The Puzzle of Console Development

"Damn, you're right. I'm so busy I'm practically begging to worry about whether a zombie lying in a coffin will suddenly jump up and start tap dancing," Tom chuckled self-deprecatingly. "Looks like I really do need a couple of aspirin pills."

"Just keep an eye on Nintendo. As for Atari— " Takuya toyed with his pen, a hint of mockery flashing in his eyes, "Let's just treat them as jokes to amuse us during our leisure time. After all, it's not a bad thing to have another loser in the market to highlight our shortcomings."

"Since we've brought up the new console," Nakayama Takuya steered the conversation away from the Atari zombie, casually flipping open another briefing on the corner of the table, "How's Mark Cerny's progress? I saw in his Jurassic Park project weekly report that the inverse kinematics program has been running?"

Tom Kalinske chuckled on the other end of the phone, "That guy's a genius. You know, when he made that Tyrannosaurus Rex move, the whole development team was stunned. He'd already chewed up the toughest bones; all that was left was to fill the skeleton with meat, which was the job of the artists and level designers—it wasn't a challenge for him anymore."

"That's good." Takuya tapped his fingers lightly on the table, making a series of light tapping sounds. "Now that the hardest part is done, let's not let it sit idle and get moldy. I need to borrow it for a while."

"Borrow someone?" Tom paused for a moment. "You mean you want him to go to Japan?"

"You know the next-generation console project has already started at headquarters," Takuya said in a low voice, his tone becoming somewhat meaningful. "Although the general direction has been set, relying solely on Nakamura and his overly meticulous hardware engineers isn't enough to bring those crazy ideas to fruition. We need a top-tier programmer who understands the underlying hardware and has a uniquely quirky way of thinking to act as a lubricant. Mark is the most suitable candidate in the world."

"You want him to do architecture design?" Tom quickly realized. "That suits his taste perfectly. If he stays in Redwood City just doing repairs, I'm afraid he'll get bored and hack into the Pentagon's servers. Just ask him directly; if he agrees, I'll release him."

After hanging up the overseas call, Takuya didn't hesitate much and immediately dialed the internal landline of Mark Cerny's development team.

"Beep beep beep-"

The silent tone in the receiver lasted for a full half minute.

Takuya was very patient. He knew that when a genius like Mark got caught up in coding, the sound of a phone ringing was no different from a mosquito buzzing.

Just as Takuya was about to hang up and redial, the receiver was grabbed, and a slightly irritable voice with a heavy nasal tone came from the other end. "This is the development team. If you're ordering pizza, I want double sausages. If not, you'd better have something important to say in ten seconds."

"It's me, Nakayama Takuya."

The breathing on the other end of the phone paused for a second, followed by a clattering sound of keyboards being pushed aside.

"Oh, Executive Director." Mark's tone immediately switched back to normal, even with a hint of guilt. "I thought it was the front desk asking if we wanted to order dinner—what are your instructions?"

"Turn off the speakerphone first, if you've turned it on," Takuya, check if there are any suspicious people around."

"It's just me and two computers compiling code." A soft click came through the receiver. "Now only I can hear you."

"Listen, Mark. Headquarters in Japan has launched the next-generation console development program."

Without any preamble, Takuya directly recounted to Mark Cerny the development direction and current progress of the next-generation console that he had previously agreed upon with Minister Yu Suzuki, and Nakamura Yuji Naka.

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Only the crackling sound of electricity could be heard in the transoceanic cable.

Takuya didn't urge him; he knew that for a genius like Mark Cerny, it would take some time to digest this radical hardware combination.

This design is like stuffing Ferrari's engine into the belly of a heavy tank—it's both insane and full of a certain violent aesthetic.

A full minute passed before Mark's voice came through the receiver.

"MIPS—plus a custom order from SGI? And even hybrid 2D and 3D rendering?" Mark spoke at an astonishing pace, almost incoherently. "This is simply—utter chaos. Are you planning to use the high throughput of the RISC architecture to brute-force graphics computing? This will drive those assembly language programmers crazy."

"That's why I came to you," Takuya said calmly. "Mediocre hardware only needs mediocre engineers. Only this kind of 'messy' stuff is worthy of your brain. So, are you interested in putting a rein on this Beast?"

Damn it.

Mark cursed, followed by a crisp clapping sound. "This sounds a hundred times sexier than teaching that clumsy Tyrannosaurus Rex to walk. You know what? I've basically finished dealing with all the problems on the Jurassic Park side. I've already built the dinosaur's skeleton; all that's left is for the Art Team to skin it up and fill in the level design—that repetitive work is a complete waste of my life."

"So that means you agreed?"

"Of course! If I don't go, you'll definitely turn that expensive MIPS chip into a useless piece of junk that can only draw squares on the screen." Mark's tone revealed an undisguised excitement. "Give me a few days to hand over the work. I'll hand over all the documentation and toolchain to my deputy and let him deal with the remaining dinosaur textures."

The sound of a chair being violently pushed aside came from the other end of the phone; clearly, this genius was no longer able to sit still.

I will be at Haneda Airport next Tuesday.

Haneda Airport was packed with people on Tuesday.

Mark Cerny appeared at the arrivals gate dragging a suitcase covered in stickers.

After adjusting to the time difference at the hotel for a day, Mark arrived at Sega Headquarters's Hardware Development Department at the headquarters early Wednesday morning.

When Mark's gaze fell on the Model 2 prototype on the lab bench, its exposed circuit boards gleaming like an untamed Beast, his still-sleepy eyes instantly lit up with an alarming brightness.

"What is this?!" Mark threw his luggage into the corner and rushed to the lab table without even saying hello.

Yu Suzuki, who was debugging a piece of rendering code, wasn't annoyed by the sight. He pointed to a stream of fluctuating data on the screen and said, "Look here. Although there are only a few dozen polygons, the dynamic effects after adding the sprite sheet save nearly 70% of the computing power compared to pure 3D calculations."

"Genius! Using 2D logic to deconstruct the computing power bottleneck of 3D!" Mark grabbed a pen from the table and quickly drew an architecture diagram on the whiteboard next to him.