Player Two Start: An SNES-CD Timeline

[RySenkari]

So, is Sonic 4 closer to Sonic X-Treme, the canceled game, or Sonic Adventure?

Nivek suggested Sonic Rush (DS) as the closest Sonic game to what we have in mind for Sonic 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61iUraFV8k

It's a somewhat better looking Sonic Rush (featuring fully rendered cutscenes instead of stills, a better musical soundtrack, etc.)

 

[Miss Teri]

Nivek suggested Sonic Rush (DS) as the closest Sonic game to what we have in mind for Sonic 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61iUraFV8k

It's a somewhat better looking Sonic Rush (featuring fully rendered cutscenes instead of stills, a better musical soundtrack, etc.)

Oh, cool. That series was critically acclaimed. How do the 3D graphics factor into this?

 

[Neoteros]

Barret Wallace's appearance and personality haven't changed, it seems. I hope Squaresoft won't get too many accusations of racism, since there's much more to that guy than being a boisterous Mr. T lookalike with a prosthetic gun arm. I mean, the blonde-haired and white Cid Highwind is even more foul-mouthed than he is, he's a chain smoker, he can give Barret a run for his money in the angry Boisterous Bruiser department, and his treatment of Shera is a hair's breadth away from being textbook spousal abuse. Barret is a saint compared to him.

Squad Four, I don't know why but I keep imagining it as vaguely similar to Beyond Good and Evil. Fighters Megamix, well, it could be amazingly good, or awfully terrible, since it'd be hard to find a balance between Tekken's arcade fighting, Virtua Fighter's technical fighting and Soul Edge's weapon-based fighting.

 

[Nivek]

Oh, cool. That series was critically acclaimed. How do the 3D graphics factor into this?

The 3D would be pretty good for the era, mostly as say characthers, enemies and bosses, and as his classic Sonic up to 11 would be pretty good, boss battle are pretty the selling point of 3d, maybe some 3d extra stages with minigames.

Something more 3D like Mario or Adventure, would come later, still wondering, specially as STI will have more life and something to do(and without OTL fiascos, less pressure, so chris senn is in far better health)

Barret Wallace's appearance and personality haven't changed, it seems. I hope Squaresoft won't get too many accusations of racism, since there's much more to that guy than being a boisterous Mr. T lookalike with a prosthetic gun arm. I mean, the blonde-haired and white Cid Highwind is even more foul-mouthed than he is, he's a chain smoker, he can give Barret a run for his money in the angry Boisterous Bruiser department, and his treatment of Shera is a hair's breadth away from being textbook spousal abuse. Barret is a saint compared to him.

Squad Four, I don't know why but I keep imagining it as vaguely similar to Beyond Good and Evil. Fighters Megamix, well, it could be amazingly good, or awfully terrible, since it'd be hard to find a balance between Tekken's arcade fighting, Virtua Fighter's technical fighting and Soul Edge's weapon-based fighting.

Did they got those OTL? didn't remember, barrett was pretty funny for the time. and his subplot give a massive favoruable light so depend, people always complain for something.

Squad Four as ry previously mentioned, is pretty interesting, with elements of Star fox, Jet force gemini and Sin and Punishmenti in terms of gameplay. https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=10246783#post10246783 . Well, in otl sega was able make a car to fight so anything is possible

 

[Neoteros]

Did they got those OTL? didn't remember, barrett was pretty funny for the time. and his subplot give a massive favoruable light so depend, people always complain for something.

Well, I was in elementary school and without internet when that game first came out so, I don't know if Barret was accused of being a racist portrayal of a black man back in 1997; the internet of 2015, however... everyone seems to think he is. Okay, he talked in pseudo-Ebonics, but that's the fault of the translators - Final Fantasy VII had an infamously bad English translation, after all. And, there aren't many things that go more against certain unpleasant stereotypes, that having a black guy be a sympathetic (if flawed, AVALANCHE is a terrorist group after all) leader and a father figure to an orphaned four year old girl.

