Is this port of Dark Castle as unplayable as the OTL Genesis and CD-I versions? If so, the worst SNES game is here very early on in the system's life.
Last edited:
Dear Pesky Partners... - A Nintendo-Philips Timeline
- Thread starter SubparLario
- Start date
Amazing Chapter. Quick question, what will happen to Hotel Mario, the Zelda CDi games, and the cdi as a whole?
Iirc because space issues (Capcom being cheap as hell) they're still at time to change it
For a moment I thought those two were for the CD..so not titles yet?
It's a lot better than either of those. Not perfect, but pretty good. A lot of games that Philips made for the CD-i IOTL will be much better in this timeline, as they don't have to deal with its weak hardware and crappy controller.
The CD-i format is alive and well. CD-i players are based on the SNES-CD hardware. There will be at least two commercially realeased combo units: the Philips Super CD-i, and the Sharp Twin Super Famicom (called the i-Twin internationally.) Nintendo and Philips license out the tech to different manufacturers. And there won't be more powerful versions of the hardware, just versions for different use cases (like education or business) that restrict what titles can be played. I'll explain more once we get to its launch.
Hotel Mario is butterflied, as Shigeru Miyamoto convinces Stephen Radosh to instead make it an original IP. Radosh ends up developing the game much earlier, so it'll be on a cartridge, with a sequel on CD. After helping with the early development of Super Mario World, Nintendo ends up taking some of Philips's engineers under their wing by collaborating on major titles. Wacky Worlds will have a different name and a somewhat different premise. Mario Takes America, the least mentioned out of the CD-i Mario games, will be completed and get an actual release. Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon are condensed into one title, featuring elements from both games as well as original ideas I have. Zelda's Adventure is butterflied completely. Sorry for being vague, but I want to save talking about these games more for when their time comes!
They're cartridge games, yeah. Nintendo and Philips just don't have very much to show right now, and are only announcing their plans for the add-on.
That's rare as the premise and the whole point of the partnership was about the add on(and Nintendo seems wanted it out very early, much like NEC did, what changed plans? ) Otl Nintendo wanted the add on by 1991 and only died because backstage issues..so why Philips just stopped caring about the CD and the add on?
Last edited:
Actually yeah, what I put down doesn't make very much sense. I'll make some quick edits to fix this mistake on my part... sorry about that!
Yeah now it make more sense and Nintendo know have the info how to counter the beefed up mega CD, so they can ask Phillips and argonaut for it. Great update buddy
Chapter 10: Bound to the Earth (Late 1990 Part 1)
Bound to the Earth (Late 1990 Part 1)
[In an American town, we're at a general store. A woman is working as the cashier. Suddenly, alien saucers appear in the skyline, and the store's windows break as objects come to life and aliens begin to attack the store. The cashier begins screaming.]
Don LaFontaine: Aliens are invading Earth.
[More chaos is shown in the streets.]
D: The world is in desperate need of a hero. Who will it be?
D: A knight in shining armor? [The silhouette of a knight is shown.] A super soldier? [A soldier's silhouette is shown.] Or perhaps... [The camera pans down to a kid dressed up like Ninten] a 10 year old boy with psychic powers.
[Gameplay from Earthbound is now showing.]
D: Because in Earthbound, YOU'RE the hero. Defeat monsters, travel across strange landscapes, and take down the evil Gigue before it's too late. Only for Nintendo.
D: Now you're playing with power! - A television ad for Earthbound
All About Earthbound
Also Known As: Mother (Japan)
Platform: NES
Developer: Ape, Inc.
