A Death in the Family: The Nintendo Story

Prologue - A Death in the Family
Prologue - A Death in the Family
Hiroshi Yamauchi sat down on the twelfth evening of December 1993 as he usually did, next to his wife Michiko, sharing some piping hot tea. Unfortunately, the sixty five year old Yamauchi would never get to enjoy his cup of tea. As his wife poured his tea, she heard a sudden loud crash. Looking away from the tea, she saw her husband lying on the ground, defeated.

Mr. Yamauchi suffered a stroke that evening, dying later that night. To some, it was a painful death and seemingly impossible to overcome tragedy; to others, it was an opportunity. See, Yamauchi was the iron grip leader of Nintendo, who’s hold over the company was as determined as the look in his eyes. So, while everyone was overwhelmed with sadness at the loss of their leader, many saw this as the time to take Nintendo in a new direction.

And why wouldn’t they? The past four years had been troublesome, as a once obscure competitor had risen to take a hold of roughly half the market Nintendo had dominated in the last generation of gaming. Sega was the enemy. The same old tricks that had brought Nintendo to the top could very well be there downfall.

Now, another competitor looked to knock Nintendo off the throne. Perhaps if Mr. Yamauchi hadn’t snubbed Sony by way of Phillips two years ago, Nintendo wouldn’t be looking at a second serious competitor in the gaming market. And serious they were. Though Sony hadn’t publicly announced the PlayStation to the world, Nintendo was already familiar with it’s would-be foe’s plans to enter the market with their new console. The PlayStation would be disc based and offer 3D graphics.

So now, with Yamauchi’s death, which surely saddened all involved, many in Nintendo knew his successor must be capable of crushing Sony, Sega, and all future adversaries. Someone who wouldn’t hold on to policies of the past, instead, looking to create the policies of the future.

Enter: Minoru Arakawa. In the days immediately following Yamauchi’s death, whispers around the Headquarters of Nintendo pointed to serious discussion amongst the board members in appoint Yamauchi’s son-in-law, Arakawa to the vacant stations of president and chairman. While the company wouldn’t be so brash as to immediately replace Yamauchi, when the time came Arakawa seemed the perfect fit. For those who wanted to maintain the continuity of command the company had followed, Arakawa was both a Managing Director, and Yamauchi’s son-in-law. For those who wanted to see the company expand its horizons or change directions, Arakawa would be a breath of fresh air, being the head of Nintendo of America.

Thus, on the nineteenth of September, two days after Yamauchi’s funeral, and a week after his death, the board convened. The two senior managing directors, and three managing directors other than Arakawa were unanimous in their decision to make him Nintendo’s next leader. To replace him, Howard Lincoln would take over Nintendo of America, and take Arakawa’s spot on the board.

The future would be in Arakawa’s hands.

Authors Note: This timeline is a reboot of my failed ‘Altendo: A Nintendo Timeline’ timeline. The major point of divergence here is the 1993 death of Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi, legendary businessman, who propelled Nintendo into the behemoth it became. This timeline will explore the impact of Yamauchi’s early death on the video game industry, and pop culture at large.

Though the timeline is subtitled ‘The Nintendo Story’, it will focus on much more than Nintendo, and attempt to provide an unbiased and fair estimation of history, had Mr. Yamauchi died in 1993, twenty years before his actual death. I hope to update the timeline weekly, but will definitely release chapters at least fortnightly. Any questions are welcomed, and any answers will be canon to the timeline.

Thanks for reading ‘A Death in the Family’ and stay tuned for the next chapter.
 
Woah how this one past out the radar...Very nice introduction buddy and waiting to see what comen, Arakawa as lived and worked with western, was closer to western style of gaming, that would be interesting to see
 
Chapter One - Knights of the Round Table
Chapter One - Knights of the Round Table
On the 1st day of October, the newly instated ruler of the Nintendo empire, Minoru Arakawa met with his board to discuss the company's short term and long term goals. Arakawa felt he would par the course for the current generation, but was very interested in shaping the way Nintendo approached the next generation. In his Nintendo of America days, Arakawa helped Mr. Yamauchi and Silicon Graphics forge a deal to develop the hardware for the new console, known for now as Project Reality. For Project Reality, Arakawa wanted to assemble the best possible team to perfect the next generation experience. Though it seemed inevitable Sega and Sony would soon release 32-bit competition for the Super Famicom, Nintendo had a trick in its sleeve. It's new console would be 64-bit.

