Countdown to Release

At the same time, at the Shibuya -Hachikō Exit bus stop.

The crowd waiting for the bus was more spread out than usual.

Next to the original long wooden bench, several sets of brightly colored hard plastic building blocks have appeared out of nowhere. The large red "Z" shape, the yellow grid pattern, and the blue long strips interlock together, and the height is just right for people to sit down.

A professional woman in a skirt suit stood to the side, hesitated for a long time, reached out and pressed the yellow square, found that it was very hard, and then carefully sat down on it.

"This chair is actually quite comfortable to sit in!"

"Tetris, huh?" A bespectacled young man next to him, holding a newspaper, pointed to the small print printed on the edge of the chair back. "Look here, buy the machine and get a free cartridge, supports four-player battles. Sega has basically turned the station chairs into a block pile."

"You gave me quite a fright when you walked by this morning. I thought the municipal construction had piled up some parts on the roadside." The woman patted her purse and smiled. "But it's not cold sitting here."

"They always like to do this." The bespectacled young man flipped through the newspaper. "Today's inserts are full of GP2 release flyers, listing all the must-see spots in Tokyo."

Beside the green belt surrounding Yoyogi Park.

An elderly man who got up early to walk his dog tightened his grip on the leash.

The Shiba Inu stopped in front of the bushes and barked wildly at a row of colorful signs standing in the middle of the lawn.

On the neatly trimmed green grass stood three Sunflower with round faces, two green Peashooter with wide-open mouths, and five meters away, on the side of the tactile paving, stood a tattered zombie wearing an orange roadblock askew.

The cardboard print is extremely detailed, with the zombie's white, dead fish eyes staring directly at the sidewalk.

"So early in the morning, and you've put all these monsters and ghosts up in the grass," the old man complained, tapping the base of the Peashooter standee lightly with his cane.

The base is a metal clip, firmly embedded deep in the soil, with a metal tag hanging above it. "Plant defenses are in place, zombies will enter the city on April 25th. GP2's flagship title, Plants vs. Zombies."

Two college students who were jogging in the morning stopped, panting heavily.

"Holy crap, they even have Conehead Zombie!" The slightly taller boy walked over and circled the cardboard box. "It looks just like the real thing. I tried it out at Yamada's store last week and died to this guy wearing a roadblock. He gnawed through the Wall-nut in two bites."

"Stop touching it, hurry up and finish running to get in line," his companion urged from ahead. "I heard the official store is releasing the last batch of pre-order slots today; if we don't go, we won't even get to touch the first-release machine."

"What's the rush? Sega is reportedly stocking up everywhere." The boy said this, but his pace noticeably quickened.

Deep in the park, on the thick branches of an old beech tree, hangs a painted hardboard with its outline cut out.

A small, green, lizard-like monster was hanging upside down on a tree branch, its large tail coiled around the trunk, and a tender leaf dangling from its mouth.

It is Pokémon Treecko the Hoenn Region in Generation III.

Under the tree, a man in his thirties, wearing a trench coat, was looking up.

Beside him was a little boy of seven or eight years old, who was holding a red, teardrop-shaped Electronic Pet machine that had been released recently.

"Dad! It's Treecko! There really is Treecko in the tree!" The little boy excitedly pointed to the treetop and jumped up and down. "Quick, pick me up! I want my Torchic to communicate with it!"

The man in the trench coat didn't move, but stared blankly at the small green pixelated lizard.

Ten years ago, also in Tokyo.

He was in high school then, and he walked through this park.

Back then, a Butterfree with outstretched wings hung on this beech tree, a Pidgeotto perched on the roof of Shibuya Station, and Squirtle lined up next to the fire hydrants by the roadside.

That was a commotion created by Sega to launch the first Mega Drive console and the first Pokémon game.

That day, students all over the city were searching for those 149 Pokémon.

Ten years have passed in the blink of an eye.

The machine in his hand changed from black and white to color, and the high school student from back then put on a suit and stood under the same tree with his son.

"Dad, why aren't you talking to me?" The boy tugged at the man's clothes and shook them.

The man snapped out of his daze, reached out and ruffled his son's hair, then squatted down and hoisted the boy onto his shoulders.

"Did you see that?"

"I saw it! It's so cool!" The boy held up the Pokéwalker in his hand and gestured towards the cardboard sign on the tree. "The instructions say that if I insert this into the GP2 cartridge on April 25th, it will come to life in the game console and accompany me to the Hoenn Region to battle the Gym Leaders!"

