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Well then, the equivalent could be from Enix, Falcom, Denpa, or HAL Laboratories.
Sqaure will likely exist. It's more that Kingodm Hearts itself was such a strange little thing that could be hit by butterflies.

I do think Hensen will likely embrace Video Games when they come around though so who knows.
 
Well. Aside from the Figment that both EPCOT and the public deserve, perhaps there's a deeper effect. Maybe success with the Figment means that more and more characters (originally) unique to the parks show up in rides and as walk-aronuds, and Classic Disney Shorts characters are slower to invade (parts of) the parks outside of Fantasylands and Toontowns.
I do think the remote puppet approach could work well for the Barker Bird Juan, who used to roost outside the Tiki Room to drum up attendance. He was removed since his own popularity jammed up crowds outside the Tiki Room.

Having him be a mobile puppet carried around could solve that issue, since he wouldn’t be in a single place all the time. And it wouldn’t be too hard to hide someone in tiki statues/carvings around Adventureland.
 
They already exist, Atari and Apple II will come soon, the same European Microcomputers but yeah Disney would treat videogames as a sideshow for a while, but an Early Buenavista and Disney Interactive could happen.

First time hearing this one? who they are?
Yeah wording is off on that one.

I mean when they become the big titan that they would become with the NES.
 
First time hearing this one? who they are?

According to the Retro Core YouTube channel, they were responsible for several Namco and Sega ports to Japanese home computers and consoles. After a bunch of mergers and reorganizations, the core of that company is now known as Micomsoft, best known as the maker of the Framemeister scan-multiplier for discrete pixel televisions to permit their use with classic consoles and home computers.
 
According to the Retro Core YouTube channel, they were responsible for several Namco and Sega ports to Japanese home computers and consoles. After a bunch of mergers and reorganizations, the core of that company is now known as Micomsoft, best known as the maker of the Framemeister scan-multiplier for discrete pixel televisions to permit their use with classic consoles and home computers.
Apparently it's spelled Dempa.
that is why never hear of them,,,they were a porting studio than died... well them, dunno the other choices could work
 
Well. Aside from the Figment that both EPCOT and the public deserve, perhaps there's a deeper effect. Maybe success with the Figment means that more and more characters (originally) unique to the parks show up in rides and as walk-aronuds, and Classic Disney Shorts characters are slower to invade (parts of) the parks outside of Fantasylands and Toontowns. It will happen eventually, if for no other reason than that people retire and someone from Marketing who has no experience in either Production or Imagineering will inevitably enter a position of power. However, even then, we could see, say, background characters for certain properties invented for the ride version of a property, then get a small but prominent role in a sequel or television spinoff, or possibly get a movie all his/her own.

If this causes the premature development of the Disney Fairies/Pixie Hollow franchise, that could sink future plans for a future Disney park anywhere in the British Commonwealth (What with Peter Pan in perpetual copyright for the sake of the Osmond Street Children's Hospital, which in turn inspired the Sonny Bono Act, which is in Disney's vested interest not to butterfly), but as the only countries that could make it work would have been Australia and possibly Singapore that's little loss. This could otherwise bring dividends in the 00s if more than Pirates of The Carribean (who are hanging out more in the Indian Ocean nowadays), The Haunted Mansion, and The Country Bears are greenlit for production, and all of them besides Pirates get better scripts and production values. Who wants Figment to get his own movie, especially if it's a world hopping one? Who wants to see that purple dragon become a "special friend" for Sora or his analogue in this timeline?

Stuff to think about.

Figment does sound like fun.

I wonder how many D&D campaigns had there Wizard and his wisecracking Dragon - or Fire Lizard for the Pern fans- after Figment's Disney debut?

Hummmm.... given the timing I wonder if Figment, or a dragon like him could turn up in the TSR/Marvel D&D cartoon?
It might certainly popularize having as pseudodragon familiar. I can only imagine the table talk about how "You don't have to do the voice, Jim."

No doubt there. There's probably a fan term like "Figmiliars" or something for them and I'm sure they become inevitably associated with Munchkins.

Kingdom Hearts could be interesting in this TL.


