That Wacky Redhead

[DTF955Baseballfan]

Also on my mind is the idea of the legality of fanfiction and recording tv shows. I realize that I ask alot but such a good tl raises such questions.

All good TLs like this do.

Parodies were legally recognized earlier, and so I suspect that fan fiction would be, too. There were Hogan's Heroes fanzines floating around int he '70s I think, certainly by the early '80s, as I read of a good number of them before ff.net came along and wiped out those.

One wonders if blooper reels will become less popular with a lack of VCR tech for the public. (OTL, Star Trek blooper reels were passed around and spread to the public in the 1970's, while BBC bloopers were passed around among the staff and beyond and built up a following.)

They will become popular somehow; IIRC it was well before most homes could afford VCRs when "Bloopers and Practical Jokes" was a big hit. I believe only after that, when more people started buying them, that "Foul-Ups, Bleeps, and Blunders" copied it, and soon the industry was really watered down.

One possibility, I suppose, is that "Bloopers and Practical Jokes" doesn't inspire the TV copycats that it did OTL becaus people aren't buying blooper reels and so there's more demand for the show itself. it coudl last 2-3 seasons longer, then.

 

[Andrew T]

Well, you knew I was going to wade into this post, given that it touches on a subject very near and dear to my heart! If you want the tl;dr version, it's great -- and comprehensive! -- job, as always.

Now, on to the details:

The CED had severe limitations when it was released in 1977; each side of the disc was limited to half an hour of footage, which meant that any films over two hours in length required a third disc, which usually carried only a few minutes more of footage out of the potential hour – this was deemed unacceptably wasteful and inefficient. Thus, many movies which were slightly longer than 120 minutes were selectively edited to bring them under that threshold.

A very plausible scenario, and one that strikes me as likely to persist even after the capacity is doubled (why ship two discs when you can ship one)? It's also likely to affect studio editing as well, as producers think, "Well, it's better that I edit this down than some clown two years from now...."

For example, the original-generation CED discs had only been available in monaural sound. Stereophonic sound, the defining breakthrough of aural technology in this era, would become standard for all releases on next-generation CED, except where the original material did not support it (primarily the case for older movies, in addition to the extensive television catalogue).

And here's another rabbit trail you may or may not wish to head down: in the early 1980s, many competitors to the Sony Walkman (and possibly some variants of the Walkman itself) were -- despite being dubbed as "personal stereos -- monaural. And, IOTL, TV would remain mono until the 1990s.

If consumers are used to stereo sound in their homes as early as 1980, it strikes me that could very easily have a spillover effect into both of these two (and probably other) genres as well.

This was pioneered by the 1981 release of Citizen Kane, which had been voted the greatest film of all time in the 1962 and 1972 critic polls in Sight & Sound magazine (and seemed a lock for the hat-trick in the upcoming 1982 poll), which included a commentary by writer-director-star Orson Welles himself – fortunately the granddaddy of Hollywood auteurs did not have an asking price nearly as large as his titanic ego or his colossal girth.

Perhaps he'd even do it for "a rich, full-bodied wine, sensibly priced at under a dollar a jug!"

The first “Best of I Love Lucy” episodes (four could be aired on a single disc, and eight on two – it would take ten to carry a 39-episode season)

So I guess we're still a few years away from being able to order a copy of "Soap: The Complete Series" on CED. Still, it looks like we're headed in that direction at least a decade ahead of OTL's schedule.

A new version of their classic 1973 Star Trek game was released in late 1978, in the wake of The Next Voyage miniseries.

You don't mention it, but I assume this is very similar to OTL's Star Raiders, one of Atari's biggest and most beloved hits, which was essentially a Star Trek-like game without the licensing. It was still playable as late as 1990; it wasn't really until Wing Commander (1990) that anyone else attempted the in-the-cockpit view with advanced graphics, storytelling, and sound.

Now, if only someone would remake M.U.L.E.....

The only version of Star Trek available on the VCS was the (inferior) port of the original 1973 version, but sales of that, too, rose considerably as a result.

The 2600 version of Star Raiders was probably the best game Atari ever produced for it, proving that Syzygy's Star Trek for the VCS doesn't have to be "Pong in Space."

On the other hand, Bruce Lee: The Way of the Warrior, one of the earliest fighting games, was a smash success for Syzygy in the arcades, one of their biggest hits of the late-1970s.

In yet another great parallelism, there was a much-beloved Bruce Lee videogame released for OTL's Atari computers (and later ported to other machines); it's widely regarded as the first game to combine side-scrolling platform game with hand-to-hand combat. In OTL's Bruce Lee, Player 1 controlled Bruce, while Player 2 could control a green sumo wrestler named "The Green Yamo"; you could play cooperatively or competitively. (Or, as I seem to recall, you could promise to play cooperatively and then kick Bruce in the back. ) The other hazard was canonically called "the Ninja," but we always used to refer to him as "the Slightly-Confused Samurai" (allowing alliteration to outweigh accuracy) because the AI on it was pretty awful.

Anyway, OTL's Bruce Lee was very easy as a one-player game (where you battle both the Yamo and Slightly), and preposterously easy if you played cooperatively.

