Dear Pesky Partners... - A Nintendo-Philips Timeline

[SubparLario]

(I meant to get this out much sooner, but I kept rewriting it trying to figure out exactly HOW I wanted this chapter to be presented. Sorry about that...)

Health Scare (Mid 1990 Part 1)

Muppets Creator Jim Henson Hospitalized After Appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show

Last night, May 4th, the famous writer, producer, director, and puppeteer Jim Henson made an appearance on the late-night talk show The Arsenio Hall Show. He brought along two of his Muppets, Kermit the Frog and Rowlf the Dog, as he did an interview with the show’s host, Arsenio Hall. However, after the completion of filming, Henson was admitted to a hospital here in Los Angeles. Henson had mentioned to a publicist that he was suffering from a sore throat and felt very tired while on-set, but Arsenio had overheard their conversation and recommended that Henson see a doctor about his symptoms after the episode’s airing. Henson believed that he did not have anything serious, but reluctantly obliged with Arsenio’s request. At the time of writing, details regarding Henson’s diagnosis or condition have not yet been made public.
- excerpt from the Los Angeles Times’ May 5th, 1990 issue

Jim Henson was pretty lucky to have gone to the hospital when he did. The doctors had diagnosed him with a Group A Streptococcal infection which, while often not severe, could lead to death if it isn’t properly treated. Luckily, Jim had gotten diagnosed with it pretty early on, and was prescribed some antibiotics, making a full recovery. By now, he had returned to his home in Manhattan, and was chatting to his close friend and collaborator, Frank Oz.

“So, you’re still going ahead with that Disney deal?” asked Oz. For the past few months, Henson had been in the process of selling The Muppets franchise to Disney for approximately $150 million.

“Why would I back out of it now?”

“Look, Jim… you’re an artist, not a dealmaker. And this deal, it’s stressing you out. And that stress got you sick! If you hadn’t gone to the doctor when you did, you very well could be dead right now.” [1]

“But that’s the thing; if I sell The Muppets to Disney, they can handle all of the business aspects, and let me make what I want to make,” answered Jim.

“Are you sure Eisner’s really gonna let you run wild? That they won’t suck the life out of your work?”

“I’ll do my best to make sure that they don’t.”

“...at least try to take better care of yourself. I don’t want to lose you.”

Even though Henson would complete the sale of the Muppets to Disney by the end of the year[2], he did at least keep one thing in mind from his conversation with Oz. Jim really was working himself to death, all because he feared that he wouldn’t be able to complete all of his ideas before passing away. And if he continued with the way he was doing things before, his fears would’ve become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Going forward, he would begin working less hours and catching up on his sleep to prevent himself from getting sick once again. While his projects might not come to life as quickly as they had before, he would at least be able to survive for long enough to complete all of them.

Footnotes:
[1] This is actually what Frank Oz believed led to Henson’s death in OTL, and he shares the same sentiment here.
[2] Sesame Street isn’t sold to Disney for the same reasons it wasn’t in OTL.

Next time, we're off to Tokyo Toy Show 1990 for the first public look at the Mega CD. See you then!​

 

[Nivek]

Sesame Street isn’t sold to Disney for the same reasons it wasn’t in OTL.

As this a no profit entity...even if they don't act like one at times....

Next time, we're off to Tokyo Toy Show 1990 for the first public look at the Mega CD. See you then!

That will be fun...

 

[SubparLario]

That will be fun...

Sega and Sony are being far less secretive about the add-on here since they want to get a leg-up over Nintendo. That, and a goof made by Ken Kutaragi... you'll find out more in Chapter 8.

 

[Nivek]

Sega and Sony are being far less secretive about the add-on here since they want to get a leg-up over Nintendo. That, and a goof made by Ken Kutaragi... you'll find out more in Chapter 8.

Excatly, Nintendo AND Philips might now about it and how to riposte, especially something argonaut was working on at the time

 

[Ninja2006]

Nice update, and great to see that Jim Henson lives! I wonder how this is gonna play out ITTL? Could Henson Star Fox actually happen, leading to Disney canning the Mario movie and them getting the IP rights?

