"In the year 1990, Nintendo would receive a mysterious package that would change the trajectory of gaming and pop culture forever. Inside the package was a blue handheld gaming console with two screens and a clamshell design. It was marked as a Nintendo DS. Along with the console itself came three game cartridges: Pocket Monsters Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, the first two words were also formed into a portmanteau: Pokémon. Copyrights and trademarks on the items indicated that they were from anywhere between fourteen and eighteen years in the future."
The Leapfrogged Console Wars 2.0
is a Pop Culture Timeline on AlternateHistory.com that posits "What if the DS and the Sinnoh games were transported back in time?"
This timeline contains examples of:
- Allohistorical Allusion: IOTL, Resident Evil began life as a Super-FX Enhanced SNES game before being moved to the Saturn and PlayStation. Here, the game is released on SNES and bombs hard.
- Box Office Bomb: In-Universe, James Cameron's Spider-Man doesn't even make back half of its budget due to the film's R Rating.
- Cartwright Curse: Cloud Strife lost both Aerith and Tifa in TTL's version of Final Fantasy VII, with the latter having been killed by Kefka.
- Celebrity Casualty:
- George R.R. Martin dies of a heart attack in 1996, butterflying A Song of Ice and Fire and its adaptations.
- Prince Charles and Prince William are among the 50 killed by an IRA car bomb in March 1996.
- J.K. Rowling would die in an IRA bomb, butterflying the Harry Potter series.
- Compilation Re-release: In 1997, Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 are localized in a updated DS compilation that features enhanced pixel art.
- Creator Killer: In-Universe, Spider-Man ended up being this for James Cameron.
- Death by Adaptation: In the Espers and Madness quest in Final Fantasy VII, Kefka ends up killing Tifa.
- Death of a Child: Prince William is only thirteen when he and his father die.
- Divorced Installment: In-Universe, The game that OTL knows as Mega Man Legends was reworked to be an original to TTL continuum called Halcyon.
- Guest-Star Party Member: In Espers and Madness, Kefka joins the playable roster only to leave the party by betraying them.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- Nintendo still works with Silicon Graphics for their successor console to the Super Nintendo, but they use the DS hardware to inform the design decisions of the Ultra Nintendo's architecture. The Ultra Nintendo also still uses ROM carts, but this time they can reach 1 gigabyte in max capacity, negating one of the big weaknesses of OTL's Nintendo 64.
- The initial pair in the Pokémon franchise still contains 151 Pokémon in the game, 150 of which are catchable in-game and one of which is an event-exclusive Mythical.
- Bubsy still jumps to 3D as a PlayStation exclusive that ends up killing the Bubsy franchise.
- No Export for You: In-Universe, Front Mission 2 for the DS is Japan-only.
- Our Presidents Are Different: Paul Tsongas is the President Personable type, being able to work with both parties to create jobs.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Queen Elizabeth II outlives her son Charles and grandson William.
- Point of Divergence: The presence of the DS and the technology to reverse engineer it in the past changes the world forever:
- Soon after the Gift arrives in the past, Nintendo acquires Game Freak.
- Nintendo is more focused on investing their capital into exploiting the advanced technology of the DS. Because of that, Nintendo opts not to purchase the Seattle Mariners in order to keep them in the city, which means the team does end up moving to Tampa Bay. This incidentally also butterflies away Nintendo's Ken Griffey Jr. baseball games.
- The Super FX chip uses ARM technology, resulting in Star Fox having better graphics than OTL.
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a launch title for the DS, being moved from the Game Boy mid-development, releasing with the DS in 1996.
- The DS port of Tales of Phantasia gets localized as a launch title.
- Pokémon Diamond and Pearl are launch titles for the DS, and release worldwide in 1996 with the only Pokémon in the game being the 151 Pokémon in the D/P Sinnoh Pokédex.
- Pokémon: The Series's main protagonist is Dawn, whose starter is a Piplup. This results in Pikachu being nowhere near as prominent as OTL and as a result ends up butterflying Plusle and Minun.
- Chrono Trigger is a launch title for the Ultra Nintendo, and becomes one of the earliest 3D role-playing games.
- Super Mario RPG and Kirby's Dream Land 3 are DS titles ITTL.
- Pokémon Platinum is based on TTL's Pokémon anime, and as a result the ability to play as Lucas is removed.
- Because Nintendo revealed the nature of the DS processors at CES 1993, Sony and Sega chooses to delay the release of their consoles another year in order to improve their designs as much as possible. The delay of the PlayStation in particular prevents it from being shared with interested third-parties, resulting in Resident Evil not being moved from the Super Nintendo, and Namco using Nintendo hardware for Ridge Racer and Tekken. Sega on the other hand, scraps the plans for the Sega 32X when they reassess Atari not being a threat.
- Super Mario World and Final Fantasy VI are SNES titles that get DS ports ITTL.
- Final Fantasy VII is released for the Ultra Nintendo, with the international version having a quest titled Espers and Madness that is a crossover with Final Fantasy VI featuring the return of Kefka.
- The PlayStation bombs hard due to a lack of third party support, being discontinued in March 1998.
- TTL's successor to VHS and Laserdisc is a format designed by Toshiba called the SD.
- Namco and Square merge in 1998.
- TTL's equivalent of 9/11 is an Al Qaeda attack in mainland China.
- Stillborn Franchise: In-Universe, Resident Evil is this trope due to the game failing.
- Superboss: In Final Fantasy VII, Kefka is a superboss that concludes the Espers and Madness quest unlocked by linking the game with a cleared save of the DS port of Final Fantasy VI.
- Timeline-Altering MacGuffin: A Nintendo DS, along with it development kits and design documents, as well as copies of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Platinum, are sent to Nintendo at the beginning of 1990. This leads to Nintendo forming an alliance with Apple and ARM to develop the technology to release the DS in 1996.
- Updated Re-release: Sonic Blast for the Saturn is TTL's equivalent to Sonic Jam, including the ability to play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy in any of the five included games, and an expanded mode that has 16-bit versions of the Game Gear exclusive zones of Sonic 1 and 2.
- The DS port of Final Fantasy VI contains enhanced pixel art and the ability to fight Kaiser Dragon.
