What if? ... Videogames!!

[RetroVortex]

I love what if? storylines, and I normally think up my own sometimes when I play games.

But I want to know, what games you think could/should have played out differently.

What if Samus hadn't saved the last Metroid?
What if Master Chief had died?
What if the cake wasn't a lie? (bad joke I know.. XD)

It doesn't have to stricly be the games themselves though.

What if the Dreamcast had beat the PS2? (one of my personal favourites)
What if Infinity ward had been left alone?
What if Nintendo had not betrayed Sony for Phillips? (Sony not directly competing? A Sony and Nintendo alliance? No Phillips CD-I?)
What if Sega of Japan had let Sega of America use the Nights engine for Sonic X-Treme? (Would the game had been finished? Would it have been successful?
If so would it have affected subsequent sonic games?)

[don]

What if Nintendo had not betrayed Sony for Phillips? (Sony not directly competing? A Sony and Nintendo alliance? No Phillips CD-I?)
Nintendo would use a Sony disc-drive, who would probably wouldn't go much far either. There would be no Playstation, which would probably leave a markt space for another company, due to less competition, and it's market would depend on the way it would approach the market.
Many games anda game series that started exclusivelly on Playstation wouln't exist, but others probably would that don't exist now.
And I very doubt that there would be a Sony and Nintendo alliance so to say, there isn't a Philips-Nintendo Allience, in the very end, there is only Nintendo.

[ZanTV]

A Sony-Nintendo alliance, if there were an alliance then, would mean JAPAN WOULD CONQUER THE WHOLE GAMING WORLD, MUAHAHA~

But if there were to be a Sony-Nintendo alliance now, Microsoft would be in deep s**t, so to speak.

What if the Dreamcast had beat the PS2? (one of my personal favourites)

Oh, if only, if only..
THEY WERE THE FIRST CONSOLE TO HAVE INTERNET MULTIPLAYER! They deserved better..

[Myrph]

A Sony-Nintendo console alliance would result in no bad console game ports...

[DancingFlameDragon]

A Sony-Nintendo alliance would also mean that I could have gotten Kingdom Hearts on a Nintendo system (besides the portable ones)!

Anyway,
What if ET had been a super awesome game?

[Songbird]

What if Nintendo had not betrayed Sony for Phillips? (Sony not directly competing? A Sony and Nintendo alliance? No Phillips CD-I?)

Then there wouldn't be, "I hope she made lots of spaghetti!", "No.", "Creepy Bowser laugh.", "Dinner.", "You Must Die!", "MMMMMMMMMM." (Goes on and on and on...)

[ZanTV]

What if the graphics of today was achieved in the 70s?

[Swish]

What if the graphics of today was achieved in the 70s?
Space Invaders would have starred human characters hiding behind oil drums in a gritty modern day New York setting.

Oh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfi15ysRQwQ).

[RetroVortex]

What if Rare had stayed with Nintendo?

A true Star Fox sequel (Adventures is not a Starfox game! It shall always be seen by me as Dinosaur Planet)

Donkey Kong Country Returns not existing/being very different
(Maybe a 64 sequel)

Donkey Kong Racing? (I wanted this one as Diddy Kong Racing in my eyes was better than Mario Kart 64)

Banjo Threeie? (I still love Nuts and Bolts btw, but its not quite the same game)

Different unique Rare projects (you know like Conker)
Battletoads? Killer instincts? (very unlikely), Perfect Dark? (probably fairly likely to have not been too different)

Kameo would likely be the same, (look at the Gamecube Demos. not much changed there), as would Grabbed by the Ghoulies as well likely.

Xbox 360 avatars may be different.
Who would have developed Kinect sports?
(Would the Kinect exist at all?)
Viva Pinata?

Also to answer "What if ET had been a super awesome game?" would require stretching the very fabric of reality, but I shall risk it!!! :braveface:

If ET was a really good game, not only Hell would freeze over, but there would be a slight chance that the crash could have been prevented, or not have been as bad as it was, (this is assuming ET sold ridiculous amounts of copies).
(As it may have drove developers to increase the quality of games, which was the main issue here)
If so:
The NES and the Master System may not have happened, and if they did, either of them may not have come up on top with strong Competitors from the pre-crash still operating.

Atari would have a chance of dominating the market.
(though I'd still think that they could have been dethroned even at this point (technological innovation being the main issue))

Who knows how the games of today would be! (How would the controls evolve? Gameplay innovations different? Would we even have graphics this good? (or maybe better? (HA!))

Another scenrio:

Complete PC domination! (XD)
No Nintendo or Sega? (taking into account that there are no replacements for them) no resurgence in console interest.

[Swish]

What if Rare had stayed with Nintendo?

A true Star Fox sequel (Adventures is not a Starfox game! It shall always be seen by me as Dinosaur Planet)
Um... I fail to see the causality there. If Nintendo didn't sell off their shares in Rare because they weren't really worth their expensive 5 year development cycles, a Nintendo-owned franchise which Rare were only involved in once, and then only at Nintendo's own insistence, would have gained a big-budget sequel more in line with previous instalments?

Further, Star Fox didn't get one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox:_Assault) (patchy gameplay notwithstanding)?

[RetroVortex]

Um... I fail to see the causality there. If Nintendo didn't sell off their shares in Rare because they weren't really worth their expensive 5 year development cycles, a Nintendo-owned franchise which Rare were only involved in once, and then only at Nintendo's own insistence, would have gained a big-budget sequel more in line with previous instalments?

Further, Star Fox didn't get one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fox:_Assault) (patchy gameplay notwithstanding)?

True, Rare were only involved with Star Fox for Adventures, BUT to be honest the game was a total mishmash. (Nintendo dropped the ball there)
Its not a bad game, but you can tell the arwing parts are just forced in there.

If Nintendo had not forced Rare to change Dinosaur Planet, and had given them a proper Star Fox game to work on, I think they would have done a better job of it then Namco, (I don't hate Assault, but the changes they made really irritated me (took out the paths, THE MAIN POINT OF THE SERIES in my opinion, the annoying voice acting (I just loved the 64 voices), and the gameplay tweaks)).

Though lets not turn this into a Star Fox argument.
(Lets just agree that its all Nintendo's fault! XD)
(Hopefully if 64 3D is successful Nintendo might actually take their own IP more seriously and move it up the priority list a couple of places)

[ZanTV]

Complete PC domination would mean nVidia and AMD (formerly known as ATI) would be the powerhouses of gaming. Sony would still be making TVs and the works, Microsoft would focus entirely on beating Apple and Nintendo would still be selling games and dominate the handheld market (though the NDS may not have existed if it were not for PSP, but this is just my opinion, who knows..)

And CPU chips, motherboards, soundcards, graphics cards would be much, MUCH cheaper. Oh, if only.. <-- This one is important, thats why its in red.