"Alladin from Genesis and SNES, na other licensed games.

A link for you to read if yiu want https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?135147-Different-games-with-the-same-name-(Genesis-and-SNES)"

Aside from Aladdin and maybe Batman Returns, how many of those were really good and popular games? Was either version good enough and/or popular enough to where it made a difference one way or another that each version was a different game?

You may dismiss all you want, but it was true that they needed to make 2 versions usually with different teams or companies because of the Nintendo policies even with all claims of they being laxed. Which clearly shows devs weren't happy as you tried to deny.

"Shows they were already working together and easy port of árcade to console."

Still irrelevant.

Not sure why would be irrelevant that they were planing support even before the gen started (on your claim that devs were waiting to see PS catch momentum before hand, while this happened even before)

"You may have the tracking, and the information I heard here may be false, but until Sega decided to go to CD and 32X they were leading against SNES, and if I'm not wrong like a year ago someone posted a link from one exec of sega or Tectoy (their partner in Brazil). The legs were dying out because they lost focus, same is said about Wii and that were fast death."

Again, the Sega CD was released in 1992, to no ill effect for the Genesis, which was doing just fine in the U.S. during the generation proper. The 32X was released around the same time the Saturn was in Japan, and only a few months before the Saturn's U.S. release. Sega was indeed already focused on moving to 32-bit systems, to the detriment of the Genesis, which had worse software support after 1994 than the SNES did (and it is normal for a console's sales to accelerate in their decline once they're replaced, regardless of support). But even had Sega supported the Genesis better it wouldn't have gotten them the win in the U.S., or at least not a convincing one. Based on what I've seen, for the period of 1991-1994, the SNES and Genesis were essentially neck-and-neck, with the Genesis only having a very small LTD lead because of its head start. That lead evaporated quickly starting in 1995. At best, had the Genesis been supported better, the U.S. would have ended up a near-tie.

You contradict your own numbers, if they were neck to neck while they were both supported, and after support dropped it slowed down, then the more probable outcome had support not be cut would be sales still coming. A much more possible outcome than the whole world changing if Nintendo did got CD.

"May very well be true, but consider the increase it have from Master System and decline of NES to SNES. I see it very clear that Nintendo was losing power worldwide and would continue against Sony that was a much better structured company than Sega."

Nintendo only lost significant market share to Sega in the U.S./NA. I'd argue that it was due largely to Sega of America's aggressive, confrontational, in-your-face ad campaigns that frequently attacked Nintendo, as well as generally having a vastly superior library of content than the Master System. American gamers are notoriously fickle and their tastes have changed more than any other major market.

So you are going to say Sega didn't saw a massive increase in Europe and RotW?

Master System Japan: 1M NA: 2M Europe: 6.8M RotW:3.2M Brazil: 8M (mostly after gen anyway)

Genesis Japan: 3.58M (258% increase)North America:17M (750% increase) Europe: 8.39M (23% increase) RotW 0.59M (probably wrong as Brazil alone have 3M and another place by Majesco 1.5M and missing more than 1M compared with Sega) This seem as good increase in sales in most regions

NES Japan:19.35M NA:33.49M Europe: 8.30M RotW: 0.77M

SNES Japan: 17.17M (seems like the difference is almost what Sega captured) NA: 22.88M (32% decrease) Europe: 8.15M (flat) RotW:0.9M

These RotW and Europe numbers that gone from less than 1M and 8M on SNES to 9M and 37M with Sony can hardly be claimed that Nintendo would achieve with doing what they were doing back then (they haven't found this sucess in the next gen as well).

"Very much true, but those games didn't need CD to work and that already show that even if Nintendo had CD Sony would still have snatched a lot of support. We do have some devs interviews showing they left Nintendo because of CD (but funny enough didn't go to Sega which was the consolidated brand, they gone Sony). I'm pretty sure Sony would have used their financial power to bring the devs because they were even less developed as developers than Sega so their dependence on 3rd parties would push them to it and Nintendo would still think they had the game won. Just look at they keep not caring about getting support until Switch really and how people claim several companies still hold a grudge."

Still, there is no evidence suggesting that it was some sort of grudge the largest third parties at the time had against Nintendo that caused them to move away from Nintendo for home console development.

The evidence is clear from they not putting games that didn't need CD on N64, nor GC, nor Wii, nor WiiU..... they didn't seem very eager to go back to Nintendo as soon as they got a viable alternative.

"The key here is likely, you are considering inertia would have caried all that support to Nintendo if they hadn't left CD behind. Like if they cared so much to have that support they wouldn't have kept away from CD like they did. The newcomer would have targeted exactly those companies (perhaps even purchasing them if necessary). You yourself said they had no loyalty to Sony so there is no reason to believe they would have any for Nintendo that ignored their inputs."