The Way of the Warrior was not adapted for the VCS, as it included four buttons which could not adapt to a controller which had only one. Given Lee’s involvement with the game, it became a massive hit in Asia, where it was known only as Bruce Lee, the name of his show being ignored.

As with OTL's Star Raiders, it was not impossible to input additional signals into the 2600; that game came with a separate keypad that plugged into Joystick Port 2. One could imagine a Way of the Warrior port that used the same type of additional device.

... or Infocom, which had emerged from a collective of instructors and graduates based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Very clever. IOTL, of course, Infocom made nothing but text-based games for microcomputers. And I can't recall: did you mention Kee Games in a prior update? I seem to have a vague recollection that you did. In any event, in OTL's Atari, Nolan Bushnell engineered a fake "third-party" videogame manufacturer named "Kee Games" (around 1978?) run by his friend Joe Kee, also then an executive at Atari, to try and make it seem as though Atari had more third-party developers.

As far as processing power was concerned, microcomputers available for personal use, which first became widespread in the late 1970s, had been unrivalled for the purposes of playing games electronically.

Okay, that gets an award for dramatic understatement! Are we going to see anything involving that fateful garage in Cupertino where the two Steves put together the Apple I? I know you know the story that both got their start IOTL programming "Breakout" for Atari....

These “edutainment” games, as they became known, introduced the Mini-Boomer generation to the home computer largely because, although these were still very expensive for the average household, well-funded school districts would purchase these computers as an innovative new tool to facilitate learning starting in the late-1970s and continuing into the 1980s. For all these reasons, home computers were not seen as a threat to the VCS, though a number of other home video game systems did indeed emerge in the late-1970s.

...Okay, so in addition to Apple, I want to know: what happens to Commodore? IOTL, one of the major reasons that reason home computers emerged as a threat to the VCS is that Commodore started selling the VIC-20 (and later, the 64) at prices that were competitive with the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and ColecoVision. Parents could buy a dedicated "game machine," or, for a few bucks more, get all of the games and convince themselves that they were buying their kids something educational as well. (And hey, I think that's true; most of us kids of the '80s grew up learning how to program in BASIC, if nothing else.)

These included a second-generation Magnavox console, along with offerings from Fairchild Semiconductor and Bally Manufacturing.

Oooh, a shout-out to the Bally Professional Arcade! Nicely done. (I don't consider the Fairchild Channel F a true videogame system, as the hardware to run each game was contained in the cartridge, and not the system.)

Mattel naturally had a formidable marketing department, and reports were leaked that their machine would be powered by a 16-bit processor – superior to anything else on the market at the time – allowing for superior graphics and sound to the VCS, and indeed even most available home computers. These new external pressures proved most challenging with regards to the complacent attitudes held by Syzygy management.

Oooh, neat! Keep in mind, though, that the cost of the TMS9900 is much higher than MOS's 6502-based offerings (including the bargain-basement 6509 used in the VCS); IOTL, that meant the TI-99/4 suffered from some significant tradeoffs including less RAM and fewer secondary custom ICs. The same sort of tradeoff took place with OTL's Radio Shack Color Computer, which also used a 16-bit chip (the Motorola 6809).

It will certainly be a challenge at Syzygy to produce a machine that uses the 9900, has at least 16K of RAM (RAM chips are ridiculously expensive in 1979), and uses the dedicated Syzygy custom ICs for graphics and sound (the equivalent of OTL's POKEY, ANTIC, and GTIA).

In addition to (and sometimes, as a result of) this dramatic advance in processing power, many of the problems with the original VCS had been corrected, dramatically widening the (previously severely limited) graphical capabilities and improving overall performance. It would also be noted for being the first console to include speech synthesis capabilities, as TI was prominent in that field.

Another dead-on home run: speech synthesis was something that absolutely captivated OTL's Atari Games engineers for decades. Here, I would imagine that something analogous to OTL's S.A.M. would wind up powering the first set of VCS II "speech", which would be more gimmicky than useful.

It was decided very early on that the VCS II should be backwards-compatible with the existing library of games for the original VCS (which would enable production on the original model to be suspended after commencement of the newer one)

Interesting. IOTL, Atari did the exact opposite; it's "next-generation" device, the 5200, was neither compatible with the 2600, nor was it compatible with Atari's 400/800 line of computers, even though the 5200 was essentially a 400 computer in a closed-off box.

It wasn't until Atari started losing market share to ColecoVision -- a product its engineers (rightly, in my view) viewed with contempt, that they started to ask why. As it turns out, ColecoVision's sales shot up when they started packaging the thing with an Atari 2600 emulator, even though neither the ColecoVision or the 2600 games were anywhere near the quality of the 5200's. Atari just realized -- somewhat belatedly -- that people weren't willing to throw away their (costly) library of cartridges.

(IOTL, as you may know , Atari developed the 7800, which was indeed backwards-compatible with the 2600. Even though Atari developed the 7800 in 1983 -- when it might have reclaimed Atari's top spot in the home videogame market -- internal mismanagement led to it being shelved until 1986, by which time it had no chance against the NES.)

