The 90s Online Network For Super Nintendo & Sega Genesis You Never Heard Of | The Story Of XBAND
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- XBAND was a multiplayer network and modem for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis that was released all the way back in 1994! XBAND featured skill based matchmaking, the ability to send and receive email, instant message-like chatting, electronic newspapers, leaderboards, multiple gamer profiles, nationwide stats, and worked by adding network play to pre-existing games like Super Mario Kart, MK, Street Fighter, Madden, NBA JAM, and more! XBAND had more features than XBOX Live did at its launch, and it was all made possible in 1994 for SNES and Sega Genesis consoles (There’s a Saturn version too!). So what happened to XBAND and why wasn’t it a success?
This documentary features new and exclusive interviews with XBAND’s developers, its users, and the team that’s worked to bring XBAND modems back to life so that you can play your 16 bit consoles over the internet today. Join me as we look back at the true start of online console multiplayer networks. This is the Story Of XBAND!
Steve Biedlingmaier & Matt Hershenson names are misspelled in the Catapult credits. Please accept my sincere apologies.
Check out Retro.live’s XBAND revival progress and their other projects at www.retro.live/
#retrogaming #GamingHistory #SNES #SegaGenesis #Nintendo #XBAND
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Update May 2020: Retro.live is not currently available but some of the people who worked it are making an online gaming network for retro consoles using more modern tech. You can find them at Retro.Link
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Thanks to everyone for being patient in between uploads. This video was a beast to make but I'm pretty happy with the result. If you're more interested in how it work that kind of stuff gets broken down in part 2 around the 16:53 mark. I'll be uploading regularly again now that my magnum opus is done lol.
Was it hard to cut it down to an hour?
Yep. It was by far the hardest part. I had about 18 hours worth of just interviews.
Can you look at Super Godzilla?
Thank you so much for this video. As an amateur PC programmer I can understand the magnitude of what these people accomplished. They laid the groundwork for online gaming.
Like I said before Thank you for letting me be apart of this. It was wonderful to think back to those years and all the fun I had. It's sad that now I know why it was taken away and to me it died way to early. I still use the same gamer tag and N*H*G is Now StormtroopersOfDeathKlan with a clan RUclips channel . To quote Docter McCoy "It was the best of times and the worst of times" memory's that will last a lifetime.
I've had people request this topic quite a bit and I always knew you were working on this. I just kept telling them "Wrestling With Gaming is on the case!" This did not disappoint. Well done, sir.
Gaming Historian very cool of you to let someone else take the reigns on this topic. Love your channel too, Norm! Oil up and...something, something..
Thanks so much, Norm. At the risk of sounding cheesy, that means the world coming from you, whose work I've always admired. You're a class act.
@@WrestlingWithGaming Keep on going you two, I love both your channels and watch every video of you two!
Two of my favourite classic gaming youtubers.
@@WrestlingWithGaming As long as you and Norm aren't holding hands and singing while standing at a urinal, I'd say your comment is an honest compliment . It's not cheesy at all !!!
On the other hand, if you WANT a urinal partner, you can't go wrong with Norm. He's awesome !!!!
2 frames latency? Pretty much a 33ms ping over dial-up. Simply amazing.
And here I'm somewhere between 49-120 ms because of crappy ISP...
33ms is unheard of. Gaming on the top of the line 56k modems would yield a ping of 100ms at best, rising to 120-140 in a game of Counterstrike. But these modems had really complex encoding and compression schemes like V.42BIS, and compression always increases latency. Chosing old 2400 baud modems due to their incredibly simple encoding scheme (and thus low latency provided you were sending very little data!) was genius - they would have been able to get that kind of hardware really cheap too. Fascinating.
Konstantin was embellishing that part. Speaking as one of the guys interviewed in the video who played xband daily, not all games were that smooth but the lag had more to do with the reverse engineering of the games and not so much the latency. MK3 was virtually unplayable in early '96 and got better over time because they continued to work on it. While MK2, Weaponlord, and KI were almost perfect the entire year I was on the service. But sometimes it was much more than 3 frames.
sl9sl9 I had no idea that modem compression added so much latency, but then again, most modem users at the time want fast downloads from web or bbs or whatever and don’t care how long the packet takes to get there.
