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Well, this actually happened almost thirty years ago, and it wasn’t a real dinosaur.

For years I’d been hearing about the dinosaur that Mr. Kazuhiko Nishi planted in the middle of Shinjuku to commemorate one million MSX computers sold. However, I never saw any real, detailed information about this, so I kept it inside the “Unverified stories that may or may not be true” drawer inside my brain.

Recently, while reading old MSX Magazines I came across a report about this event, so here’s a report on the report.

MSX Dinosaur Land (MSX Magazine, February 1986). Click to enlarge

MSX Dinosaur Land

The event took place between December 1st, 1985 and January 15th, 1986. It was started by Hitohiko Sato (president of NTT’s Shinjuku branch office), Masayoshi Son (CEO of Softbank) and Kazuyasu Maeda (head of the computer development department at Panasonic).

The dinousaur was built by the staff from Toho Studios who built the models for the Godzilla movies. According to the article, this was their biggest model to the time, and it cost 150 million yen to build. Inside the dinosaur there was an MSX computer that made it emit loud growls every two hours.

Some of the booths. MSX Magazine (February 1986). Click to enlarge

Around the dinosaur there were several booths. There were representations of the internals of VLSI chips, a 9-screen synchronized display controlled by nine MSX computers made by nine different brands, an exhibition of MSX computers from around the world including exotics like Al-Alamiah units with Arab keyboard, and even another exhibition with a demo unit of every MSX computer sold to the date (over forty of them). Several companies had their own booths (T&E Soft, The LINKS, ASCII…), and there was an especial booth for different mini-events like game competitions that took place during the time.

MSX game competition at the MSX Dinosaur Land. MSX Magazine (March 1986). Click to enlarge

The event had around 230,000 visitors (an average of 5,100 people per day), which is not bad at all.

Visitors to the event. In the bottom right corner is Mr. Ikko Ohno (illustrator of the MSX Magazine covers) with his wife. MSX Magazine (February 1986). Click to enlarge

Final day of the event. MSX Magazine (April 1986). Click to enlarge