Publisher: Nintendo (Japan), Philips (International)
Released: July 27th, 1989 (JP); November 19th, 1990 (US); August 1991 (EU)
Earthbound, known as Mother in Japan, is an RPG developed by Ape, Inc.. A chance encounter between Shigesato Itoi and the Philips executive Stephen Radosh in 1989 lead to Philips showing interest in his game. Despite Nintendo feeling as though the game wouldn't do very well in the West, Philips believed that the game could work so long as it was marketed correctly, and they ended up publishing the game internationally. Specifically, the game's advertising took advantage of the modern-America setting and was marketed as a chance for your average kid to be the world's hero. Philips also wanted to publish the game in order to start building a name for themselves before the Super Nintendo’s launch, as they were focused primarily on developing Super Nintendo titles during this time. The game's translation was fast-tracked, as Philips translated the game into English, French, German, Spanish, and even Dutch (which very rarely received translations in the 90's and 2000's in OTL). Some adjustments to difficulty were also made so that the game would be more approachable to Western audiences. Philips also added graphical flair to the game in order to make it look more appealing. For example, the color and design of the game’s battle backgrounds now change depending on your environment, instead of always being black. Most other aspects of the game, such as the plot, are the same as OTL.
Earthbound is received quite favorably by gaming magazines and the public. Some of the game's difficulty is disliked, but it's at least a fair bit easier than the Japanese version of the game. The contemporary setting, humor, and touching story are praised, especially since larger narratives weren’t a big part of games at the time. It's that contemporary setting which greatly helps in the game selling pretty well overseas, despite being an RPG. It's one of Nintendo's big holiday games and helps with making the RPG genre more popular in the West, all while earning Philips a nice profit. Nintendo Power even released a strategy guide for the game in December 1990 (replacing the "4-Player Extra" strategy guide they made in OTL.) Fans are eager to see what Itoi does with the game's sequel on the SNES. Itoi and Ape Inc. also formed a good relationship with Philips, as they believed in him when Nintendo didn't. Philips would even contribute some developers to help work on Earthbound/Mother 2, speeding up its development. As a matter of fact, the default name for the main protagonist of Mother 2 is Phil in reference to Philips (much like how the Mother 1 protagonist is named Ninten as a nod to Nintendo.)
“Nintendo gave me the resources to make my dream game, but it was Philips who gave me the chance to spread that game around the world. And I can’t thank them enough for that.” - Shigesato Itoi, on his struggle to bring Earthbound into existence.
[In an American town, we're at a general store. A woman is working as the cashier. Suddenly, alien saucers appear in the skyline, and the store's windows break as objects come to life and aliens begin to attack the store. The cashier begins screaming.]
Don LaFontaine: Aliens are invading Earth.
[More chaos is shown in the streets.]
D: The world is in desperate need of a hero. Who will it be?
D: A knight in shining armor? [The silhouette of a knight is shown.] A super soldier? [A soldier's silhouette is shown.] Or perhaps... [The camera pans down to a kid dressed up like Ninten] a 10 year old boy with psychic powers.
[Gameplay from Earthbound is now showing.]
D: Because in Earthbound, YOU'RE the hero. Defeat monsters, travel across strange landscapes, and take down the evil Gigue before it's too late. Only for Nintendo.
D: Now you're playing with power! - A television ad for Earthbound
All About Earthbound
Also Known As: Mother (Japan)
Platform: NES
Developer: Ape, Inc.
Publisher: Nintendo (Japan), Philips (International)
Released: July 27th, 1989 (JP); November 19th, 1990 (US); August 1991 (EU)
Earthbound, known as Mother in Japan, is an RPG developed by Ape, Inc.. A chance encounter between Shigesato Itoi and the Philips executive Stephen Radosh in 1989 lead to Philips showing interest in his game. Despite Nintendo feeling as though the game wouldn't do very well in the West, Philips believed that the game could work so long as it was marketed correctly, and they ended up publishing the game internationally. Specifically, the game's advertising took advantage of the modern-America setting and was marketed as a chance for your average kid to be the world's hero. Philips also wanted to publish the game in order to start building a name for themselves before the Super Nintendo’s launch, as they were focused primarily on developing Super Nintendo titles during this time. The game's translation was fast-tracked, as Philips translated the game into English, French, German, Spanish, and even Dutch (which very rarely received translations in the 90's and 2000's in OTL). Some adjustments to difficulty were also made so that the game would be more approachable to Western audiences. Philips also added graphical flair to the game in order to make it look more appealing. For example, the color and design of the game’s battle backgrounds now change depending on your environment, instead of always being black. Most other aspects of the game, such as the plot, are the same as OTL.