The latency of the 1990's XBAND was far less than the much more modern Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade. I remember trying to play Street Fighter 2 and Doom in online multiplayer games on Xbox Live Arcade and finding the lag to be so severe that the games were totally unplayable. It was not due to poor internet connection it was due to poor implementation of the online servers, the games lagged like hell regardless of the strength of the internet connection.
I loved how everything in the 90s was labeled "X" something lol. Good ol days!
Haha so true.
And after Apple, everything was labeled “i” something. :)
We're still buying XBox's to this day.
80s were "radical", 90s were " extreme"
Now everything is “Plus”. X is way cooler.
My handle was "Havok" and I formed a clan with someone who named himself "Kayos". Our clan was called the White Lotus society based on some mortal-kombat lore we read in the instruction manual. I was pretty good at the game so I got recruited into a more prestigious clan by someone called "the emperor". He required I rename my account to a star-wars related name, and I only knew Luke Skywalker basically, but he was strictly empire-themed. So he suggested I spell it "Luuke" with two U's based off of the evil clone of Luke Skywalker in the Timothy Zahn books (that I didn't read till years later). He did make one exception to his empire-themed rule which was his real-life girlfriend named "Leia".
I haven't even thought of those times for the last 20 years, but this video brought back a bunch of nostalgic memories. Memories of clan wars, talking in chat after games, mail-bombing, and more. Honestly, if all Xband did was connect you to a random person to play without the communication aspects, it wouldn't be anywhere near the same experience. Communicating with other humans who share a common interest with you is the back-bone of a feeling of "community". It's something very special to experience, and I'm glad I started my teenage years with that unique experience that is taken for granted by today's youth.
@Hulk Hogan noob
It's really sad to read this honestly. The online "community" of today, if you can really even call it that sucks. No one even really communicates with each other or uses mics anymore, it was a lot better when this was new. That's why I think the golden age of gaming was 90s to early 2000s. I wish we could bring it back.
@@repentnow6244 "No one even really communicates with each other or uses mics anymore"
That is so far from the truth. I would say people have gone to more closed off communities like clans. There are people you can talk to if you look for them and from time to time I still get to know new people through playing games.
I dunno how it is on the consoles, but on PC people do communicate.
@@Ozzianman oh yeah I would agree if we are strictly talking about PC. I went back to console here recently after years of only PC gaming, you've got your clans and stuff on console but it's nothing like it used to be.
I think PC gaming feels more like the old way because it is that core hardcore community that beats on with in it. Console gaming is a shell of it's former self in a the sense that it's pretty much for everybody now, too many people casually playing online for a few won't pick up a mic to create memories with total strangers.
I'm one of the guys in the documentary. I was ULTIMAN on the snes and played mostly MK3 nationwide. I was indeed an amazing time back then.
"an hour an 4 mins? I don't have time for this!"...an hour and 4 mins later "that was a good doc!"
Lol glad you liked it
ikr
Same here
I didn't even notice the length until now. But I'm also quite stoned. 🤷🏼♂️
this is such an important story in the history of gaming, thank you for telling it
Thank you for watching 😊
My main username on the SNES format was King Werewolf. I remember finding an exploit in the tournament/contest system and used it to get selected for pretty much every one that I planned on: The server would select from a list of people in queue who were waiting for an opponent. Most of the time, these people would get an opponent before the computer would select them and they would miss out. I found that in my local area, nobody would be in queue, so I would queue up in my local area and sit there for several minutes. This brute-forced the XBAND server to pick me for contests every time I tried it. I remember beating the editor of EGM magazine at MKII because he wasn't used to the 2-second lag time, so I would fake a move, make him throw up a block, and then buffer the move in such that it would execute right as he let go of the block button. Worked like a charm! Later on though, I got waxed by Nintendo's Killer Instinct champion (as did everyone else that night). Fun times.
Do you remember who the editor was?
