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Sega Channel: VGHF Recovers over 100 Sega Channel ROMs (and More)

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One of the most interesting things in this release IMO is the internal documents from Sega Channel management. For example, in this binder https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/ef6246e4-79be-4b02-b262... there's a bunch of research documents trying to figure out how to turn the service around after it began underperforming their expectations.

It seems like the main problem they ran into was that the service appealed mainly to the small minority of "heavy players" (who they defined as playing more than 14 hours per week). Their original projections were that they could target cable subscribers who own Genesis systems and play games more than 4 hours a week, but they found that most people who weren't gaming fanatics preferred to own a few games and rent games as needed rather than subscribe to Sega Channel.

The other big problem they ran into was parental resistance. A large amount of parents they talked to viewed Sega Channel as an "open tap" that would increase their child's time spent playing games. An ongoing subscription also was only a one-time "give" from the parent to the child, whereas buying/renting games was one "give" per occasion, which was more psychologically attractive to the parents.

1 month agoby ndiddy

"Sega broke ground in the late 90s with one of the first digital game distribution systems for consoles."

By the time this came on to the scene the idea was already 14 years old. Intellivision was doing it in 1980: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayCable

The idea blows people's minds if they think of a TV channel as just a channel for delivering TV, but the concept is not that hard if you realize it's just a way to broadcast data, most of which happens to be television video signals. The problem is making it cost-effective for a console to have an amount of RAM normally associated with a cartridge. For most of console gaming's lifespan cart size completely outclassed RAM size so storing a full cartridge image in RAM was expensive for what was generally the low end of the market. Plus the RAM you could stick in the receiver put a firm upper limit on how large a cart you could broadcast, and in an era still undeniably ruled by Moore's Law the size of the more desirable carts tended to outrun the RAM put in these things so they tended to become rapidly unable to keep up with the cart sizes.

1 month agoby jerf

This is awesome! I used to have sega channel as a kid. I never had a game console and a Sega is the only one my mom ever bought us. We were fortunate enough to have cable TV from TCI cable and they had Sega channel. Every month we'd get new games and eventually they changed it to 2 weeks.

1 month agoby millzlane

Interested in the Lost World: Jurassic park variants. I was 5 when that came out in 1997 and it was an odd release since barely anyone had a Megadrive anymore but we had one and my parents wouldn’t buy me a PlayStation, so they relented and bought me that as I loved dinosaurs. It is honestly such a great game and was really underappreciated since it was so late in the release cycle for that console.

1 month agoby physicsguy

Cool, it's nice that they're sharing them instead of adding them to Frank's private collection.

1 month agoby nubinetwork

I felt like the coolest kid in the neighborhood with Sega Channel. It was so cool to have a dozen or so new games every month. There was a stunt car driving game that was on there at one point. I have no idea what it was called, I couldn't really explain it anymore than that, but whew was it a great time when it was there!

1 month agoby Jeremy1026

Sega Channel cut my game rental costs in half (sorry Blockbuster) and I played so many games I would have never bothered renting. Good times.

1 month agoby empressplay

Oh man. Yeah, Sega Channel was amazing. It's true that it came pretty late in the Genesis' life and by that time, Sega was prioritizing Saturn but man, I loved SC and looked forward to the first of the month when all of the menus would switch.

1 month agoby exogeny

I remember my cousin excitedly telling me that his mom had got him Sega Channel. My mind was blown. However it was soon taken away per parental discretion and I never got a chance to visit and play it. Back to Sonic 2, and Eternal Champions.

1 month agoby darepublic

This is very neat, though the difficulty and time it took to get all this material speaks to the problems with subscription services and game preservation. As more and more services and games move to subscription-only models where individuals do not own or even control local copies of the games they play, once those services shut down (or specific titles are pulled) more and more games will be locked away, forgotten, and then lost forever.

1 month agoby garciansmith

If it was Nintendo instead of Sega, everyone would be slapped with a cease-and-desist backed up with the threat of lawsuits.

1 month agoby jakedata

Growing up, the Sega Channel was something I desperately wanted as a kid. Unfortunately, I did not have a Genesis, we did not have cable TV, and our parents would have balked at spending $40/month (adjusted for inflation) on a service to keep us from going outside to play.

1 month agoby bityard

Very cool, I wonder why the service was never updated to work with saturn. No hdd would be my guess. with no hdd games have to be absurdly small to fit in ram.

I will note that as I was reading the saturn specs(I am unfamiliar with the system) I found that there are save cartridges and a saturn modem. Everything needed hardware wise. It looks like they made a internet(dialup) based version for saturn.

And final thoughts: It would be neat to see what sort of back end services they were using if those were in the recovered backup tapes. probably quite a bit more sensitive than releasing roms so may not happen.

1 month agoby somat

There should be some kind of video game preservation law.

If you stop selling a game, you're obligated to release it for free, including any server code that game depends on.

1 month agoby aussieguy1234

Wow, I thought those would be as lost as the Doctor Who episodes. Kudos for the great research and archive work!

1 month agoby Aissen

In a previous work life, I remember working on a Sega Channel/XBAND hybrid.

1 month agoby pinewurst

Wow, I never heard of that before today. Sega Genesis was my first console. I still remember the six button controller. It worked well for Mortal Kombat 3.

1 month agoby devinprater

we had this in college. It failed to work more often than it worked, but when it worked it was awesome and way ahead of its time.

1 month agoby jghn

Sega Channel was so ahead of its time

1 month agoby Melatonic

> The Berenstain Bears’ A School Day

Given how often people love to swear with certainty that they remember Berenstain spelled as Berenstein [0], I find it kind of neat/interesting when this sort of digital archaeology refutes the silliness with undeniable proof.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenstain_Bears#Name_discrepa...

Edit: that's one of the ROMs they recovered from tape backup -- wanted to add context since, if you don't actively expand the list in the article, my comment appears wildly non-sequitur

1 month agoby kevinsync

From Wikipedia:

> The Sega Channel was an online game service developed by Sega for the Sega Genesis video game console, serving as a content delivery system. Launched on December 12, 1994, the Sega Channel was provided to the public by TCI and Time Warner Cable through cable television services by way of coaxial cable. It was a pay to play service, through which customers could access Genesis games online, play game demos, and get cheat codes. Lasting until July 31, 1998, the Sega Channel operated three years after the release of Sega's next generation console, the Sega Saturn. Though criticized for its poorly timed launch and costly subscription fee, the Sega Channel has been praised for its innovations in downloadable content and impact on online game services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel

1 month agoby nomilk