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If there are Yakuza trying to extort visitors, well, it won't end well for the Yakuza at all; look at the effect the Rastafarian movement had on Jamaican tourism for an example of what could happen (hint: it went down until the Jamaican government cracked down on it, IIRC)...
Yeah, there was going to initially be a similar effect on Japan, but with some insight from @Osakadave I'm altering how the Yakuza will try to shake down Disneytropolis. I'll edit the post soon to correct it.
 
Good to see Secret of NIMH still being made. That was one of my favorite animated movies, and aside from being really good by itself, it inspired Spielberg to work on Land Before Time, another classic movie. So I’m definitely happy to see it hasn’t been butterflied!
 
Asteroids
"Video Games: The Future of Entertainment"
--Title on the cover of the December 17, 1979 issue of Time Magazine

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Asteroids
was Atari's answer to Disney's Black Hole. All of Atari's (and, to a lesser extent, Universal's and MCA's) eggs were in the game's basket. While the gaming titan was no slouch in sales, it certainly was playing second fiddle to Walt Disney and Jak Strachan, and Michael Eisner and Raymond Kassar weren't having that. It was all or nothing. Everything was riding on Asteroids being a success.

Released to the world on November 12, 1979, Asteroids was just that. While never quite reaching Black Hole's sales (somewhere between 90,000--100,000 cabinets), it wooed players with its fancy new vector graphics and supplanted Space Invaders as Atari's best selling arcade game of all time, hovering at around 75,000 cabinets sold. It was the win Atari desperately needed on the heels of a year of being slapped around by the House of Mouse.

Asteroids' success was followed by more good news. The first item was Adventure, a game for the Atari 2600 that caused gaming to explode in the amount of things that could be accomplished on just one little cartridge. With the brand-new ability to take the game's action across multiple screens, new worlds were opened and the medium could shift from making minigames to crafting epic adventures. While it didn't sell as well as something like the 2600's Space Invaders port, Adventure received unreal critical acclaim, even getting a spotlight in the "Gaming Watch" segment of rival company Disney's Walt Disney Fun Club News. It also would inspire many mainstream magazines and newspapers to take notice of the new medium of video games, with the most notable event being Time Magazine's featuring of Adventure on the cover of their December 17, 1979 issue.

But Atari's best news would be from Disney themselves. While they had slated their first-person vector graphics Star Wars game to debut in the arcades in 1979's holiday season, the company admitted to getting their hopes up too high and needed a few more months to finish the game, now set for a February/March 1980 release, after Galaxian debuted in January. This meant that Atari wouldn't be facing as harsh competition during the winter as they had initially feared, turning the tide in their favor (with two excellent games compared to just one) in their war against Disney.

Universal rode this wave of success right into the box office, when on Thanksgiving Day they released Woody Woodpecker. Walt Disney was suddenly nervous about his position on top of Hollywood, and set out to make sure Eisner stayed put in second place.
 
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Interesting update so far. You know it would be interesting to see what the characters from TTL's Snow Queen would look compared to Frozen as I'm trying to visual how they'd look '70's style, haha. That or what the future VHS covers would look like for some of the different animated Disney films ITTL. :)
 
So what's the fate of Ted Turner at this point? I believe he already founded CNN at this point and I believe he tried to buy CBS before buying MGM. Is it possible he could succeed in acquiring the company?
 
Interesting update so far. You know it would be interesting to see what the characters from TTL's Snow Queen would look compared to Frozen as I'm trying to visual how they'd look '70's style, haha. That or what the future VHS covers would look like for some of the different animated Disney films ITTL. :)
Luckily for you, Don Bluth and the other animators based their designs for the film on Marc Davis' artwork for Disneyland's Enchanted Snow Palace ride (the movie, in fact, looks like Davis' concept art come to life). So, you actually can see what Elsa, at least, looks like:

2015-01-25_0247.jpg


Picture that, but some larger facial features to make it easier for her to emote, and you've got Elsa from The Snow Queen.
 
So what's the fate of Ted Turner at this point? I believe he already founded CNN at this point and I believe he tried to buy CBS before buying MGM. Is it possible he could succeed in acquiring the company?
Ted Turner's moving along like IOTL, he still founded CNN and he'll still try to buy CBS. But I haven't quite decided yet if he'll be successful or not.
 
Luckily for you, Don Bluth and the other animators based their designs for the film on Marc Davis' artwork for Disneyland's Enchanted Snow Palace ride (the movie, in fact, looks like Davis' concept art come to life). So, you actually can see what Elsa, at least, looks like:

2015-01-25_0247.jpg


Picture that, but some larger facial features to make it easier for her to emote, and you've got Elsa from The Snow Queen.
Personally always preferred some of the other concept designs they did for the Snow Queen, mainly because the crown she wears looks a bit too big and ridiculous, as are the icicles in the dress.

tumblr_m78agfQ5Nm1qcaxqwo5_1280.jpg


The third design to the right above is I remember correctly was adapted into Elsa's OTL outfit, with the exception of the see-through cape which they added after, and the hair change they gave Elsa.
 
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Personally always preferred some of the other concept designs they did for the Snow Queen, mainly because the crown she wears looks a bit too big and ridiculous.

tumblr_m78agfQ5Nm1qcaxqwo5_1280.jpg


The third design to the right above is I remember correctly was adapted into Elsa's OTL outfit, with the exception of the see-through cape which they added after.
The crown is a tad oversized, but she wouldn't wear it all the time in the film. Just during the sequences when she first creates her castle and dress. And, the design I showed was (to my understanding) about as finalized as it got in the 1970s, since it's not only inked but also painted, unlike those sketches, as well as usually featured alongside the other concept art for the scrapped ride.

I dunno, that's just the design I'm going with as "final".
 
The crown is a tad oversized, but she wouldn't wear it all the time in the film. Just during the sequences when she first creates her castle and dress. And, the design I showed was (to my understanding) about as finalized as it got in the 1970s, since it's not only inked but also painted, unlike those sketches, as well as usually featured alongside the other concept art for the scrapped ride.

I dunno, that's just the design I'm going with as "final".
There were two other painted designs by Davis from the 1970s though:

IMG_3772.jpg

IMG_3887aa.jpg
 
That's true, but I prefer the first one myself. And since I control the very fabric of this alternate reality, my word is law. :p

Why not both? I mean you said that the massive crown only sticks around for a scene or two before she shrinks it down to a more practical size.

Honestly, I think the later designs featuring a spiky-haired bluehead blue-skinned Elsa look better than that design, but that's just me.
 
I'm really curious what's going to happen with Nintendo ITTL. Is the video game industry still going to crash in '83?
For reasons I won't yet disclose, the Video Game Crash of 1983 will, ITTL, be more like the Atari Crash of 1983. It'll ruin Atari, but not the whole industry.
 
It’s actually a good thing that Disney is pushing the Star Wars game release date back instead of trying to rush it. Sure, it gives Atari more time in the spotlight, but when it comes out it’ll really knock it out of the park!
 
For reasons I won't yet disclose, the Video Game Crash of 1983 will, ITTL, be more like the Atari Crash of 1983. It'll ruin Atari, but not the whole industry.

At least in the meantime the more serious competiton would tighten quality control at Atari. And when the "Atari Crash" happens Atari could always be sold to a competitor. Disney's an option but so's Mattel. And without an industry-wide crash Mattel wouldn't end their support of the Intellivision. Which managed to survive six years under a start-up company after the crash. Roughly 1/5 of the Intellivision's total library were made with zero input from Mattel post-crash. And I don't see why Mattel wouldn't stay in the game if they weren't burned by the crash.
 
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