When Tetsu Kobayashi dragged Yuji Naka all the way to Shimayose's game shop, Naka was completely stunned.
At this time in Japan, an ordinary office worker earned about one million yen a year, and mid-level managers earned around two to three million. As a new hire, his salary didn't even reach 100,000 yen a month—barely 50,000.
"Fifty thousand yen… I can't afford to do any of this…"
Yuji Naka bent over holding his knees, gasping for breath.
Too exhausting!
Tetsu Kobayashi spread his hands.
Fifty thousand? That was about the same as his monthly allowance.
"You take a break first. Uncle? Uncle!"
After calling out a few times, Shimayose Yosuke hurried out from the shop, looking helpless.
"You all keep calling me 'uncle,' making it sound like I really have a bunch of nephews. Please, I'm not the uncle—my uncle works at SEGA!"
"Alright, whatever you say." Tetsu didn't bother quibbling. "Uncle, is that old game machine still here? The one called Talarala-something—can I try it?"
Shimayose Yosuke: ?
Someone wants to buy that?
Still, he bought equipment to sell, not to actually collect, so he didn't have many true collectibles.
"It's Talatalamusic!" he emphasized.
Soon, Yosuke connected the main board to a TV, using a hand-wired joystick to operate it. The crude setup almost made Yuji Naka faint on the spot.
What a waste of precious hardware!
But—
The moment the sound played, he and Tetsu Kobayashi looked at each other.
They had it.
Though they didn't know what chip this machine used, the sound reproduction perfectly delivered the effect they'd envisioned. Even the subtle noise textures came through clearly.
"Uncle, can you sell me this main board?"
Yosuke held up two fingers.
"Two thousand?" Yuji Naka guessed.
"Twenty thousand!" Yosuke shrugged. "This main board is out of production and the game itself is discontinued! If you want it, sure, but at least pay the price of a new machine!"
Tetsu scratched his head.
Twenty thousand yen for a console wasn't expensive. Acceptable.
In modern terms, twenty thousand yen was less than a thousand RMB—not even enough to buy a smartphone.
Without hesitation, he flipped out his bulging wallet and handed it to Yosuke.
Yosuke was more shocked than Naka.
He looked at the wallet, then at Tetsu, at a loss for words.
Seriously.
Kids these days—carrying tens of thousands of yen in cash—yet fighting a little girl over a 100-yen game machine?
Too much.
---
Yosuke definitely wouldn't have expected that once Tetsu brought the board home, he wouldn't even play it—he just tore it apart.
Watching from the side, Yuji Naka suddenly saw a layer of mystery shrouding Tetsu Kobayashi.
The way he disassembled the device was way too skilled! He himself couldn't do it.
And seeing Tetsu holding a soldering iron, welding the chip onto their board, Naka grew even more bewildered.
How was he this experienced?
Just how many game machines had this guy dissected in his life?!
"Alright… that should about do it." Tetsu set down the soldering iron. "Try again. Tell me immediately what you feel."
Naka nodded, put the headphones back on, and tested the game again.
This time—
With the new sound chip, the game instantly transformed.
The sound details came through; the explosive noise between beats almost pierced the eardrum, yet landed with the perfect amount of softness.
For a moment, Yuji Naka felt addicted.
This was too good!
Tetsu folded his arms.
"Seems old machines really do have hidden surprises."
S24A, without the AC suffix.
This was SEGA's 1979 arcade-grade sound chip—top-of-the-line for its time, capable even of synthesizing pieces like Ode to Joy.
But because the cost was too high, it was replaced with the S24AC months later.
By now—four years later—under Moore's Law, the new S27 chip had replaced the older S24 series.
However, the S24A, being the uncut original chip, still delivered sound quality nearly on par with the S27, only slightly inferior in trivial areas.
Yuji Naka removed his headphones and looked at Tetsu.
"The sound is perfect now. But… the game itself has a little problem."
He pointed backward.
Tetsu leaned forward casually—then froze.
The screen was glitched: the entire display was filled with virus sprites.
"Crap—memory overflow!" Tetsu slapped his hands together.
He'd forgotten!
Even looped electronic music took a lot of space. Importing it uncompressed naturally caused a memory blowout.
"Memory overflow" was slang—meaning the storage exceeded its limit. Put plainly: the outhouse was full.
To save space, games used sprite sheets—lots of tiny assets arranged to simulate a full picture, reducing storage needs.
But if memory overflowed, the whole screen would be covered in sprites.
Tetsu immediately sat down and began typing rapidly.
He mainly needed to compress the uncompressed audio; arcade sound chips would then reconstruct it as closely as possible.
Yuji Naka rubbed his eyes from behind.
At this point, he was sure he hadn't misseen.
Tetsu really was modifying the program—and from how skillfully he worked, he didn't even need comments. Unless he wrote it himself, he wouldn't be this familiar.
"Um, I… I mean…"
Naka cautiously spoke up. "This game—did you make it yourself?"
Tetsu turned and answered simply:
"I wrote the program."
But he didn't make the game.
Yuji Naka let out a sigh, almost wanting to punch himself.
"I'm very sorry! I…"
He couldn't bring himself to finish.
How could anyone say something that embarrassing?
Tetsu stopped typing, unsure how to respond.
After a long moment, he shook his head.
"No big deal. You'll be getting paid for this outsourcing, right? Use that to treat me to dinner. I know a place called Dixies—prices are fair and the food's great."
He pushed the keyboard forward.
"This should do it. Storage should be fine now. You can add more sound effects, or enrich the loop if you want."
Then Tetsu asked a crucial question:
"Since you composed the music, you hold the copyright. Do you want a one-time buyout, or do you want a royalty share?"
Yuji Naka sucked in a breath.
There was a deal like this?! He thought all employee work—and employees themselves—belonged to SEGA!
"Then… a one-time buyout."
Yuji Naka was short on money.
Living in Tokyo wasn't easy, especially when he wasn't some American-headhunted SEGA director with a free luxury apartment.
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