Earthbound is received quite favorably by gaming magazines and the public. Some of the game's difficulty is disliked, but it's at least a fair bit easier than the Japanese version of the game. The contemporary setting, humor, and touching story are praised, especially since larger narratives weren’t a big part of games at the time. It's that contemporary setting which greatly helps in the game selling pretty well overseas, despite being an RPG. It's one of Nintendo's big holiday games and helps with making the RPG genre more popular in the West, all while earning Philips a nice profit. Nintendo Power even released a strategy guide for the game in December 1990 (replacing the "4-Player Extra" strategy guide they made in OTL.) Fans are eager to see what Itoi does with the game's sequel on the SNES. Itoi and Ape Inc. also formed a good relationship with Philips, as they believed in him when Nintendo didn't. Philips would even contribute some developers to help work on Earthbound/Mother 2, speeding up its development. As a matter of fact, the default name for the main protagonist of Mother 2 is Phil in reference to Philips (much like how the Mother 1 protagonist is named Ninten as a nod to Nintendo.)
“Nintendo gave me the resources to make my dream game, but it was Philips who gave me the chance to spread that game around the world. And I can’t thank them enough for that.” - Shigesato Itoi, on his struggle to bring Earthbound into existence.
The next update will cover the Super Famicom launch, as well as its three Japanese launch titles. It'll be a hefty update, but I should be able to get it out before the end of this week!
Loved the commercial, nice one
Also being translated into pal 4( plus dutch) would make earthbound the console RPG for Europeans in the very beginning, especially for Dutchmen, I can imagine even European PC rpg taking cues from earthbound too
That's very Itoi, you nailed it
waiting for it, will be amazing
Last edited:
In our timeline, Nintendo has had a somewhat messy track record when it comes to their European localizations. German and French have gotten translations since the SNES, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese had to wait for N64/GCN (with the Castillian Spanish release of Ocarina of Time infamously having no in-game translations, relying on a booklet with the Spanish script instead), and Dutch had to wait until the Wii. Hell, there were rarely UK English versions of games up until the Mario Party 8 "Turn the train spastic!" controversy forced their hand in order to avoid any future backlash. Philips, being a European company and later handling Western European distribution of Nintendo products, will work very closely with the brand-new Nintendo of Europe to translate games into other languages. Nintendo's trying to break Sega's European dominance, and Philips is spearheading a lot of those efforts. Only time will tell how successful they are.
There were some games on Spanish by Nintendo since SNES just very sporadic..but those absolutely worth it (lufia 2, illusion of Gaia, terranigma, etc) but yeah those were very rare, that will be a massive improvement.
That dominance was minor,was mostly as Mattel fucked over nes, Sega also played second fiddle to microcomputers at the time
Well, that didn't age well. I completely forgot about Thanksgiving when I first wrote this, and needed some time to recuperate from all of that. I'm blazing ahead with writing Chapter 11 as we speak; in fact, I've completed the write ups on Super Mario World and the SNES hardware. All I need to do is talk about F-Zero and Super Pinball and we'll be golden!
I forgot you where from USA...that explain IT, But yeah take your time buddy
Funny thing about pinball for CDI ,it was made by capital video interactive, renamed capital disc when Phillips bought them,a studio in Bethesda MD, that's why his name https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ington/0c47fecb-0b41-4f2b-bd00-8b661e9a5243/
So Phillips might have get them earlier ittl
Last edited:
I don't like the Mother series, but this was a very well written chapter. Nice job!
Last edited:
Of course it was plus the butterfly of earthbound becoming the console European RPG
Chapter 11: Presenting… the Super Famicom (Late 1990 Part 2)
(Apologies for the massive delay for this chapter getting published! I really did need some time to relax after all of the Thanksgiving celebrations. I'll be away from my home this weekend, so there might be another larger break between this and the next chapter. However, I am getting things done! They're just further along in the timeline, so you can't really see them yet.)
