altersidearchives

[altersidearchives]

Update 10.27.2024

This blog has been inactive for about a year now, as such I figured it'd make sense to be clear about some stuff.

For all intents and purposes, Alterside Archives is still continuing, but the way I used to do things will be changing. Rather than havinf this weird story about an amateur archivist with inter-dimensional internet, I'm going to instead just be doing various art pieces along with blurbs or fake Wikipedia articles about things within this timeline. It was difficult keeping a consistent "chronological" thing going, which is why I tended to take random cuts and stuff, since my mind was constantly racing.

I also have other projects that are of more importance and passion for me, such as my cartoon "Bionic Block, Asimov." I usually post updates about it on my main Tumblr @rocketwithapocket, which I'm more active on in general. So, yes, I do intend to be more active with this in the future, but don't expect a constant stream. Everything already on the blog will stay, but keep in mind that MOST of what has been already posted is outdated. I'll be reposting stuff that is still accurate to my current ideas for the timeline, however, with more detail to boot.

That's all I gotta say for now. Peace, and stay tuned for new stuff.

- Nina

[altersidearchives]

So, I've still been unable to get a ROM of anything running yet, but I was lucky enough to dig up a ZIP file for what appears to be the soundtrack for the first Sonic game in this timeline, figured I'd post it here. I found a synopsis of the game on Sega's website too for some kind of re-release, for the sake of context.

"Jam like it's 1992 with Sonic's first EVER adventure! On a bright sunny day on her home of South Island, getting ready for a new gig with her friends Mach, Vector, and Sharps, when all of a sudden... Dr. Robotnik attacked! With an iron fist, literally, and an army of robotic minions, he's ready to add Mobius to his world domination collection! It's up to Sonic to skate, jump, bounce, and crash at full speed through the many layers of the planet to stop the mad doctor, save her fellow Comets, AND the rest of Mobius in the process!" 

Neat.

The next part of the Nickelodeon stuff is coming soon, by the way. It’s just taking a while finding everything. Sorry for the silence.

- R

[altersidearchives]

[Alterbits] The Slime-Encrusted Rabbit Hole (Part Uno)

So, yeah, while I'm mainly focused on video games for this, I am pretty big into cartoons too. So while I was writing up the Nintendo stuff, I decided to look up Nickelodeon and see what I got.

...and I IMMEDIATELY had questions with one of the first things I saw. Robot Jones, on Nick? With a third season?? That's readily available??? And it was also one of the first image results on Google when I searched "Nickelodeon." Taking a guess that it was recently put on a streaming service or whatever. Looks like an Amazon icon or something.

It was being hosted on MySpace of all things. I went onto the site and found it was some kind of watch party feature where you can buy seasons of shows to add to a digital collection, and they had a bunch of Nick ones, which is where the Robot Jones icon came from. On top of a bunch of others.

A page full of Nickelodeon shows on “MySpace Play.” I guess MySpace had a form of success in this timeline. Seems to be a watch party type service, makes sense.

Even more questions started ringing through. There was a show next to the Robot Jones seasons that looked like Elinor Wonders Why, y'know that PBS Kids show? But Elinor looks like a teenager or something. I was able to pull up the show's page, and I got greeted with this.

Getting a bunch of Stranger Things vibes from this. Wonder if that exists in this timeline as well.

I won't keep making comments, I'll let the cap speak for itself on this one, but that's when I decided I had to look into it further. Obviously I couldn't buy the show, I doubt I could put in a credit card from a parallel universe and I was NOT about to try it. I caught a glimpse of a Glove and Boots character too, if you can see it in the first screencap. So I was definitely having my curiosity peaking at that point. So I went to the Wikipedia page for Nickelodeon, and started to dig.

Hoo boy.

Now at first this didn’t seem all too crazy. The logo was different but I already got a glimpse of that on the MySpace thing. The first big difference was the “Paramount Universal” thing. I didn’t look much into that, so my only assumption is that Viacom merged with Universal instead of CBS and Comcast eating them up. At least I HOPE that’s what happened instead of the potential monopolistic nightmare that all four combined would be, but I digress.

