• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

The Story of Xband. (Online gaming for Genesis and Snes)

SnatcherHunter

SnatcherHunter

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
13,479
Very good video. Actual interviews with Xband employees.
Very ambitious when you think about it. Online gaming back then? Just Wow.



Anyone remember Xband?

I personally remember seeing all the ads for it, but my limited brain at the time didn't comprehend what it was. This was before I even knew what the web truly was.


I used to laugh with the MK reference. Not really funny when it was already happening back then!
 
rpm

rpm

Into the Woods
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
12,348
Parts Unknown
Wrestling With Gaming is a fantastic gaming documentary channel, I'd highly recommend all of his videos
This has been in the works for the better part of a year, glad to see it's finally out and that it seems to be worth the wait, gonna dive in now
 
OP
OP
SnatcherHunter

SnatcherHunter

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
13,479
rpm said:
Wrestling With Gaming is a fantastic gaming documentary channel, I'd highly recommend all of his videos
This has been in the works for the better part of a year, glad to see it's finally out and that it seems to be worth the wait, gonna dive in now
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes it is. Glad he is back with such an informative video.
 
Dad_and_Videogames

Dad_and_Videogames

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,997
I enjoy this channel and I started watching this at the gym this evening. This was always a fascinating product back in the day. Really amazing what they were able to accomplish. Those 90s aesthetics are fantastic.
 
OP
OP
SnatcherHunter

SnatcherHunter

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
13,479
Had no idea Killer Instinct was even patched to actually work with Xband. What is this sorcery?
 
Indelible

Indelible

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,596
Canada
Great video, I remember seeing ads for Xband in game magazines but I had no idea what it was. I was only 9 years old in 94 so the thought of online play would've blown my mind.
 
Laser Ramon

Laser Ramon

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,629
I played MKII back in the day and that shit was magical.

They also had mini webpages you could go to that looked exactly like what you would hope 90s internet would look like.
 
samred

samred

Amico fun conversationalist
Member
Nov 4, 2017
2,584
Seattle, WA
Some really good stories here, especially about Howard Lincoln from Nintendo chewing out his subordinates because of how good Xband was.

Also, I was in Dallas during the Xband era, and my Blockbuster NEVER advertised this thing. I had no idea it was as low as $30 or even $20. Grumble grumble.
 
I am Christina Aguilera

I am Christina Aguilera

Member
Oct 29, 2017
85
I bought one of these for Genesis for very cheap from -- I believe -- Blockbuster Music (a Blockbuster-owned store AND a record store, that's a '90s obsolescence double word score). At the time, we had no proper home internet, so the prospect of being able to play online versus multiplayer AND have a method of *having* *an e-mail address* over the phone was extremely enticing, and felt like a way to be able to dip a toe into the future.

Alas, I could never talk my mom into a subscription, so basically, all I could do was mess with the menus, avatars, sound test code, and the hidden maze game built into the Genesis Xband's BIOS. I definitely want to watch this to see what I missed!
 
Syriel

Syriel

Banned
Dec 13, 2017
11,088
samred said:
Some really good stories here, especially about Howard Lincoln from Nintendo chewing out his subordinates because of how good Xband was.

Also, I was in Dallas during the Xband era, and my Blockbuster NEVER advertised this thing. I had no idea it was as low as $30 or even $20. Grumble grumble.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The monthly fees were higher than PSN or XBL are today though. ;)
 
Hawk269

Hawk269

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,043
I had one of these and it was pretty amazing. This was a very cool video and appreciate them taking the time to make it.
 
kittens

kittens

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,237
Just watched the full video. Pretty fascinating! I grew up in the 16 bit era but have zero recollection of this existing, but I do remember every so often seeing ads for devices in gaming magazines and not fully understanding what their purpose was lol. Looking back it's not hard to see how they had a hard time marketing this, it was very ahead of its time.
 
OP
OP
SnatcherHunter

SnatcherHunter

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
13,479
So the high monthly price is what killed the service IMO. Those type of prices would have steer anyone away.
What a shame though, the damn thing truly worked. Which is funny because I remember devs saying fighting games was impossible on the Dreamcast due to the limited 56K modem connection, and here we have Xband executing such task years before DC.
 
Dekuman

Dekuman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,026
Amazing tech and great documentary.

I remember this was advertised and featured heavily even on Nintendo Power.
 
Xbox Live Mike

Xbox Live Mike

Prophet of Truth
The Fallen
Oct 29, 2017
2,434
USA
I just watched the video last night on my recommended youtube feed. coincidence or conspiracy......
 