 

[Nivek]

Well, I was in elementary school and without internet when that game first came out so, I don't know if Barret was accused of being a racist portrayal of a black man back in 1997; the internet of 2015, however... everyone seems to think he is. Okay, he talked in pseudo-Ebonics, but that's the fault of the translators - Final Fantasy VII had an infamously bad English translation, after all. And, there aren't many things that go more against certain unpleasant stereotypes, that having a black guy be a sympathetic (if flawed, AVALANCHE is a terrorist group after all) leader and a father figure to an orphaned four year old girl.

for what i've read...nope, maybe not care, his strange english(that ebonics explained) did was critized, so the rest i think if not blipped a radar otl, here would be hard difficult, again maybe a better translation would do wonders here.

Something Else of E3 update, something who loved, something who disliked, something to comment about the future?

 

[Nevermore]

To get some idea of what the UNES looks like ITTL, would it be fair to say it's a slightly smaller looking version of the N64 DD:

Of course, with the N64's general layout (power, reset, controller ports) with a CD tray instead?

As for the controller, would it be fair to imagine it as basically the Wii Pro Controller with a port on the back for memory expansion (and, perhaps in the future, something like the Dreamcast's VMU? The PS1 OTL actually had the PocketStation.) If so, then I'm rather glad to see I was right about guessing its design.

I'll also echo the others in my praise of "Goddamnit, it's full of incest!" being one of the best out-of-context quotes to come from this TL so far.

So now the cat's officially out of the bag with the UNES and we've got the Game Boy Color on the horizon. I'm a little sad to see the Game Gear pretty much dead in the water as per OTL, but I don't think it was really possible to save it barring a major overhaul. I suppose those R&D dollars were better spent elsewhere. Hopefully we'll see a worthy competitor to the Game Boy/Game Boy successor line ITTL similar to the PSP.

That said, as good as Sonic 4 is sure to be, I'm sure Sega was pretty annoyed after Space World considering that Nintendo pretty much stole their thunder regarding a controller with 3D movement. Of course, I'm sure TTL will see a lot of threads debating on who utilized those controls better. I'd suggest Nintendo, if only because they have a second stick to control the camera, but that could just be my own personal bias there.

A Squad Four sequel, huh? Is it being developed by Argonaut Games or has Nintendo handed it off to another team in house at this point? And out of curiosity, is Dog Dash actually based on a cancelled game concept that Naughty Dog had OTL for a game or is it an entirely new IP created for the purposes of Player Two Start?

Also: given Fire Emblem's earlier and more widespread popularity ITTL, might we see a collaboration between Intelligent Systems in a crossover with Konami (Suikoden?) or Koei in the future?

Tomb Raider and Legacy of Kain also make their grand appearances... as Saturn exclusives to boot. One small quibble, though: Eidos wouldn't be publishing the game as they wouldn't own Crystal Dynamics until 1998. CD would be the ones who are putting out the game for Silicon Knights. Also loved the random bits with Jaleel White and Coolio just sort of randomly being at E3. Gotta love pointless celebrity appearances (well, understandable in White's case, but still).

Also: if we're talking about companies surviving past their OTL 'best by' dates (I think id Software is safe for the moment), why not have Nintendo nab Maxis and Sega Origin Systems? In the former's case, they had exclusivity deals with Nintendo during the SNES era and I'm sure that Sim____ games continued to appear on the SNES CD. They might still eventually decline, but it might be more graceful than being under EA's roof.

If Sega gets Origin Systems to ensure that Ultima will remain with them as their big Western RPG series... that has enormous butterflies as that would be before System Shock 2 ever enters development. Looking Glass Studios never gets tapped to do a sequel and a lot of common game tropes nowadays don't appear (like audio logs being a way to inform the player of a back story). Just food for thought.

 

[Kevin R.]

One (embarrassing) question that hit my mind when I read about Tomb Raider... how do I put this in a way that isn't disgusting... uh, what do Lara Croft's boobs look like?

