AHC/WI Video game console propaganda wars in Europe

I had a strange dream last night about an ATL:

Firstly, console gaming is more popular in Europe than it was/is in OTL.

In a time period spanning approximately from 1986 to 2004, various European countries start state-owned companies that each develop a uniquely constructed video game console for domestic consumption that is intentionally made incompatible with any other console and has a unique, domestically made library of video games usually inspired by the country's culture and history, also contaning some Nationalist propaganda.

The companies use various tricks, such as writing parts of the code purely in Assembly, and constructing game cartridges containing expansion hardware for games that require it, to get the most out of the consoles, most of which are somewhere between the NES and the Super Nintendo in hardware performance.

The consoles are advertised on state-owned television channels, in schools, sometimes handed out as gifts to children for good academic performance etc. and usually pushed by the State to have a relatively low price, while various tricks are used to keep international consoles like Sega and Nintendo out of the country as much as possible.

One of the most unique of these consoles was made by Russia as late as 2005. At the start-up of each game the Russian flag is displayed while the Russian National Anthem is heard and images of people like Peter the Great, Lenin, Yuri Gagarin, and Putin pop up in the background.


How possible do you think is this ATL? What would need to change in history in the 80s or even earlier for it?
 
If every country is just stuck to their consoles, then it's not really a propaganda war.

But anyway, I can't really see this happening. Western Europe is way past the idea of state propaganda in video games, while Eastern Europe doesn't really give much a shit about video games at all. Plus, nobody would even bother to buy such "national consoles" because, as you explain, they would be outdated and they would have a tiny library of boring games, both of which make national consoles uncompetitive compared to worldwide variants.
 
Okay, let's go with this. (I'm techno-illiterate, so will stick to the political implications)...

Does this lead to an "arms race" between the various game-producing countries?

If, for example, Country X adds a feature to their game allowing its players to murder the children of Country Y, does that lead real-life "hawks" in Country Y to demand the same feature in Country Y's video game's?

"Look, do I WANT our kids to be learning this kind of stuff? Of course not. But do I think that our kids over here should stick to Geneva rules while the kids in Russia are learning how to murder our children?! Hell No!!"

And then of course, you'll have the "doves", saying we're not gonna win this war by stooping to the various horrors that we claim to be fighting against. And you'll end up with various international squabbles about which country was the first to introduce some awful function into their games...

"In tonight's news, a smuggled game cartridge purports to show a Viking's Revenge game featuring a "disembowelment" function released in 1991, thus contradicting Denmark's claims that the function was only added in 1992 in response to Germany's adoption of a similar trope. UN game-inspectors have arrived in Copenhagen for a meeting with the Danish Defense Minister about the matter."
 
Okay, let's go with this. (I'm techno-illiterate, so will stick to the political implications)...

Does this lead to an "arms race" between the various game-producing countries?

If, for example, Country X adds a feature to their game allowing its players to murder the children of Country Y, does that lead real-life "hawks" in Country Y to demand the same feature in Country Y's video game's?

"Look, do I WANT our kids to be learning this kind of stuff? Of course not. But do I think that our kids over here should stick to Geneva rules while the kids in Russia are learning how to murder our children?! Hell No!!"

And then of course, you'll have the "doves", saying we're not gonna win this war by stooping to the various horrors that we claim to be fighting against. And you'll end up with various international squabbles about which country was the first to introduce some awful function into their games...

"In tonight's news, a smuggled game cartridge purports to show a Viking's Revenge game featuring a "disembowelment" function released in 1991, thus contradicting Denmark's claims that the function was only added in 1992 in response to Germany's adoption of a similar trope. UN game-inspectors have arrived in Copenhagen for a meeting with the Danish Defense Minister about the matter."

Not bad, another idea:

Government agents from country X smuggle in a game console with a cartridge from country Y. After reverse-engineering it, they develop their own propaganda games on country Y's cartridge standard and fire the cartridges across the border, for children from country Y's border villages to find and hopefully play.
 