But it's also very likely that it doesn't exist. It's very vulnerable to butterflies.
Sqaure will likely exist. It's more that Kingodm Hearts itself was such a strange little thing that could be hit by butterflies.

I do think Hensen will likely embrace Video Games when they come around though so who knows.

Kingdom Hearts is surely butterflied as we know it. Still, RPG Games already exist pre-POD and some form of Disney RPG seems possible if not probable at some point.

Videogames will come up sooner than you think.

I do think the remote puppet approach could work well for the Barker Bird Juan, who used to roost outside the Tiki Room to drum up attendance. He was removed since his own popularity jammed up crowds outside the Tiki Room.

Having him be a mobile puppet carried around could solve that issue, since he wouldn’t be in a single place all the time. And it wouldn’t be too hard to hide someone in tiki statues/carvings around Adventureland.

Interesting idea, CW...
 

Rosenheim

Donor
Just want to comment and say that I've tremendously enjoyed this timeline so far. While I'm not a huge fan of Disney, especially modern Disney, it's very fun to see the path you're charting with Henson at the helm (well, sort of haha).
 
Btw, in my tirades I failed to mention how much I loved the Japan trip post. I am a huge Nipponophile!! I am so surprised no one has mentioned Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli in reference to the implications of Jim's interest in Japanese animation. I really see Jim jumping onto dubbing Nausicaa as soon as possible. Building a partnership between the studios way ahead of OTL. Just imagine those two wonderful artists collaborating. A Ghibli animated Dark Crystal sequel/spinoff and a live action Henson puppeteered Totoro. God damn that tickles me in all kinds of places lol. Please take these ideas.

I have plenty of ideas with Miyazaki, fear not.

Just want to comment and say that I've tremendously enjoyed this timeline so far. While I'm not a huge fan of Disney, especially modern Disney, it's very fun to see the path you're charting with Henson at the helm (well, sort of haha).

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it.
 
Meta-Discussion: The Butterfly Effect
Meta-Commentary: The Butterfly Effect

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
- Medieval Proverb

Many (most?) of you reading this are probably familiar with the butterfly effect and how it pertains to Alternate History. Just as weather models have shown that insignificant inputs (e.g. the flap of a butterfly’s wing) can, under the right conditions, ultimately set off a chain of events that result in drastic changes to weather patterns (e.g. a hurricane), so can a small historical change set in motion major changes, as per the “For want of a nail” scenario often falsely attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who merely repeated a medieval proverb.

Orthodox butterfly theorists (for lack of a better term) cite the butterfly effect as so powerful that anyone conceived even moments after a change will not come to exist, with instead their biological “sibling” being conceived instead. They cite weather patterns and human interactions as being so volatile and chaotic that almost nothing can be taken for granted once a point of departure, however small, is set in motion. Like ripples in a still pond, the change radiates out.

Conversely, there’s a counter-argument that historical inertia is so strong that any changes developed by the point of departure will, like ripples in a raging river, get swallowed up by the bigger whole. An orthodox Deterministic view would even say that alternate history is as impossible as an alternate spacetime in our universe and that free will is an illusion and therefore alternate timelines are impossible. Schrodinger’s cat is alive and dead simultaneously, deal with it[1].

Honestly, it’s probably a mix of these ideas, though physicists will of course disagree. Spacetime may be more stochastic than we like to think. Remember, the butterfly effect doesn’t say that every time a butterfly flaps its wings that a hurricane will form from it (Sir Terry Pratchett’s fractal-winged Quantum Weather Butterflies aside), it says “under the right conditions”. A hundred horseshoe nails may have been lost that fateful day, but it was that one that made the difference. The rest made no difference. And we see potential points like this in history, like Lee’s Lost Order 191 that formed the genesis of Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory book series. Perhaps time is a stream that wanders through points of rapids and stills, narrow rocky points where changes in direction are unlikely or wide swampy flats where the course can change constantly.

Or maybe that metaphor and the accompanying argument is tapped out. Lord knows the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Philosophy are not coming my way anytime soon.