I'm serious. I'm not being pervy here, or at least I hope I'm not. (I swear! ) One of the trends of this TL seems to be that the "bro-ification" of gaming gets nipped in the bud early with a number of strong, well-written female characters in '90s gaming. And IOTL, Lara's famous... proportions came about by accident, the result of a developer adjusting a slider and inadvertently increasing the size of her breasts by 150%, which the rest of the creative team saw and liked. I could easily see a fluke like that being butterflied away, especially with Tomb Raider being made for a more powerful console than OTL's PlayStation, and Lara having more realistic proportions similar to the 2013 reboot -- i.e. she has a defined figure, which would make her form stand out with limited processing power, but not ridiculously exaggerated. (Maybe they focus on her legs and, uh, rear, like Chun Li? She does do a lot of jumping and climbing, after all, and players are gonna spend most of the game looking at her from behind... stop, Kevin! <headslap> ) This could well have butterflies down the road with how later female characters are depicted.

 

[KamuiArchetype]

Nice update. Although for some reason I keep imagining Coolio's performance in the list of top embarrassing pop cultural events of the 90s when people look back at that decade. I'm imagining a bunch of parody Youtube videos and YTPs in the future.

So, is Keepers of the Light TTL's Thracia 776? Huh, if that's so, I hope the substitute characters of Holy War actually get used in it and are canonized as actually active in the story of the Jugdral saga.

I'm not seeing Iron Combatant making any headway in Japan at all. The majority of the audience for mecha is going to be young boys (the type who'd watch Gundam) and most female fans are going to be of the fujoshi persuasion who are more interested in slash of pretty boy pilots than female pilots.

Before I forget, what's Shin Megami Tensei II's status TTL? Please tell me if it still exists that Atlus actually bothered to make different final bosses for each route instead of being lazy asses like OTL.

 

[Goldwind2]

Is square going to merge with Enix like it did Otl

 

[Nivek]

One (embarrassing) question that hit my mind when I read about Tomb Raider... how do I put this in a way that isn't disgusting... uh, what do Lara Croft's boobs look like?

I'm serious. I'm not being pervy here, or at least I hope I'm not. (I swear! ) One of the trends of this TL seems to be that the "bro-ification" of gaming gets nipped in the bud early with a number of strong, well-written female characters in '90s gaming. And IOTL, Lara's famous... proportions came about by accident, the result of a developer adjusting a slider and inadvertently increasing the size of her breasts by 150%, which the rest of the creative team saw and liked. I could easily see a fluke like that being butterflied away, especially with Tomb Raider being made for a more powerful console than OTL's PlayStation, and Lara having more realistic proportions similar to the 2013 reboot -- i.e. she has a defined figure, which would make her form stand out with limited processing power, but not ridiculously exaggerated. (Maybe they focus on her legs and, uh, rear, like Chun Li? She does do a lot of jumping and climbing, after all, and players are gonna spend most of the game looking at her from behind... stop, Kevin! <headslap> ) This could well have butterflies down the road with how later female characters are depicted.

I've heard that rumor too and the more i hear, the more i think is a urban legend(or just the designer cover his ass), all more advance 3d models she already have her assets, or just PS1/Saturn(the game was co maded with both consoles in mind) triangles were just that bad make those big triangle boobs, as N64/*saturn would texture it a little better, maybe would be better made or just like otl(if that was planned all along) (Joanna Dark uses to have big assets in her advance 3d models but were more modest ingame thanks n64 hardware and newer one pushed more a more animesque art style)

 

[Nivek]

Nice update. Although for some reason I keep imagining Coolio's performance in the list of top embarrassing pop cultural events of the 90s when people look back at that decade. I'm imagining a bunch of parody Youtube videos and YTPs in the future.

So, is Keepers of the Light TTL's Thracia 776? Huh, if that's so, I hope the substitute characters of Holy War actually get used in it and are canonized as actually active in the story of the Jugdral saga.

I'm not seeing Iron Combatant making any headway in Japan at all. The majority of the audience for mecha is going to be young boys (the type who'd watch Gundam) and most female fans are going to be of the fujoshi persuasion who are more interested in slash of pretty boy pilots than female pilots.

Before I forget, what's Shin Megami Tensei II's status TTL? Please tell me if it still exists that Atlus actually bothered to make different final bosses for each route instead of being lazy asses like OTL.

Jejeje, that is so 90's as this timeline this, again yeah that will be big in youtube(we need to cover the loss of cdi infamy, isn't it? )

Little Spoiler...Keepers of Light is fully original title here(but influence by Tear Ring Saga, the unofficial fire emblem) in relation, would be the equivalent of gaiden to snes-cd. more details are surprise .