William Shatner, the former Captain James T. Kirk himself, served as pitchman for the console in the sixty-second spot, which (fittingly) advertised the VCS II port of Star Trek: The Next Voyage, the name for the 1978 remake of the original arcade game.

You may be aware that Shatner has made more money as the pitchman for Priceline than in his entire television and movie career combined; that's because he took equity in the company in lieu of payment. I wonder if Shatner gets a similar deal from Syzygy here....

It also didn’t help that the MSRP for the IntelliVision was $299 – the VCS II, meanwhile, retailed for $269, and (because of the backwards-compatibility) had a much larger library of games available. [23] In fact, the original VCS port of Mission: Impossible was found to be functionally playable on the VCS II, given the greater processing power allowing a portion of the veritable thicket of kinks to be smoothed out.

Oh, one more thing: in order to be backwards-compatible, the VCS II will essentially have to have an entire VCS (including the 6509) inside of it, in much the same way that the Commodore 128 had an entire C-64 grafted on the motherboard. Of course, that means the VCS II in "native" mode could use the 6509 as a co-processor....

And indeed, their game Dragonslayer (based, in part, on the classic legend of St. George and the Dragon) had perhaps the best-developed storyline of any game to date when it was released in 1981, including an array of memorable and clearly defined characters, but it involved no element of choice whatsoever on the part of the player.

I love convergence. IOTL, Dragon's Lair (and the sequel, Space Ace) were brief but immensely profitable fads in 1983 and 1984.

It was the sole unqualified triumph for Sony in North America, with Beta camcorders far outselling VHS; for the first generation after “New Hollywood”, camcorders would also prove an invaluable resource for budding filmmakers with creative ideas of their own, some of which showed more promise than others…

You tastefully elide over it, but obviously this has massive implications for the adult movie industry, as discussed in the next section:

It was certainly not the only such scandal of the era, given the widespread release of home videos and video games which depicted subject matter that was, if not pornographic, then at least obscene.

One legal "oops" here; as a legal term of art, "obscene" is a much narrower category of speech than "pornographic" (even if they have somewhat different colloquial connotations).

If speech is determined to be "obscene," it can be banned outright; for that reason, courts must generally determine that the speech lacks any literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. On the other hand, speech that is "pornographic" can be restricted (but not banned) based on community standards of decency; thus, the work can still be held to have some redeeming social value.

For this reason, if you pick up a (now vintage!) pornographic magazine from the 1990s or earlier -- solely out of historical curiosity and research, of course -- you'll see that even so-called "hardcore" magazines will typically contain a few pages with some sort of non-pornographic content (something like a car or restaurant review) to skirt the then-prevailing obscenity law. It really is a variant on the hoary notion that "I read Playboy for the articles." (And never mind that many important interviews actually did take place in the pages of Playboy.)

In many countries, such as the United Kingdom and particularly Canada, this resulted in such a profound series of major scandals based around moral outrage that the movies and video games which inspired them were dubbed the “video Nasties”.

Which begs the question: is Ed Meese Ronald Reagan's Attorney General in 1979??

 

[Pesterfield]

required a third disc, which usually carried only a few minutes more of footage out of the potential hour – this was deemed unacceptably wasteful and inefficient.

With a little thought it could be an advantage, give the space to short subject films to test new directors/talent or let the animation department have it.

Bring back the old way of a short subject and cartoon before the main picture.

 

[Brainbin]

Thank you all, as always, for your very positive responses to the latest update! And now, as always, for my replies to your responses...

... please don't kill the Pope.

I can't make any promises. World leaders do tend be highly vulnerable to assassination attempts. However, as e of pi says...

I wasn't talking to Brainbin as much about his planning when he made that decision and might be wrong, but I think a large part of butterflying to this guy over John Paul I was to not have to go through the research on papal politics involved in picking a pope twice.

That is essentially it, yes. (And note that Cardinal Siri also lived past 1986, although that probably would have been a near thing if he had actually become Pope).

But that's another story altogether (and it would be interesting to see a TL that concentrates on a Cardinal Baggio Papacy).

Indeed it would, though obviously this timeline won't be focusing on the politics of Catholic theology in any detail.

And that's not true!They tried to erase TMP from the memory of the fans. So they designed a new (and more militaristic) uniform, changed the color of the photon torpedoes (blue in TMP, red in TWOK), created a new warp effect and made several changes to the sets.

Only the uniform used for the senior officers (our main characters) was entirely new. The cadets wore modified versions of the costumes from TMP, as did the on-duty medical staff (including Bones), and Spock (his black robe was reused intact). Also, TMP was very important because it served as a model for how not to design the new uniforms.

As previous stated, Brainbin will not be doing a spin-off. But I'm positive he would allow for someone else to do one. And I'm hoping for one.

You're positive? Be forewarned, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment...

Brainbin, Carlo Martini is considered a relative liberal. Opus Dei is... not, though ironically several of their politician members have also been members of center left parties.

Well, then! I think that means my previous statement still applies in the case of Innocent XIV

Next order of business, will be an ITTL version of Universal vs Nintendo. Would there even be a case? Which way would it go as getting rid of Donkey Kong and by extension Mario, would be too massive of a loss to culture.

