Nintendo Bows Its Head

While Hideo Kojima was busy working on the Metal Gear Setting Collection, reports surfaced of the hugely successful porting of Konami Contra Koei Tecmo's Nobunaga's Ambition's Koei: National Edition to the Mega Drive.

It was lying quietly on Nakayama Takuya's desk.

Contra sold 70,000 copies in its first week, while Contra 'Nobunaga's Ambition: National Edition sold 50,000 copies in its first week.

These sales figures were quickly transmitted to other third parties.

The fruits of victory followed one after another.

The assistant's desk was practically overflowing with letters of intent for cooperation from third-party manufacturers, arriving in droves.

Nakayama Takuya leaned back in his chair, his fingertips lightly tapping on a data summary. He knew very well that the MD's powerful capabilities were an invincible weapon in this blitzkrieg.

The successful porting of Contra and Nobunaga's Ambition's Ambition is like the crucial sharpening of a drawn blade.

In a brief internal meeting, Nakayama Takuya first gave high praise to his subordinates' achievements without reservation, and a murmur of excitement rippled through the office.

But then, he changed the subject, and the atmosphere in the entire conference room instantly became tense.

"Our manpower and resources are limited."

His self-sunlight swept across every young and excited face.

"We don't need to waste any more energy on die-hards like Enix who are determined to be tied to Nintendo."

His voice wasn't loud, but it instantly silenced the entire conference room.

Our goal is not to conquer everyone.

"Instead, it provides the best stage for third parties willing to join us, a stage that is freer and more profitable than Nintendo."

He stood up, walked to the whiteboard, crossed out the word "win over" and wrote down the word "service" heavily.

"Deeply integrating with existing partners to ensure that those already on board the MD platform receive top-tier technical support and earn more money here than elsewhere, creating an unshakeable virtuous cycle—this is the core of our next phase."

Just as Sega was quietly adjusting its strategic direction, a piece of news, neither too big nor too small, but with profound implications, emerged in the industry.

Nintendo quietly lifted the ban on Konami's game, the Goonies 2, which they had previously blocked on the Famicom platform.

This signal was interpreted by the entire market as a "truce" signal from Nintendo in this third-party war.

When the assistant handed him the message, Nakayama Takuya simply chuckled.

He knew that it wasn't Yamauchi Haku's goodwill, but rather a compromise he had to make to stabilize the situation and prevent a cascading defection of more third-party factions under Sega's fierce offensive.

It was Nintendo that offered this way out to save face.

Konami, with its keen sense of opportunity, quickly seized this opportunity and submitted the Gradius and Salamander games to Nintendo.

Release applications for two major shooting games.

Nintendo approved it very quickly, with unprecedented speed.

The ripples from Konami's "unbanning" spread faster than anyone anticipated.

The day after the news broke, as if it had been pre-arranged, several photocopies of "sales licenses" from Nintendo were quietly sent back by Sega's informants planted in different companies.

"Manager Nakayama, this is from Hudson Namco." The assistant placed the documents on the table, a barely suppressed laugh in his voice. "They resubmitted the arcade port that Nintendo had previously rejected, completely unchanged. This time, Nintendo stamped the approval overnight."

Nakayama Takuya picked up those papers and could almost picture the livid face of the head of Nintendo's review department.

The assistant lowered his voice even further, as if sharing a hilarious joke, "Our people at Fangdai reported that the producer Fangdai grabbed the game cartridges and took the Shinkansen to Kyoto overnight. He was terrified that if he was late, the door that Nintendo had finally opened would close again."

A light laugh rang out in the office.

The scene was utterly absurd. Just the day before, manufacturers had been hailed as traitors and relegated to the sidelines by Nintendo, but now they were scrambling to Kyoto like a school of sharks smelling blood, fighting over the scraps that Nintendo had been forced to throw out. What they were offering up were the very games that Yamauchi Haku had once dismissed as "unlikely to ever appear on the Famicom."

Now, not only does Yamauchi Haku have to greet them with a smile, but he also has to personally clear obstacles for these games to go public.

"A bunch of clever opportunists." Nakayama Takuya put down his documents, his assessment precise and calm.

He wasn't surprised at all; in fact, he thought it was all perfectly natural. This wasn't Nintendo's mercy, nor was it a victory for these manufacturers.

Rather, it was Sega MD's solid sales figures that pried open a crack in the door for them.

"They're proving their worth to us, and they're also demanding a long-overdue explanation from Nintendo." He leaned back in his chair, looking out the window. "This means that the most intense and frenzied phase of this third-party battle that has shaken the industry has passed. However, the impact is minimal."

"We have already partnered with quite a few third parties, and currently, among the three major OEMs, our console boasts the best performance."

"If the game is released on multiple platforms, our game's performance will definitely be the best. Based on that alone, we are already invincible in the third-party game market."

"What's left is a game of first-place play. I'm even less afraid of that."

Seeing that Takuya was confident in his company's game development, everyone felt reassured and continued working with renewed energy.

Takuya had just returned to his office with his coffee when the phone on his desk rang.

Takuya put down his coffee and then answered the phone.

A voice, clearly tinged with laughter, came through the receiver.

"Special Secretary Nakayama, I apologize for disturbing you."

He is Konami's president, Kozuki Kagemasa.

First of all, please allow me to congratulate you.

"Metal Gear is truly a masterpiece; it showed me entirely new possibilities for games as an art form."

Then, he changed the subject.

"Furthermore, we at Konami are extremely satisfied with Contra's performance on the Mega Drive."

Kozuki Kagemasa didn't mention a single word about Nintendo's lifting of the embargo, and he didn't even mention <The Goonies 2>.

Faced with this carefully presented compliment, Nakayama Takuya showed not a trace of victor's pride.

He followed the other person's words, responding in the same humorous but more candid tone:

"The president was too harsh Kozuki."

" At Sega, we're simply providing another stage for talented creators like Konami to shine. After all, good works should be seen by more players, shouldn't they?"

He didn't expose Konami's scheme to profit from all three parties.

Instead, he pushed the chessboard to a higher dimension.

"To celebrate the successful start of our collaboration, Sega is willing to provide deeper technical support for Konami's future Mega Drive titles. We could even explore collaboration models for certain exclusive content; I think players would find that very interesting."

On the Kozuki Kagemasa fell into a long silence, lasting several seconds.

His shrewd mind worked quickly, and he instantly realized that the young man in front of him didn't care about the win-win situation for all three parties. After all, he had also seen clearly that Sega was not at a disadvantage in games that were ported by all three parties at the same time. Exclusivity was the killer.

With this in mind, Kozuki Kagemasa vaguely agreed to Takuya's suggestion.