This is an alternate history thread. In our reality, Nintendo did not have the enthusiasm for CDs in the late 80s that some others did and failed to continue to pursue CDs as a format after their attempts to develop an SNES-CD failed. This alternate history assumes that some sort of change happened at Nintendo that led to key decision makers having greater interest in and generally seeing the merits and advantages of optical discs over cartridges, leading them to abandon the latter. Maybe Ken Kutaragi did some things differently that convinced Nintendo higher-ups that CDs were the future. Who knows? We can speculate about a divergence point, but this is an alternate history thread and a divergence point of some kind is necessary and thus automatically implied.

Then you are changing more than what OP suggest that was simply having CD not changing an entire corporate philosophy.

Back in the late 80s, while Sony, Sega, and NEC saw the merits of CDs, Nintendo did not. Their failure to see the value in CD at the time was not because they didn't care about what third parties wanted. They were skeptical that gamers would want to deal with the long load times, and while they did approve Sony's CD-ROM add-on they weren't gung-ho about it. Later on in the generation it was clear that the format had gone nowhere in the 16-bit era, seeing as how the Sega CD had very few worthwhile games and how CD add-ons for the TG16/PC Engine and Neo Geo generated even less interest from gamers and developers alike. Once the SNES-CD deals fell through, they ceased serious pursuit of optical discs. There was some residual interest as very early in the N64's development there were still discussions on whether it should use CDs in some capacity, though the 64DD shows that Nintendo saw even more merit in floppy disks (one of their concerns was that a CD-ROM drive would hurt them by making the N64 more expensive). It's hard to blame their long-term skepticism of CDs given what the format produced in the first half of the 90s. It wasn't until gaming started to move fully to 3D that the value of the CD format made itself obvious for all to see, but by that point it was too late for the N64 to have ever been a CD-based system. That's our reality, but it is not the hypothetical reality we are discussing in this thread.

In our reality they also didn't try DVD on GC and BD or HDDVD on Wii. They are very skeptical of market practices, and we have seem a lot of reports in the forum of they not caring about 3rd parties and hearing them. Not hard to verify this comparing to Xbox coming and getting more support than GC, also that even with big sales Wii didn't get much support. Call it what you want, Nintendo makes the HW they want and 3rd parties follow if they like. Also when you point on their reason to avoid CD you also have to consider that perhaps Mario 64 and others would had become much worse games and N64 could have done worse than it did in real world.

"You may say otherwise but you most agree with me than disagree (GC could have any game PS2 had, multiples discs weren't a problem in the gen prior, GC gen or even next gen). Nintendo simply didn't care about the needs of third parties, to make them happy or even have they on their platform for multiple gens. So I fail to see why in this alternative universe just by having CD they would start caring."

I address most of this above. I just wanted to address the GC's format. Its mini-DVDs had a capacity of only 1.5GB, whereas a single-layer DVD can 4.7GB and a double-layer DVD can hold 8.5GB. Many PS2 and Xbox games had a capacity greater than 1.5GB. Multiple discs were never an optimal solution. They weren't the norm on on the PS1, and even less so afterward. With a tiny handful of exceptions, most multi-disc releases post-Gen 5 were games with a bonus disc, with the game itself fitting on a single DVD. The GameCube's format would have necessitated more games being split across multiple discs than a lot of developers would care for. There's probably a reason why some multiplatform games came to both the PS2 and Xbox but not the GameCube, and I doubt it was because Nintendo were being dicks to their publishers. That being said, the GC had better support than the N64.

Weren't the norm, but if we are so much claiming FF VII gone to PS1 due to CDs we had it with 3 right? And FF IX with 4 CDs. So even though it may be somewhat of a bother they could make multiple layer or multiple disc games (or use more compression, simplified audio, etc), it was doable but devs just didn't care. You can have your doubts, but you dismiss everything negative as not possible because no one were vocal about it, but you are adamant everything would change because you have one interview from Square saying the CD tied them down.

Not to forget that several games were selling much better in Xbox or PS2 than on GC, because people buying Nintendo HW wanted their games.

Yeah. The N64 was $200 but the games averaged at least $60. Assuming a $300 CD-based N64 with games averaging $45, the savings from software would make up for the $100 higher price of the system after 7 games purchased. The typical attach rates for systems from the Big Three have ranged between 7 and 11.

On SNES vs Megadrive, another significant factor in the former's victory in the 4th gen was a little game called Donkey Kong Country.

Arriving somewhat late in the gen, it was a huge deal at the time with its mind-blowing pre-rendered graphics and next level soundtrack, and it was a major killer app for the SNES, giving it a real shot in the arm at a time when Sega was shifting their focus to new hardware.

