Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [59]
Everyone involved in technology wanted to be part of it. Nintendo and Sega were in a dilemma: developing a new console would shut the door on their successful SNES and Genesis platforms. But new competitors like NEC and 3DO were already prepping CD-ROM-based video game consoles. Appropriately enough for the makers of Mario and Sonic, the task for Nintendo and Sega was knowing exactly when to take the running jump.
Nintendo went first, announcing a deal with Sony back in 1988 to codevelop a CD-ROM game system, which would also have a cartridge slot for SNES games. Sega countered in 1991, saying a CD-ROM system would be ready that year attachable to any Genesis. But it only expanded the size of the game, not the quality of graphics. Sega CD was a dud. Nintendo’s CD would have been similar—offering more game, but not better game—and it died after years of quiet delays.
But Nintendo, like a paranoiac whose brash actions truly do get others conspiring against them, created a self-fulfilling prophecy in its urge to quash the competition. Its deal with Sony allowed the Japanese electronics giant the licensing rights to the special game-playing format it used, Super Disc. Big mistake. Nintendo’s fortune had come in large part from owning licensing rights for NES and SNES games. It would never have that with the Sony console: Sony would get sole licensing fees for each CD-based game. As Sony execs got ready to enter the multibillion-dollar gaming industry, Yamauchi sensed they would steamroll over friend and foe alike.
It helps to imagine what happens next being the actions of Degrassi kids, not Consumer Electronics Show attendees. See, Lincoln and Arakawa had been two-timing Sony with Philips, Sony’s Netherlands-based rival. And Nintendo threatened to break up with Sony if Sony wasn’t cool with this. Sony swallowed its pride and announced its “exclusive” deal with Nintendo at CES, and double-dealing Nintendo the very next day talked about how it’s now exclusive with Philips, that hussy, for a CD-based console.
Philips was little more than a rebound partnership, never destined for more than a few brief awkward weeks. It was working on the CD-i, which it wanted to make into the standard format for game-playing consoles, the same way it had successfully come up with a standard format for CDs with Sony back in 1982. A deal with Nintendo would kill two birds with one stone, it felt, and help create a CD-ROM standard for games. Every game would play on every player. And once the standard was set, the golden age of information was imminent.
Nintendo had massively profited from proprietary media formats in the past, and planned on doing so well into the future. Any system that was based on CD-ROMs was copyable. The big N had made a mint on lockout-chipped cartridges, which was very tough to copy. Any ten-year-old with a PC could plunk a CD-ROM into a burner (which were getting affordable) and make a perfect copy of a game for the cost of a blank CD. Without the lockout chip, Nintendo felt it was signing its death warrant with a CD-ROM system surer than dealing with Sony.
But it was a long time dying. Sony came back to Nintendo despite the Panasonic deal, and the three agreed to give Nintendo the game royalties it wanted and let the games be playable on Panasonic’s CD-i as well as the Sony/Nintendo console. Now the only problem was all the CD-based games were flops, and expensive ones to boot. Nintendo decided to sever ties with both parties at once, and convert its CD-BASED games in development into regular SNES titles. It just, like, needed