Presenting… the Super Famicom (Late 1990 Part 2)
“Welcome! This is Dinosaur Land. In this strange land we find that Princess Toadstool is missing again! Looks like Bowser is at it again!” - Opening cutscene to Super Mario World
“THE RACE IS OVER… YOU ARE AN F-ZERO MASTER!! GOODBYE, FROM CAPTAIN FALCON AND THE F-ZERO CREW.” - Ending cutscene after getting 1st place in a grand prix on Master difficulty in F-Zero
All About The Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Also Known As: Super Famicom (Japan), Hyundai Super Comboy (South Korea)
CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz
Bus Width: 16-bit/24-bit[1]
Main RAM: 128 KB
GPU: S-PPU (Picture Processing Unit) - consists of PPU1 and PPU2 chips
VRAM: 64 KB
Audio: Philips SAS-1000 (Super Audio System) - has 8 channels for audio
Audio RAM: 64 KB
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
Launch Price: ¥25,000, US$199, £150[2]
The Super Famicom looks practically identical to how it did in our timeline, and the same can be said for its later North American redesign. The controllers are also just like they are in our timeline, introducing the diamond-shaped 4 face button layout and shoulder buttons. The main differences are in the internals; the most striking is the 10 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, which is almost 3 times faster than the OTL 3.58 Ricoh 5A22 (which is a derivative of the WDC 65C816.) Also notable is the Philips SAS-1000 chip, which has similar capabilities to the OTL SPC-700 but works in a different way.
The Super Famicom launches to the same success that it did in our timeline. Nintendo’s initial 300,000 consoles sold out within a matter of hours, and the resulting social disturbance led to the Japanese government asking console manufacturers to schedule future releases on weekends. Nintendo even had to ship the consoles at night in order to avoid getting robbed by members of the Yakuza.
All About Super Mario World
Also Known As: Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 4 (Japan, box only)
Platform: SNES
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
Super Mario World is the 4th[3] mainline home console Mario game, and the first to be released in the 16-bit era. Philips engineers helped port Super Mario Bros. 3 to the SNES’s Motorola 68000 chip early in development, due to Nintendo’s programmers being largely unfamiliar with the architecture. Nintendo mostly took over the game’s development from that point, although the Philips staff was kept around for any additional assistance they might need. While definitely still rushed out for the Super Nintendo’s release, these Philips engineers were able to help Nintendo squeeze 4 more exits into the game, for a nice, round total of 100.
The new exits are as follows:
The scrapped naval mine object, found in the Gigaleak.
Outside of these new levels, there are also some more minor differences caused by butterflies. These include:
All About F-Zero
Platform: SNES
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
F-Zero is a futuristic racing game utilizing the SNES’s Mode 7 background mode to simulate a faux-3D effect. This is a game that benefits greatly from the increased processor speed of the SNES, as it’s a bit smoother in this timeline. In our timeline, skipping too many checkpoints in a race would cause the AI racers to bug out due to processor speed limitations. To remedy this, “shortcut fouls” were implemented, where skipping too many checkpoints causes the ship that repairs your machine to pick up your machine and place you backwards in the course.[5] While shortcut fouls still exist in this timeline, they’re much harder to pull off and require you to skip more checkpoints than in OTL. There are two other minor changes to the game itself. Firstly, a small portrait of each pilot is featured next to their vehicle on the machine select screen. These portraits also show up with different expressions upon finishing a race, winning/losing a grand prix, crashing/ranking out, or getting a game over. Some of them are pretty humorous, like Samurai Goroh pouting angrily while his face is covered in soot after a crash, or Dr. Stewart's incredibly smug expression after winning a race. Lastly, White Land II and Death Wind II swap positions. Death Wind II is the 5th track of the Queen Cup, and White Land II is the 2nd track of the King Cup.
Really, the biggest differences with F-Zero aren’t in the game itself, but in its marketing. Philips, believing that it was an excellent showcase of the Super Famicom hardware, encouraged Nintendo to go ahead with making Captain Falcon a sort of “mascot” for the system. This was especially true in Japan, where the Super Famicom didn’t have a pack-in title. F-Zero and Captain Falcon were used pretty heavily in the system’s marketing, almost as much as Super Mario World was. While Super Mario World is still the pack-in title in the West, F-Zero definitely still got quite a bit of spotlight too. The comic included in the manual in OTL and TTL is “Issue #0” of a comic series that would run in Nintendo Power and its international versions, and even came with an exclusive discount towards your first subscription.