Anyway…

qwb.png

The Quantum Weather Butterfly, Sir Terry’s literal take on the Butterfly Effect (image source “occupymath.wordpress.com”)

Now, I like big butterflies, and I cannot lie. Who wants to see an alternate history where the Colonial Army beats Cornwallis 2 hours earlier than in our timeline but nothing else changes? Unless something big happens (e.g. Alexander Hamilton catches a bullet) there’s little to interest the reader. And yet, conversely, for a Pop Culture timeline like this, the opposite seems to be the case. We all love the pop culture we grew up with. Maybe we want to see a different actor here or there, but please don’t butterfly away our favorite movie or TV series!

Ironically, pop culture is arguably the most vulnerable to the butterfly effect since ideas are so ephemeral by nature and timing so critical for success or failure of an idea. This means that if we wanted to be truly realistic, then after 4-5 years most pop culture would be unidentifiable for us. But that creates the double-conundrum where not only do readers lose their beloved shows but it also creates a pop culture timeline that would realistically leave the “predictable butterfly zone” and enter the “total fiction zone” very quickly. By 1985/6 I’d be progressively entering a world of pure imagination on my part and by 1990 it’d be a purely fictional world with only a superficial pop culture resemblance to our own. And while such a thing is cool as backstory to a larger timeline (like how Jazz not existing in a Southern Victory timeline both seems likely and offers a meaningful butterfly) it’s sort of missing the point in a Pop Culture one, in my opinion.

As such, I am going to assume some sort of pop cultural inertia here. Put simply, for the next several years post-departure, greater pop culture trends will largely be the same in my timeline unless I can find a direct butterfly that will affect things. Long production cycles associated with things like movies (5-10 years) and theme parks (10-20 years) will help in this regard. Certain events are also pretty likely to happen no matter what, like the internet (ARPANET is already established before the point of departure) and the invention of streaming, new digital media, and (to some degree) social media. Certain ideas or trends can be realistically assumed to come about since pop culture can be cyclical (the return of Superhero movies, for example) though the specifics may change (no guarantee that the MCU will exist as such, and certainly not as we know it). But in short, orthodox butterfly theory will not be upheld in this timeline and some level of parallelism will be put in place.

So, when 1990 comes around and you’re wondering why some of the same hit songs are on the radio, well, that’s why. That and laziness and limited creativity, to be honest, since I really can’t even begin to predict the Top 40 hit songs of a decade post-departure. In order to keep this timeline from spiraling into a 500-page epic that I and many readers don’t have time for, I will keep things fairly constrained butterfly-wise. That said, there will be noteworthy changes developing as the series progresses and I may even throw in a few weird and wacky curveballs, like in that one Simpsons episode where Barbershop Quartets apparently became all the rage in the 1980s. But by and large I will also have a lot of parallelism here and there simply to keep things out of the pure fiction zone.

But as always, I’m open to suggestions and please alert me if I missed an obvious and critical butterfly, or even a potentially fun one. While I feel I’ve done a reasonable job of research, I’m far from the expert on all things pop culture. After all, Pobody’s Nerfect.




[1] Or something like that. Quantum physics is not my strong suit.
 
In other words, Super Mario Bros is almost certain to still happen. Super Robot Wars, though, is rather less likely.
mario predates the POD, or both happen in pararell to not disrupt the other, SRW was like that little gameboy(yes the original was GB game) that could, a little fire emblem clone become an otaku symbol

As such, I am going to assume some sort of pop cultural inertia here.
Something with P2S when we always goes to the maximum butterflies, we ended use OTL IDEA and even whole OTL products, mostly because were basic enough the butterflies would be different..and at times...because the sheer need of content make us easy(is not lazyness..writing things take time and energy...a lot actually), and at times a little of rule of cool or just even with butterflies...an equivalent would be very similar. Again for any writer...unless you write something hard to change.. anything 3-5 year POD is fair game.
 
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@Geekhis Khan Thank you for that analysis, I agree that in pop culture timelines you have to end up somewhere close to OTL or folk have no idea what is going on- however I would ask you to consider using OC's or 'third runner ups' for movie/tv roles please. Give someone else that 'Big Break' instead of Kid Rock or Will Ferrell please.

Also do not be afraid to change product names or tech- Netflix could have been Blockbuster; Nokia could have made Android; Interplay could have survived etc. I am sure we could have had that and still ended up mostly where we are.
 
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