We already know that Philips was allowed to license Nintendo IPs as one of the stipulations of a court settlement between Philips and Nintendo. But now, new sources have been claiming that licenses for the Nintendo IP (Mario, Zelda, etc) were cross-licensed through Philips via the Magnavox Odyssey settlement rather than the SNES-CD deal as originally assumed.
While these both happened around the same time (and several sources claim not to know which lead the deal to fruition for the characters), it seems that the deal made under the negotiations meant that Philips was granted the rights for cross-licensing the library of characters to other publishers out of America from that settlement.
Given that there is direct evidence that The Software Toolworks licensed CD distribution for other properties Philips previously had rights to (see Hex’s Digital Love for an example; multiple previous CD discs from that art collective came out under Philips’ own label), it is possible that The Software Toolworks was being used as a second-party publisher for Philips’ development interests on PC and other systems. If true, it would put their other licensed Mario titles (ie. Mario is Missing, Mario’s Time Machine, Mario’s Game Gallery, etc) in direct lineage from that deal, and explain why titles like Mario Is Missing have never hit Virtual Console/NSO.
Weegee’s dark history