F-Zero is received just a bit better than it was in our timeline, as there’s a bit more polish present. While there might not be a whole lot of content, it makes up for it with the incredibly tight gameplay and exhilarating speeds. The increased marketing means that the game sells even better, and cements itself as one of Nintendo’s major franchises. Nintendo begins work on a two-player sequel for the base SNES, but the system can’t handle the high speeds of both racers very well. This initial attempt eventually turns into Super Mario Kart just like in our timeline, and work on a true sequel to F-Zero begins on the SNES-CD.
All About Super Pinball
Platform: SNES
Developer: Capitol Video Interactive
Publisher: Philips Interactive Media
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
Super Pinball is a virtual pinball game and Philips’s first title for the Super Nintendo. While F-Zero showed off the system’s graphical might, Super Pinball was more focused on the console’s audio capabilities. The development team recorded sounds from real pinball machines and compressed them to fit on a Super Nintendo cartridge. And unlike OTL’s CD-i Pinball, Super Pinball has actual music, with a track for each of the game’s 4 boards. It also has a more traditional pixel art style instead of the higher resolution sprites of the OTL game. The game’s boards are Cyber Land, a high-tech factory area, Dogfight, based on World War I airplane combat, Spring Break, taking place on a beach with umbrella-patterned jet bumpers, and Crystal Cavern, an underground cave with plenty of shiny gems to grab for points.
Super Pinball is a lot better than our timeline’s Pinball, partly thanks to having much better controls and having more things to do on the boards. But outside of the game’s audio, it’s a fairly average pinball game, all things considered. It doesn’t sell that great in Japan since they don’t care much for pinball and being completely overshadowed by the other two launch titles. It had a much better time upon its release in the West, though. Overall, Super Pinball is a pretty decent start to Philips’s SNES catalog.
Footnotes:
[1] The original 68000 processor is… weird. The data bus is 16 bit, and the address bus is 24 bit. Beginning with the 68020, both buses were made to be 32 bit.
[2] As this is before the time of the Euro, I’m only going to list the price in pounds sterling to represent Europe. Otherwise, that’s too many currencies. Expect a price in Euros to show up alongside pounds once they come around.
[3] I personally consider both Lost Levels and Super Mario USA to simultaneously share the 2nd game slot. If you don’t, then Mario World is the 5th home console Super Mario game. What qualifies as a mainline Mario game in our timeline is… messy, to say the least, but I digress.
[4] That mountain on Yoshi’s Island is actually called Kappa Mountain in the manual IOTL, and is named after the creature from Japanese folklore. An example of a Kappa is Kapp’n from Animal Crossing.
[5] Wanna try this out for yourself? The easiest place to do it in our timeline is in Port Town II. Boost into the very first jump plate near the pit area and make a hard right to the other side of the track. It works in the GBA games and F-Zero 99 as well!
Presenting… the Super Famicom (Late 1990 Part 2)
“Welcome! This is Dinosaur Land. In this strange land we find that Princess Toadstool is missing again! Looks like Bowser is at it again!” - Opening cutscene to Super Mario World
“THE RACE IS OVER… YOU ARE AN F-ZERO MASTER!! GOODBYE, FROM CAPTAIN FALCON AND THE F-ZERO CREW.” - Ending cutscene after getting 1st place in a grand prix on Master difficulty in F-Zero
All About The Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Also Known As: Super Famicom (Japan), Hyundai Super Comboy (South Korea)
CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz
Bus Width: 16-bit/24-bit[1]
Main RAM: 128 KB
GPU: S-PPU (Picture Processing Unit) - consists of PPU1 and PPU2 chips
VRAM: 64 KB
Audio: Philips SAS-1000 (Super Audio System) - has 8 channels for audio
Audio RAM: 64 KB
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
Launch Price: ¥25,000, US$199, £150[2]
The Super Famicom looks practically identical to how it did in our timeline, and the same can be said for its later North American redesign. The controllers are also just like they are in our timeline, introducing the diamond-shaped 4 face button layout and shoulder buttons. The main differences are in the internals; the most striking is the 10 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, which is almost 3 times faster than the OTL 3.58 Ricoh 5A22 (which is a derivative of the WDC 65C816.) Also notable is the Philips SAS-1000 chip, which has similar capabilities to the OTL SPC-700 but works in a different way.