 

[Nivek]

Nice update, and great to see that Jim Henson lives! I wonder how this is gonna play out ITTL? Could Henson Star Fox actually happen, leading to Disney canning the Mario movie and them getting the IP rights?

Disney was only the distribuitor, the mario movie was,,,something unique in development... read over it before commenting

 

[Ninja2006]

Disney was only the distribuitor, the mario movie was,,,something unique in development... read over it before commenting

Really? I thought they really made that........Well, you learn something new everyday.........

 

[SubparLario]

Yeah, the 1993 Mario movie's development was... something else. The Gaming Historian made an excellent video about it, and I'd highly recommend checking it out. The film legitimately had potential, but the directors' egos got in the way of things.

Nice update, and great to see that Jim Henson lives! I wonder how this is gonna play out ITTL? Could Henson Star Fox actually happen, leading to Disney canning the Mario movie and them getting the IP rights?

Before his death, Jim Henson wanted to make a show called Muppet High, where the Muppets were teenagers at a 50's high school. There were some toys based on it released in 1991, but the show never materialized once he passed. Here, he'll actually get to make that show. As for a Henson-Star Fox collaboration, I have something in mind, though it'll play out differently than in P2S. Star Fox 1 will be a cartridge game here, so there won't be any FMV's in it.

 

[Ninja2006]

Yeah, the 1993 Mario movie's development was... something else. The Gaming Historian made an excellent video about it, and I'd highly recommend checking it out. The film legitimately had potential, but the directors' egos got in the way of things.

Ok. Now that the PoD is earlier, how do you think the 90s Mario movie will fare ITTL?

Before his death, Jim Henson wanted to make a show called Muppet High, where the Muppets were teenagers at a 50's high school. There were some toys based on it released in 1991, but the show never materialized once he passed. Here, he'll actually get to make that show. As for a Henson-Star Fox collaboration, I have something in mind, though it'll play out differently than in P2S. Star Fox 1 will be a cartridge game here, so there won't be any FMV's in it.

Muppet High sounds like a cool idea!

 

[Nivek]

Ok. Now that the PoD is earlier, how do you think the 90s Mario movie will fare ITTL?

That depends on the wizard,but who knows

 

[SubparLario]

That depends on the wizard,but who knows

Yeah, Nintendo had barely any involvement with either of those, so I don't think there's much I can change, unfortunately.

 

[Nivek]

Yeah, Nintendo had barely any involvement with either of those, so I don't think there's much I can change, unfortunately.

The thing would be if they give the rights,as was the success of the wizard convince them to go ahead with the Mario movie, that giving too much creative freedom was something unique at the time.

Regardless that's irrelevant, we need to release the SNES and SNES CD first

 

[SubparLario]

Birth of a Blue Blur (Mid 1990 Part 2)

June 7th, 1990

This day marked the beginning of Tokyo Toy Show 1990. A three-day event held at the brand-new Makuhari Messe convention center, the focus of it wasn’t just toys as the name implied, but video games, too. Although the first day of the event was locked to members of the press, the public could swing by and check out demos and other material on the other two days of the event.

Sega had come to this event with two major hardware announcements. The first was their answer to Nintendo’s new handheld console, the Game Boy, that was only released last year. Called the Game Gear, it had something that the Game Boy quite famously lacked: color. It was also more powerful than Nintendo’s console, since its hardware was based on Sega’s Master System home console. Set for an October 1990 release in Japan, it would be Sega’s first foray into the handheld gaming sphere.

There were also some new games that were shown off. One of those games would be Sonic the Hedgehog, and this was the first time the game was shown off to the public. Starring a blue hedgehog, this platformer would focus on speed, and the character was designed to become Sega’s new mascot to rival Nintendo’s Mario, especially in the West. This first build would go on to interest many fans of the Sonic series, as it was incredibly important to the franchise’s history. Years later in the 2000’s, Sega would release this prototype as part of a Sonic anniversary collection[1], and fans would rip this prototype and dig into it to find out even more about Sonic’s first ever appearance.