Arakawa assembled his 'Dream Team' of talent to plan every detail of the new console, from shape, name, controller, to software. Time Magazine's November 1993 issue would dub the team The Knights of the Round Table.

~~~~

The Knights of the Round Table
  1. Minoru Arakawa - The founder of Nintendo of America, Arakawa recently ascended to Nintendo's top spot after the tragic death of his father-in-law, Hiroshi Yamauchi, the man who guided Nintendo into the age of video games. Arakawa ultimately has the final say on every decision related to Project Reality. Many expect Arakawa's western ties to influence the development of the console.
  2. Howard Lincoln - Lincoln is Arakawa's best friend and the leader of Nintendo of America. Arakawa has given Lincoln and the American branch of Nintendo an unprecented amount of input in the development of Project Reality, due to his relationship with Lincoln and Nintendo of America.
  3. Jim Clark - Clark, the chairman of Silicon Graphics, is personally assisting Nintendo in the console design, which will incorporate technology from SGI's supercomputers, used for CGI movie graphics. Clark originally pitched the tech to Sega, who turned it down. Clark was quick to contact their rival and jumpstart development of Project Reality.
  4. Shigeru Miyamoto - Miyamoto is one of the most celebrated video game developers of all time, and is tasked with ensuring a smooth transition for Nintendo's franchises into the 3D Graphical Era. Miyamoto has also personally undertaken design of the console's controller.
  5. Genyo Takeda - Takeda leads the development group who have built every Nintendo console to date. His valued input will help Nintendo build a console feasible for mass market and mass production.
- Taken from Time's November 1993 issue.

~~~~

Howard Lincoln was certain of one thing: The CD was the future. Around the industry, the buzz was that both Sony and Sega would launch CD-ROM based consoles. Yet Takeda and Miyamoto were sold on cartridges as the medium of game storage for Project Reality. Clark and Lincoln both supported the CD format, but Arakawa was unsure which route to take. Many industry devs planned to support the CD format in the coming years. Square had specifically asked Nintendo to use the CD format. A valuable partner, Lincoln could not standby and see the loss of Square. So in early December 1993, he met with Arakawa.

"Minoru, it's either me or the carts," Lincoln said. "If we aren't going the CD route I'm prepared with a resignation that will be on your desk tomorrow. I don't mean to strong-arm you, but I can't stand idly by while Shigeru and Genyo are trying to sabotage this system before it even launches."

"Understood," said Arakawa.

And so, Arakawa made his ultimate decision to switch to the CD format to keep in line with competitors, and keep Square happy. As work on Project Reality continued, Arakawa set a targeted release window for Q1 1995 in Japan, and Q4 1995 in America. Intel gathered from industry contacts tipped Arakawa off that Sega and Sony both planned to launch in Japan in late '94, and WW in late '95. Though a '94 release for Reality was out of question, Arakawa was confident they could launch in early '95. Arakawa wanted to show off the console by August 1994, and development increase significantly towards the end of 93. Official devkits were completed in January 1994, and given to select developers:
  • Acclaim
  • DMA Design
  • Silicon Graphics, Inc.
  • Paradigm Simulation
  • Rareware
  • Sierra On-Line
  • Mindscape
  • Epilogue
  • Square
Stay tuned for the next chapters for updates on the development of fifth gen consoles!
 
Stay tuned for the next chapters for updates on the development of fifth gen consoles!
How could work, the good thing is if they lauch as OTL, they could even add extra RAM cheaper as ram price got a massive collapse in 1995-1996 timeframe onward(the GPU revolution collapse the ram price with more people producting it) and that extra RAM can be used for CD(example 5-6 MB of RAM and 1-2 reserved for CD if necessary, specially big games), still the other is looking a cheap CD producer..Phillips or JVS?
 
Things I can see likely happening ITTL:

Final Fantasy VII onward being developed for Nintendo's 7th gen console.
Fire Emblem being released outside Japan years earlier (IOTL FE3/Mystery of the Emblem is the series' best seller in Japan, and a more outward-thinking Nintendo exec could perhaps convince Shouzou Kaga that he had an audience outside Japan). This would have ramifications on the strategy RPG subgenre, which IOTL has been more influenced by Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics.
With FF possibly staying with Nintendo, the RPG exodus to the PlayStation likely does not happen. IOTL Nintendo only really got the RPG market back with the Nintendo DS, and their RPG library on consoles has been weak until the Switch.
 
Fire Emblem being released outside Japan years earlier (IOTL FE3/Mystery of the Emblem is the series' best seller in Japan, and a more outward-thinking Nintendo exec could perhaps convince Shouzou Kaga that he had an audience outside Japan). This
The thing was Fire emblem always got sidelined because Kaga own timing, the original Nintendo was too busy with SNES(still that one was the easiest to bring...but the problem was FE1 used a special chip that was japan only) FE3 got sideline because DKC and the CD boom, FE4 Was 1996 when all the light was in N64, Kaga trully failed for never doing FE64 as miyamoto wanted(the first time i hear fire emblem name outside smash or emulator, was on miyamoto on interview about 64DD) and that got him fired(that and steal assets in what will become tear ring saga) so if he can got FE64(maybe moving FE4 for it?) could got it the series into big jump...That or localizing FE3 but might be just in nickle of time.

. IOTL Nintendo only really got the RPG market back with the Nintendo DS, and their RPG library on consoles has been weak until the Switch.
GBA: I'm a joke to you?
 
A fantastic idea for a timeline. I’m quite excited to see where this goes. Sega is doomed but I’m curious to see how well Nintendo could do Sony in a fairer fight than OTL, doubling OTL sales would be insanely impressive.

