team to check progress the next. His feet seemed to carry him everywhere, even to other development teams.
Takuya squinted, recognizing the man who was busy as a spinning top.
Oguchi Hisao.
Seeing this man, his face etched with the lines of relentless toil, Takuya's heart skipped a beat.
To the current Sega employees, this man was merely a versatile "Swiss Army knife" manager, someone to be moved wherever manpower was needed.
But in Takuya Nakayama's memories from his previous life, this man was a lifeline for Sega's future.
During Sega's darkest days in his past life, Oguchi Hisao had been appointed President at a critical juncture. He aggressively cut unprofitable businesses, single-handedly pulling the sinking giant back above water.
To waste such a capable leader, a man who could steer the ship, by leaving him stuck at the grassroots level as a firefighter constantly putting out fires, was a criminal waste of talent.
Now that Mark Cerny had been promoted to lead technological breakthroughs, the company's administrative management and project coordination—its critical rear echelon—needed a strong leader to take charge.
Takuya Nakayama was desperately short on time. He needed to free himself from the tedious daily approvals and personnel disputes to focus on broader strategic planning.
"Oguchi-san," Takuya Nakayama called out.
His voice wasn't loud, but in the quiet office, it carried clearly.
Oguchi Hisao, who had been rushing toward the sound effects team, abruptly stopped. Turning around and spotting Takuya Nakayama, he hastily tucked the messy stack of papers in his arms into his jacket, bowed deeply, and apologized, "Executive Director Nakayama! My apologies, I didn't notice you approach."
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