Next up, looked like Nick Jr. died at some point, interesting, and there’s a full-on NickRewind network that seems to have taken over Nicktoons. I read on and it sounded not too crazy. The “Elements of Harmony” bit caught my eye, but I wanted to keep reading onwards, save it for later.

....The last paragraph caught me RIGHT the fuck off-guard. Two YouTube channels getting full-on shows on Nick, let alone rather, niche ones. I mean yeah, in our timeline we got FRED and ReactToThat (ew), but those channels were HUGE back then and were practically controlled by big companies anyhow. I dunno if JacknJellify and the GaB guys were bigger in this timeline or what but, wow. Shit’s getting weirder.

Didn’t bother reading the History bit, I thought that’d be way too much to shove into this anyway, but there were more interesting tidbits, I’ll spare the redundancy and not comment here, buuuuuut I did see a mention of Pikwik Pack and Let’s Go Luna (and what I think might be Xavier Riddle? That’s one of the ones I didn’t look at), so what happened to PBS Kids here? I thought the Elinor bit I saw was just a coincidence, but no I guess?

So I clicked on the list...

[altersidearchives]

[1/2] Nintendo: Preparing the Famicom

First off, uhhh... happy new year! It's been a bit, mainly because I had to get some shit sorted out before I could continue. Turns out the people at the labs found out I got it working. I was able to make an agreement with them that I can keep this going as long as I stick to pop culture (video games, television, movies, consumer tech, etc) and that I can't specify too much about real people, unless it's needed for context. So yeah, no personal stuff about the people involved in this stuff in this timeline, makes sense.

I might as well use this quick intro to bring something up; The 1983 American video game crash didn't happen. From what I could gather, Atari had tried harder to combat the lower quality stuff being pumped onto the VCS (it never got renamed to the 2600 it seems) and actually released a new console proper much earlier, around 1982. It's called the "Atari XE." Coleco and Activision also entered agreements and Activision started to help on the ColecoVision's exclusives. The Intellivision just died a quiet death, I guess. So… no crappy 2600 Pac-Man, since the XE launched with a better version instead, and the E. T. game had much more effort and resources put into it, making it a MUCH better game on the XE. I was looking around and it looks like it's considered a beloved classic in this timeline and even got an arcade conversion a year later. That was… certainly bizzare to read. Figured it was important to mention before getting into the Nintendo stuff.

Alright, let's go.

As the 1980s were starting up, Japanese game developer Nintendo began releasing games in arcades outside of their home region, starting with Sherrif, Lunar Scope, and a few others. A modest success, but especially in America, failed to capture a mainstream audience. After a few internal reworkings at the company, reuse of the cabinets, and a creative visionary in Shigeru Miyamoto, they would later release Donkey Kong in 1981 to massive success and mainstream appeal, coming close to that of Pac-Man the year prior.

Follow-ups would soon be released, along with many console and home computer ports of the time. Donkey Kong Jr. in 1982 would be the direct sequel to the original, gaining sucess, albeit much less than its predecessor. A spin-off featuring the original star of the first game, now renamed "Mario," would also release in 1983, introducing his brother Luigi. This would be the first entry in the ever-popular Mario Bros. series of games, which would soon become Nintendo's flagship franchise. Shortly after, in 1984, a sequel called Mario Battle Bros. would release in arcades, being an evolved take on the original game, focusing more on competitive play and introducing a proper power-up, the Punch Ball, which was thrown and bounced off walls at enemies or knocked back your opposing player. Unlike their previous arcade games however, Nintendo did not license either of the Mario Bros. titles to receive outside ports. This was due to the company wanting to release proper "accurate" ports to their own upcoming game console, the Nintendo Famicom.

The console was being developed with the goal of achieving quality much more closer to the arcades than was capable of the other home machines of the era, while still using swappable cartridges. Alongside Nintendo's own in-house developers, other Japanese companies were working closely with them to bring a strong launch line-up of arcade-quality games and conversions to the new platform. Namco was a strong partner for Nintendo, developing a Famicom conversion of their awaited Pac-Man follow-up alongside the arcade release.

Although a focus on the Japanese market was important, Nintendo wanted to make the leap into overseas markets as well with the Famicom, it was a matter of how to go about it.