For those that haven’t read it Polygon’s oral history of Final Fantasy VII is invaluable. From that I’d argue the CD-ROM issue is overblown, and that the usual Nintendo arrogance plus CDs plus dislike of the SGI chip all were key factors.

Yoshinori Kitase; Director, Square Japan

…Anyway, we made a 2,000-count polygon version of Behemoth for the Nintendo 64, but when we rendered and animated it, the framerate was way too low. To properly display Behemoth with that technology, we needed 2,000 polygons, but it was a little too much for the hardware. That was part of the problem with choosing Nintendo.
Yoshihiro Maruyama; Executive vice president, Square U.S.

[In September 1995] I was hired by the president of the company, [Tetsuo] Mizuno-san, and he told me that, “Squaresoft will always be with Nintendo. … As long as you work for us, it’s basically the same as working for Nintendo.” And the week after I joined, they started saying, “Oh, maybe we should switch to Sony.” So I was kind of shocked.

Hironobu Sakaguchi; Producer and executive vice president, Square Japan; Chairman and chief executive officer, Square USA

Of course, back then I wasn’t the president of Square. There was a management level above me, and I talked with them to make the decision. But PlayStation games being on CDs was the biggest factor. If you wanted to make a 3D action game on a Nintendo 64 cartridge with that limited space, you could do it. But I wanted to create a 3D role-playing game. It was very clear in my head what I wanted to make, but that would have been difficult on Nintendo’s hardware. …

The biggest problem was, of course, memory. Based on our calculations there was no way it could all fit on a ROM cartridge. So our main reason for choosing the PlayStation was really just because it was the only console which would allow us to use CD-ROM media.

Tomoyuki Takechi; President and chief executive officer, Square

Also CDs were cheaper than cartridges, so we were thinking we could provide more to players without raising the price. That was another big part of the appeal.
[Note: While many people speaking for this story point to this often-told story about the differences between CD-ROMs and cartridges as the main reason for Square’s shift to PlayStation, some say hardware horsepower differences and communication between Square and Nintendo also played a key role in the decision. Kawai says he believes Square has focused its public comments on the disc versus cartridge debate over the years out of respect to Nintendo.]

Nintendo did not make a fickle choice of carts: they made the call because it was cheaper to make the console by $50-100 & it made them hundreds of millions of dollars of upfront cash. Obviously CD is the right move and will benefit them massively in the long run but Nintendo is going to be hurting 1996-1997 cash wise vs OTL. On the plus side, as mentioned already CDs and new Nintendo CEO probably keep Squaresoft on board and perhaps further—at least in Japan, the western third parties not specifically signed by Nintendo were all in on PlayStation: Sony Music USA & Sony Europe doing that hard developer relation work, heh. At least ITTL CDs and new Nintendo leadership will help tons. Poor Sega though, Nintendo CD N64 in Japan will finish off the Saturn fast.

How could work, the good thing is if they lauch as OTL, they could even add extra RAM cheaper as ram price got a massive collapse in 1995-1996 timeframe onward(the GPU revolution collapse the ram price with more people producting it) and that extra RAM can be used for CD(example 5-6 MB of RAM and 1-2 reserved for CD if necessary, specially big games), still the other is looking a cheap CD producer..Phillips or JVS?

RAM prices collapsed 1996 which is much too late to crank the RAM in the N64, production ready in 1995 and designed 1993-1994. Also why you saw the Dreamcast in 1998 (designed 1997) with so much more RAM. Alas the only in-between console to look at it is the beloved only by me lol M2 which mustered 6 MB RAM 1997 theoretical launch—as it was designed in 1995-1996, before RAM prices fell. Hardware projects take time.

Nintendo having an expensive CD-ROM drive in there ITTL would simply be unable to afford increasing RAM until well past OTL launch dates. But hey, that’s what the Expansion Pack is for and TTL Nintendo will likely be just as aggressive on pricing / bundling it as OTL.

but the thing was the RAM SGI was obssesed was an awful RAM was the last one to fall of price, have they used more simple RAM would have added more at cheaper prices

RAM prices collapsed after the N64 had released in Japan so Nintendo—after adding $50-100 because of CD drive—would not have sprung for more RAM. Again, that’s literally why the Expansion Pack exists—brilliant foresight.

(Incidentally Sony bought 18.6% of Squaresoft in 2001, nothing to do with their switch back in 1995 and all about keeping a key third party developer financially healthy.)
 
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RAM prices collapsed 1996 which is much too late to crank the RAM in the N64, production ready in 1995
N64 was produced much later, acording David Sheriff, Nintendo have the N64 ready by 1994-1995 but delayed thanks DKC popularity and issue with early 3D development kit, nintendo was famous till wii, as they could make and stop production very quickly(see gamecube price drop in 2003) but the thing was the RAM SGI was obssesed was an awful RAM was the last one to fall of price, have they used more simple RAM would have added more at cheaper prices.

In a way DKC give leverage to delay N64 and compete via price too.

and that the usual Nintendo arrogance plus CDs plus dislike of the SGI chip all were key factors.
Did square forgot their own one? they critize Nintendo was so friendly enix and they always got with enix first over them.
 
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