This far out from the POD, there are no sacred cows. I got rid of Tom Baker, don't forget!

Why are you cutting this off at 1986?

There are several reasons, but one of them is that it makes the timeline twenty years long (the POD was sometime in late 1966). That's a nice, round number.

Will Desilu gain control of Paramount due to the ruling in the "Trial of the Century" and use it to produce their own movies and cartoons (I see a Saturday Morning Cartoon continuing "Journey of the Force")

Desilu has no stake in the Trial of the Century. They employ Marcia Lucas, but assuming that Lucasfilm wins their final appeal, I doubt that situation will last.

Do I sense an alliance between Desilu and the good Mr.Turner?

I'm sure he would like that very much.

Finally, what of Red China since their economy can be assumed to have gone down the crapper without Nixon?

We'll definitely find out what has become of Red China prior to the end of this timeline.

I realize that I ask alot but such a good tl raises such questions.

I appreciate the compliment. Obviously I can't answer all of your questions at this time, but there's a start

You really, really ought to publish this when you're done, Brainbin. This is one of the most fleshed-out TLs I've ever seen, and I'd buy it in Kindle or POD form in a heartbeat.

I would love to sell TWR once I've completed my revisions, so thanks for expressing an interest

Is there any possibility we might learn how Nintendo is doing ITTL, particularly in regards to the Famicom?

Yes, that will be a focus of the coming video game updates.

Likewise. So many stories.

Thank you, THE OBSERVER, for your continued enthusiasm

Speaking of Bruce Lee, how has his career progressed post-The Way of the Warrior?

He has appeared in a number of action movies which have been moderately successful stateside, and wildly popular among Asian-Americans, and in Asia itself. Basically, he accomplished what Jackie Chan did IOTL - about twenty years earlier. (Think of him as a cross between Chan's mainstream success and Jet Li's more acrobatic style.)

How much have butterflies affected The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

It most likely exists in substantially the same form as IOTL, though (given its low budget) the changes would range from subtle to obvious.

Nice to see Don Bluth in a more financially secure position ITTL.

And it's even nicer to put him in one He seems to be one of the few "maverick animators" who is a genuinely nice guy.

One wonders if blooper reels will become less popular with a lack of VCR tech for the public. (OTL, Star Trek blooper reels were passed around and spread to the public in the 1970's, while BBC bloopers were passed around among the staff and beyond and built up a following.)

The Star Trek blooper reels, remember, were actual reels - that is, of film - which were played on projectors, not video players. Their popularity shall certainly endure ITTL.

Interesting development on the tech front. I do hope recording shows for home becomes semi-legal (i.e. you can do it but not for monetary purposes).

That is, of course, the OTL outcome.

And the video game wars between Syzygy and Mattel reminds one of OTL's Nintendo vs Sega (with the VCS II as the SNES and the IntelliVision as the Genesis).

That may have been something of an inspiration for this Battle of the Titans, yes

Likewise the bane of creativity, the Moral Guardians are starting to come out again, this time with the whole "Video Games are corrupting the youth FTW!!!" crap....god let there be a backlash against those bozos.

With every new generation they always find something to rally against - and very often, more than one something. Recall the early 1980s IOTL...

Brainbin, you have changed pop culture of eighties in Poland.

Thanks for sharing your story, Mefisto. Part of the reason I don't focus on non-Anglosphere countries is that each one has its own unique experiences with popular culture, many of which are often deeply personal and idiosyncratic, as you demonstrate with your example. You did a much better job explaining the changes to Polish culture than I could.

Really great video (recordings and games) update, Brainbin.

Thank you, Glen! Glad you enjoyed it

I have no problem with the inexistence of Canibal holocaust in this tl. I own the movie. It's something that shouldn't exist

It is rather horrifying, yes. I can't help but be reminded of The Human Centipede - surely a modern equivalent

Well, remember, Brainbin isn't going to directly address pop culture of the non-English speaking world... but for myself, I'd only be interested if something butterflies away Poland's weird ideas on how to make a movie poster.

When in doubt, blame the communists

I would assume we all would think that.

You would think so, but clearly there is a market for these things, or they would have stopped making them by now.

All good TLs like this do.

Thank you very much for the lovely compliment

Well, you knew I was going to wade into this post, given that it touches on a subject very near and dear to my heart! If you want the tl;dr version, it's great -- and comprehensive! -- job, as always.

Thank you, Andrew! I'm really glad you enjoyed it

A very plausible scenario, and one that strikes me as likely to persist even after the capacity is doubled (why ship two discs when you can ship one)? It's also likely to affect studio editing as well, as producers think, "Well, it's better that I edit this down than some clown two years from now...."

All excellent points - and indeed, the tragedy is that companies are finally beginning to show an interest in developing "special features" to accompany their movies just as the length they would need to fill jumps from ~45 minutes to ~105, or about two-and-a-half times as long, and probably at least that much more expensive.

And, IOTL, TV would remain mono until the 1990s.