When the Megadrive started lose momentum and peter out, the SNES keep steaming on beyond the release of the PS1 and Saturn, and DKC was a key game in keeping Nintendo's ageing 16-bit machine relevant.

It's worth noting that the game was also a collaboration with a then third party, Rare.

DKC is great, but didn't Nintendo already owned half of Rare?

I suspect DKC and its great performance may have influenced on they not putting CD. Also there are stories about Shigeru being jealous.

Nintendo bought a 25% share of Rare after being impressed by their proposal and demos for a pre-rendered game, and that gradually went up to a 49% share over time.

I don't think it's very likely DKC turned them away from CDs though, I think that was probably more their fear of piracy after how big a problem that was for them on the NES, and the failure of early CD-based consoles like the 3DO.

You may dismiss all you want, but it was true that they needed to make 2 versions usually with different teams or companies because of the Nintendo policies even with all claims of they being laxed. Which clearly shows devs weren't happy as you tried to deny.

Most of those games were developed by different studios. Even when it was the same studio, it would easily be chalked up to reasons other than "they hated Nintendo."

Those games were developed by different studios because Nintendo restrictions dictated that, reason why they ended up different. That adds a lot to cost and certainly can make a company displeased with the platform holder.

Not sure why would be irrelevant that they were planing support even before the gen started (on your claim that devs were waiting to see PS catch momentum before hand, while this happened even before)

What do you mean "before the gen started"? As far as I can tell, Konami's arcade systems weren't based on anything made by Sony until the ones based on PlayStation hardware were being released in 1996. In other words, Konami and Sony partnered for arcade machines after Konami started developing for the PS1, not before. That doesn't prove your point.

That proves that they had talks about, one doesn't chose partners, chips and designs in a few weeks. You don't want to accept that Sony would have gotten good support even with Nintendo had CD because PS1 would have been a loser, but these show they were already talking to support even before PS1 was a hit and/or N64 showed to be a dud.

You contradict your own numbers, if they were neck to neck while they were both supported, and after support dropped it slowed down, then the more probable outcome had support not be cut would be sales still coming. A much more possible outcome than the whole world changing if Nintendo did got CD.

"Neck-and-neck" meaning the SNES and Genesis were essentially tied for the 1992-1994 period, and the Genesis's lead in LTD sales was only slight at the end of that period. I don't see the Genesis having a convincing victory in the U.S. even if the Genesis had better support. The numbers just don't support it. If it had legs comparable to the SNES's, the result would have been a statistical tie.

Yes, statistical tie in NA, statistical tie in Europe, statistical tie RotW, lose in Japan. That would have put both very near one another.

So you are going to say Sega didn't saw a massive increase in Europe and RotW?

Master System Japan: 1M NA: 2M Europe: 6.8M RotW:3.2M Brazil: 8M (mostly after gen anyway)

Genesis Japan: 3.58M (258% increase)North America:17M (750% increase) Europe: 8.39M (23% increase) RotW 0.59M (probably wrong as Brazil alone have 3M and another place by Majesco 1.5M and missing more than 1M compared with Sega) This seem as good increase in sales in most regions

NES Japan:19.35M NA:33.49M Europe: 8.30M RotW: 0.77M

SNES Japan: 17.17M (seems like the difference is almost what Sega captured) NA: 22.88M (32% decrease) Europe: 8.15M (flat) RotW:0.9M

These RotW and Europe numbers that gone from less than 1M and 8M on SNES to 9M and 37M with Sony can hardly be claimed that Nintendo would achieve with doing what they were doing back then (they haven't found this sucess in the next gen as well).

*sigh* The SNES sold 12.8M fewer units than the NES globally. Nearly all of that loss was from NA. While the SNES didn't do as well as the NES in Japan, the Genesis was outsold by the PC Engine, selling only 3.58M to the PCE's 5.84M. If anything, NEC was more responsible for Nintendo's very modest losses in Japan in Gen 4. Sega only had a significant impact on Nintendo's sales in America, which was responsible for the vast majority of all of Sega's gen-over-gen gains in the three major markets. It's right there in the numbers, black-and-white, clear as crystal.

If you want to be dismissive better stop the conversation and remove the respect I had for you. Genesis saw a major increase on the sales while Nintendo saw decreases in all markets, so nothing show Nintendo growing the market or that they would cause Europe and RotW to major increases as you claimed they would if they had the CD. Genesis done a much better job in Japan than Master System if you want to pretend that didn't take sales away from SNES ok (and 10% isn't that modest). And seems like you decided to not reply to the sales going from 1M to 9M RotW and 9M to 37M from SNES to PS1.