But their second announcement was much more unexpected. Sega announced that they were partnering with the electronics giant Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the Mega Drive. And it didn’t just give the system the ability to read CD’s like the PC Engine CD-ROM2 did; no, it greatly increased the capabilities of the Mega Drive, and would allow for even more arcade-accurate ports. It would even increase the system’s output resolution to allow for full-motion video that filled that entire screen. It would turn the Mega Drive into a real beast once it came out in Japan in 1991.

Sega of Japan had initially wanted to keep the add-on a big secret from the public, and weren’t going to show off the add-on at TGS 1990 at first. However, an incident regarding Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi caused them to switch gears completely. You see, he had scheduled an introductory meeting of him and the new Sony Computer Entertainment of America with Sega of America, assuming that they knew about the Mega-CD add-on. After all, why wouldn’t Sega of Japan tell the branch that was succeeding the most about their upcoming hardware?

They did not.

And the confusion of Sega of America’s executives quickly turned to anger, especially for their new president, Tom Kalinske. He was (rightfully) pissed off that SoJ would keep such important details a secret from him and his branch, and began to question why he even took this job in the first place. Even Sony’s Japanese branch backed him up, stating that if the two companies wanted the add-on to succeed, they needed a substantial amount of hype, and that required being more open about the Mega-CD. To quote Ken Kutaragi himself, “Sega of Japan slowly became more and more jealous of their American counterpart. But I told them that if we wanted to beat out Nintendo, we’d all need to put one foot forward, and not bicker amongst ourselves.” Sega of Japan relented, and the device was shown off at TGS. Sega would also communicate more with their other branches as a result of this incident.

As for Nintendo and Philips, they were completely absent from the event as per usual during this time frame. Instead, Nintendo would host an event of their own, Shoshinkai 1990, in August. Unlike Shoshinkai 1989, which focused solely on the Super Famicom, Shoshinkai 1990 would feature Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy games all in one place.

Footnotes:
[1] Something Sega wanted to do with Gems Collection in OTL, but they quite literally lost the ROM for it. Yuji Naka ends up keeping a backup of the prototype here, and so it actually gets released!

As you can probably guess, the next chapter will be about Shoshinkai 1990. See you then!​

 

[Ninja2006]

Birth of a Blue Blur (Mid 1990 Part 2)

June 7th, 1990

This day marked the beginning of Tokyo Toy Show 1990. A three-day event held at the brand-new Makuhari Messe convention center, the focus of it wasn’t just toys as the name implied, but video games, too. Although the first day of the event was locked to members of the press, the public could swing by and check out demos and other material on the other two days of the event.

Sega had come to this event with two major hardware announcements. The first was their answer to Nintendo’s new handheld console, the Game Boy, that was only released last year. Called the Game Gear, it had something that the Game Boy quite famously lacked: color. It was also more powerful than Nintendo’s console, since its hardware was based on Sega’s Master System home console. Set for an October 1990 release in Japan, it would be Sega’s first foray into the handheld gaming sphere.

There were also some new games that were shown off. One of those games would be Sonic the Hedgehog, and this was the first time the game was shown off to the public. Starring a blue hedgehog, this platformer would focus on speed, and the character was designed to become Sega’s new mascot to rival Nintendo’s Mario, especially in the West. This first build would go on to interest many fans of the Sonic series, as it was incredibly important to the franchise’s history. Years later in the 2000’s, Sega would release this prototype as part of a Sonic anniversary collection[1], and fans would rip this prototype and dig into it to find out even more about Sonic’s first ever appearance.

But their second announcement was much more unexpected. Sega announced that they were partnering with the electronics giant Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the Mega Drive. And it didn’t just give the system the ability to read CD’s like the PC Engine CD-ROM2 did; no, it greatly increased the capabilities of the Mega Drive, and would allow for even more arcade-accurate ports. It would even increase the system’s output resolution to allow for full-motion video that filled that entire screen. It would turn the Mega Drive into a real beast once it came out in Japan in 1991.

Sega of Japan had initially wanted to keep the add-on a big secret from the public, and weren’t going to show off the add-on at TGS 1990 at first. However, an incident regarding Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi caused them to switch gears completely. You see, he had scheduled an introductory meeting of him and the new Sony Computer Entertainment of America with Sega of America, assuming that they knew about the Mega-CD add-on. After all, why wouldn’t Sega of Japan tell the branch that was succeeding the most about their upcoming hardware?