@@Mirokuofnite It happened way back in 1995, so I don't remember. Would need to reviews issues from that year to find out.
@@RedArremer I happen to have nearly all the issues of egm. Might've been Ken Williams(sushi x) but I'd have to dig up those issues and see if there was any info on it.
@@Mirokuofnite Whoever it was looked like they were a decent player, but they hadn't gotten used to the lag of the XBand. I remember they played Raiden and I played Liu Kang. I finished them off with the double cartwheel uppercut for insult to injury.
BTW I got suspended several times for mail-bombing people that mail-bombed me, and that's when I found out you could log onto an outside computer terminal and mail-bomb without getting caught. I remember being very upset with Catapult about that and informed them I was going to come over to their headquaters and give them a piece of my mind, and they suspended me again for 'terrorist threats'. What a laugh.
My family was so poor during this era. I always wished I could try out the xband so this documentary is bittersweet. Great job as always!
Dude its 2021 I cant afford a $200 phone bill now!!
Hey just think you get xband for a few bucks a month on any console you want! Without this I’m sure it’d have taken a lot longer for network gaming to be a thing
So shit talking and rage quitting have been there since the beginning of time. Nothing we experience today is new.
JohnnyNismo I’m 35. I was rage quitting over games with family members 😅😂 back in the early 90s
@@devote I'm 37. I know, lol. The internet of today has always existed within us😂
Well... 480p and beyond is new (regarding the timeframe of xband. for console gaming)
shit talking and rage quitting were there since humans engage in any type of competition... So we're just doing the exact same thing with different means through out history.
Did you just call 1994 the beginning of time?
Man, the XBand brings back all kinds of memories for me. I grew up in the southeast USA, but due to having older friends through my sister, I was into stuff like anime (which was mostly unknown then), Dungeons and Dragons, etc. All of these things made me weird to my middle school. When I got an XBand, I played the online games a little bit but it was really hard to find players locally and I couldn't call long distance. But what I did figure out pretty quickly is that people were using all 4 player profiles to create what were essentially news letters or even little proto-websites. You would save your last profile to give "links" to other users in the same topic who were also running news sites on their 4 profiles, and they would link back to you. That and the email soon became my main usage of XBand and pretty quickly, I quit even looking for online games. I would spend hours reading people's sites, emailing them back and forth and generally talking with other people who were passionate about the same things I was which as amazing. I was so heart broken when XBand closed but switched almost immediately to the internet on my PC. But, believe it or not, it actually felt empty compared to XBand. It was missing the community. Everyone who was into these topics knew each other and it almost felt like a family. There was tons more content on the internet but it wasn't social at that time. You were simply pulling up static webpages and looking at them. Forum software was still very, very new and few people had the technical abilities to set them up and run them so they were extremely rare. Eventually I did settle into the web and internet and it did become more compelling as social experiences started getting more common. Today I am a professional software developer and I have to believe on some level that XBand was one of the things that started me on that path, because creating software that creates social experiences and communities is extremely exciting to me and what drove me to start programming. So on the off-chance that any of the Catapult team may read this wall of text: Thank you! It really meant the world to me!
I was ULTIMAN the guy featured in this video and creator of the Wikipedia article. What did you play? I was in Alabama and mostly played MK3 on snes.
@@RawChristianSuperman I really can't remember my profile name, because I think it was a set of 4 for the profile messages. But I played mostly fighting games, Killer Instinct and Super Street Fighter 2 and played in east Tennessee. Although I really didn't try to find games with people for very long before I solely got into the social features of the Xband.
@@RawChristianSuperman Just curious if you were in Huntsville, AL as that's where I live. Was wondering if this city or Alabama in general had at least a double digit number of XBand users. There's always been lots of engineers here due to Redstone Arsenal / NASA / etc so I wouldn't be too surprised if at least a couple of people here in Huntsville dabbled in the 16 bit console dawn of online gaming.
@@dacypher22 did your sisters older friends have the decency to teach you that Tenchi Muyo was the superior anime of the 90s, and not DragonBall Z?!?!
@@cbh148 Nah, I was in Dothan.
