Someone recorded the SEGA Channel's menu interface on VHS back when it was in operation and has subsequently uploaded it to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMRLZcBiN-k&t=72s
An interesting detail of the SEGA Channel is that it was a one-way modem. There was no way for the cartridge to communicate anything back to the headend. Instead, there was a constant broadcast of
Game 1, Menu program, Game 2, Menu program, Game 3, ...
looping forever. When you selected a game, it would just wait for it to come around on the loop and store it locally.
XBAND looks like it was really awesome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBAND#Service
After the matchmaking part on the service, the system would switch into a P2P mode:
"When the network matched two players up, the newly-connected player's XBAND modem would disconnect from the server and dial the other player, whose own XBAND modem would answer when the phone rang. At that point the players would see the XBAND logo slide together, followed by the matchup screen, which displayed each player's codenames, avatars, locations, and a pre-typed "taunt"."
Great article that brought back some fond memories of the Sega Channel. As a young teenager when we got it, I was in awe of the technology and wondered how it worked and why something like it didn’t exist for the computer. Not having to tie up a phone line AND it was even faster! Loading it up for the first time really felt like it was magic and world-changing.
Interestingly enough, later on when cable modems came out in my city, you still had to use a phone line for the up channel. The Sega Channel still seemed superior to what PCs had and always wondered how they pulled it off. So, it’s neat today learning how it worked!
The Sega Channel was definitely too late though. The Genesis was old and I swear it seemed like the PlayStation came out a short few weeks after we got it. Of course, that was its own type of magic that felt world-changing when powering it on the first time. ;)
They also offer a glimpse into the future, with regards to preservation, as much of the content appears to be completely lost to time. It’s especially sad with Xband; I hope it gets reverse engineered and emulated to some degree at some point, but there’s probably a lot of data completely lost to time. At least someone was wise enough to make a bunch of video recordings before it shuttered.
Similar, but not solely contained in a cartridge:
Nintendo Family Computer Network
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Computer_Network_System
and the Nintendo Satellaview which did things similar to the SEGA Channel.
Hey, markchristian, the footnote numbering in this article is off/inconsistent. (The links seem correct, but the numbers are wrong.) Would you mind fixing this? Thank you!
Edit: Whoops, sorry, I got mixed up. This comment actually applies to your "sensors in cartridges" article (https://writing.markchristian.org/2019/05/11/sensors-in-cart...), not the one I'm actually commenting on. Oops.
I love articles like these. To markchristian, I was wondering if you have any informatinon about the SNES Satellaview unit and how the experience of playing Satellaview games was different from playing cartridge games back in the day? Satellaview always seemed much ahead of its time and I feel like it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves, though that's probably because it was Japan only.
The video documentary on XBAND mentions that players started forming clans with clan tags using the player chat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_5M-z_RUKA
I picked up this intriguing GB cart with modem recently for cheap. I don't know when it was originally released.
> Tune in next month when we’ll be taking a look at the forgotten art of the tech concept video.
Looking forward to this! Will it include stuff similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos or is 'tech concept video' a whole another thing?
Another challenge for the MAME developers.
Such a wonderful crossroads of technology there.
Sometimes looking at these things make me think "Wait do I really need to be doing things the way I have been?"
a recent documentary about XBAND: https://youtu.be/k_5M-z_RUKA
Would be super cool to see the source code and protocol implementations.
One of the more interesting examples of cartridges with built-in modems was the GameLine for the atari 2600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameLine It would fail but they created a new company called Quantum Computer Services which would come to be known as America Online. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-gameline-maste...