December 14th, 1993
“I don’t give a flying fuck about anything else, this console better have goddamned CD support,” said Howard Lincoln, chairman of Nintendo of America. “Sony’s already going to beat us to market; we have to compete with them.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Howard Phillips, marketing lead on Project Reality. “Minoru has to listen to those other fucking japs though.”
Phillips and Lincoln were two members of the Project Reality development team, which the media had dubbed The Knights of the Round Table. As they enjoyed their sushi, the Japanese businessman sitting a table over from them gave Phillips a skeptical look.
"Minoru said it’s a one-man one-vote system on this, right?” asked Lincoln. “So, all we have to do is flip one person. Clark is on board.”
“Right, right, but who the fuck can we flip? This is getting ridiculous. I mean, Shigeru has a stick up his ass on the issue, and Takeda is old school. Minoru is gonna vote with them.”
“Let’s talk to Tanimoto. I know we’ve had trouble with CD software in the past, but if we are going to compete with storage and with cost, we got to use these discs.”
Lincoln held up a blank compact disc. It could store six Super NES games on it alone. Nintendo needed to utilize this technology. But, he reckoned that all good things would come to an end. Two and a half months after Minoru Arakawa said he wanted the American team to help with Project Reality, the stiff Japanese would not budge.
Meanwhile, Phillips had his own agenda. He wasn’t content with overseeing marketing here. He wanted a larger role, and he wanted to shape how the games were designed. There was a hunger consuming him, encroaching on his reality. Somehow, he knew he was destined to turn this into the greatest video game console of all time.
“I got to go, Howard.”
“See ya, Howard”