They did not.

And the confusion of Sega of America’s executives quickly turned to anger, especially for their new president, Tom Kalinske. He was (rightfully) pissed off that SoJ would keep such important details a secret from him and his branch, and began to question why he even took this job in the first place. Even Sony’s Japanese branch backed him up, stating that if the two companies wanted the add-on to succeed, they needed a substantial amount of hype, and that required being more open about the Mega-CD. To quote Ken Kutaragi himself, “Sega of Japan slowly became more and more jealous of their American counterpart. But I told them that if we wanted to beat out Nintendo, we’d all need to put one foot forward, and not bicker amongst ourselves.” Sega of Japan relented, and the device was shown off at TGS. Sega would also communicate more with their other branches as a result of this incident.

As for Nintendo and Philips, they were completely absent from the event as per usual during this time frame. Instead, Nintendo would host an event of their own, Shoshinkai 1990, in August. Unlike Shoshinkai 1989, which focused solely on the Super Famicom, Shoshinkai 1990 would feature Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy games all in one place.

Footnotes:
[1] Something Sega wanted to do with Gems Collection in OTL, but they quite literally lost the ROM for it. Yuji Naka ends up keeping a backup of the prototype here, and so it actually gets released!

As you can probably guess, the next chapter will be about Shoshinkai 1990. See you then!​

Cool!

 

[Screwhorn77]

So, the Tokyo Toy Show Sonic 1 prototype is preserved, and Sony chews out Sega and tells them to keep their act together, not to mention a more powerful Sega CD. The Sega appreciator side of me approves.

 

[CourtlyHades296]

Can't wait to see what direction the Sonic franchise takes now that the Sega CD is actually a competent device ITTL.

 

[Nivek]

Shoshinkai 1990

Those were so fun, wonder if they give us a first glance at SNES.CD or wait till next year.

 

[SubparLario]

So, the Tokyo Toy Show Sonic 1 prototype is preserved, and Sony chews out Sega and tells them to keep their act together, not to mention a more powerful Sega CD. The Sega appreciator side of me approves.

As someone who is very concerned with the preservation of video games, this was a small change I wanted to make. Expect more interesting stuff to be found in this timeline. A "bonus" chapter I want to make at some point are in-universe snippets from The Cutting Room Floor, which is a site that deals with unused content in video games and prototypes. Though that's way off in the future from now. (Side note, I've actually edited a bunch of articles on there and have even started a few pages, so I have a pretty good grasp on the wiki's editing style.)
Sony is starting to become a sort of mediator between Sega's two branches, especially since this is around the time that tensions between the two truly began in OTL (peaking once the Saturn came around.)

Can't wait to see what direction the Sonic franchise takes now that the Sega CD is actually a competent device ITTL.

While rewriting the Jim Henson chapter over and over again, I took a small break to focus on what I wanted to do with the Sonic franchise here. Since I've always been more of a Nintendo and Mario guy myself, I enlisted the help of my best friend Cherry to figure stuff out, and I think the plans we've come up with for Sonic are something that a lot of people will enjoy. No spoilers, though!

Those were so fun, wonder if they give us a first glance at SNES.CD or wait till next year.

They were, though I'm not surprised they stopped doing them once E3's presence became really big. Maybe they can start doing them again now that E3's floundering...

 

[Nivek]

They were, though I'm not surprised they stopped doing them once E3's presence became really big. Maybe they can start doing them again now that E3's floundering...

I think Direct fully remplaced those, and just sporadic shows if they need a physical presence, but the future was all directs now

 

[SubparLario]

(Sorry this update took so long to come out! I ended up doing a bunch of research for future parts of the timline this week. In other news, I'll be visiting my dad over the weekend, so I won't be very active on here during that time. I have a draft of Chapter 9 already made, so the turn around time will be shorter than last time.)

