
Vintage video game cartridges with built-in modems - markchristian
https://writing.markchristian.org/2019/06/29/communicating-cartridges/
======
jccalhoun
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](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...](http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-gameline-master-
module_20315.html)

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adenylyl
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](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.

~~~
rahimnathwani
The looping you describe sounds similar to how teletext worked. You would
enter a page number, and wait for the page to load. If it was a common page
(e.g. the default page '100') it would be transmitted more frequently, so the
average wait time would be lower.

~~~
elsurudo
> how teletext worked

How teletext works! In Europe, it is still used. There is weather,
classifieds, LOTS of "seeking partner" ads usually for the older generation,
etc...

Really neat technology/"hack" when you think about it

~~~
rahimnathwani
"In Europe, it is still used."

Wow. Your comment prompted me to ask my dad whether he still uses teletext. I
assumed the answer would be 'no', because he can read and watch news on his
iPad.

But apparently he still uses teletext for quick access to news headlines and
share prices.

~~~
danieldk
I have also seen people who use the online version/simulation of teletext.
Probably because it is so brief and has very few distractions. E.g.:

[https://nos.nl/teletekst](https://nos.nl/teletekst)

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
That's really cool. Thanks for the link.

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fnord77
XBAND looks like it was really awesome

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBAND#Service](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"."

~~~
nr152522
Perhaps it was related to cost of landline calls back then?

~~~
bityard
Services like XBAND were either unavailable or prohibitively expensive for a
large swath of the population at the time. Like a lot of early technology, I
guess.

For XBAND, you had to buy the modem, you had to pay for the service, and you
had to pay for the phone call. Where I lived when growing up, a "local call"
was about a 2-mile radius, and that radius contained maybe 700 phone lines. I
was one of a handful of people who even had a 16-bit video game console in the
area and I was pretty fortunate that my parents were somewhat okay with
spending hundreds of dollars (over the course of a few years) in mindless
entertainment.

The Sega Channel would have been a complete non-starter since, even if I
happened to live in one of the few service areas, you had to pay for a
subscription to the Sega Channel which was a pricey add-on to your existing
cable bill.

Even back then, I thought it would have been smarter for Sega to charge for
the modem (as they did) but subsidize the cost of the channel delivery to
customers. They could recoup the costs of delivery through more marketing of
upcoming games or even showing ads. But I assume that if it was even feasible,
the cable companies would have laughed it out of the room anyway. ("You want
us to provide a channel for FREE?!")

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dnos
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. ;)

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jchw
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.

~~~
markchristian
Amazingly enough, [http://www.retro.live](http://www.retro.live) has a working
implementation of XBAND. You can see a demo of it in the excellent Wrestling
With Gaming documentary on XBAND:
[https://youtu.be/k_5M-z_RUKA?t=3448](https://youtu.be/k_5M-z_RUKA?t=3448)

~~~
jchw
Holy Shit! That's incredible. Thanks for the link.

Even cooler that it works on Analogue Super NT. That's two layers of video
game history preservation right there :) After all, eventually, some day, the
last working SNES unit will fail...

I don't see very much information on retro.live's page, but I hope they heed
the lesson of Xband's demise and open source the important bits of their work
in some time.

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spilk
Similar, but not solely contained in a cartridge:

Nintendo Family Computer Network

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Computer_Network_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Computer_Network_System)

and the Nintendo Satellaview which did things similar to the SEGA Channel.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview)

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Sniffnoy
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...](https://writing.markchristian.org/2019/05/11/sensors-in-
cartridges/)), not the one I'm actually commenting on. Oops.

~~~
markchristian
Thanks for the heads up!

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shorts_theory
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.

~~~
markchristian
I’ve always wanted to write about it, but it’s never really fit into one of my
monthly themes. Many of the games on the service are available online as
ordinary ROMs, often with “BS” in the title (for Broadcast Satellite). I’m
sure the experience of using the system and playing along to synchronized
audio was pretty wonderful, but the games themselves just played like ordinary
cartridges once they’d be downloaded. Unlike the Sega Channel, Satellaview
games could be downloaded into special cartridges and kept around
indefinitely.

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Maxious
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_5M-z_RUKA)

~~~
eclipxe
Yep! I used to do that on Xband

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djmips
I picked up this intriguing GB cart with modem recently for cheap. I don't
know when it was originally released.

[http://gameshark-mx.blogspot.com/](http://gameshark-mx.blogspot.com/)

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chime
> 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos)
or is 'tech concept video' a whole another thing?

~~~
markchristian
The Mother of All Demos is amazing, but I’ll be talking about some cheesy
corporate junk. :)

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madengr
Another challenge for the MAME developers.

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xellisx
[https://hackaday.com/2015/05/01/tweeting-from-the-nes-
expans...](https://hackaday.com/2015/05/01/tweeting-from-the-nes-expansion-
port/)

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duxup
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?"

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joshu
a recent documentary about XBAND:
[https://youtu.be/k_5M-z_RUKA](https://youtu.be/k_5M-z_RUKA)

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winrid
Would be super cool to see the source code and protocol implementations.

~~~
pinewurst
The transport protocol was a close relative of AppleTalk (ADSP I think).

~~~
markchristian
Dang, I had never pondered this question. Where can I learn more?

