"Sold out nationwide."
"Urgent notice: On the first day of release, every store in the country has sold out of stock!"
It was not yet noon when news like this seemed to sprout wings, spreading by television, radio, and word of mouth through streets and alleys, sweeping across all of Japan like a tsunami.
Every major TV station cut in with urgent news reports, and anchors announced this sales miracle in tones of disbelief. Newspaper editorial departments were in complete chaos. Editors-in-chief looked at the copy their reporters handed in and pounded the desks hard. "What kind of headlines are these? Make the headlines bigger! Extra! Print an extra edition!"
"The Birth of a Myth! The Descendants of Roto Conquer the Archipelago Once More!"
"The Pinnacle of the RPG Pyramid! The Undisputed King!"
"The Frenzy of Millions of Players! Another Sleepless Night in Akihabara!"
The media exhausted every inflammatory word they could think of to describe this unprecedented spectacle, as if anything less would not be enough to express the shock in their hearts.
On the secondhand market, the price of Dragon Quest II was instantly driven through the roof. A cartridge that had originally cost around five thousand yen shot up in the blink of an eye to ten thousand, twenty thousand, and some people even posted sky-high prices of fifty thousand yen. Even so, there were prices but no goods; a single cartridge was hard to find.
The new term "DQII refugees," carrying a bit of joking bitterness and helplessness, quickly spread among players. Those players who had returned empty-handed were like wanderers who had lost their spiritual food, loitering around newspaper stands that still sold gaming magazines, their eyes wide as bronze bells as they searched for any information about the game. Even a few comments from