Indeed it did - but when television went stereo, it was a Big Deal - "IN STEREO WHERE AVAILABLE" was the "IN COLOR" of its day (much as "AVAILABLE IN HD" would follow).

If consumers are used to stereo sound in their homes as early as 1980, it strikes me that could very easily have a spillover effect into both of these two (and probably other) genres as well.

A very likely possibility

Perhaps he'd even do it for "a rich, full-bodied wine, sensibly priced at under a dollar a jug!"

Ah, Maurice LaMarche. We should all be grateful for the work that man has done to keep the voice of Orson Welles alive

Since the majority of his Welles portrayals (and my own mentions of him in this latest update) are rather cruel, it's only fair that I link to his straightest-ever portrayal.

(And yes, that's Vincent D'Onofrio playing the body of Welles, not LaMarche, who was dubbed in later - which might have helped to restrain him.)

So I guess we're still a few years away from being able to order a copy of "Soap: The Complete Series" on CED. Still, it looks like we're headed in that direction at least a decade ahead of OTL's schedule.

I'd say getting that fifth season makes it worth waiting for, wouldn't you? (I did mention that, didn't I? )

You don't mention it, but I assume this is very similar to OTL's Star Raiders, one of Atari's biggest and most beloved hits, which was essentially a Star Trek-like game without the licensing. It was still playable as late as 1990; it wasn't really until Wing Commander (1990) that anyone else attempted the in-the-cockpit view with advanced graphics, storytelling, and sound.

I didn't consciously base the Star Trek game (or the Mission: Impossible game) on anything in particular, but Star Raiders may have been a subconscious influence (through popcultural osmosis). Certainly a lot of space games from that era tended toward the cursor-based first-person space shooter which, as you note, evolved and matured into Wing Commander and other space sims of that nature. Whether that will prove the ultimate evolution of the Star Trek line ITTL is another question.

The 2600 version of Star Raiders was probably the best game Atari ever produced for it, proving that Syzygy's Star Trek for the VCS doesn't have to be "Pong in Space."

Thank you very much for that clip; it is just about exactly how I'd imagine the 1977 port of the 1973 arcade game to look.

In yet another great parallelism, there was a much-beloved Bruce Lee videogame released for OTL's Atari computers (and later ported to other machines); it's widely regarded as the first game to combine side-scrolling platform game with hand-to-hand combat. In OTL's Bruce Lee, Player 1 controlled Bruce, while Player 2 could control a green sumo wrestler named "The Green Yamo"; you could play cooperatively or competitively. (Or, as I seem to recall, you could promise to play cooperatively and then kick Bruce in the back. ) The other hazard was canonically called "the Ninja," but we always used to refer to him as "the Slightly-Confused Samurai" (allowing alliteration to outweigh accuracy) because the AI on it was pretty awful.

Anyway, OTL's Bruce Lee was very easy as a one-player game (where you battle both the Yamo and Slightly), and preposterously easy if you played cooperatively.

I definitely did not know about this game - though my version is simpler (given that it was made earlier), it has the advantage of being endorsed by Lee himself, who appears in commercials for the game (in which he does not speak, only performing his trademark martial arts, so that the footage can be reused for Asian markets).

As with OTL's Star Raiders, it was not impossible to input additional signals into the 2600; that game came with a separate keypad that plugged into Joystick Port 2. One could imagine a Way of the Warrior port that used the same type of additional device.

True. Mostly I wanted to highlight that the VCS II would have a better controller. I was thinking something along the lines of the OTL NES Advantage.

Very clever. IOTL, of course, Infocom made nothing but text-based games for microcomputers. And I can't recall: did you mention Kee Games in a prior update? I seem to have a vague recollection that you did. In any event, in OTL's Atari, Nolan Bushnell engineered a fake "third-party" videogame manufacturer named "Kee Games" (around 1978?) run by his friend Joe Kee, also then an executive at Atari, to try and make it seem as though Atari had more third-party developers.

I did not mention that, no. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't exist ITTL.

...Okay, so in addition to Apple, I want to know: what happens to Commodore?

We're going to be hearing from those two companies (or their equivalents) in later updates. This update was mostly setting the backdrop for gaming in the 1980s.

Oooh, a shout-out to the Bally Professional Arcade! Nicely done.

You can thank Dan1988 for that; he clued me in on their... intriguing corporate history.

(Dan1988 also wanted to respond to some of your concerns about the hardware himself, so I'll let him do so - but your comments have been noted and logged )

(IOTL, as you may know , Atari developed the 7800, which was indeed backwards-compatible with the 2600. Even though Atari developed the 7800 in 1983 -- when it might have reclaimed Atari's top spot in the home videogame market -- internal mismanagement led to it being shelved until 1986, by which time it had no chance against the NES.)

In the end, this is the major advantage I have with Syzygy ITTL: it is not run by blithering idiots.

You may be aware that Shatner has made more money as the pitchman for Priceline than in his entire television and movie career combined; that's because he took equity in the company in lieu of payment. I wonder if Shatner gets a similar deal from Syzygy here....

