The Gamepass of the 90s: The SEGA Channel!
Krappadizzle
Member
I had this thing. They marketed in my area as a kid I guess and my Mom was sick of spending money renting games. I LOVED it as a kid. Waiting until the new games changed over at night of a new month was fun with buddies. Worked pretty much as advertised though I do remember some games not letting me use cheat codes for some reason.
Captain Toad
Banned
That was great. I remember wishing their was the same for SNES, which I highly preferred due to Nintendo and Squaresoft games.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Never had it, but I remember it. I swear Sega was always ahead of the curve.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
That thing was awesome. Although IIRC you couldn't manually manage the games it had stored on it. So if you downloaded a new game there was some chance it'd delete something else of yours.
I had a Phantasy Star IV save that was pretty far but I lost it because I got a little too greedy downloading other games.
I had a Phantasy Star IV save that was pretty far but I lost it because I got a little too greedy downloading other games.
The Pleasure
Gold Member
nial
Member
Satellaview was a thing in Japan.
Badlucktroll
Member
When i was a kid i thought the sega channel was an actual channel with sega shows lol (i think i just saw the logo someplace)
ReBurn
Gold Member
This was really cool. I never subscribed myself but I had a coworker who did. For me it always felt like it came a bit too late considering all of the magazines at the time were hyping next gen offerings.
The real first game pass was Intellivision PlayCable in the early 1980's. You had access to a rotating library of 15 to 20 downloadable games for like 12 bucks a month. It was limited by the 8K of RAM in the component making it incompatible with the larger games that started releasing later in the console's lifecycle. My uncle had it for a while. It was never available where I lived.
The real first game pass was Intellivision PlayCable in the early 1980's. You had access to a rotating library of 15 to 20 downloadable games for like 12 bucks a month. It was limited by the 8K of RAM in the component making it incompatible with the larger games that started releasing later in the console's lifecycle. My uncle had it for a while. It was never available where I lived.
March Climber
Member
From the little I've interacted with it, I knew that the concept was way too good and way ahead of it's time. It's a shame it took so long to catch on.
It's like asking a retired athlete to come back and play a sport. Just doesn't feel the same and they'd probably be worse off for doing so.
diffusionx
Gold Member
I never had this as I had a SNES and even if I had a Genesis, there was no way my parents were going to spring for it, but I remember reading about it in GamePro and it seemed way too good to be true. Like, Sega is just going to send you monthly games for subscribing? And there are exclusive games ONLY available on this service? For a kid who only got a few games a year and only had a crappy rental store nearby (no Blockbuster) this was just amazing.
I give Sega credit for bringing these services here. Nintendo had them in Japan but never bothered.
I give Sega credit for bringing these services here. Nintendo had them in Japan but never bothered.
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Draxon Gamer
Banned
Mattel and Nintendo had similar ideas but Sega was in the best position to use theirs. It was a good idea but it would only work if they had put enough marketing budget behind it and it was launched during the peak of the platform. Sega Channel came out sometime in 94 and it needed to be out in 92 to capture that rising Genesis audience..
Scotty W
Banned
I think that might be Nintendos BS Sattlaview system in Japan.
RAIDEN1
Member
Nintendo had little confidence in the thing...about as much as they had in the 64DD