Damn, even in the 90's people still threatened to kill each other for losing at a game.
DaAmazinStaplr I wonder what type of shit they said back then lol
@@havelthesnacc8753 ready for a wedgie!!!
@@tonytrilex2555 get ready for a swirlie dweeb!!
Then it evolved into sexual attacks on you're mom haha
My parents were so mad when they got their bill. I was one of those guys who made accounts just to update the clan. Lol.
holy crap, you even got ex devs to talk about this!
The first time I heard about this, my mind was blown. There was a device, years prior to the Dreamcast that made it possible to play online games on the console. And no one outside of the US knows that such a thing ever existed? It had so much personality with more features than some of the paid online services 25 years later.
But I couldn't find that much stuff about XBand besides the couple of uploads on youtube and screenshots from magazines.
The fact that you could fill an hour with information and even dug up much new stuff is amazing!
Thanks for taking the time to watch. I was a big XBAND fan as a teenager so i really wanted to do XBAND and the people behind it justice. The guys from Catapult were all extremely generous with their time for the interviews (about 3 hours each) and with follow up questions afterwards. They are still passionate about XBAND and it's infectious.
Waittaminit! You could go online with the Sega Saturn too!
Fun fact: The company that created the GameLine was Control Data Corporation, which then renamed itself to Quantum Computer Services. It then became AOL in 1991.
So yes, AOL made the gameline
Dude....
I was using Q-Link on my Commodore 64c in the early 90's before AOL. It costed $5 an hour to use the chat room. The 2400 baud modem was so slow. But it was really ahead of its time. You could order pizza delivery with it, and it had a guess that song type of game where you could hear part of a song, and it had a game called club caribe that was kind of like an early mmo.
@@blastofo Club Caribe (AKA Habitat) is a legend in MMO history now. One thing a lot of people who played it don't know is that it was a limited beta at that time, only sold in certain stores in certain cities. Quantum Link knew if they ever released it to a wide market, their entire network would crash (even the limited beta was said to at one point be using 50% of Quantum Link's bandwidth and computing power). So you are one of the few people who got to experience the first real-time, graphical MMO ever made.
@Dusk Raccoon Games have always pushed technology. Even back in the days of mainframe computers, games were almost always the way that the engineers would push the limits of new hardware they got. MUDs and BBS door games were two of the major reasons why modems started being adopted in the late 80's and early 90's. When smartphones first came out at the end of the 2000's, they looked cool but a lot of people got them after they saw they could play real games on them. What can you say? People love to be entertained and games' connection to technology has meant that new technology will almost always spark people's minds with what games can make with it.
My parents were so mad when they got their bill. I was one of those guys who made accounts just to update the clan. Lol.
paco is that you lul?
Im a 38yr old gamer...how the hell have i never heard about this! 😮😲😲 amazing work dudes..thanks🤘👍
Thanks man. Glad you liked it!
Same here bro. Im in awe
Same here, never heard of it. Was it not a thing in NorCal or I just lived in a rural area...
@RuinAngel not sure, I grew up in rural south of the UK & never saw it....🤔
@@deafmusician2 that's cool man, shame you never got to see it though.
Oh wow! Used to have one of these for my Sega Genesis. My brother and I spent hours playing Madden, NBA Live and Mortal Kombat II online. It was incredible. There was also a trick/exploit for it. If both players picked up the phone after a game and waited for the static to clear, they'd be connected for a regular phone call.
Yep it was mentioned in one of the interviews, but it didn't make the edit. I'm in the video too, I was ULTIMAN on the snes. It was an amazing time.
Who showed u the trick
I was thinking at the beginning, "was this thing legit? If it was possible, how come Nintendo didn't do it on their own?", and then they mention how they met with Nintendo president and he himself could not believe it is just amazing.
I loved the technical details the developers give, you can tell these guys are geniuses.
They really are geniuses. They were great to talk to.