I am familiar with the story, although some reports indicate that Shatner was forced to hold onto his stock until after its value had collapsed when the dot-com bubble burst, and then (along with most of the other shareholders) sold it when it was worthless, after which point the share value then recovered. (He apparently said this on Conan in 2012.)

Oh, one more thing: in order to be backwards-compatible, the VCS II will essentially have to have an entire VCS (including the 6509) inside of it, in much the same way that the Commodore 128 had an entire C-64 grafted on the motherboard. Of course, that means the VCS II in "native" mode could use the 6509 as a co-processor...

I like the sound of that very much. And it provides a "shallow end" for designers and programmers to utilize the new processing power as well!

I love convergence. IOTL, Dragon's Lair (and the sequel, Space Ace) were brief but immensely profitable fads in 1983 and 1984.

And a most intriguing prelude to the much bigger (but nearly as short-lived) FMV craze of the 1990s when CD-ROM became the dominant format.

One legal "oops" here; as a legal term of art, "obscene" is a much narrower category of speech than "pornographic" (even if they have somewhat different colloquial connotations).

So noted. I shall endeavour to correct my error.

Which begs the question: is Ed Meese Ronald Reagan's Attorney General in 1979??

Cabinet questions... I thought I forbade those (I shall let you know after some further research and consultation.)

With a little thought it could be an advantage, give the space to short subject films to test new directors/talent or let the animation department have it.

Bring back the old way of a short subject and cartoon before the main picture.

An intriguing proposition - the problem is, it's over a decade too late to save the short subject divisions of most American animation studios. The art, for better or for worse, is dead, and it would almost certainly be much cheaper to just trim a few minutes in editing than to animate a ten-minute short or produce an even longer short film to precede the feature - not to mention that it cuts into revenues from additional showings at the theatre, which, for better or for worse, is still the primary source of income at this juncture.

 

[Dan1988]

Oooh, neat! Keep in mind, though, that the cost of the TMS9900 is much higher than MOS's 6502-based offerings (including the bargain-basement 6509 used in the VCS); IOTL, that meant the TI-99/4 suffered from some significant tradeoffs including less RAM and fewer secondary custom ICs. The same sort of tradeoff took place with OTL's Radio Shack Color Computer, which also used a 16-bit chip (the Motorola 6809).

It will certainly be a challenge at Syzygy to produce a machine that uses the 9900, has at least 16K of RAM (RAM chips are ridiculously expensive in 1979), and uses the dedicated Syzygy custom ICs for graphics and sound (the equivalent of OTL's POKEY, ANTIC, and GTIA).

As the person who had suggested using the TMS9900 processor - let me say that I would assume that both Syzygy and TI would have worked something out here. As you are fully aware, the fact that no one wanted to deal with the TMS9900 led to TI developing its own home computer system - the TI 99/4 and the updated TI 99/4A. In this case, doing so would not be necessary, since the TI99 series is basically butterflied away (except in minicomputer form - that bit is hard to butterfly), with the HCS (and, in part, the VCS II) taking its place. Now, assuming that TI did make some research in building a home computer system ITTL which never materialized, I would think that, as Syzygy is essentially the only buyer of the processor at this point, TI would share its research on that front so as to not only improve on it but to allow for compatibilty with Syzygy's custom ICs. Maybe whatever VDC used here could be used to replace the TMS9918 VDC or incorporate some of the design. In the end, though, I would assume that as few tradeoffs as possible would be a big point, especially if Syzygy wants to expand its presence in the computer industry. Who knows - maybe some of the development could also work on Syzygy's arcade machines? There's all sorts of possibilites here. And I say that as an ex-user of a TI 99/4A because Dad had it as his computer for a long time during my childhood until we went for a Windows 3.11 computer, so I first learned how to type on a TI 99/4A and I liked it. And honestly, I think more could have been done on it - it was a good computer, but IMO it did not deserve the fate it did in OTL.

 

[NCW8]

I've been thinking that the different situation in Iran ITTL is going to butterfly away the Iranian Embassy Siege in May 1980. The end of the siege raised the profile of the SAS, leading to a number of popular culture references (for example on Not the Nine O'Clock News). In particular, without that ending of the siege, the film Who Dares Wins won't be made.

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[MatthewFirth]

I definitely knew YOU would not do a sequel, why can't you allow someone else. Is it because they would need your approval and you don't see it?

 

[Mefisto]

Well, remember, Brainbin isn't going to directly address pop culture of the non-English speaking world... but for myself, I'd only be interested if something butterflies away Poland's weird ideas on how to make a movie poster.

Don't even try to touch our Polish School of Poster.
Seriously, I like most of them, probably because I grew with them. Try to google "Polska szkoła plakatu", you'll see more. To butterfly them you should butterfly Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali and other surrealists, art deco, psychedelia of '70 and probably whole Poland. Well, we were living in a surreal country with surreal economics and surreal regime, you could only expect that we developed surreal art.
Well, we managed to convince Philip K. Dick that Stanisław Lem doesn't exist and the name is only a cover for some strange organization (I can't remember the details but I think Dick couldn't understand what was going on with royalties for his books printed in Poland).

