"Metal Slug—now that's a great name!"
"Just hearing it makes you feel the hardness of steel and the scent of gunpowder!"
The confusion and unease of being dragged into a sudden meeting vanished at once, replaced by a near-manic surge of creative energy.
Talent that had been suppressed for too long, sharpness that had been worn down by repeated failures—everything ignited at the very moment the words Metal Slug appeared.
"Director! Besides tanks, we can do planes! Helicopters! Even submarines!"
A young programmer with glasses—ashen-faced just moments ago—was now flushed with excitement. He pushed his glasses up and blurted out, "System32's scrolling capability can totally handle levels that go above ground and underwater!"
"Yes, yes!" the artist beside him chimed in. "And the enemy death animations—we can do so many kinds! Burned into charcoal, blasted into the air, struggling underwater—we can even make them hop around clutching their butts if they get shot there!"
"And prisoners! We can design captured allies—saving them gives items, or they can fight alongside you! They can salute, blow kisses, and when they die, their souls can float upward!"
"Boss fights! The bosses must be huge! Cover the whole screen! Their entrance should shake the heavens, and when they explode, they should shatter into thousands of pieces!"
Ideas surged like a breached dam, flooding the entire lab with feverish enthusiasm.
Director Takahashi listened, grinning ear to ear, slapping his thigh repeatedly. "Good! That's good! Put all of that in!"
"Wait."
Uchida Minoru's low voice cut through the chaos.
His stubborn, rigid demeanor kicked in again—brows knotted, face frighteningly stern.
"Too many ideas will dilute the core experience. For the first game, we must perfect two points: tanks and destruction. Every detail must be polished to the extreme. We are not here to make a bunch of flashy but empty features."
The room cooled instantly.
Several young team members opened their mouths to argue, but a single glare from Uchida shut them up.
Director Takahashi looked awkward, about to mediate, when Takuya clapped his hands lightly.
"Uchida is right." He acknowledged Uchida's professionalism, then turned to the discouraged group. "But all of your ideas—not a single one goes to waste."
He walked to the whiteboard and picked up a pen of a different color.
"It's like feeding pigeons. You can't throw out a whole year's worth of feed at once. That's not generosity—that's waste. You give them small handfuls, little by little, so they keep coming back for more."
Everyone blinked for a moment, then burst out laughing.
"Uchida," Takuya said, "you're going to be the pigeon-feeder. Write down every idea they just said. We'll have a meeting and sort them out."
He wrote several titles on the board: Metal Slug 1, Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug X.
"Which features are must-haves for the first game, which are reserved for the second to surprise players, and which can be used for enhanced editions or spin-offs. What we're building isn't just a game—it's a series plan that can feed us for half a lifetime."
Uchida stared at the titles, breathing hard.
He finally understood—Takuya's promise of "half a lifetime of food" wasn't empty talk. It was a treasure map with the path already drawn.
He said nothing more. He snatched paper and pen from a nearby team member and growled, "Don't just stand there! Repeat everything you just said! If anyone forgets their idea, nobody's going home today!"
The members of Arcade Team Five didn't complain—they cheered even louder, crowding around with unstoppable excitement.
Watching them in full creative frenzy, arguing animatedly around the whiteboard, Takuya smiled with satisfaction and turned to leave.
The first link of the plan—securely in place.
"Executive Nakayama, please wait."
A steady voice stopped him.
Takuya turned and saw Department Head Nakamura from hardware development standing there, holding a thick report.
Unlike the boisterous Takahashi, Nakamura was a quiet technical maniac—yet the way he adjusted his glasses, and the glint in his eyes behind the lenses, revealed unmistakable excitement.
"Department Head Nakamura, what is it?"
"Executive, regarding the CD-ROM 'seek-time optimization' you assigned earlier…" Nakamura didn't announce the result immediately. Instead, he teased it, handing over the report with a calm but firm voice. "We… may have found the cure."
Takuya's heart tightened. He accepted the report.
"The Sony team truly is skilled. With their help, instead of trying to brute-force higher drive speed, we rewrote the data-reading logic from the ground up." Nakamura explained, "We created a new game file system standard. And with tiered resource pre-loading, the program can load the most needed data into RAM before it's required."
He paused and summarized, "In simple terms: we've made a single-speed CD drive behave like an almost double-speed drive in effective load efficiency. The mechanical speed is unchanged, but players will almost never feel long loading times."
Takuya tapped the report lightly, eyes sharp.
"And the cost? Nakamura, I need to know whether this will turn the CD drive into a ridiculously expensive toy no ordinary household can afford."
That was the key. Brilliant tech is worthless if the cost makes it impossible to mass-market.
"That is exactly what makes this report invaluable!"
Nakamura pushed up his glasses, voice trembling with excitement. "Double-speed drives are absurdly expensive. But with our optimization, a cheap single-speed drive can deliver fully acceptable commercial performance! Total cost is safely within the red-line budget you set!"
Takuya opened the report and scanned the dense pages rapidly.
Classic high-capacity games played through his mind—scenes impossible in the cartridge era, now finally within reach.
Snap!
He closed the report.
The crisp sound echoed through the hardware department, silencing the entire floor. Every engineer looked at him—waiting for the verdict.
His expression held no outward excitement—only calm control—but his voice carried unwavering authority.
"Nakamura. Pass the word."
"The MD external CD-ROM drive project is officially approved."
He swept his gaze across the room—at every engineer whose face was flushed with anticipation—and declared, one word at a time:
"Its name will be—Mega-CD."
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