Console gaming via dial-up? - The story of XB∀ND

[alienboyva]

I knew there were devices like the SEGA Channel on the Genesis and the Satellaview for the Super Famicom in Japan , but I've never heard of this device. WOW! It's pretty impressive that they were able to do online gaming on the SNES/Genesis via dial-up back in the day. It's kind of funny that they had to deal with some of the same issues we had to with modern online gaming, like people disconnecting when they are about to lose, people harassing others, etc.  

 

This video is very well produced. I like how they have interviews with people who worked on the device/service and people who actually used the device back in the day. It's pretty cool that they revived the service via a modern day internet connection.

 

*Note* Video is over 1 hr long

 

[Kezay]

Definitely something I gotta set aside time to watch.  I think the last time I saw anything indepth on XBAND was back on N-sider.com (the fan site) which used to be a really good archive of smart and well researched gaming industry articles.  Unfortunately, last I checked it is nothing like it used to be.  But I digress, I've always liked checking out in depth overviews of stuff that are seldom talked about.

[Ridley Prime]

Kinda reminds me what I saw of Gameshark making Goldeneye online possible through dialup at the time. Not related to this, but still.

[April]

5 hours ago, Kezay said:

smart and well researched

yeah you can't survive if you only write stuff like that, remember
unless you specifically have a patreon, which you probably need youtube for, at the least

[Eliwood8]

Finally had the time to watch this: really interesting documentary, I had no idea this was a thing back in the SNES days! And the fact that they were able to do this back then is really impressive—really they were just too ahead of their time for the product to catch on.

 

On 5/7/2019 at 11:30 AM, alienboyva said:

It's kind of funny that they had to deal with some of the same issues we had to with modern online gaming, like people disconnecting when they are about to lose, people harassing others, etc.

 

The more things change, the more they stay the same.