Shoshinkai 1990 (Mid 1990 Part 3)

August 28th-29th, 1990

Video footage of the event. Do note that even though the title says “TOKYO GAME SHOW 1990,” Nintendo was not present at TGS in OTL or TTL. It's just a mistake on the uploader's end.​

About two and a half months after Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo hosted their second ever Shoshinkai event. And Shoshinkai 1990 was an entirely different beast compared to Shoshinkai 1989. Now a two-day long event, members of the public were able to attend on the second day, getting a chance to play demos of upcoming games. Even though Game Boy and Famicom games were being shown off, people were most excited that this would be their first chance to try out the Super Famicom before its November launch. Multiple third-party studios like Konami, Capcom, Namco, Enix, Bandai, and more were all present at the event.

Nintendo had four Super Famicom games of their own to show off. Super Mario World and Dragonfly (now christened Pilotwings) returned from last year’s event, and are far more complete. F-Zero utilized Mode 7 to create a fast-paced, futuristic racer the likes of which have never been seen before on a home console, and would launch with the system alongside Super Mario World in Japan. One of the game’s four racers, Captain Falcon, was featured heavily at the event, such as in decorations and a cardboard cut-out that guests could take pictures with. The character was almost being treated like a mascot for the system[1], though Mario still got plenty of love here, too. And Intelligent Systems was working on a port of Will Wright’s popular computer game, SimCity, with Nintendo publishing the game.

Philips similarly had four titles to show off. Returning from Shoshinkai 1989 was Super Pinball, and it was confirmed to be a launch title for the Super Famicom. It had a playable demo featuring 2 out of the game’s 4 pinball boards: Cyber Land and Dog Fight. Outside of this game, though, Philips was largely concerned with ports of popular computer games than original titles at the time. Ports of the megahit puzzler Tetris, Silicon Beach’s popular Macintosh title Dark Castle, and Cinemaware’s graphically-impressive strategy game Defender of the Crown were all shown off by Philips at the event[2]. The port of Defender of the Crown in particular was looking to be an almost exact conversion of its original Amiga release, which really goes to show how capable of a machine the Super Famicom was.

Numerous arcade ports were also shown off by third party studios. Konami’s Gradius III ran very nicely on the Super Famicom, as did Irem’s R-Type II and Jaleco’s Big Run. However, while Capcom’s port of Final Fight had comparable visuals to its arcade version, it lacked the iconic two-player mode from its original arcade release. As for original titles, Enix mixed city-building and platforming to create ActRaiser, which stunned both members of the public and the press with its incredibly detailed and colorful graphics. It was on par with various arcade games of the era. HAL Laboratory was also developing a sequel to their Famicom title Jumbo Ozaki’s Hole in One Professional for the Super Famicom just titled Hole in One Golf, and it utilized Mode 7 for special camera effects. Overall, the Super Nintendo’s lineup was looking pretty solid so far.

Nintendo did have at least one hardware announcement to make, however. And that was confirmation that they were, indeed, developing a CD add-on for the Super Famicom in collaboration with Philips. A prototype was shown off exclusively to members of the press on the first day of the event. It would utilize Philips’s Compact Disc Interactive format as its storage medium, turning the SNES into a multimedia device capable of playing games, educational software, music, and perhaps even movies in conjunction with an MPEG-1 decoder card. While they had experimented with using disc caddies as an anti-piracy measure, they later settled on just using a standard tray-loading drive. A special "Memory Pak" was plugged into the cartridge slot, and this would house game save data. The two companies hoped to partner with schools to release a special “Education” version that would be restricted to educational software for use in classrooms or libraries. The add-on would also increase the system’s capabilities, such as a special graphics chip developed by Argonaut Games that allowed for rudimentary 3D graphics. In fact, Argonaut made a demo program showing this tech off that featured some spaceships rendered with polygons. Nintendo and Philips were planning to release the add-on in early 1992 in Japan.

With both Nintendo and Sega moving forward with their respective partners to create CD peripherals, the console wars were heating up, and the battleground would soon shift from cartridges to CD's.

Footnotes:
[1] Nintendo actually planned for him to be the SNES mascot in OTL. His design features red, blue, and yellow to match with three of the four button colors on the SFC controller. Philips ends up encouraging them to use F-Zero more in marketing.
[2] All early CD-i titles in our timeline.

Next update will be all about Mother 1's international release. Until then!​