The Super Famicom launches to the same success that it did in our timeline. Nintendo’s initial 300,000 consoles sold out within a matter of hours, and the resulting social disturbance led to the Japanese government asking console manufacturers to schedule future releases on weekends. Nintendo even had to ship the consoles at night in order to avoid getting robbed by members of the Yakuza.
All About Super Mario World
Also Known As: Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 4 (Japan, box only)
Platform: SNES
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
Super Mario World is the 4th[3] mainline home console Mario game, and the first to be released in the 16-bit era. Philips engineers helped port Super Mario Bros. 3 to the SNES’s Motorola 68000 chip early in development, due to Nintendo’s programmers being largely unfamiliar with the architecture. Nintendo mostly took over the game’s development from that point, although the Philips staff was kept around for any additional assistance they might need. While definitely still rushed out for the Super Nintendo’s release, these Philips engineers were able to help Nintendo squeeze 4 more exits into the game, for a nice, round total of 100.
The new exits are as follows:
- Kappa Mountain[4] - In between Yoshi’s Island 1 and the Yellow Switch Palace. It’s pretty comparable to 2-3 or 7-3 from the original Super Mario Bros., featuring jumping Cheep Cheeps and bridges, though you can actually swim in the water this time around.
- Soda Lake 2 - OTL’s Soda Lake is now Soda Lake 1, and leads directly to Soda Lake 2. This underwater level has shark enemies that swim left and right in a pattern.
- Cookie Mountain 2 - Located at the base of the ladder to #4 Ludwig’s Castle on the world map. This is a vertical mountain level with Diggin’ Chucks and Monty Moles.
- Bowser Secret 1 - Valley of Bowser 1 and 2 swap level layouts, and Valley of Bowser 1’s secret exit leads directly up to here. Bowser Secret 1 is an underwater level that features Torpedo Teds and naval mines (which were scrapped from the OTL game.) Beating it leads left towards #7 Larry’s Castle.
The scrapped naval mine object, found in the Gigaleak.
Outside of these new levels, there are also some more minor differences caused by butterflies. These include:
- Dolphins can not be eaten by Yoshi in ANY version of the game, due to Philips engineers questioning this feature from both cultural and game design standpoints.
- Princess Peach uses her Japanese sprites in ALL versions of the game. In our timeline, early, unfinished versions of her sprites were used in the international release seemingly by accident.
- Chain Chomps appear in some Forest of Illusion levels. IOTL, all that remains of them is the sprite of their chain stored along with the other forest tileset graphics.
- Slight alterations to various levels that would take forever to list them all.
All About F-Zero
Platform: SNES
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
F-Zero is a futuristic racing game utilizing the SNES’s Mode 7 background mode to simulate a faux-3D effect. This is a game that benefits greatly from the increased processor speed of the SNES, as it’s a bit smoother in this timeline. In our timeline, skipping too many checkpoints in a race would cause the AI racers to bug out due to processor speed limitations. To remedy this, “shortcut fouls” were implemented, where skipping too many checkpoints causes the ship that repairs your machine to pick up your machine and place you backwards in the course.[5] While shortcut fouls still exist in this timeline, they’re much harder to pull off and require you to skip more checkpoints than in OTL. There are two other minor changes to the game itself. Firstly, a small portrait of each pilot is featured next to their vehicle on the machine select screen. These portraits also show up with different expressions upon finishing a race, winning/losing a grand prix, crashing/ranking out, or getting a game over. Some of them are pretty humorous, like Samurai Goroh pouting angrily while his face is covered in soot after a crash, or Dr. Stewart's incredibly smug expression after winning a race. Lastly, White Land II and Death Wind II swap positions. Death Wind II is the 5th track of the Queen Cup, and White Land II is the 2nd track of the King Cup.