TRU

TRU

Banned
Nov 9, 2017
521
I got to use it for a month until my mom got the Long Distance Bill. (During the era of land lines you had to pay extra to call outside of your area code)

She disconnected it and that was all I got to play. But it was really cool at the time!
 
5taquitos

5taquitos

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,867
OR
TRU said:
I got to use it for a month until my mom got the Long Distance Bill. (During the era of land lines you had to pay extra to call outside of your area code)

She disconnected it and that was all I got to play. But it was really cool at the time!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sounds like me when it turned out the BBS I was dialing to play Trade Wars was not local...
 

LudicrousSpeed

Member
Nov 2, 2017
2,239
Had one in the Dallas area. I absolutely couldn't use the long distance stuff, but thankfully there were enough local players in the area.

One of the things of that video that really took me back is showing off the chat and one person just typing "Phone?". Since Xband was just a modem, you could also just have both players pick up the phone. You'd have to wait a minute so that the modem connections on both side failed, but once they did the modems would quit but the call would remain connected, so you could just chat with the other person on the phone.

SnatcherHunter said:
Had no idea Killer Instinct was even patched to actually work with Xband. What is this sorcery?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

KI wasn't patched itself. The Xband had to basically be able to patch the games in the pass-through so that they could hook up to the controller inputs. Nintendo apparently assisted Catapult with how to patch KI, not that KI was patched for Xband.

KI on the SNES felt a little dodgier on the service than some of the other games, but it worked surprisingly well and I played a bunch of it on there.

EDIT: Because now I'm thinking about all that stuff, technically SNES Xband also supported Super Mario World. That's not a game with multiplayer so there was no game, but the cart was used to match with other people who just wanted to drop into chat.
 
Last edited:

Nuclear Muffin

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
4,721
Amazing documentary for an amazing device.

It's crazy to think that this is basically the starting point for Xbox Live today (Xband-Netlink-Dream Arena-Xbox Live). It's incredible just how much the gaming industry owes to this little "impossible" device from a plucky start up!

One of the most fascinating peripherials in video game history!

Brilliant documentary that was absolutely worth the wait!
 

Deleted member 28962

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 31, 2017
258
Very good documentary. I do remember being intrigued by X-band and Netlink, but I never got one. It's gaming/tech history I've always regretted not being a part of.

I'm happy they talked about the latency issues, which is something I always wondered about. I did not know the way a dial-up modem encoded data influenced its latency. I knew dial-up modems had inherit latency but assumed that was because of analog/digital conversions and interleaving.
 
Themaddestgamer

Themaddestgamer

Banned
Nov 30, 2017
1,563
Thats really cool and i never heard of it. My first online gaming experience was PS2 broadband adapter and Socom 2.
 
xabbott

xabbott

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,065
Florida
I remember wanting a xband so bad but my parents were not about to mess with anything else that needed our phone line. I ruined that with the AOL bill. -.-
 

Deleted member 8468

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
9,109
I wanted one of these so bad. Once my parents found out it was an internet thing they were off the idea because "someone would steal our phone line."
 
truly101

truly101

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
3,245
Just started watching this, will have to finish it up tomorrow. the one thing I remember most about Xband is that menu music. That was some 90s ass music.
 
hibikase

hibikase

User requested ban
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
6,820
LudicrousSpeed said:
EDIT: Because now I'm thinking about all that stuff, technically SNES Xband also supported Super Mario World. That's not a game with multiplayer so there was no game, but the cart was used to match with other people who just wanted to drop into chat.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

SMW has alternating 2 player mode which is still technically 2 player mode.
 
TrashHeap64

TrashHeap64

Member
Dec 7, 2017
1,675
Austin, TX
The craziest part to me is that almost every single game (save for one or two) were never designed for this kind of play. This thing was like a glorified GameShark that read button pressed and then sent all of that data in between frames. The amount of reverse engineering and putting codes together is mind boggling. Any supported game that used score counters, random number generators, NPCs with random movement, all of this data had to be modified in a small patch located in this thing's memory and injected into the game during run time.

Absolutely wild that it worked as good as it did
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,580
We're watching this right now. Great video. I had no idea... About so many things really. Worth watching if you're an oldie.
 
nStruct

nStruct

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
3,134
Seattle, WA
This is a great video. It's crazy what those guys pulled off in the 90's. I remember the X-Band existing but thinking it sounded too good to be true.
 
GreenMonkey

GreenMonkey

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,861
Michigan
I got referred to the video from the weekly RetroRGB. Great video with interviews and everything.

I never heard of this in the 90s either. I would have been like 14-16 around the time this thing was out. Only heard of it on the internet later.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.