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 transformed 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 Meguro 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 become a living *Pokémon Park*. Each meticulously crafted model bore a small acrylic ad: "February 13, Sega Mega 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" screamed bold print across every paper.
Social commentators clashed. Some TV pundits decried it as "lawless commercial 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 roamed with homemade Pokédexes, logging each creature's location.
Media fueled the frenzy, launching a "Collect All 151 Pokémon" challenge. Yet, after exhaustive efforts, people discovered Sega had placed exactly 149 Pokémon, leaving two unnamed mysteries, stoking the IP's allure with a tantalizing cliffhanger.
Nintendo's costly Mario billboards and posters became ignored, expensive backdrops in this citywide craze.
On January 30, the morning anime slot aired *Pokémon* Episode 65: "Viridian Gym! The Final Badge!" When Rocket Team's leader, Giovanni, debuted alongside his silver-armored, oppressive Mewtwo, 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 Mewtwo appeared, its cold, powerful gaze promising secrets unveiled in the game. "Play to unravel the mystery," the narrator hooked, merging anime and game 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 game 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 game 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 formed 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 game. These reports landed on Shigeru Miyamoto's desk.
Reading descriptions of vast RPG worlds and cinematic strategy battles, Miyamoto felt a shift. His resentment over *Mario 3*'s rushed launch morphed into dread. He wasn't facing a mere imitator but a "game 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, seemed unfairly stacked.