Really, the biggest differences with F-Zero aren’t in the game itself, but in its marketing. Philips, believing that it was an excellent showcase of the Super Famicom hardware, encouraged Nintendo to go ahead with making Captain Falcon a sort of “mascot” for the system. This was especially true in Japan, where the Super Famicom didn’t have a pack-in title. F-Zero and Captain Falcon were used pretty heavily in the system’s marketing, almost as much as Super Mario World was. While Super Mario World is still the pack-in title in the West, F-Zero definitely still got quite a bit of spotlight too. The comic included in the manual in OTL and TTL is “Issue #0” of a comic series that would run in Nintendo Power and its international versions, and even came with an exclusive discount towards your first subscription.
F-Zero is received just a bit better than it was in our timeline, as there’s a bit more polish present. While there might not be a whole lot of content, it makes up for it with the incredibly tight gameplay and exhilarating speeds. The increased marketing means that the game sells even better, and cements itself as one of Nintendo’s major franchises. Nintendo begins work on a two-player sequel for the base SNES, but the system can’t handle the high speeds of both racers very well. This initial attempt eventually turns into Super Mario Kart just like in our timeline, and work on a true sequel to F-Zero begins on the SNES-CD.
All About Super Pinball
Platform: SNES
Developer: Capitol Video Interactive
Publisher: Philips Interactive Media
Released: November 21st, 1990 (JP); August 23rd, 1991 (US); April 11th, 1992 (EU)
Super Pinball is a virtual pinball game and Philips’s first title for the Super Nintendo. While F-Zero showed off the system’s graphical might, Super Pinball was more focused on the console’s audio capabilities. The development team recorded sounds from real pinball machines and compressed them to fit on a Super Nintendo cartridge. And unlike OTL’s CD-i Pinball, Super Pinball has actual music, with a track for each of the game’s 4 boards. It also has a more traditional pixel art style instead of the higher resolution sprites of the OTL game. The game’s boards are Cyber Land, a high-tech factory area, Dogfight, based on World War I airplane combat, Spring Break, taking place on a beach with umbrella-patterned jet bumpers, and Crystal Cavern, an underground cave with plenty of shiny gems to grab for points.
Super Pinball is a lot better than our timeline’s Pinball, partly thanks to having much better controls and having more things to do on the boards. But outside of the game’s audio, it’s a fairly average pinball game, all things considered. It doesn’t sell that great in Japan since they don’t care much for pinball and being completely overshadowed by the other two launch titles. It had a much better time upon its release in the West, though. Overall, Super Pinball is a pretty decent start to Philips’s SNES catalog.
Footnotes:
[1] The original 68000 processor is… weird. The data bus is 16 bit, and the address bus is 24 bit. Beginning with the 68020, both buses were made to be 32 bit.
[2] As this is before the time of the Euro, I’m only going to list the price in pounds sterling to represent Europe. Otherwise, that’s too many currencies. Expect a price in Euros to show up alongside pounds once they come around.
[3] I personally consider both Lost Levels and Super Mario USA to simultaneously share the 2nd game slot. If you don’t, then Mario World is the 5th home console Super Mario game. What qualifies as a mainline Mario game in our timeline is… messy, to say the least, but I digress.
[4] That mountain on Yoshi’s Island is actually called Kappa Mountain in the manual IOTL, and is named after the creature from Japanese folklore. An example of a Kappa is Kapp’n from Animal Crossing.
[5] Wanna try this out for yourself? The easiest place to do it in our timeline is in Port Town II. Boost into the very first jump plate near the pit area and make a hard right to the other side of the track. It works in the GBA games and F-Zero 99 as well!
Next time, we'll be stopping by Summer CES 1991, as Winter CES 1991 wasn't very interesting in OTL or TTL. I'll be seeing you all then!
Last edited: