Player Two Start: An SNES-CD Timeline
- Thread starter RySenkari
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I think I understand what Ry and Nivek are doing here. OTL, with the success of the Genesis and the moderate success of the Sega CD, Sega got victory disease in a sense. I'm not quite sure of all the details surrounding the production of and discussions leading up to the 32X, but it seems to me that they believed that keeping the Genesis on life support was still viable for the simple fact that the vanilla platform had done so well. Surely, with all that brand loyalty they'd built up, people wouldn't have an issue buying two systems, right?
What's happening is that this perception won't exist ITTL due to the second-class status (at least in the USA, the market where the Genesis has performed the best, I believe both OTL and ITTL) of its CD counterpart. Sega will be eager to wash their hands of all of this and move onto something that can bite into Nintendo's stranglehold on the market. They have a high chance of doing so with the guts, more or less, from the Nintendo 64 at the heart of their alt-Saturn here. The question ultimately becomes whether or not the console will be disc-based or cartridge-based. That was something that hurt Nintendo IOTL and might plague Sega here as well. But if they choose the former option, well, the 5th generation of consoles is certainly up for grabs. But a big remaining problem will be the hostility between the branches of Sega itself that are sure to come up in the near future. "Physician, heal thyself," indeed.
I wonder who the last of the 'Big Three' is going to be here. Even when Nintendo and Sony (inevitably?) split, I don't think they're going to go off and make their own game console. Nintendo's too smart to let them try something like that here if they've been working with them so closely; it might actually help Sony in the long run if they can restructure themselves in a way not mostly centered around video games if the worst comes to pass (though a TL where Nintendo absorbs Sony would be great, giving them a jump start years earlier about being a multimedia company rather than a strictly video game-based one...). Microsoft, still, perhaps? I suppose they could partner with one of the ailing companies like SNK, NEC, the shambling corpse of The 3DO Company, or even Atari. Philips might be interesting in a very roundabout way, if the CD-i could somehow be more successful than OTL, with them pulling a 'Sony' against Nintendo for backing out. Apple? "Player Two Start" as a secret Apple Pippin wank would be a twist I don't think anyone could've predicted, at least.
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With that said, I'll be interested to see what studios Sega and Nintendo sign exclusivity deals with or even make 2nd party studios ITTL. I get the impression that Argonaut Games might be ITTL Nintendo's Rareware. I think an acquisition model probably does suit Nintendo better as it allows them to maintain a 'family friendly' image while delegating creation of more 'mature' games to others in their fold. Not sure who'd be making stuff in the '90s that'd mesh well with Nintendo's culture that'd fit that description, however.
It'd be nice to finally see a Nintendo adaptation that doesn't completely suck too. An equivalent to Sonic SatAM or something of that nature; a Legend of Zelda cartoon headed by Greg Weisman?
A Nintendo/Disney partnership of some sort does seem like it'd have merit. They're quite similar to one another, after all.
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Here are the Nintendo Power covers for the rest of 1993.
April 1993 - Super Mario World 2
May 1993 - Batman Returns (as in OTL)
June 1993 - Star Fox
July 1993 - The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening (as in OTL)
August 1993 - Street Fighter II Turbo (as in OTL)
September 1993- Super Mario All-Stars (as in OTL)
October 1993 - The Terminator
November 1993 - Secret of Mana (as in OTL, but a different picture
December 1993 - Battletoads II
Nope, we still see Sunset Riders on vanilla SNES in October 1993, Konami's still happily supporting both for the time being.
The 32X was produced as kind of a stop-gap between the Genesis and the Saturn, and was done so over Tom Kalinske's objections. Ironically, it's BECAUSE Sega of America was so successful that Sega of Japan started to have tensions with them. A lot of it was jealousy. A less successful Sega may well mean a less hostile Sega of Japan, so we may not see the 32X at all....
I'll say right now that TTL Saturn will be disc-based. It'll be more powerful than OTL Saturn obviously, but time will tell how successful it is. It won't have to compete with the Sony Playstation obviously, so depending on what Nintendo and Sony do, it could have the fifth-gen market to itself for quite some time...
Right now Sony is raking in the dough, taking a cut of every third-party game that is produced on the system (and selling a record number of music CDs). Sony and Nintendo have and will continue to have their differences, but will it be enough to break up such a lovely marriage? We'll see. For now, they're a pretty happy couple. Will there be a third company in the console market at some point? ...yes. When and who will it be? We shall see.
The Philips CD-i is dead in the water, does even worse here than in OTL. Atari is intriguing, IIRC we do have plans for them. Microsoft, well....we have plans for them too.
We have plans for Apple. We have plans for...what is known in OTL as the Pippin which may or may not lead to the complete collapse of a certain company. That's all I'll say for now
Oh, you'll hear a lot about Rareware next post, both on the Battletoads front and about a certain monkey and a certain game which may or may not determine the ultimate fate of the vanilla SNES... and as for Argonaut, they are going to do a lot better here. Squad Four is part of a much larger whole, and I've had a lot of fun planning what Argonaut's going to end up doing ITTL.
It'd be nice to finally see a Nintendo adaptation that doesn't completely suck too. An equivalent to Sonic SatAM or something of that nature; a Legend of Zelda cartoon headed by Greg Weisman?
Hmm...we actually haven't thought too much about this yet but it could be worth addressing... Greg Weisman's still going to be doing Gargoyles ITTL but after that, who knows?
We actually discussed Namco quite extensively in our chats, you might be surprised at our plans for them
I doubt Microsoft would've entered, at least as a pure console developer. The only reason they entered the console market in OTL was because they wanted to stop Sony from getting the monopoly. However, they could still enter the gaming market in some form. They could help develop the Dreamcast for Sega (like in OTL.)
What about Namco? What many aren't aware of is that Namco came very close to entering the market during the 16-bit era. IOTL, they partnered with NEC to develop their 16-bit console, and were going to release it in 1990. However , Hudson feared that they would lose NEC's support to Namco, and around the same time, they were working the SuperGrafx on (an upgraded version of the TurboGrafx-16), which was going to be fully 16-bit. But Hudson rushed it to the end of 1989 to avoid losing NEC's support, and it ended up being a minor-upgraded 8-bit hardware.
Since the fourth generation is only two years away from being over ITTL, Namco's 16-bit console doesn't happen. However, with no standalone Sony console ITTL, as well as the commercial failure of NEC/Hudson's PC-FX (which never made it out of Japan IOTL,) Namco has a much bigger opportunity of becoming a third contender. If not, they can make an exclusive deal with Nintendo and release some of their games on the SNES-CD and later the N64.
What about Namco? What many aren't aware of is that Namco came very close to entering the market during the 16-bit era. IOTL, they partnered with NEC to develop their 16-bit console, and were going to release it in 1990. However , Hudson feared that they would lose NEC's support to Namco, and around the same time, they were working the SuperGrafx on (an upgraded version of the TurboGrafx-16), which was going to be fully 16-bit. But Hudson rushed it to the end of 1989 to avoid losing NEC's support, and it ended up being a minor-upgraded 8-bit hardware.
Since the fourth generation is only two years away from being over ITTL, Namco's 16-bit console doesn't happen. However, with no standalone Sony console ITTL, as well as the commercial failure of NEC/Hudson's PC-FX (which never made it out of Japan IOTL,) Namco has a much bigger opportunity of becoming a third contender. If not, they can make an exclusive deal with Nintendo and release some of their games on the SNES-CD and later the N64.
Just thought of another question. What's the ratio between those who can play SNES cart games and those who can play SNES CD games at this point of time? In OTL, Sega/Mega CD apparently sold around just 2.7 million in its lifetime, while the Genesis/Mega Drive did around 40 million, so only above 6%. I'm thinking it's already higher than that for the SNES line ITTL.
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Is a interesting proposal but depend a lot of butterflies(Genesis is still popular as OTL in all places except japan) and japan still have a lot of leverage.
Wanst MEGA-CD like 4 Millon? well nobody have exact Number OTL(wiki not give accurated date, NPD didn'e exit yet). But lets say 3 millon, that is like 7% percent, and PC engine one... is even more difficult but maybe was a little higher. Will not spoil nothing but you're in right track GD, you're being our best fan so far,xd.
Well, I just now read that Mega CD sales could have ranged from 1.5 to 6 million sales, and US sales could have been 2.5 million. So between 3.5 to 14 percent. Something tells me SNES CD would still have a higher percentage.
Other questions:
Is there a glut of FMV games on the SNES CD like OTL Mega/Sega CD, or has that been avoided? Similarly, does the Mega/Sega CD have more non-FMV games in its library or not? Does it even have titles it didn't get in OTL?
Are we going to see what the usual console arguments by the gaming public would look like? How does Mario vs. Sonic look this time around?
Yeah i read the same number too, is pretty unclear how sale, I always rounded it to 3 millon for average mean sake, and you're right, more if read between lines in the updates.
FMV was CD Shovelware, there is Diamond hidden in the glutter but following Strugeon Laws, most shovelware are bad, but here Nintendo with Higher quality standard make hard life to developers and publishers to publish those game(the rule 1 game for snes vanilla and snes cd per year, Nintendo Right of first refusal in any non internal development game), some good FMV have been published by Sony and third parties but notherless crap manage to pass the radar but SNES-CD image is far positive that sega-cd.
In general, Nintendo and a lesser degree Sony check carefully which game got the pass for the CD system but something they're not flawless(specially Sony who more games means more royalties) but make a far better job than sega, specially with more developers knowing the minimum standards.
About the Console wars, is raging hard as otl but there a new position, when in vanilla console seems a hard fougt battle, the optical wars have been already partially called, Sony and Nintendo made the best optical addon but Sega have been a great runnerup with must have exclusives. The Mario vs Sonic rivalty is as OTL, with nintendo fans exalt mario legacy as sega fans promote sonic attitued and grounbreaking sucess as his qualities.
Still we're entering 1994 and Sega have a better run that 5 year before but Nintendo make a gigantic leap with their CD addon, but this playing a long game and sega have a good Ace in the hole.
You're killing off Bandai, aren't you...We have plans for Apple. We have plans for...what is known in OTL as the Pippin which may or may not lead to the complete collapse of a certain company. That's all I'll say for now
Ironically the Pippin hurt apple more that bandai, but that is other topic.
Right. Of course, had Bandai done a console without Apple's help, well... that's a question that we will perhaps address later on. Maybe.
Hmm, so what did you guys think of the new and improved Secret of Mana? Just curious.
Right. Of course, had Bandai done a console without Apple's help, well... that's a question that we will perhaps address later on. Maybe.
Hmm, so what did you guys think of the new and improved Secret of Mana? Just curious.
Fantastic. And, that could be a door to have Secret of Mana 2 in America finally... About the music... seems to be that more "Distant Worlds"-like concerts and tours will have more recognition ITTL. Just two questions:
1. How will the e-sports be doing ITTL?
2. How is PC gaming ITTL? Any chance for Bullfrog to stay at the business?
Fantastic job
Fantastic. And, that could be a door to have Secret of Mana 2 in America finally... About the music... seems to be that more "Distant Worlds"-like concerts and tours will have more recognition ITTL. Just two questions:
1. How will the e-sports be doing ITTL?
2. How is PC gaming ITTL? Any chance for Bullfrog to stay at the business?
Fantastic job
Secret of Mana 2 to the West is a certainty at this point. And yeah, having CD-quality music in RPGs (and a lot of other SNES-CD games) will really boost the profile of video game music ITTL. Remember, we've got Final Fantasy VI coming up...and that opera scene....
So far, e-sports are quite a ways off, so it's fallen outside our radar at this point in time. We'll see them grow in prominence but that's a ways off and we have yet to determine if they'll be bigger, smaller, or stay the same as IOTL.
We'll cover Doom in the next update and perhaps do a general PC update sometime soon, maybe maybe not. I do know that a lot of PC hits are going to make it to the SNES-CD in some form or another. Bullfrog had a mild success with the SNES-CD release of Syndicate, they might rake in some extra dough with SNES-CD ports or original projects but that has yet to be seen.
Wonder if it even be called Secret of Mana 2? It could easily be some variant of "______ of Mana" titles, given the naming scheme in OTL.
Regarding CD games, there's still usage of the soundchip, right? I would figure only a couple of pieces would be streamed from the CD, given how many CDs they would put out for official OSTs. (Final Fantasy III has three CDs for its OST)
Doom on consoles. That came out on SNES with the Super FX 2 chip, Jaguar, Sega 32X... neither of them had all the PC levels.
I'm planning to call it "Elements Of Mana".
And if the Lunar games could have full-CD soundtracks on the Sega CD (and hell, Pier Solar had one too), Final Fantasy can pull it off on the SNES-CD. The OSTs have a higher bitrate obviously but the in-game stuff could sound a hell of a lot better than it did on the soundchip
Oh yes, Doom will be a big game for the SNES-CD. EGM gave the SNES version rather lousy scores IOTL, but with that 21.4 Mhz processor and 700 MB of space...
I'm planning to call it "Elements Of Mana".
And if the Lunar games could have full-CD soundtracks on the Sega CD (and hell, Pier Solar had one too), Final Fantasy can pull it off on the SNES-CD. The OSTs have a higher bitrate obviously but the in-game stuff could sound a hell of a lot better than it did on the soundchip
From what I looked, Lunar doesn't have as many songs. In comparison, the FF VI ost has over 60 tracks with over 3 hours of music. Granted the songs of the OST may have one loop, but that leaves at least 1.5 hours of music. Probably more since the 21 minute ending theme doesn't loop. If they store the music as 16-bit 32kHz PCM, then maybe they could fit it all (of course the music can't be read in CD Players) but it would be pushing it. I still think some songs would be done with the sound chip, as it outputted at 16-bit, 32kHz. Few would be able to tell the difference if done correctly. Not to mention it would allow more dynamic music (as in alter the music based on events in the game ala iMuse)
And since you mentioned Lunar, any chance that series will see an SNES CD update?
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