"Yes, it will keep you company." The man looked at the sign on the tree branch and said softly, "Sega guys haven't changed a bit."

Traffic gradually increased on the streets, and the morning rush hour for commuters arrived in full force.

Whether it's the announcements in subway cars or the steamer behind the Kanto stalls at convenience stores, you can see that blue and white handheld game poster everywhere.

Shinjuku, Shibuya, Akihabara, Ikebukuro.

Overnight, the entire streets and alleys of Tokyo were filled with this unexpected physical set.

Office workers sip canned coffee on boxy chairs, students exchange secret signals next to ammunition boxes on the platform, and people doing their morning exercise dodge Peashooter in the grass.

There's no need for elaborate banners or flyers; elements from the game have already been forcefully squeezed into the cracks of reality.

There are only seven days left until April 25th.

This handheld console launch battle, which had been brewing for months, had reached its limit in the chilly Tokyo morning air.

On the afternoon of April 19, the clanging sound of metal filing cabinets being pulled out echoed through the archives of major newspapers in Tokyo.

Within thirty-six hours of the street installation appearing, the film shot by the social affairs reporters was developed in the darkroom, and photos of the actual street objects covered the editorial desk.

These station seats and lawn signs, constructed from high-density plastic and painted cardboard, quickly became a unified feature in newspapers and magazines.

The first to react was the morning news column of the Mainichi Shimbun.

The typesetters placed a faded, yellowed newspaper clipping from ten years ago in the bottom column of the second page of the morning edition.

That's a microfilm copy of the front page of a newspaper from January 29, 1988.

The print featured a giant Butterfree model on a beech tree in Yoyogi Park, with the headline below. "Pokémon Take Over Tokyo."

The editorial team combined a black-and-white photo from ten years ago with a picture taken yesterday morning of Treecko- shaped sign in the Hoenn Region.

The two photos were taken at the same tree right in Yoyogi Park, with a full ten years in between.

This cultural observation, titled "Street Scenes Reappear After a Decade," points out that ten years ago, Sega promoted the original MEGA...

DRIVE, along with the original Pokémon, covered train stations, green belts, and construction sites throughout Tokyo Metropolis with 149 life-size models, forcing teenagers across the city to take to the streets with homemade picture books in search of them.

Ten years later, the same marketing tactics have once again been applied to the fabric of the same city.

This time, however, the tree branches that used to hang the models were replaced with upside-down lizards, the cold iron benches were replaced with Tetris that people could sit on, and even the grass was filled with zombies in tattered suits with different expressions.

The evening edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun retrieved the police dispatch records from the Metropolitan Police Department's Traffic Division for that year.

The report detailed several minor traffic jams in Shibuya and Shinjuku during the spring of 1988 caused by people crowding around a model, and compared them with passenger congestion data at major train stations during yesterday's morning rush hour.

The columnist wrote that ten years ago, this practice was defined by social commentators as unauthorized commercial graffiti, and even sparked a heated debate on television about the privatization of public spaces.

However, today, such municipal complaints are almost non-existent.

The management departments of major sites even marked out safety lines in advance, which clearly indicates that they have reached a cooperation agreement with Sega to allow these functional game peripherals to be integrated into municipal facilities.

Behind this tolerance lies a complete shift in the cognitive structure of the entire consumer group.

Television stations are following up with special programs much more quickly.

In its midday news special, TV Tokyo displayed Betacam format videotapes that the station had kept on its records.

On the left side of the screen, a low-resolution video of young students running around searching for Pikachu on the lawn of Akihabara Yoyogi Park ten years ago is played, while on the right side, a high-resolution aerial video of people queuing up to experience the GP2 drone in Akihabara yesterday evening is simultaneously shown.

The male commentator's voice-over was flat, listing the business background behind the two sets of data one by one.

Ten years ago, Sega launched the 16-bit Mega Drive (MD) in a do-or-die situation, against the backdrop of the home console market being completely dominated by Nintendo's First Heart Association system.

At that time, street distribution was more like a surprise attack that broke through channel blockades.

By the spring of 1998, ten years later, Sega no longer needed to rely on surprise attacks to fight for a foothold in the market.

The Sankei Shimbun, on the other hand, turned its attention to deeper intergenerational emotions.

The reporter visited the magazine sections of several large bookstores in Shinjuku.

