Precooling

April 21st, the first day of GAMEBOY's release.

The air in Tokyo no longer carries the frenzied atmosphere that seemed to be brewing for the storm just two weeks ago.

Although there were queues on the streets of Akihabara, the level of excitement was much milder.

The line was nowhere near as long as the one that stretched across the entire city when GamePocket was released.

The expressions on people's faces reflected more of their habitual support for Nintendo, the long-established giant, than a fervent desire to chase after a groundbreaking new species.

Before noon, the sparse line of people had quietly vanished, as if a gust of wind had swept through and left no trace.

The electronics store employees, having just endured two days of queuing at GamePocket, felt a sense of unreality as they looked at the steady flow of customers before them.

"That's it... nobody's here?"

The sales figures for the first day were released quickly.

On its own, this number is quite good for a new console.

But in a market already ignited by GAMEP0CKET's sales of over 1.5 million units, it appears so pale and powerless.

After all, everyone's benchmark now is Sega, which has been riding high these past two weeks.

The following day, the market finally saw a wave of positive word-of-mouth feedback for Nintendo.

The quality of Super Mario Land is impeccable.

It's pure, concentrated Nintendo fun, with ingeniously designed levels and silky smooth controls.

However, this wave of positive word-of-mouth came quickly and went just as fast.

"You've cleared the level."

"Is that all?"

"This is nowhere near enough!"

Within just a few days, similar feedback began to spread from the player community to Akihabara.

The entire game consists of only 12 levels.

Its long playtime is sustained by its maddeningly high difficulty and repetitive challenges, rather than by a sufficiently rich amount of exploration content.

This happiness was exquisite, yet fleeting and disheartening.

On the sixth day after the release of Game Boy, the sales growth curve began to weaken at a visible rate, like a long-distance runner who had exhausted his strength prematurely.

The trump card, Super Mario Land, ultimately couldn't last long enough.

As for the games like Tennis and Mahjong released around the same time, the amount of entertainment they offered was negligible compared to GAMEPOCKET's impressive lineup of launch titles.

Seven games in total, each with its own unique style and fun, captivating players' time.

Just then, Sega delivered another blow to Nintendo.

Just as Game Boy players had finished playing Super Mario Land a few times and the novelty was wearing off, leaving them feeling a little empty, a new game quietly launched.

Based on the success of <Joy Island Adventure>, COMPILE has created a light interactive game specifically for game consoles.

Part 1: Joy Island Party.

Its purpose is obvious, yet incredibly effective.

We're going to take advantage of GAMEBOY's limited game library in the early stages by constantly bringing in fresh content!

At the same time, a problem that was previously overshadowed by the dazzling brilliance of GAMEPOCKET has begun to emerge among GAMEBOY players.

The screen has no backlight.

When a game is so addictive that it makes you forget to eat or sleep, this flaw becomes particularly glaring. In the darkened bedroom, that dim screen becomes the last barrier to enjoyment.

But now, when the novelty of the game wears off quickly and one becomes far less addicted than their opponent, this weakness seems less important.

For Yokoi Gunpei, the fact that they no longer had the urge to stay up all night to play was a huge irony.

The hardware gap that he least wanted players to notice was actually being "ignored" by players because his own software wasn't attractive enough.

Therefore, with its initial lineup, replayability, social features, and hardware experience lagging behind, consumers voted with their feet, and those players who were still holding back their money almost without hesitation sided with GAMEPOCKET.

Game Boy's first-week sales figures have been finalized.

Less than 200,000 units.

A significant portion of it still relies on the "Mario" brand name for its success.

Even more fatally, unlike Sega's Grand Strategy of simultaneous global release from the outset, the Game Boy was only released in Japan at this time.

The sales figures for the second week were even more dismal, plummeting to less than 100,000 units.

At this point, a full month had passed since the release of GamePocket.

Sega Headquarters, sales command center.

In front of the huge whiteboard, Masao Suzuki from the Marketing Department was writing down the latest global sales data stroke by stroke with a Mark, his hand even trembling slightly with excitement.

"1.31 million units sold in Japan!"

"In the North America market, the strategy of bundling Tetris was hailed by the media as a 'divine move,' resulting in sales of 820,000 units!"

"Europe and other regions combined -140,000 units!"

When he put down his pen, the entire command room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

All the executives looked at the final total on the whiteboard and felt a huge weight lifted off their shoulders.

Global sales have surged to over 2.2 million units!

Four years ago, the independent Tetris handheld console failed to make a big splash in the European and American markets due to distribution issues.

This time, bundling Tetris as a standard feature in every American version of GamePocket proved to be the golden key to unlocking the entire European and American market! For those players, it was simply an irresistible and fatal temptation.

Compared to Sega's dazzling performance, Nintendo's sales report of less than 300,000 units is simply embarrassing.

Faced with a predicament where there were almost no alternatives, Nintendo chose to handle the situation quietly.

They maintained a suffocating silence, offering no explanations or retaliations, simply letting the products lie quietly on the shelves, slowly selling off.

Kyoto's silence was seen by Sega as nothing short of a resounding surrender.

Gentlemen!

President Nakayama Hayao's voice broke the silence, carrying an unwavering determination.

"According to plan, press your advantage!"

Once the order was given, the entire Sega sprang into action, like a fully wound-up war machine.

Packaged GAMEPOCKET development technical documents were swiftly sent to the desks of major game companies across Japan through a third-party communication team.

When the executives of those companies saw the development tools that Sega included, and the development environment instructions that were even simpler and clearer than those from the NES era, they immediately started making calculations.

"The startup cost is less than half that of an NES game?"

"A platform with over two million installed bases, and it's growing rapidly!"

Sega has revived another platform!

"If successful, it will open up a whole new path to wealth!"

Which developer would refuse such a virtually risk-free attempt?

Without much hesitation, they transferred spare developers from their companies to form the GAMEPOCKET development team.

Let's test the waters?

No!

This is a new platform for a new scenario!

Looking at Sega's games, it's worthwhile to carefully examine the differences between them and those from home consoles.

We can't follow in Nintendo's footsteps.