When in doubt, blame the communists

Could you believe that there were no communists in Poland?
We were socialist state (at least that was what we were tought at school, the only communist contry in the world was USSR). We could understand that: we were much poorer than capitalists but not as dirt-poor as Russkies (that was a reasoning of common people, something that propaganda tried to deny in vain). Our Party was United Workers' Party, not communist. The official name of our state was Polish People's Republic. So when I found out that we are known abroad as "communists" I was wery suprised and slightly hurt ("What??? We are not THAT bad!")

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if this style of posters wasn't a reaction against so called "Socrealism" which the regime tried to impose on society. So ultimately you can be about something.

Slightly OOC: Long time ago you said that you knew only one ugly soviet cartoon. Are you interested in links to cartoons I used to watch in TV as a kid (Polish, Czechoslovak and Russian)? Most of them were very family friendly and some of them really beautiful.

 

[jpj1421]

I haven't read the latest update yet, but I was thinking of a butterfly flap that may have no consequence until much later down the line that would kind of make me sad. It seems Fantasy/Sci-Fi is a more acceptable medium on TV ITTL, which means George R. R. Martin will probably get much more work, which probably means no Song of Ice and Fire. *sigh*

Of course, the TL will end way before that issue comes up.

Oh well.

Love the writing, I'll read that latest update when I find some free time.

 

[Nivek]

This far out from the POD, there are no sacred cows. I got rid of Tom Baker, don't forget!

Yes, that will be a focus of the coming video game updates.

Ummm, with the trial of the century... that would not butterfly away so much the King Kong right trials(who the same universal lost in all regards, having only rescticted rights and the rest is in public domain), but something interesting was conversation with the both Howard Lincoln and Howard Philips about that the original defense was the derivate characther(ie all characther can be derivated without being the same) and that animal characthers are not under the same traits as human characther(that would mean someone can copyright tiger for his use and force to lincesed and that is not possible, both in artistic and legal sense), that would be interesting, OTL plan b was remplacin Donkey kong of being necessary.

About the Famicom the thing would be interesting, OTL Masayuki Uemura(Nintendo Hardware Engineer alongside Yokoi) plans called for an advanced 16-bit system which would function as a full-fledged computer with a keyboard and floppy disk drive but because following the sucessful Colecovision(that was optional the computer), they decided to created what was OTL, here the thing would be pretty different

 

[NCW8]

Don't even try to touch our Polish School of Poster.

I guess that we shouldn't even suggest trying to change Polish TV dubbing ? For those who haven't experienced it, foreign films shown on Polish TV were (or maybe still are) dubbed by one person for all the parts, speaking in a monotone.

Slightly OOC: Long time ago you said that you knew only one ugly soviet cartoon. Are you interested in links to cartoons I used to watch in TV as a kid (Polish, Czechoslovak and Russian)? Most of them were very family friendly and some of them really beautiful.

The "Soviet" cartoon that BB said he knew was actually from The Simpsons.

I quite like some of the Polish Animation that I've seen - particularly Miś Uszatek and Koziołek Matołek. However my favourite is still the Czech cartoon Krtek.

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[Mefisto]

I guess that we shouldn't even suggest trying to change Polish TV dubbing ? For those who haven't experienced it, foreign films shown on Polish TV were (or maybe still are) dubbed by one person for all the parts, speaking in a monotone.

Just looked into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing_(filmmaking) and learned that this practice is called "voice-over". It seems that this practice still persists though I watch TV once or twice a year.
Only a bad lektor reads the roles in monotone. Earlier, when I used to watch more TV, I actually preferred lektor over dubbing - the dubbed speaches sounded artificially to my ears. With lektor I could hear the original woices and intonation and understand what the actors have said.

And I think that hiring one person to read all the text is much cheaper than hiring as many persons as actual actors in the dubbed show.

The "Soviet" cartoon that BB said he knew was actually from The Simpsons.

Good to know. I was afraid that somebody can really think that we were forced to see such a garbage.

I quite like some of the Polish Animation that I've seen - particularly Miś Uszatek and Koziołek Matołek. However my favourite is still the Czech cartoon Krtek.

Krtek was also one of my favourite cartoons. You could also try to find "Reksio" and "Bolek i Lolek" - both are Polish ones and they are universal because they didn't use any words, only onomatopoeias.

It looks like I have to refresh my list. I managed to lose the document with links somehow...

 

[MatthewFirth]

Could we have an update on other Europe countries?

 

[Thande]

Ah, this is the update you mentioned when we met - interesting stuff. The Mission: Impossible travails remind me somewhat of Star Trek: A Final Unity, a graphically impressive adventure game which was timed incredibly badly - designed for DOS at a time when Windows 95 was coming out, and designed for the final versions of DOS, so it will only run on very specific machines and often not run particularly well (for example, it won't work on the DOSBox emulator). I actually still own a computer from the exact moment of time where it would work, and even then I had to call Packard Bell's helpline (which at the time, bizarrely, was based in the Netherlands) to find out how to import drivers for my mouse and the sound card from a completely unrelated programme through DOS.

I see the whole "as good as arcade graphics on your home console" spiel is appearing earlier in TTL (or maybe it was in OTL and I'm just not familiar with it being used that early).