[altersidearchives]

[Alterbits] Pac-Man series (Part 1)

Since I started off the findings with stuff about Pac-Man, I figured I’d try and clear stuff up a bit. So here’s a little sheet I made of the first few Pac-Man games I could scround up.

From what I could gather, the whole “Pac-Mania” stuff of the 80s was still very much a thing, but it looked like Namco was somewhat able to keep the momentum a bit stronger, since their partnership with Midway kinda crashed and burned. Instead of them working together to make Ms. Pac-Man, they kinda just. Made an unofficial sequel after Namco turned down the pitch from them and GCC. So we have a “Pac-Man 2″ that only came out in the US, which was basically just Ms. Pac-Man without the Ms. herself. By some weird multiverse-level irony, they ended up making a sorta Ms. Pac-Man of their own, in “Pac-Girl,” based on a character made up for the cartoon, which still happened. They ended up making a proper sequel in 1983 called “Pac-Partners,” which was marketed as a 2-player game with a wider scrolling maze and 2 new ghosts. I’ll see if I can grab screenshots later, but this is all VERY interesting already. I’ve barely scratched the surface and we see a drastic change in one of the biggest gaming franchises ever.

Not to mention what happens to Namco after the 90s. It’s nuts what I found.

[altersidearchives]

Bit of an Important Note

Even though I'm gonna be doing my timeline stuff here as well, I'm gonna go around and post random stuff I find that I feel is interesting, or I can't exactly put into the timeline piece, or if I just feel like jumping around if I find something cool. I'll tag them as #alterbits to keep them properly separated from the main articles.

- R

[altersidearchives]

[12/12] Here Goes Nothing

I want to preface this with context before I continue any further… my name is… I'll just go with "R" for now. I live close by to a big scientific laboratory, it gets a little noisy around here and I sometimes see stuff blow up out of the windows, but that's besides the point. One day, as I was driving home from work, I see a box full of gadgets and parts laying around. I usually don't mess with that stuff, but I was working on a few projects and could use the spare junk as long as it was safe… so I was curious. Turns out it was an abandoned project they had no further use for and needed to dispose of the parts. It looked like a Wi-Fi router and a modem with a bunch of wires, and it said "ALTER" on the top. I took it all home and didn't really do much with it.

A week in, and I go back to check it out. I go in my shed and hook it up to an old laptop I haven't used in years… with some makeshift pillow armor in case it decides to explode- and got it connected. When I went onto my browser though, the Google page looked a bit odd. A little more refined and with a newer logo, and a bunch of new buttons I never recognized. It also said my browser wasn't recognized, yet I was using Chrome… on Google. Thought it was one of those special screens they do every other day and it was bugging out, but it was still weird. I looked up the first thing I could think of… "pac-man…" and after about ten minutes, yes it really is THAT slow, stuff came up. Couldn't get any images yet, but, the stuff I was reading puzzled me. There were new games, a ton of new characters I'd never heard of, and I couldn't find a trace of things you'd expect like the old Midway games. Instead I found a game called "Pac-Man 2" and a whole article about a massive legal dispute between Namco, Midway, and GCC in the 80s over this game, which had a strikingly similar development story to Ms. Pac-Man, but… that game seems to have been wiped from existence here, if it ever even DID.

I realized what I had, I was looking at the internet from an alternate timeline. These science guys must have been developing some form of… I guess multiverse communication? And this is all they could get working and tossed it in the bin. I don't blame them, this is slower than 90s dial-up, I'd be disappointed too. At first I was kinda freaked, but… also really REALLY intrigued. I had to know more. So, I looked up "Nintendo" and got to work, figured they'd be a good place to start if I'm already going with looking at this place's games industry.

So I'll be documenting all that I can from various sources (mostly Wikipedia articles, that's all that's loading in full at the moment), and put together some type of documentary article stuff to make sense of it all. I'll also be adding notes as I go along to give opinions and other tid-bits I find that I can't fit into the articles.

Since this was called "ALTER" apparently, I'll call this project of mine… the Alterside Archives.

Well, here goes nothing.