Cultural WI: Nintendo releases Star Fox 2?

The choice to not release the fully-completed Star Fox 2 for the Super Nintendo seemed to do more than just deny the sales of what was almost certain to be a classic game. It also seemed to damage relations between Nintendo and Argonaut, and (might?) have stunted hardware development for the N64 (I'm saying this more as a casual hunch than anything).

What would the effects of releasing this one game be? Surely the changes wouldn't be massive, but how may the snowball roll down the mountain?
 
Besides Super Getting a late Hit Alongside DKC3 and something us(snes owners) would surely loved, the butterflies would be interesting with star fox series, as Star Fox 64(herw 3D, as 3 is 3D?) Would be vastly different(they would stiill want a soft reboot but make little sense with 2) and expand the new gameplay options 2 bring(the semi real time turn based space screen, multiple planets and missions, non lineal gameplay, transofrmable vehicles) and those would be big how EAD-Argonaut will want an entry for N64(and with 2 sucess they will trully wanted it).

About Nintendo-Argonaut, IIRC they were working about a yoshi 3d platformer partly based Mario 64 and one argonaut original idea, if here come better term, a better yoshi game that story(not bad feeling with story was not bad just...disapointing) that other good butterfly.

besided that, alongside getting a second party and super fx emulation not being a issue...not mayor butterflies, besied a few more millon seller for extra games development.

(Note that n64 rumor is fake)
 
Hi, Nivek. I guessed that the biggest immediate effect would be on Star Fox 64. A game following Star Fox 2 and more closely involving Argonaut is more likely to be a sequel than a reboot, as they now have an expanded world to match up to (like the two additions to Star Fox Team, Fay and Miyu) and Argonaut, likely to want to defend their additions to the game, would have a bigger stake in the game/series compared to Miyamoto. This could lead to Star Fox 64 being bigger and take longer to develop, released for the holiday season of 1997 instead of the summer, or even delayed to 1998.

How might this affect Miyamoto's decision to suggest to Rare that Dinosaur Planet should be a Star Fox game? At this point, Argonaut would've/could've been seen as 'the' team that developed Star Fox, in the same way that Rare was the guys behind Donkey Kong Country, with relations with Nintendo still going strong. Here, there's less reason for another team to work on Star Fox, so Rare might be left to work on their game, releasing Dinosaur Planet as an N64 game. I'm not sure if this would butterfly away the Microsoft purchase of Rare, or if Rare would avoid the rather ignoble fall from glory by staying with Nintendo or would burn out anyway, but a Rare making games for the GameCube and Wii (IMO superior to the Kinect as a game system) would be a pretty big impact for one game to have.
 
Hi Drunkrobot, Of Course Star Fox 64 would be heavily change here, so let's say give argonaut full control and 1998 released date would be interesting, that free EAD for a whole original game too, those are nice butterflies. The Rest would be guessing how butterfly impact that.

The Whole Dinosaur Planet-Star Fox Adventures were a lot of butterflies and not unify theory but with obvious other butterflies the game can land anywhere, like N64 or Gamecube(Star Fox Adventure was amazing and pretty even if was a reskinned Dinosaur Planet) about microsoft and other is that butterflies, maybe here rare make an extra game in 1997 alongside goldeneye and that help to keep as second party(and avoid talent leaks) and again all is up how people manage the timeline

So you touch two good butterflies and their effect, something more? in general N64 would be like that unless they push 64DD for default and for me is the true massive butterfly(capcom was working a resident evil port, who landed in cartidge, FFVII started in 64dd,etc).
 
To me, a focus on the DD while the N64 still used cartridges is just going to lead to a bigger win for Sony's PS1. The history of console add-ons have always been spotty, even in the best of terms (The Famicom ended up selling 20 million units in Japan and had near-total market domination, and such games like Metroid and the Legend of Zelda required the Famicom Disk System. Even then, the FDS only sold 4 million units, a fifth of the total install base). The N64 sitting on top of it's bulky big add-on looks like an embarrassing repeat of history, with the PlayStation taking the place of the SNES with the 64DD as the impotent Sega-CD. If their 64-bit system was going to support CDs, then it had to be a part of the system itself. Whatever happened to that deal between Nintendo and Phillips? Surely Nintendo had to get something out of letting Phillips use Mario and Zelda on the CD-I? Why couldn't Phillips supply a CD drive for the N64? However, those are events that would've likely needed to happen earlier on, not during 1995 when Star Fox 2 was to be released.
 
I was talking about integrating the 64DD since day zero, i think there is something about 64DD puzzle never feels completed and nintendo was so full on it....still that is a butterfly worthy is own TL.

So something else here or just enough for you?
 
Oh, well, to me any scenario that results from the release of Star Fox 2 won't be able to significantly impact the hardware of the N64, it's just too late in the deisgn process to make that change without at least a significant delay. Although a healthier relationship with Argonaut may result in improved chips to the N64 Game Pak, essentially pushing up the graphical ceiling in the same way the Super FX and Super FX 2 chips did for the SNES, although storage was always the limiting factor for the N64 anyway.

As for a timeline, I've always wanted to do one, but I'd need to do a lot of research and quite a bit of creative thinking in order to make something worth reading.
 
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