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How the American Civil War created Super Mario Bros

Great piece. For a much more obscure example, I remember how one of the Ogre (giant robot tank board game) developers came up with the combatant emblems based on the logos of local businesses he saw (one was an hourglass, the other an ancient helmet)
 
That's amazing (and unnerving to know how 'unlikely' it all working out is!)
Thanks, that's part of what I was going for with this.
I'd always heard the name came from a pizzeria; owing a guy named Mario is a new one to me.
Not heard that one before - the landlord story is told often enough I could probably get away with calling it something stronger than an apocryphal legend, but I wanted to be cautious about it.
 
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Also Mario Segale had no mustache. Mario has a mustache due to a design need to make the character more easy to see on the arcade machine. Namely to break up the head from the body.
 
Oh wait...

Lew wrote Ben Hur. Say he dies...

Howard Fast still writes Spartacus in the 1950s.

Ben Hur does not come out in 1959.

Universal does not try to make their own prestige picture in Spartacus in 1960.

Kirk Douglas does not have a script he takes issue with leading him to Dalton Trumbo do to massive rewrites.

Stanley Kubrick and Douglas in turn do not push for Trumbo to get a film credit.

The American Legion in turn does not protest the film in 1960 cause a Blacklisted man is credited on screen.

President JFK does not cross the American Legion line to see the film in effect ending the Blacklist of Hollywood.

o_O
 
Oh wait...

Lew wrote Ben Hur. Say he dies...

Howard Fast still writes Spartacus in the 1950s.

Ben Hur does not come out in 1959.

Universal does not try to make their own prestige picture in Spartacus in 1960.

Kirk Douglas does not have a script he takes issue with leading him to Dalton Trumbo do to massive rewrites.

Stanley Kubrick and Douglas in turn do not push for Trumbo to get a film credit.

The American Legion in turn does not protest the film in 1960 cause a Blacklisted man is credited on screen.

President JFK does not cross the American Legion line to see the film in effect ending the Blacklist of Hollywood.

o_O
Very good. As I implied in the article, there's actually loads of consequences you could draw from this one (plenty of other stuff requires Edgar Wallace, for instance) but I just focused on once.

Also Mario Segale had no mustache. Mario has a mustache due to a design need to make the character more easy to see on the arcade machine. Namely to break up the head from the body.
Yes, I said that in the article: he was given a cap, moustache and overalls because that was what they could show with the arcade machine's limited capabilities and blocky graphics.
 
Wasn't there a BBC series that was based on that premise? Back when Ofaloaf and Sargon did the Movie Nights I distinctly remember such a program based on those types of historical coincidences - i.e. how the invention of gunpowder led to the development of the motion picture as we know it.
 
Wallace need not even have to die. One of the essays in What Ifs? of American History posited that if Wallace had received clearer written orders and arrived at the Battle to reinforce Grant earlier his career might not have been so mired in controversy that he resigned from the Army in 1865. His death ensures he would never write Ben-Hur, but continued service in the Army might still butterfly it.
 
Wallace need not even have to die. One of the essays in What Ifs? of American History posited that if Wallace had received clearer written orders and arrived at the Battle to reinforce Grant earlier his career might not have been so mired in controversy that he resigned from the Army in 1865. His death ensures he would never write Ben-Hur, but continued service in the Army might still butterfly it.
I did think of doing it that way, but this felt a bit more 'AH POD-y'.
 
I did think of doing it that way, but this felt a bit more 'AH POD-y'.

I'm fond of him not going to New Mexico because that also means a very different end for Billy the Kid and all the butterflies that might arise from that in popular culture.

I don't think we could go so far to say William H. Bonney dying of old age in obscurity will completely change the Western, but possibly as a genre the stock character of the outlaw might become very different.

In addition to Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros., did Lew Wallace give us Red Dead Redemption?
 
I'm fond of him not going to New Mexico because that also means a very different end for Billy the Kid and all the butterflies that might arise from that in popular culture.

I don't think we could go so far to say William H. Bonney dying of old age in obscurity will completely change the Western, but possibly as a genre the stock character of the outlaw might become very different.

In addition to Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros., did Lew Wallace give us Red Dead Redemption?
Thanks for that, as I may revisit further consequences of the same POD in the future (as I mentioned, there's also a lot of other things that rely on Edgar Wallace).
 
Fascinating read. And a very good illustration of one of the things that you, @Thande are very good at in your ah writing.

Tracing the consequences of certain actions (as you say, not the butterfly effect; more a ripple effect) can really elevate a TL, and - whether in footnotes or the main body of the text - it's something I really enjoy in LTTW, and even your shorter works like The Curse of Maggie.
 
Fascinating read. And a very good illustration of one of the things that you, @Thande are very good at in your ah writing.

Tracing the consequences of certain actions (as you say, not the butterfly effect; more a ripple effect) can really elevate a TL, and - whether in footnotes or the main body of the text - it's something I really enjoy in LTTW, and even your shorter works like The Curse of Maggie.
Thank you Geordie. I actually think it's more interesting in the shorter works set closer to the present day, because we come psychologically prepared that a work with an earlier POD is going to be quite different, but not that something we take for granted in our everyday life could so easily have been different (and quite possibly with plenty of other things being superficially the same so it sticks out). That's the kernel of where AH speculation begins, of course, the Sliders Blue Bridge scenario where everything is the same as OTL except they're downloading progs to their X-Slates.
 
The one that lingers in the memory from Maggie is less pop culture, but still worth pondering: the Sir James Saville Memorial Children's Hospital. Which is horrifying, but a plausible consequence of the press reforms.

Edit: Moreover, the consequences of no Saville exposé bear thinking about. No Top of the Pops/BBC scrutiny, means people like Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall are still respected elder broadcasters. Whither next? While I get the impression that #metoo was American in origin, did the high profile ructions in the UK have any bearing on decisions to speak out in the US? Does Cosby go down without Saville having preceded him? Is House of Cards churning through a pedestrian seventh season, with Frank Underwood pushing British Republic under an Amtrak in order to win the mid-terms?
 
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