Based on this post I made in the Here’s The Keys thread, this thread imagines a world where Smash remained an exclusively Nintendo crossover, because all of the 3rd party franchises are owned by Nintendo and always have been! How would the history of the gaming industry at large be affected by such a change?
Sega's mascot would still be Alex Kidd, and they might struggle to sell the Genesis without Sonic, so Nintendo maintains their monopoly for a bit longer until Sony shows up.
Pac-Man would be Nintendo’s initial claim to fame, rather than Donkey Kong. Though if Super Mario Bros. is still Super Mario Bros. and not, I dunno, Super Pac-Man, then Mario would probably still be their mascot. Namco's mascot would be Taizo Hori or Galaga, I guess.
Nintendo would reuse Lock-On Technology from the classic SNES game Sonic 3 & Knuckles to fit Final Fantasy VII onto the N64.
Sonic Team would be a subsidiary of Nintendo, but since I didn't say any series not represented in Smash would be owned by Nintendo, then I guess stuff like NiGHTS and Billy Hatcher just wouldn't exist.
Minecraft would be a Wii exclusive, presumably with motion controls. great.
Nintendo would be the premier developer of fighting games, so say goodbye to Street Fighter tournaments.
Marvel vs Capcom probably wouldn't exist. I guess it would be Marvel vs Nintendo instead?
That point on SEGA's lack of Sonic is interesting, because I suppose that means they'd have had to find something else to replace
Altered Beast with to sell the Genesis... which begs the question of what they'd actually have gone with. Assuming a late-1991 to mid-1992 point, I guess
Kid Chameleon might make sense as a platformer that's more approachable than the beat-em-up genre? (Given it's likely a matter of approachability, I'm guessing this would write off RPGs given their lack of Western popularity at the time. Then again,
Wonder Boy III or even
Bonanza Bros. aren't lost on me as loose potential picks. Maybe SEGA as a whole become way more notable for their arcade developments and ports than they do their home-console releases, at least in the West? Could be neat for them to loosen up their RPG restrictions given they'd probably not have leaned into the "radical" marketing angle as much.
The idea of Namco's mascot being Taizo Hori would honestly be incredibly interesting for a few reasons, including because it brings to mind the much later question of the
Mr. Driller series being a headlining franchise rather than being treated as something relatively minor... and then Driller Team having the opportunity to develop more polished arcade releases like
Star Trigon to help extend the
Dig Dug world even more, or other early Namco games getting a similar kind of treatment.
Oh, and
Final Fantasy VII being three seperate N64 cartridges stacked on top of each other is a hilarious thought.
This is a world in which Capcom's premier fighting games are Darkstalkers and Rival Schools.
Who do you think replaced Raiden and Heihachi in PlayStation All-Stars? Assuming they still can't afford Crash and Spyro.
Also, I know you said SMT/Persona would count as the same, I like to imagine there's some weird contract deal between atlus, sega and nintendo here, and the persona subseries is something of a weird rights situation
That thought on Capcom's fighting games is incredibly interesting. I almost have to wonder - does
Final Fight have some kind of weird scenario where it's bought by Nintendo prior to the
Alpha games? The context of that game's development means it could quite easily have ended up developed in-house at Nintendo... but if it's still with Capcom, it leads to this fascinating potential idea of Maki ending up in
Rival Schools' PS1 port over Sakura, and
Street Fighter having had guest fighters as far back as
Alpha. Or maybe characters from
Fatal Fury were included instead... would that mean Terry's design would be more like his look in the SF1 opening?
Raiden and Heihachi's an interesting case, and I'd say this kind of depends on what direction you'd want to take the thread's concept. Assuming we still want the proposed characters to fill similar roles (Konami's character being slightly weird and obviously cross-promotional, but still cool, and Namco's character being the face of a prominent series with plenty of entries across PlayStation platforms), there's a few ways to take it. I'd probably go with Vic Viper (specifically from
Zone of the Enders) and Nightmare (from
SoulCalibur, with a DLC Siegfried costume.) This does admittedly make a few assumptions - namely,
Enders still got its 2012 HD remake to crosspromote and that
Soul Edge acts as Namco's headlining fighting game franchise over
TEKKEN and thus actually exists - but I think it'd make at least some sense.
...maybe the Persona subseries is handled a little like
Tokyo Mirage Sessions? That game was published by Nintendo but developed by Atlus, so I suppose it'd be more on the Nintendo side of things (perhaps having existed since the N64 which is a... weird thought). Come to think of it, that'd probably mean this universe's
Mirage Sessions is more of a dedicated
Persona X
Fire Emblem crossover rather than a unique project inspired by SMT and FE, which could be interesting... a part of me thinks it'd be interesting to see
FE characters used as Personas, akin to the Emblem concept that'd eventually come about in
Engage.
They could probably get Lara Croft. In this universe, Square's biggest claims to fame are like, Chrono Trigger, The World Ends With You and Super Mario RPG, so I can't imagine they would own her.
Maybe they could get Klonoa?
The effects of Square not having
Final Fantasy or
Dragon Quest are actually massive when you think about it. Makes you wonder if the company would even still exist, let alone "as we know it". I guess the
Mana series could have been a bigger deal?... but then you have to ask whether that'd even have come about if they didn't already have their history with FF. Begs the question as to whether they even own Taito, or whether they got acquired by another company in 2005.
Come to think of it, it wouldn't surprise me for TWEWY to pivot heavily to a mobile-centric series in some way - whether it be match-three games with pin designs, sequels taking a similar form factor to
Final Remix, or even something like
Tin Pin Slammer becoming its own side-series. It's kind of fascinating to think what direction that series might have taken.
This makes me kind of wonder what Ehrgeiz would have looked like, to be honest, depending on if
SaGa or
Chrono Trigger became their bigger series. Assuming the latter (given this is before
Chrono Cross), I'm going to guess its guest fighters would have been Crono, Lucca, and Magus, then the additional PlayStation exclusives would probably be Frog, Ayla, and... Crono's future self, maybe?
Speaking of The World Ends With You, would that still be in Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance? I feel like it's not even a sure thing DISNEY is in Kingdom Hearts here, considering they were the primary copyright holders of Sora, not Square.
I guess things have to have turned out pretty differently in that elevator pitch, huh. Assuming it goes something like Nintendo being in the same building as Disney in Japan, with Hashimoto (a Nintendo employee) coming across a Disney exec there, then I reckon it'd probably look more like one of Nintendo's flagship series crossing over with Disney properties... which then makes me wonder if they'd have it as
Mario rather than
Final Fantasy for reasons of popularity and visual cohesion. (King Mario... with Luigi and Peach/Toad as side characters. What a world.)
In that case, I guess it'd be a secondary Nintendo series that still has Nomura connections, which just opens the door to what kind of projects Nomura would have been working on had he been a Nintendo employee. A small part of me reckons it'd probably manifest as some kind of "urban fantasy Zelda" project, so it'd probably be "urban Zelda" characters in
Dream Drop Distance rather than
TWEWY.
Then again, if
TWEWY was kept, it'd open the door for
Kingdom Hearts to maybe be planned as more of a "greater crossover" series rather than just one between Nintendo and Disney? I guess it's pure speculation, but a part of me almost wonders if they'd end up taking it as far as something like
Super Robot Wars by deliberately trying to pull in as many different Japanese companies as possible into the fold.