I have an inbuilt dislike for Mattel, mainly because of what they did in OTL to Bluebird Toys.

About the "Morecambe and Wise doing Atari 2600 adverts" thing I mentioned: see here. OTL really is stranger than fiction...

Re the matter NCW8 raised: in OTL the BBC didn't bring out "Auntie's Bloomers", its own answer to "It'll Be Alright On The Night" for blooper reels, until 1991, but perhaps they might do it earlier in TTL.

 

[vultan]

Could we have an update on other Europe countries?

Once again, Brainbin is focusing almost exclusively on the pop culture of the English-speaking world for the purposes of this timeline, except in cases where non-Anglophone media directly impacts the former (for instance, anime in OTL 2013).

Now, your mileage may vary on what exactly constitutes the English-speaking world...

 

[MatthewFirth]

Well what I want to know is what's happening in other countries and how it's how it affects the entertainment industry.

 

[RAKtheUndead]

Ah, this is the update you mentioned when we met - interesting stuff. The Mission: Impossible travails remind me somewhat of Star Trek: A Final Unity, a graphically impressive adventure game which was timed incredibly badly - designed for DOS at a time when Windows 95 was coming out, and designed for the final versions of DOS, so it will only run on very specific machines and often not run particularly well (for example, it won't work on the DOSBox emulator). I actually still own a computer from the exact moment of time where it would work, and even then I had to call Packard Bell's helpline (which at the time, bizarrely, was based in the Netherlands) to find out how to import drivers for my mouse and the sound card from a completely unrelated programme through DOS.

I tend to think of that as a problem with MS-DOS in general - the whole driver system was very flawed, and I was very glad to see some degree of plug-and-play compatibility when I started using Windows 95 - even if it wasn't at all perfect. I've been re-exploring Windows 3.1 recently, and it strikes me that you had to have a driver disc for nearly every peripheral short of the keyboard, the mouse (if you had a PS/2 mouse) and a few select printers and sound cards. I don't think I noticed at the time since I had a bog-standard hardware setup, although I do recall the serial mouse drivers quite well.

Oh, one more thing: in order to be backwards-compatible, the VCS II will essentially have to have an entire VCS (including the 6509) inside of it, in much the same way that the Commodore 128 had an entire C-64 grafted on the motherboard. Of course, that means the VCS II in "native" mode could use the 6509 as a co-processor....

Good point, and one I would have made myself; I would have thought that this would add quite a bit of expense in manufacturing, even considering that the VCS's processor was a cheaper version of an already inexpensive CPU. That said, the OTL Game Boy Advance wasn't that expensive, nor were the OTL PlayStation 2 or Wii, all of which had near-perfect compatibility with their predecessors.

 

[Mr Teufel]

Only slightly off-topic, I found this interesting factoid:

...in 1946 police dispatcher Erwin Walker went on a killing spree through Los Angeles that inspired the movie He Walked by Night. Jack Webb had a small role in that film as a forensic scientist. As he had a lot of spare time on set, he got to chatting with the police adviser about authenticity in crime films, which inspired him to create the radio (and later TV) show, Dragnet. The LAPD assigned a young officer named Gene Roddenberry as an adviser to help find real cases for the show to adapt.

Roddenberry went on to write several episodes and got jobs with other shows before finally creating his own TV series, Star Trek. Star Trek turned out to be highly successful and spawned numerous spin-offs, one of which starred an actress named Jeri Ryan who was the wife of an Illinois politician. After they divorced, numerous scandalous accusations she made against him became public just as he was running for Senate. The accusations killed his candidacy and allowed Barrack Obama to win the election with no real opposition, launching a political career that would culminate in the White House.

Not sure how true it is, but it sure sounds plausible...

 

[HOI_guy]

"Star Trek turned out to be highly successful and spawned numerous spin-offs, one of which starred an actress named Jeri Ryan who was the wife of an Illinois politician. After they divorced, numerous scandalous accusations she made against him became public just as he was running for Senate. The accusations killed his candidacy and allowed Barrack Obama to win the election with no real opposition, launching a political career that would culminate in the White House."

This is basically right, but horrendously truncated. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ryan and scroll down to the "Personal life" section.

 

[NCW8]

Re the matter NCW8 raised: in OTL the BBC didn't bring out "Auntie's Bloomers", its own answer to "It'll Be Alright On The Night" for blooper reels, until 1991, but perhaps they might do it earlier in TTL.

It's interesting reading about these Christmas Tapes. They date back to films made in the 1950s for the Christmas party with technical staff imitating real performers and performing sketches. Gradually these became less refined and started including bloopers. They also switched from film to video tape.

As you say, it took a while for the BBC to follow ITV's lead in producing a programme based on blooper tapes. It could be because of a controversy involving the 1978 Christmas tape. That tape included a section where an interview with Princess Anne was editted to make it look like she was talking about sex. That fell into the hands of the Sunday People newspaper who did a shock-horror story about it. It's quite possible that mudied the waters on the subject of bloobers in general as far as BBC management were concerned, hence the delay in producing their own bloopers show.

Cheers,
Nigel.