Special Issue

"Are you sure it'll sell?" the supervisor asked.

"Word from Los Angeles is that the whole industry is leveling up. Players need a guide to tell them what machine to buy at the end of the year, what games to buy." The editor-in-chief set down his coffee cup. "This isn't just a magazine. It's this year's second-half gaming shopping list."

Tokyo, Famitsu editorial office.

Because of the time difference, it was afternoon here. The editors gathered around the conference table, looking at the freshly developed photographs.

"The scale of the Americans' expo is ridiculous." A young editor pointed at the dense sea of people in one of the photos.

"Focus on the products." The chief editor rapped the table. "Sega and Sony have already pulled apart in their North American strategies. Compile the development interviews for Yakuza and Jumping Flash!. And that engine nobody knows how to handle yet—find a few local Japanese programmers and ask what they think of an open-source engine."

"Should we make the in-game footage of Square's Final Fantasy VII a two-page poster in the next issue?"

"Do it. Enlarge that screenshot of Bahamut. Readers eat that kind of thing up."

On the first weekend after the E3 expo came to a close, the streets of Los Angeles and New York welcomed a new wave of noise.

After several days of nonstop work, the gaming media delivered E3 special issues as thick as bricks to the shelves of major retail stores and newsstands.

Over the past week, players all across the United States who hadn't been able to make it to Los Angeles in person had heard nothing but the lucky ones who had gone boasting about what they'd seen at the show, and the greedy worms in their hearts had long since been hooked out.