3 ms·
It mostly acted like a digital storefront, or more an xbox gamepass of the 90s. Except instead of down games over an internet connection, it only had one-way c
by phire 3y ago
It mostly acted like a digital storefront, or more an xbox gamepass of the 90s.
Except instead of down games over an internet connection, it only had one-way communication. The satellite would just continually retransmit the same games every few min. When you selected a game to download, the Satellaview would wait for the next transmission to come around and save it to the 1MB flash card.
You could then play the downloaded game more or less like any other cartridge. Many releases were just games that had previously been on retail cartridge.
But some games (these soundlink games) were more of an event. Instead of simply downloading the game, there was a scheduled hour to tune in, and everyone would play the same game in parallel, with roughly the same progression. New game data would beamed down from the satellite continually, bypassing the 1MB limit. Most of this streaming data was CD quality audio, either narration (often live preformed narration) or music, but it could also stream code or graphics too.
I understand it did have some ability to handle multiple tracks of audio, but most of the time the game was designed to work with only one track of audio, hence forcing the players down the same progression based on time.
- thret 3y agoThat's a pretty cool concept given that it was almost 30 years ago!
- retrac 3y agoOh, the idea is even older. In 1980, video games downloaded over cable TV, was tested in a few US cities. Intellivision! Same basic idea. Cable service allowed very fast (1 Mbit/s approximately) transmission for the time, so games could transfer in seconds: : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayCable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayCable And Sega offered something similar in the USA in the early 1990s too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel I think Satellaview in Japan, was the first service of that kind, which was truly successful though.
- jerf 3y agoMore than 30 years ago. Believe it or not, the Intellivision has the same service, using the same basic technique in 1981: https://www.intvprime.com/intellivision-faq/intellivision-faq-section-2-0-hardware/#2.6%3a+What+was+PlayCable%3f https://www.intvprime.com/intellivision-faq/intellivision-fa... https://www.intvfunhouse.com/mattel/playcable.php https://www.intvfunhouse.com/mattel/playcable.php (The Atari 2600 got a competitor but despite being the older console it was released in 1983: https://www.wired.com/story/streaming-games-actually-started-the-80s/ https://www.wired.com/story/streaming-games-actually-started... ) So, 43 years ago.