Before we go on, let’s get to some animated stuff right now.
The third season of the Super Mario Mushroom World Adventures (the Super Mario anime) was aired in Japan, and it started airing on March 8, 1991. The third season is mostly based on BowserQuest 2: Way of the Koopa Warrior. Along with that, DiC Entertainment and Saban Entertainment dubbed the third half of Season 2 of the Super Mario anime, as well as the first half of Season 3 on Saturday mornings between September 7 and December 28, 1991. Though later on, Saban Entertainment would dub the show from 1992 to 1996, where it would be dubbed by another anime-dubbing company known as “All-Star Productions”. Don’t know what it is? You’ll see later. Also, an anime based off of The Legend of Zelda series was released to coincide with A Link to the Past. (And yes, this will be after the Legend of Zelda cartoon finished airing.) While not part of Nintendo, an OVA based off of Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 was made that year, which won’t be dubbed until 1996.
Now back to what’s going on. 1991 was the year that the SANAVS (or the Super Atari-Nintendo Advanced Video System (or even shorter, the Super Advanced Video System) came out, and here it is!
The Super Atari-Nintendo Advanced Video System
The Super Atari-Nintendo Advanced Video System
Released in: August 23, 1991
The SANAVS, which is what the SNES is known as IOTL, is the successor to the ANAVS. As for the image? That’s the placeholder image, as the SANAVS is OTL’s North American SNES under a different name. Also, here’s the console’s launch titles:
- BowserQuest 2: Way of the Koopa Warrior
- F-Zero
- Gradius III
- Pilotwings
- SimCity
- Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 3
As you can see, F-Zero, Gradius III, Pilotwings, and SimCity stayed the same, while the two games (BowserQuest 2: Way of the Koopa Warrior and Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 3) will be detailed.
First off is BowserQuest 2: Way of the Koopa Warrior. Here in this game, Bowser joins forces with his long-long twin brother (Nise A. Zure), a volcano-headed "scientist" (Volcanard Vast), and a very busty dragon girl (Pyronica Doragon) and go through five different realms, each based around the five elements of the Wuxing (Chinese philosophy), two other unrelated realms, the Hall of Records, and then outer space to butt heads with the evil, eccentric, zany, egotistic, and incompetent mad scientist who is the leader of the Warpass Gang known as Dr. Dokan.
Next is Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 3. It’s the same as it was IOTL, except there are now more dinosaurs! Now, I can explain more details about it and the previous game, but I’ll explain all of it in a Google document because I have to save some space.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s check on Sega right now.
Sega Sidestories
Outside of Nintendo, Sega also has done some stuff lately. A while ago, they released the Sega Master System, then in 1989, Sega released the Sega Genesis. Because of that, Nintendo released the SANAVS (known as the SNES IOTL) in order to compete with the Sega Genesis in 1991. Nintendo’s mascot is Mario, so what’ll Sega’s mascot be? Well it’s not Alex Kidd, but rather a speedy blue hedgehog known as Sonic the Hedgehog!
Here we have Sonic’s first game on the Sega Genesis! Released on June 23, 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog has taken some very fast success and very fast sales!
Gambling everything on Sonic’s success, Sega also released 8-bit versions of the game on the Master System and Game Gear (part-developed by Ancient) which reproduced some of the levels of the game while adding new ones and concluding in the Sky Base Zone – which would set a trend for later Sonic games finishing with a confrontation in the sky.
Some notes on the butterflies: This version of Sonic 1 is subtly different from OTL’s. The order of zones goes Green Hill - Marble - Spring Yard - Star Light - Labyrinth - Scrap Brain, probably due to consistent difficulty in the zones. Also, the front-facing Ball Hog enemies and the unused Splats enemies are kept in, except they appeared in the Spring Yard and Star Light zones respectively, the random UFOs in the background of the Marble Zone are also kept, and the swimming goggles are kept in, and they’re used for having Sonic actually swim underwater unless if he gets hit. Finally, the Final Zone is now known as the “Final Face-off Zone”.
Oh! Speaking of Alex Kidd, there have been rumors of a new Alex Kidd game coming soon in either late 1991 or early 1992. Even though Alex Kidd is no longer the mascot of Sega (I think), we can still see some Alex Kidd games, albeit only one or two of them for one console at a time.
As for other Sega IPs at the time the SANAVS is released? Well, that’ll be up to you.