About Thracia 776, a lot ot element were added to holy war here(leif deuteragonist plus a few characther who hook the whole plot, specially certain redhead), Holy war is heavily different, and i think you already noticed that, maybe later put a more in deep summary those changes.

You always thinking like that japan, . More details about the game later.

SMT II did was more indeep here but bad news....Japan only, Atlus got cold feet after SMT I bombed and they think it will not goes that well head to head against Square, Enix , Konami or Nintendo own offering, so they focus more original and experimental games for the west. but in graphics, game content and side quest, SMT II was heavily improved but still would look date against FFVI, Chrono or Tale Phantasia, thus atlus is more waiting to push his next gen game, alongside a more 3D-ish SMT spinoff.

Is square going to merge with Enix like it did Otl

A picture worth thousand words:

 

[RySenkari]

Squad Four, I don't know why but I keep imagining it as vaguely similar to Beyond Good and Evil.

Right now Squad Four's still mostly an on-rails adventure series. Once the Ultra Nintendo hits, technology will enable it to evolve into something resembling OTL's Jet Force Gemini or Beyond Good and Evil. Look out for the third installment!

Of course, with the N64's general layout (power, reset, controller ports) with a CD tray instead? As for the controller, would it be fair to imagine it as basically the Wii Pro Controller with a port on the back for memory expansion (and, perhaps in the future, something like the Dreamcast's VMU? The PS1 OTL actually had the PocketStation.) If so, then I'm rather glad to see I was right about guessing its design.

Right on both pretty much!

That said, as good as Sonic 4 is sure to be, I'm sure Sega was pretty annoyed after Space World considering that Nintendo pretty much stole their thunder regarding a controller with 3D movement. Of course, I'm sure TTL will see a lot of threads debating on who utilized those controls better. I'd suggest Nintendo, if only because they have a second stick to control the camera, but that could just be my own personal bias there.

Pretty much, the second stick makes the Ultra Nintendo's controller more useful, though once the Saturn controller gets redesigned to make it smaller, it's pretty well regarded also.

A Squad Four sequel, huh? Is it being developed by Argonaut Games or has Nintendo handed it off to another team in house at this point? And out of curiosity, is Dog Dash actually based on a cancelled game concept that Naughty Dog had OTL for a game or is it an entirely new IP created for the purposes of Player Two Start?

Squad Four: Eclipse is Argonaut like the first, while Dog Dash is indeed an original IP.

Also: given Fire Emblem's earlier and more widespread popularity ITTL, might we see a collaboration between Intelligent Systems in a crossover with Konami (Suikoden?) or Koei in the future?

It's a possibility, though it probably wouldn't be until the Ultra Nintendo's successor at the earliest.

Tomb Raider and Legacy of Kain also make their grand appearances... as Saturn exclusives to boot. One small quibble, though: Eidos wouldn't be publishing the game as they wouldn't own Crystal Dynamics until 1998. CD would be the ones who are putting out the game for Silicon Knights. Also loved the random bits with Jaleel White and Coolio just sort of randomly being at E3. Gotta love pointless celebrity appearances (well, understandable in White's case, but still).

Exclusives for now at least! And I'll go back and fix that Eidos thing if I can remember to do so. E3's always been visited by celebrities, both IOTL and ITTL, that's not gonna change here Remember Michael Jackson, Joel Schumacher, and Selena last year?

Also: if we're talking about companies surviving past their OTL 'best by' dates (I think id Software is safe for the moment), why not have Nintendo nab Maxis and Sega Origin Systems? In the former's case, they had exclusivity deals with Nintendo during the SNES era and I'm sure that Sim____ games continued to appear on the SNES CD. They might still eventually decline, but it might be more graceful than being under EA's roof.

That's also a possibility down the road. I think Sega getting Origin is more likely than Nintendo getting Maxis.

If Sega gets Origin Systems to ensure that Ultima will remain with them as their big Western RPG series... that has enormous butterflies as that would be before System Shock 2 ever enters development. Looking Glass Studios never gets tapped to do a sequel and a lot of common game tropes nowadays don't appear (like audio logs being a way to inform the player of a back story). Just food for thought.