If this peters out by the late 2000s and the remaining consoles become collectors' items on auction sites, the Angry Video Game Nerd would have a field day reviewing them :D
 
This would be very interesting in a continued Cold War...

June 20, 1991, Hötensleben, East Germany

Little Gregor and Helga went out to play in the yard after breakfast, hoping to finish the formation of toy soldiers and tanks they were constructing in the sandbox. Next to the sandbox there was a concrete wall dividing their garden from the Death Strip of the border to West Germany. Gregor still remembered the beating and harsh lecture he received from his dad, when he was caught making chalk drawings on the wall. His father immediately started cleaning it up, but before he was finished, a Volkspolizist showed up and threatened to withdraw him from his waiting list to buy a Wartburg car, if it happened again.

As he was about to kneel down to move a tin soldier, he noticed a bright object lying among the leaves of a small bush between the sandbox and the border wall.

He picked it up and saw that it was a game cartridge, but unlike any he had seen before. The artwork featured stylized action scenes similar to those he saw on West German television and the East German state emblem of a hammer and compass was missing from it, instead featuring the Bundesadler of West Germany.

Helga went up to him curiously and inspected the cartridge.

They immediately went inside to play it, having grown bored with the only game they had so far for their console Wenn ich groß bin, gehe ich zur Volksarmee.

Their parents were both at work, and Uncle Hans was absent too, having gone to the pub to chat up with an old friend of his, after said friend was allowed a permission slip to visit the border village of Hötensleben.

As they inserted the cartridge and turned the system on, they were surprised to see that instead of the East German state emblem appearing on the screen with the first stanzas of the East German anthem beeping along, it featured a pretty well-drawn cartoon-like action sequence of people scrambling across a fence in a thunderstorm chased by dogs, and a pretty decent 8-bit rendition of a hard rock song.

The tutorial instructions that appeared described the game as a Role Playing Game, where you take the place of an East German family, who tries to escape to the West through Hungary. Unlike any video game they have seen before, it had a save feature, accomplished with a small RAM chip and a coin cell battery contained inside the cartridge.

They were immediately absorbed by the fluid motion of the characters, the game mechanics of talking to people, collecting items and using them later in situations that required it and traveling around a map containing East Bloc countries, all accompanied by gritty cyberpunk-inspired scenes and rock music.

Unbeknowst to them, a man was observing them through the window with a bitter, disappointed smile. He took out his notebook and looked up their father's name in it. He crossed out the word Wartburg, replaced the word Technician with Security Guard, and replaced the number describing his salary of 1400 Marks with 800 Marks.

"For the Fatherland" he muttered as he walked away, trying to silence his conscience.
 
Last edited:
How possible do you think is this ATL? What would need to change in history in the 80s or even earlier for it?

I think you need a POD way before 1986. In the 80's Europe was already firmly on the path to integration and so there was no way a French console could feature French games only. And certainly no European country, either in the EU, nor in the Warsaw Pact could get away with promoting their own game systems over that of their border states. If anything, they would try to integrate the best titles of the other countries systems into their own ones instead of blocking them out. This was the time when Europe started consolidating their electricity nets to common compliance after they already done so with their television technology and car safety and emission standards.

However I can see two scenarios where we can have a 'console war' across Europe:
1) For some reason Atari never enters the European market, instead several major European electronics companies all try to emulate Atari's success in their own turf. The result will be something like three years of console craziness with 20+ systems all vying for the market until one after the other drops out and only 2 or 3 remain. Then give them another three years to enjoy their monopolies before the Japanese swoop in and give then a run for their money like 10 years earlier Honda and Toyota did to Simca and Morris.

The second scenario would be a more electronic savvy USSR,or even East Germany recognizing the potential of video games, building a successful console for the Warsaw pact states and then exporting this one to the west... This one prompting a space race scenario in which the various E.U. countries come up with their own systems to stem the Eastern imports while not simply allowing Atari to swoop in and take the rest of the market. Again, as far as European integration was progresses by 1981, the E.U. would immediately come up with its own standards for gaming consoles making sure that even if the different cartridges were not compatible, the software would be and new titles would be released immediate across all platforms.
 
Top