Ten years ago, those elementary school students who ran in the cold wind to collect all 151 Pokédex in their Pokédex have mostly changed into dark suits and become adults commuting on the Yamanote Line every morning.

When these people see the military green heavy machine gun ammunition boxes on the tram platform, or sit on the Tetris bench at the bus stop, the emotional experiences they accumulated in front of the black and white screen back then are awakened without any hindrance.

The report included a candid photo.

A 30-year-old man carrying a briefcase bent down and put his son on his shoulders, letting the child hold up a newly released red Electronic Pet device and aim it at Treecko on a treetop.

The toys in the hands of the two generations have changed from black and white plastic shells to colorful miniature devices that support infrared communication, but their actions in chasing the same set of rules are almost identical.

Even a cultural criticism weekly that usually keeps its distance from commercial activities changed its usual harsh wording in this issue's column, characterizing the incident as a precise delivery of industrialized cultural memories.

The magazine points out that Sega did not use any sophisticated concepts; they simply turned those symbols that had been established for a decade into physical objects and placed them prominently in the middle of the road that people pass by every day.

From newspaper inserts to old archives on television screens, to the ending theme songs of the new Pokémon anime played on the radio.

Within just three days, the entire public opinion network in Tokyo was completely woven into the rhythm of this countdown.

April 25th, 5:30 AM.

The first Sōbu Line tram crossed the Kanda River Railway Bridge and slowed down before entering Akihabara Station.

As soon as the carriage door opened, Kenta and Fatty rushed out with the crowd.

The two ran up the stairs, swiped their tickets through the ticket gates, and plunged into the intersection of the electric street.

Kenta stopped in the middle of the exit plaza.

He tilted his head back, his mouth open, and couldn't close it for a long time.

"Fatty—look up." Kenta raised his hand and poked the ribs of the person next to him.

The fat man was rubbing his aching neck. Following his finger upwards, the plastic bag of breakfast in his hand fell to the ground with a thud.

On the roof of the small red building in the Sega First Hall, a giant, crimson balloon is pressed down.

Thick, sharp claws gripped the edge of the parapet wall, the black stripes on its back standing out vividly in the morning light. It was larger than the entire small red building, looking down at the opposite side of the street from its elevated position.

That is Groudon, the creator of the land in the Hoenn Region.

Across the street from the Radio Kaikan, a deep blue whale hangs suspended in mid-air on the rooftop.

Its tail fin, stretching tens of meters long, stretched directly over the street, blocking half of the sky above the JR station entrance. Its white ventral fins swayed gently in the morning breeze; it was none other than Kyogre, a symbol of the ocean.

Above that, in mid-air, a giant emerald green dragon coiled directly above the center of the Electric Town.

The tethered steel cables are fixed to the fixed steel frame bases of the buildings on both sides. The green dragon's body is coiled into a huge ring, looking down at the red and blue behemoth below.

Rayquaza.

The three balloons completely filled most of the sky Chuo-dori.

"This... this is like bringing Godzilla vs. Mothra to Akihabara?" The fat man squatted down to pick up the plastic bag, muttering to himself, "Did Sega really pull all of Bandai's model division over here to do the hard labor?"

The plaza in front of the station was filled with young people who had just exited the station.

No one was in a hurry; everyone was looking up, snapping photos of the sky with their point-and-shoot cameras.

Flashes of light went off one after another.

"Ten years ago they hung up over a hundred small ones, this year they've brought out three big ones for a tokusatsu showdown!" A young man wearing a red and white baseball cap patted his companion on the shoulder and shouted, "See that? Groudon's markings are exactly the same as a tokusatsu suit!"

"Stop looking! The line for Manager Yamada is stretching all the way to Changping Bridge!"

Kenta suddenly realized what was happening and grabbed the fat boy's backpack strap. "Let's go! Let's pick up the goods!"

The two bypassed the crowds taking photos and dashed into the alley behind Chuo-dori.

The iron gate in front of Yamada Game Shop was being pounded on loudly.

The line stretched out from the threshold, turned two street corners, and ended up in the green belt along the Kanda River.

Sweating profusely, Yamada pulled open the roller shutter door, the hinges making a sharp, screeching sound.

Before he could even stand up straight, a dozen crumpled reservation slips were handed to him.

"Line up! Take a number and get your goods!" Yamada yelled at the top of his lungs, his voice already half-hoarse, "Don't push! There's plenty of stock! Enter the store in order of your queue!"