The last time an American company successfully launched a game console in Japan, Jesse Takamayama was the famous Hawaiian Sumo wrestler and Chad Rowan (aka Akebono) was still in high school. The last time an American company successfully launched a video game console in Japan, a famous hanafuda card maker named Nintendo had recently begun dabbling in arcade games and Sony hadn't yet invented the Walkman.

The last -- and only -- American company to successfully launch a video game console into the Japanese market was Atari. Atari succeeded once, with its Video Computer System. And since the 1979 debut of the VCS, Atari, Mattel, Coleco, and 3DO all tried and failed to launch systems in Japan.

On Feb. 22, Microsoft Corp. will try to do what no American company has been able to do since Jimmy Carter was president. This company, however, may succeed.

Of all of the game consoles on the market, Microsoft's Xbox has the most powerful processor -- a 733 MHz Pentium III processing chip. The Xbox processor is considerably faster than the processors in Sony's PlayStation2 and Nintendo's GameCube.

Does processing power matter? Nope!

Looking back, Sega's Mark III had a more powerful processor than Nintendo's Famicom. Sega's MegaDrive had more processing power but less colors and poorer sound than Nintendo's Super Famicom. Sony's PlayStation had a 32-bit processor that supposedly could never compete with the 64-bit processor in Nintendo 64. In each of these cases, the Japanese market went with the apparent underdog.

Xbox also has the most powerful graphics engine. Powered by a 250 MHz Nvidia Gforce chip that renders 100 million polygons per second, Xbox creams Sony's PlayStation2 and Nintendo's GameCube.

For those unfamiliar, "polygons" in gaming are flat tiles used to construct game graphics. The 3-D objects in games are really hollow mosaics constructed of hundreds and often thousands of polygons; and the more polygons artists have to work with, the better their work comes out.

A talented artist can create a recognizable human with 100 polygons. They can draw a pretty convincing human figure with 10,000 polygons.

Xbox's graphics engine renders 100 million polygons per second.

If you are making a basketball game, you will likely have 10 players on the screen at any given time, plus a referee, coaches, players on the sidelines, and an audience. Polygons are used to create these images as well as the court on which the game is played.

Then there is the frame rate. Cartoons and movies are not really moving pictures, they are strings of still pictures laid out in sequence. Run through these pictures quickly enough and they appear to move.

Games work the same way. You can achieve passable animation with 20 frames per second. Animation at 30 fps was once considered a high-water mark because it allowed for smooth movements.

Some of the latest games, however, run at 60 fps. To achieve this rate, you need a lot of polygons, and Xbox's graphics engine certainly provides them.

But Xbox gives game designers more than polygons to work with. By most reports, Xbox is exceptionally easy to program for. Microsoft created the system so that it can create shadows and reflections automatically, making life easier for graphics designers. In fact, shiny surfaces such as the bodies of cars and football helmets are sometimes a bit too reflective on Xbox. That, however, is easily fixed.

Xbox has other technological bonuses, too. It has twice as much random access memory as PlayStation2 and is the only console with a built-in hard drive and Ethernet card. Despite all of these technological strengths, Xbox has some major strikes against it. Its biggest and most correctable problem is its enormous controller.

When Xbox was first released in the United States last year, it had an unwieldy controller that many Americans called uncomfortable. To prepare for the Japanese market, Microsoft created a smaller controller that is still too large and too heavy.

When most people play video games, they hold the gamepad in front of them like a tray. With the Xbox controller, people inevitably rest it against their body or on their lap. The button layout on the Xbox controller is also a bit bleak. The PlayStation2 controller has four buttons set in a wide diamond. The button positions are far enough apart so that players always know which button is which.

With GameCube, Nintendo was even smarter than Sony. The GameCube button layout has a large main button with three smaller buttons surrounding it. The size, shape, and position of the buttons reminds players which button they are hitting.

And Xbox? Well, Xbox has six small buttons laid out in two parallel rows. Inexplicably, the Xbox has the largest controller and the smallest buttons.

But controllers are easily replaced. In fact, Mad Catz and InterAct, two third-party peripheral makers, have already released gamepads that improve upon Microsoft's original design. Although they still have six small and badly arranged buttons, the outlook is getting better.

And then there are questions about the size of the Xbox console itself, which is about the size of a small VCR. It is too big to fit on top of most televisions.

But space is not the big question for people who really want to play games. Determined video game players find space, make space, do whatever it takes. The big question for real gamers is software.

When it comes to games, Sony's PlayStation2 has an unmistakable edge.

Having come out in 2001, a full year before Xbox or GameCube, Sony has hundreds of games -- most of them ranging between mediocre and bad in quality.

But Sony also has many great games in its library. If you want to play "NBA Street," "KA," "Devil May Cry," "Gran Turismo 3: A-spec," "Jak and Daxter," "Final Fantasy X," and "Metal Gear Solid 2," you are going to need a PlayStation2.

Life with PlayStation2 was not always so rosy, however. With the exception of "Ridge Racer," which was not all that great, PlayStation2 launched with a really lousy bunch of games. Hell, for the first year, the most popular software for PlayStation2 was the "The Matrix" on DVD.

By comparison, Xbox will have a phenomenal launch lineup. "Dead or Alive 3," "Genma Onimusha," "Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee," "Air Force Delta II," "Project Gotham," "Jet Set Radio Future" and "Wreckless in North America" will all be solid games.

"Halo," a superb first-person shooter from Microsoft, will be exclusive on Xbox. And while the Xbox library includes "Azurik," and "Kabuki Warriors," all real stinkers, it will look lots better than the PlayStation2 library looked for nearly a year.

If I had to pick one game console to purchase this February, I would likely go with PlayStation2, unless I had children, in which case I would buy a GameCube.

But that decision is based on a snapshot of the February market. Games will look better on Xbox than PS2. In some cases, they will look much better on Xbox.

For gameplay and graphics, Microsoft and Nintendo have a lead on Sony, and that lead may start to pay off by the end of 2002.

In the meantime, the GameCube's lackluster debut in September opens the door for Microsoft in the Japanese market if it can just provide a winning set of games.

Microsoft may be up against a stacked deck in Japan. But you can beat a stacked deck with enough aces up your sleeve. And Microsoft looks to have a few aces.