All Is Ready

The air in the Meguro Ward apartment drifted with the faint bitterness of instant coffee.

Nakayama Takuya was hunched over the low table. Spread open before him was a notebook, on which he had drawn a circle divided into five equal parts. In the five fan-shaped sections were written Contra, Snow Bros., Street Fighter, River City Ransom, and Shadow of the Ninja.

A pencil lay flat in the very center of the circle, and he was just reaching out to spin it.

"Ring, ring, ring—!"

The shrill telephone bell suddenly ripped through the quiet of the room, like a needle puncturing the bubble of his concentration.

Nakayama Takuya frowned slightly and withdrew his hand with some helplessness, grabbing the cream-colored receiver beside him.

"Moshi moshi?"

"It's me, Takuya."

Ito Ryoji's voice came from the other end of the line, carrying a trace of fatigue that was hard to notice, but even more, a kind of pride he could not quite suppress.

"Senior Ryoji!"

Nakayama Takuya's eyes lit up instantly, and the displeasure from being interrupted just now vanished without a trace.

"I got the thing for you."

Ito Ryoji said it lightly, as if he had merely handled some insignificant little matter.

"Really?! Thank you so much, Senior!"

Takuya almost jumped up from the tatami, his voice filled with excitement he could not hold back.

"Don't get happy too early."

Ito Ryoji gave a soft laugh on the other end.

"It took some twists and turns. This thing wasn't easy to get. You know, stuff from over there..."

He did not spell it out, but Takuya understood what he meant.

"In short, kid, you owe me a big one. Get ready to bleed heavily."

"No problem! I'll absolutely make sure you're satisfied, Senior!"

Takuya thumped his chest in guarantee.

"The best sushi restaurant in Ginza. Order whatever you like!"

"Fine, I'll remember that. Come pick it up at my apartment in Minato Ward after work. You know the address."

"Okay! I'll come right over!"

After hanging up the phone, Nakayama Takuya felt his heart pounding hard in his chest.

He glanced at the floppy disk on his desk labeled Tetris, and the corners of his mouth rose uncontrollably.

The crucial physical evidence was finally about to be in his hands. He looked again at the circle on his notebook, picked up the pencil, and drew another circle outside it. "Only children make choices. I want them all!"

He changed into a relatively presentable jacket and hurried out of the somewhat messy apartment.

Minato Ward. Ito Ryoji's bachelor apartment was completely different from Takuya's student-heavy residence.

Simple, modern, spotless, carrying the distinctive calm and sense of order of a high-level white-collar worker.

Ito Ryoji had already changed out of his suit and was wearing comfortable home clothes. He pushed a heavy cardboard box, firmly bound with packing straps, in front of Takuya.

The cardboard box was wrapped in layer after layer of thick transparent tape. There was no trademark on it, making it seem rather mysterious.

"Here, this is it."

Ito Ryoji patted the cardboard box.

"Original flavor, Soviet Union goods. But whether it works or not, whether the ports and voltage are right, I haven't tested it. You'll have to figure that out yourself."

He pushed the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, the lenses reflecting the soft indoor light.

"Thank you, Senior!"

Nakayama Takuya solemnly took the box. It was heavy in his hands.

"I'll definitely make sure you eat back the cost of this meal!"

"All right, hurry up and take it away. Seeing this thing makes me think of my over-budget international long-distance phone bill. For this thing, I called Moscow for an hour, then made several more calls to Vladivostok."

Ito Ryoji waved his hand, complaining with a hint of joking.

After saying goodbye to his senior, Nakayama Takuya held the box as if he were holding some rare treasure and drove back to his apartment in Meguro Ward.

After closing the door, he could not wait to set the box down on the tatami and cut open the packing straps with a small knife.

Inside was revealed a beige-gray machine with a rather rugged appearance. The treatment of its edges and corners carried the stiff bluntness of an industrial product; one look and it was very Soviet Union.

Printed on the body was a string of Cyrillic letters he could not understand at all—Electronika 60.

Beside it lay several thin 5.25-inch floppy disks, their labels likewise covered in handwritten Cyrillic letters.

This was the legendary place where Tetris had been born.

He carefully moved the machine onto the desk, and then immediately ran into the first problem—the power connector.

The power supply was labeled 220V 50Hz. Sure enough, it was different from Japan's 100V 50Hz.

He rummaged through the box of miscellaneous things the original owner had left behind for ages, but he couldn't find any converter that matched.

It looked like he could only go to that place.

He grabbed his wallet, went out again, and headed straight for Akihabara Electric Town.

Akihabara at dusk was ablaze with lights. Shops selling all kinds of electronic components and computer parts stood row upon row, while the beeps of various electronic devices tangled together with avant-garde electronic music.

This was a paradise for electronics enthusiasts, and the best place to hunt for strange and unusual parts.

After hitting a wall at several large appliance stores, he finally found an old shop that specialized in all kinds of secondhand electronic junk, deep in an inconspicuous alley piled high with used goods.

After communicating for ages with the gray-haired, sharp-eyed owner through a mixture of words and gestures, the owner finally dug out a transformer from the bottom of a dust-caked drawer. It looked just as ancient, but the connector seemed like it would match.

Takuya had the owner connect it to the power and confirmed with a multimeter that there was no problem with the output voltage. Then he paid and hurried back to the apartment again.

He carefully connected the converter to the Soviet computer, then plugged in the power.

Taking a deep breath, he pressed the stiff power switch on the Electronika 60.

The fan began to let out a low hum. The screen flickered a few times, and then lines of green Cyrillic characters started scrolling across the black background.

The boot process was slower than he had imagined.

He inserted the floppy disk with what looked like "Tetris" written on it into the drive. Since the Elektronika 60 was a clone of DEC's PDP-8, the commands should be more or less the same, so he entered a few simple loading commands according to his hazy memory.

The floppy drive made a "click-clack, click-clack" sound as it read the disk.

A few seconds later, the screen refreshed.

Familiar blocks began to slowly fall from the top of the screen.

The interface was extremely crude: monochrome, no background, no sound effects, only the blocks themselves.

Most importantly, it only had the most basic falling, rotation, and clearing.

There was only single-player mode, no versus mode.

This was it!

Nakayama Takuya clenched his fist hard, and an indescribable surge of excitement welled up in his chest.

This was exactly the most primitive version described in his memories of Tetris's origins!

It truly existed, running right before his eyes! This machine from the other side of the Iron Curtain was bulky and rough, yet it had given birth to an idea that was about to sweep the globe. History was sometimes just that wondrous.

He had obtained this machine precisely to explain Tetris's copyright ownership to Sega. Sega needed to obtain authorization openly and honorably, not simply "borrow" from it.

This provided the firmest evidence and foundation for his next plan.

He looked at the clumsy falling blocks on the screen, then thought of the "Sega Versus Version" on his own computer, with its richer features, brisker tempo, and competitive fun.

He thought of the tangled, root-knotted copyright disputes over Tetris in his previous life. Sorry, Frenchmen. Sorry, Nintendo. This time, Tetris belongs to Sega.

Nakayama Takuya's gaze became incomparably sharp and resolute.

He turned off that meritorious old Soviet machine and carefully placed it back into the box.

Then he walked over to his own MS-DOS computer and neatly placed together the Tetris (Sega Versus Version) development proposal, which he had revised and polished over and over, and the floppy disk that could run the demo program.

Everything was ready.

He picked up the telephone receiver on the desk, paused with his finger on the dial, then without the slightest hesitation dialed the direct line to Nakayama Hayao's office.