Butterflying System Shock 2 away is huge, though perhaps a similar title could appear on the Saturn or its successor...

One (embarrassing) question that hit my mind when I read about Tomb Raider... how do I put this in a way that isn't disgusting... uh, what do Lara Croft's boobs look like?

Not quite as pointy thanks to the improved graphics of TTL's Tomb Raider. Plus, with Kalinske in charge (the man has three daughters), he might try to downplay the promotion of Lara Croft as a sex symbol, he really seems to like her as a strong character.

So, is Keepers of the Light TTL's Thracia 776? Huh, if that's so, I hope the substitute characters of Holy War actually get used in it and are canonized as actually active in the story of the Jugdral saga.

PART of it is Thracia 776, the other part is Seisen no Kaifu. It's a HUGE game and yes those characters get used.

I'm not seeing Iron Combatant making any headway in Japan at all. The majority of the audience for mecha is going to be young boys (the type who'd watch Gundam) and most female fans are going to be of the fujoshi persuasion who are more interested in slash of pretty boy pilots than female pilots.

Well, it should do decently well in the States if reviews are good.

Before I forget, what's Shin Megami Tensei II's status TTL? Please tell me if it still exists that Atlus actually bothered to make different final bosses for each route instead of being lazy asses like OTL.

Japan only, and it's largely and same as IOTL. Some things can't be helped

Is square going to merge with Enix like it did Otl

Maybe, maybe not.

 

[Lavanya Six]

The comment about Final Fantasy VII's gameplay being traditional and a bit clunky makes me wonder about its place in gamer culture ITTL. It won't be the breakout JRPG in the rest. That's arguably Secret of Mana, although even SoM was more a large touchstone amongst a few JRPGs that established the genre's foothold in North America.

It's still Final Fantasy, and it's still the franchise's golden age, but right now my guess would be that FFVII ends up being more of a FFVI. A game that ends on many "Best Of" lists over the years, is fondly remembered by JRPG fans, but doesn't quite become a definitive game in the genre.

One (embarrassing) question that hit my mind when I read about Tomb Raider... how do I put this in a way that isn't disgusting... uh, what do Lara Croft's boobs look like?

I'm serious. I'm not being pervy here, or at least I hope I'm not. (I swear! ) One of the trends of this TL seems to be that the "bro-ification" of gaming gets nipped in the bud early with a number of strong, well-written female characters in '90s gaming. And IOTL, Lara's famous... proportions came about by accident, the result of a developer adjusting a slider and inadvertently increasing the size of her breasts by 150%, which the rest of the creative team saw and liked. I could easily see a fluke like that being butterflied away, especially with Tomb Raider being made for a more powerful console than OTL's PlayStation, and Lara having more realistic proportions similar to the 2013 reboot -- i.e. she has a defined figure, which would make her form stand out with limited processing power, but not ridiculously exaggerated.

Even if the first game has a more modest Lara, I'm certain there'd be "boob creep" over the next few games. It happens in comic books a lot. Teenage, willowy, or small-cupped women tend to gradually bloat over time. For example: Stargirl over at DC went from being a trim, athletic teen who occasionally was drawn with braces in the early-to-mid 2000s to fairly racktastic by the 2010s.

The boob inflation could tie into the franchise's sequelitis (if she starts out more modest ITTL). A waggish rule of thumb amongst gamers could be that you can judge how bad a Tomb Raider is by how big Lara's chest is. A back-to-basic Lara could instead be seen as one that ditches the overt sex appeal.

On the other hand, if Lara's chest stays relatively modest all the while, it could be an ironic reference point ITTL for the design of female characters: "I think we need to make this one more Black Queen and less Lara Croft."

EDIT: And never mind. Missed the author's response above while I was drafting this.

 

[Nivek]

The comment about Final Fantasy VII's gameplay being traditional and a bit clunky makes me wonder about its place in gamer culture ITTL. It won't be the breakout JRPG in the rest. That's arguably Secret of Mana, although even SoM was more a large touchstone amongst a few JRPGs that established the genre's foothold in North America.

It's still Final Fantasy, and it's still the franchise's golden age, but right now my guess would be that FFVII ends up being more of a FFVI. A game that ends on many "Best Of" lists over the years, is fondly remembered by JRPG fans, but doesn't quite become a definitive game in the genre.



