This was no ordinary chip. With its 8-bit PCM and 4 channels, it might have been barely audible to audiophiles, but in that era, it could produce voice clarity on par with a telephone answering machine.
Perfectly adequate for teaching "Apple" and "Banana."
Fu Zhan, clutching the chip, immediately led his famished brothers into the small, dark room.
Months later, the result they produced raised even Takuya Nakayama's eyebrows.
These men had somehow crammed a massive 5MB of ROM into a plastic cartridge—a feat considering mainstream Mega Drive game cartridges at the time barely reached a few hundred kilobytes to 1MB at most.
This enormous capacity was packed with valuable content: a daily English vocabulary database with simple definitions and example sentences, along with corresponding real voice recordings.
But the software design was even more ingenious.
Fu Zhan added "Progress Management" and "Time Supervision" to the system.
This was no mere software; it was a perfect solution to parents' pain points. The Learning Log clearly tracked how long their child studied and how many words they learned, making it easy to check progress at a glance.
It could even randomly select quiz questions from a vocabulary database, allowing parents to easily check their children's learning progress and effectiveness without much effort.
Isn't this the prototype of an early "vocabulary app"?
Takuya Nakayama stared at the sample, his mind whirring with calculations.
Selling this thing only in the domestic market would be a waste of its potential.
Consider the middle class in India, South America, Eastern Europe, and the newly independent CIS nations. Which of them wouldn't want to learn English? Which parents wouldn't want their children to score well on TOEFL or IELTS and study or immigrate to Europe or North America?
This was a basic need, a currency more essential than games.
Label this machine an "English Learning Terminal," place it in department stores across those countries, and it would become the ultimate tool for exploiting parental anxiety.
As for whether the child would use it for vocabulary drills or secretly plug in game cartridges to have a blast—that was none of Sega's business.
Mercury Electronics' move had paid off completely.
Moreover, thanks to the underlying support of the Yamaha chip, they had also "optimized" the audio data for existing MD games. This ensured that games originally designed for the original console could run smoothly and without distortion on this learning machine.
The Mercury One, an upgraded version of the Mega Drive all-in-one console, along with several specialized English learning software cartridges, were quickly loaded into cargo holds bound for Mumbai, Seoul, Moscow, and São Paulo, traveling through Sega's vast and intricate global logistics network.
Fu Zhan was a tech guy, but he wasn't naive.
As early as 1989, electronic dictionaries had already emerged. One such device was the Instant-Dict, developed and manufactured by Best Group International, a company founded by Danny Tam, a graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Department of Electronic Engineering.
When he saw how well Danny Tam's Instant-Dict was selling in Hong Kong, Fu Zhan realized that Mercury, being an outsider in the electronics industry, couldn't compete with the established tech giants solely on hardware.
"We need to sell something they don't have," Fu Zhan said to his core technical team, pointing at the screen feature that had countless children gnashing their teeth. "Just being able to pronounce words isn't enough. We need to offer features that other electronic dictionaries lack—especially ones that address parents' pain points."
This was Mercury Electronics' killer app: the Learning Progress Backend Monitoring System.
The system faithfully recorded every boot-up duration, every word memorized, and even generated random quizzes based on the learning records.
When parents returned home from work, they only needed to press a few key combinations to bring up the day's "Learning Log."
If their child had spent three hours playing Sonic but only memorized five vocabulary words, the bright red progress bar and test scores on the screen would undoubtedly lead to "bamboo shoots stir-fried with pork" appearing on the dinner table.
Initially, distributors across the country eyed this strange device—which looked like a keyboard plugged into a cartridge—with deep suspicion.
In their eyes, it was neither a proper computer nor a pure game console.
Sales figures remained sluggish for a full month.
Heeding Takuya Nakayama's warnings, Sega closely monitored sales performance. Upon noticing the poor performance, they swiftly issued instructions for research and adjustments, which were immediately sent to all retailers and distributors.
"Don't promote in arcades; go to bookstores and school gates," Sega's directives were blunt and direct. "Tell parents this isn't a toy; it's a necessary investment for studying abroad or emigrating." This device would both encourage children to actively self-study and allow parents to easily monitor their progress. As for the distributors, "Delay the final payment for the first shipment by three months."
The "Bring Your Own Investment" strategy instantly shattered the psychological defenses of distributors and retailers.
As long as we don't have to tie up our capital, what's not to sell?
The situation changed rapidly.
In Seoul's tutoring streets, middle-class neighborhoods in Mumbai, and even on the streets of Moscow, which had just undergone economic shock therapy, the "kid-managing" machine became a hot commodity.
Even if parents had to tighten their own belts, they were willing to pay for this device that kept their children quietly sitting in front of the TV, reciting "Apple, Banana." Their goal was to ensure their children could study or immigrate to developed countries in Europe and America when the time was right.
Three months later, in Fuzhou, the local Investment Promotion Bureau received a call from the branch manager of the Bank of China. He reported that a direct wire transfer of over two million US dollars had arrived from Sega Japan's account into Mercury Electronics Technology's account. This immediately alerted the entire bureau, and the vice mayor in charge of investment promotion visited Mercury Electronics Technology the next day to inspect their operations.
In an era when foreign currency was as precious as gold, a small, unknown company suddenly acquired such a large sum of US dollars. This wasn't just a private enterprise; it was clearly a god of wealth that needed to be revered and worshipped.
The more than two million dollars in cash inflated the egos of Fu Zhan and his team of tech enthusiasts as much as their wallets.
Beyond methodically launching the German and French dictionary expansion projects, Fu Zhan's tone on the phone with Takuya Nakayama rose by eight octaves. His message was clear: "We're tired of making dictionaries. We want to join the ranks and develop real Sega games."
Takuya Nakayama neither indulged their fantasies nor shut them down.
He simply replied: "Want to make games? Fine. Come to Tokyo and see how Sega makes games first."
A week later, Fu Zhan and a few core team members stood at the entrance of Development Team 3 at Sega Headquarters, looking like Liu Laolao entering the Grand View Garden.
They had expected to discuss projects over red wine, but the moment they stepped inside, Shimizu tossed them temporary employee badges for trainees.
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