The evidence is clear from they not putting games that didn't need CD on N64, nor GC, nor Wii, nor WiiU..... they didn't seem very eager to go back to Nintendo as soon as they got a viable alternative.

Really? THERE HASN'T BEEN A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE! The N64 and GC had formats with significant limitations (esp. the N64). The Wii and Wii U were underpowered. Same for the Switch. Smaller-scale projects have been released for Nintendo's handhelds, which were always avidly supported by most of the big Japanese third parties, but for the big AAA releases, they reserved their efforts for the consoles that best facilitated their needs for the types of games they wanted to make, and for the most part that hasn't been Nintendo's consoles.

And guess what they were just like that? Right, because Nintendo choose that those were enough for them and didn't care about what 3rd parties wanted.

Then you are changing more than what OP suggest that was simply having CD not changing an entire corporate philosophy.

You don't get the point of alternate history, do you? A divergence point is always implied, and a divergence point requires different conditions. Even if only a "what" is stated a "how" is always implies. If our alternate history is about Nintendo releasing a CD-based N64, it implies that Nintendo's key decision makers ended up seeing things differently regarding the format.

More personal attacks. Divergence point on OP was going CD, not changing the entire Nintendo corporation philosophy that would then make CD the choice with a lot of other indirect changes that you decide by yourself outside of the OP. There was one different condition CD, that is it. Nintendo having better relationship with developers, they listening to other companies requirements, fostering and supporting 3rd parties to sell more, advertising heavily those companies games are all changes that you decided to include. And seeing the increase in sales from FF VI to FF VII we can very well point out that if it were in N64 it wouldn't caused the impact it did on PS1.

In our reality they also didn't try DVD on GC and BD or HDDVD on Wii. They are very skeptical of market practices, and we have seem a lot of reports in the forum of they not caring about 3rd parties and hearing them. Not hard to verify this comparing to Xbox coming and getting more support than GC, also that even with big sales Wii didn't get much support. Call it what you want, Nintendo makes the HW they want and 3rd parties follow if they like. Also when you point on their reason to avoid CD you also have to consider that perhaps Mario 64 and others would had become much worse games and N64 could have done worse than it did in real world.

See above.

Weren't the norm, but if we are so much claiming FF VII gone to PS1 due to CDs we had it with 3 right? And FF IX with 4 CDs. So even though it may be somewhat of a bother they could make multiple layer or multiple disc games (or use more compression, simplified audio, etc), it was doable but devs just didn't care. You can have your doubts, but you dismiss everything negative as not possible because no one were vocal about it, but you are adamant everything would change because you have one interview from Square saying the CD tied them down.

CDs had a capacity of 700MB. FFVII was 1.5GB. Games were already getting huge. For a few PS1 games, multiple discs were a necessity. Standard DVD has a minimum capacity of 4.7GB, nearly seven times that of a CD. That was good enough for a good while, and only a handful of games needed multiple discs for the game itself (almost all of them coming at the end of the generation). There's a difference between "necessary but feasible," "feasible but not necessary," and "flat out impossible" (the latter being the case when an N64 cart has a maximum capacity of 64MB and your game is over 23 times that size).

We have seem "impossible games" like RE2 ported to N64, or RE4 ported to PS2. And good to see you go from comparing DVD to the mini available in GC (1/4 capacity, and well we had some games that used multiple DVDs, wouldn't say all were end gen still that is pointless. It was feasible but devs just didn't care because they wouldn't see relevant profits) to 64MB being 23x smaller than 700MB (yes I can agree multiple CD games could be a problem, but you coul make a multi cartrdrige game if you so much wanted using password as the "saving method", and most of the games didn't need a CD to be feasible even with a lot of work, movies and audio sounds would be the biggest part of the memory consumption and for plenty of games those would also be not necessary or could be translated to in game engine text).

Cartridges of SNES and N64 were pirated as well, and one of the promises of CD was that it would prevent piracy due to the high cost of the burners (we know it didn't work out later). But think about Nintendo arrogance, if they could do that much on a 16bits cartridge and Sega CD and 3DO weren't much better looking they didn't need CD at all.

They weren't just worried about players pirating games, the bigger concern for them was actual developers creating and selling unlicensed software; this was a huge problem on NES, but was largely solved on the SNES by comparison. I think it was less a matter of arrogance and more paranoia.

So we want to believe Nintendo had a great relationship with 3rd party at the same time worried about unlicensed SW they may have put? That is above paranoia. Even great non-Nintendo games didn't sold as great as Nintendo, so an unlicensed game would probably earn peanuts (unless you are talking about shovelwares damaging the image of the system). NES had those shovelwares without Nintendo seal and public could differentiate from the ones with seal.