Even if the first game has a more modest Lara, I'm certain there'd be "boob creep" over the next few games. It happens in comic books a lot. Teenage, willowy, or small-cupped women tend to gradually bloat over time. For example: Stargirl over at DC went from being a trim, athletic teen who occasionally was drawn with braces in the early-to-mid 2000s to fairly racktastic by the 2010s.

The boob inflation could tie into the franchise's sequelitis (if she starts out more modest ITTL). A waggish rule of thumb amongst gamers could be that you can judge how bad a Tomb Raider is by how big Lara's chest is. A back-to-basic Lara could instead be seen as one that ditches the overt sex appeal.

On the other hand, if Lara's chest stays relatively modest all the while, it could be an ironic reference point ITTL for the design of female characters: "I think we need to make this one more Black Queen and less Lara Croft."

EDIT: And never mind. Missed the author's response above while I was drafting this.

Your thougs in FFVII are pretty good and acording the context, but ITTL context, with mana and other rpg already setting a foothold,FFVII would have higher standard to meet and most reviewers are pretty hardcore fans who even if love the 3d graphics, still wanted more of the meat that a trade show demo would not provide so fast(as you say, the game have hype but still a bar must jump and raise) but i think when the game is more finished and a more elaborated demo is out...that will be a megaton.

About Lara you got more right and as ry say, sega would push more as a powerful female that her boobs of steel, plus even if lara lost her boobs of steel a female indiana jones and one well made was hard to see, even more of videogame, specially a good one, thus lara easily can make an impact.

 

[Golden Darkness]

Your thougs in FFVII are pretty good and acording the context, but ITTL context, with mana and other rpg already setting a foothold,FFVII would have higher standard to meet and most reviewers are pretty hardcore fans who even if love the 3d graphics, still wanted more of the meat that a trade show demo would not provide so fast(as you say, the game have hype but still a bar must jump and raise) but i think when the game is more finished and a more elaborated demo is out...that will be a megaton.

What I like to know is how this FFVII will be like in comparison to OTL.

Will there a notorious gut punch scene where an Aeris/Aerith like character gets suddenly killed? And massive rumors over whether there was a sidequest to revive her, but it was cut out? Of course, most likely the only way to do so is with a Gameshark.

Speaking of cheating devices, how are those devices faring?

 

[Nivek]

What I like to know is how this FFVII will be like in comparison to OTL.

Will there a notorious gut punch scene where an Aeris/Aerith like character gets suddenly killed? And massive rumors over whether there was a sidequest to revive her, but it was cut out? Of course, most likely the only way to do so is with a Gameshark.

Speaking of cheating devices, how are those devices faring?

Umm the rumors i heard was that takahashi(xeno series famed) conceptualized the idea of a party member loss, to the impact of it, but wanted to be random among the mandatory Human party members(sans cloud for obvious reason and the two optional ones), tv tropes say was barrett and aeris in the final drafts but mr Sakaguchi, who loss her mother at the time, pushed Aerith for the female angle... so they always planned that player punch ahead still if not big butterflies, keep as otl.

Cheating device still exist and nintendo will not be happy with those( a discreted way to piracy), with cd some will be memory card esque as cd is running, but those not jump into popularity until certain gameboy game comes ahead....

 

[KamuiArchetype]

and it's largely and same as IOTL. Some things can't be helped

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Damn it Atlus. Even in an alternate timeline they still manage to shit up anything Law-related.

 

[Nivek]

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Damn it Atlus. Even in an alternate timeline they still manage to shit up anything Law-related.

That is Atlus to you, yeah sometimes law route is always massively lacking, even when sometimes seems was the original choice in SMT 1(how the MC helped to created millenium). But that is atlus for us, again maybe this will raise hope:
The Sega Saturn version was planned to be released in North America in June, 1996, but it was cancelled for unknown reasons.[1]

"Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner". GameFan (Shinno Media) (#39). March 1996. (if someone can give a scan that magazine will be a mega pleasue)

 

[RySenkari]

FF7 will be somewhat different, somewhat the same, anything else would be spoilers.