Reborn in the Golden Age of Gaming: I Became the Prince of Sega Chapter 136 133: Propaganda Showdown

January 28, 1988, dawn. Tokyo's sky hung in a hazy, half-awake blue.

Nintendo's marketing team, nursing a slight hangover from their perceived triumphs, braced for another "victorious" workday. To them, Tokyo—the empire's capital—was drowned in Mario's promotional tide.

But as citizens stepped outside, they found the city transford overnight.

A schoolboy, backpack slung, took his usual shortcut through Yoyogi Park. He froze, gazing upward. A vibrant Butterfree model hung from a tall beech tree, its wings quivering in the morning breeze, poised to take flight.

A suited salaryman, irritably checking his watch at a Shibuya bus stop, glanced up and missed a heartbeat. Perched on the stop's canopy was a fierce Pidgeot model, its sharp eyes surveying the waiting crowd.

At a guro construction site, workers preparing for a grueling day stopped short. At the entrance stood life-sized Machamp and Machoke models, steel beams propped on their shoulders in bodybuilder poses, cheering the crew or "helping" with heavy materials.

At a street corner, a row of Squirtle models in sunglasses stood neatly by a fire hydrant, forming a cool "Squirtle Fire Brigade."

Tokyo—from parks to stations, construction sites to corners—had beco a living *Pokémon Park*. Each ticulously crafted model bore a small acrylic ad: "February 13, Sega ga Drive & *Pokémon Park: Adventure* Launch! Limited Pikachu Edition Console!"

This unprecedented urban art spectacle spread like a virus through phone lines and word of mouth, igniting society. TV news vans raced across the city, reporters capturing first-hand footage. The next day's headlines abandoned politics and economics: "Pokémon Conquers Tokyo" scread bold print across every paper.

Social comntators clashed. So TV pundits decried it as "lawless comrcial graffiti," a capitalist assault on public spaces. Others praised it in columns as "new-era cultural interaction," a genius bridge between virtual and real. Regardless, a spontaneous "Find the Pokémon" hunt gripped Tokyo's citizens, especially kids, who road with homade Pokédexes, logging each creature's location.

dia fueled the frenzy, launching a "Collect All 151 Pokémon" challenge. Yet, after exhaustive efforts, people discovered Sega had placed exactly 149 Pokémon, leaving two unnad mysteries, stoking the IP's allure with a tantalizing cliffhanger.

Nintendo's costly Mario billboards and posters beca ignored, expensive backdrops in this citywide craze.

On January 30, the morning ani slot aired *Pokémon* Episode 65: "Viridian Gym! The Final Badge!" When Rocket Team's leader, Giovanni, debuted alongside his silver-armored, oppressive wtwo, viewers were captivated. The episode ended with Ash earning his eighth badge, but the usual credits didn't roll.

Instead, a new, unannounced animated ad seamlessly followed. It flashed back to Episode 17, "Island of Giant Pokémon," the narrator's magnetic voice tying *Pokémon Park: Adventure*'s story to that mysterious island run by Giovanni. A fleeting glimpse of armored wtwo appeared, its cold, powerful gaze promising secrets unveiled in the ga. "Play to unravel the mystery," the narrator hooked, rging ani and ga narratives.

In Kyoto, Nintendo's headquarters was a pressure cooker. The conference room's massive TV looped Tokyo news reports on the "Pokémon invasion." Hiroshi Yamauchi's face was ashen. Maeda's rejected report on Tokyo's "propaganda vacuum," with his boss's red-inked "enemy fears battle, lacks funds, a sign of triumph" now lay mockingly on the table.

Maeda sat silent, head bowed.

"Demo!" Yamauchi's roar shattered the stillness. "Let everyone play *Super Mario Bros. 3*! Let them feel what a real, ultimate ga is!" He ordered the Shoshinkai network to launch the largest-ever *Mario 3* demo events in key stores nationwide—a final, confident trump card to crush Sega's flashy marketing with unmatched ga quality.

Nintendo's war machine roared, demo events drawing huge crowds. Mario's charm sparked endless gasps and cheers.

But Sega outmaneuvered them. Their stores matched with demos, showcasing not just *Pokémon Park: Adventure* but *Fatal Fury*'s flashy combat and *Space Harrier*'s lightning-fast shooting. Five diverse, polished launch titles ford a dazzling software wall.

Worse, Nintendo's spies at Sega's Akihabara flagship store reported two heavily guarded demo machines running near-complete previews of *Phantasy Star*—a deep, explorable RPG—and *Super Robot Wars*, a strategic, action-packed tactics ga. These reports landed on Shigeru Miyamoto's desk.

Reading descriptions of vast RPG worlds and cinematic strategy battles, Miyamoto felt a shift. His resentnt over *Mario 3*'s rushed launch morphed into dread. He wasn't facing a re imitator but a "ga legion" spanning every genre, built on a cohesive vision.

Could his 8-bit masterpiece single-handedly fend off this next-gen onslaught? The fight, from the start, seed unfairly stacked.