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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 t

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"."

icelancer 7y ago
It was. Very much so. I have a lot of fond memories of playing Kirby's Avalanche and Killer Instinct on the SNES over the phone lines. I could not fathom why more people didn't flock to the XBAND. It represented everything I ever wanted as a kid gamer. They had the right idea. Way before its time unfortunately, and shockingly. I still don't really understand why it didn't take off. Luckily, just last month (May 2019) there was a one hour documentary on it that covered a lot of the development of the unit. Well worth watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_5M-z_RUKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_5M-z_RUKA
- therein 7y ago
  Yup, I am so glad you posted this. I remember watching this video a month ago and enjoyed being reminded of it. The part about how they live-patched the game to simulate input was very cool to hear, because that's exactly how I would have approached it and it was with the drawbacks/challenges I knew would come with.
nr152522 7y ago
Perhaps it was related to cost of landline calls back then?
- gonesilent 7y ago
  Yup, I had many a bad bill from bbs days just calling the state over. Back in the days also of local dial in numbers for good old ix.netcom.com...
- bityard 7y ago
  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?!")
dormando 7y ago
I had a ton of fun with XBAND until people discovered *69. parents were not amused when rando's kept calling to "see what the other guy sounded like". Drooled constantly over the XBAND keyboard that they probably only made ten of. I can still "type" relatively fast with a game controller.

icelancer 7y ago

It was. Very much so. I have a lot of fond memories of playing Kirby's Avalanche and Killer Instinct on the SNES over the phone lines. I could not fathom why more people didn't flock to the XBAND. It represented everything I ever wanted as a kid gamer. They had the right idea. Way before its time unfortunately, and shockingly. I still don't really understand why it didn't take off. Luckily, just last month (May 2019) there was a one hour documentary on it that covered a lot of the development of the unit. Well worth watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_5M-z_RUKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_5M-z_RUKA

therein 7y ago
Yup, I am so glad you posted this. I remember watching this video a month ago and enjoyed being reminded of it. The part about how they live-patched the game to simulate input was very cool to hear, because that's exactly how I would have approached it and it was with the drawbacks/challenges I knew would come with.

nr152522 7y ago

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

gonesilent 7y ago
Yup, I had many a bad bill from bbs days just calling the state over. Back in the days also of local dial in numbers for good old ix.netcom.com...
bityard 7y ago
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?!")

dormando 7y ago

I had a ton of fun with XBAND until people discovered *69. parents were not amused when rando's kept calling to "see what the other guy sounded like". Drooled constantly over the XBAND keyboard that they probably only made ten of. I can still "type" relatively fast with a game controller.