Thank you for this. The SNES XBAND was a short but brightly burning flame that shed a profoundly impactful amount of warmth and light on my childhood. It objectively set me on a path that would lead me next to WebTV, where I'd learn HTML, and from there I'd go on to create websites in high school and join various computer and tech teams which would open the door to various tech jobs where I'd learn even more. And through it all, I'd be gaming, just like I was when I started. The combination of all these things would eventually lead me to RUclips, and then Twitch, to be the person I am today.
My feelings were the same. I'm Jonathan, one of the guys interviewed in this video. It was a very special time.
I use to play all night and day. This one time me and *Corwin played at my place soo long when we did go to bed when it was early morning but still dark we go up after it already was dark again about 8 pm. So much fun I miss it.
@@AngelOfDeath420 my dad was glad to pay the phone bills. He watched me all the time. I wasn't into any sports, so this was a good trade off.
My dad did that with me at the arcade. It's was awesome because other people told me playing was a waste of time and nothing good can come of it. I do the same thing with my Raven 8 yo Girl.
And who are you, if you don't mind me asking?
this is insane, both the xband concept itself and the quality of this documentary. awesome work. the interviews are an amazing touch,
Thanks so much. I was very fortunate that these guys were so generous with their time
So happy I was able to experience this back in the 90’s. Even had the keyboard. Good times! I loved XBAND.
I'm Jonathan from the video. Do you remember what your codename was? You're truly rare to have had one of the keyboards, even I didn't have that.
The fact that the XBand works in 2019 blew my mind so hard, I said OUT LOUD to a COMPLETELY EMPTY HOUSE, "BULLSHIT"
Surprised no one mentioned that most of us would just pick up the phone and shut the xband off to chat instead of using the controller to type, met a bunch of people that way.
I also remember the minor subscriber revolt when they changed the match making to severely limit people only willing to outdial local calls only. Prior to the change you could still be matched to someone long distance.
Someone had at one point also figured out the Xband connect long distance service was using a PBX to connect users, the modem would dial a local access number, then enter a code (pretty much exactly like a pre-paid calling card) and used a DTMF decoder to sniff out the codes.
SNES KI on the XBAND kicked ass. Many sleepless nights battling it out. My friend was the first to get one, and I thought he was full of shit. When I went to his house and found that this actually existed and it worked, I was blown away.
Speaking as one of the guys in videos, may I ask what was your codename?
Man I remember I played a guy playing Cinder doing these long combos and moves, I wanted to cry. I never knew the depth of KI was so deep. Playing against good people online was cutthroat, you either sanked or swim.
I was one of many who played SNES KI on the xband. it was great murdering people with ultra combos as Orchid.
How the hell did I not hear about this when it came out? This is WAY ahead of its time.
Yeah, I never heard of this until today and I am 39 and had an SNES in this era
same here had a snes and sega played all the time and never heard of this
I'm 36 and the main place I heard of this back in the day was video game magazines. They had ads all over them for the xband.
@@ScubaSteveM45 unless you were from the western side of the united states near california or the outlying states chances are theres alot of gaming trends you missed over the years :( sadly only the most mainstreamed ideas make it over here on the east.
@@LilDimeJDHDofficial That explains it then as I happened to be a young teen in the early 90s in the Seattle area.
Watching this from Hong Kong makes me feels fascinated. I didn't know such thing existed at all!
We used to go to shops that lets you play the console against each other and they charge around 1 dollar USD per hour.
The danger of getting punched in the face after winning was very real.
Thanks for this!
Everybody involved with the XBand seems so fun! They all seem like truly good people.
Well... Konstantin went on to create a company that made spyware. So not 100%.
There was a dark side of online gamers. There were trolls, hackers, clicks who would harass others if you are good or bad at certain games. All the same as other gaming online consoles. LOL
Man I think this is your best one yet. Production value is top notch bro, so is your editing. Really great work thank you for killing an hour of my work day!
Thanks for watching! Glad you liked it and more importantly that I could make work go by faster lol
Yup. Best content yet.
Gaming Historian you still the best 👍👍👍
This is such a great video! XBAND was my first real online experience, back in 1995. It blew my mind, not just to be able to play games against people on the other side of the country, but to also be able to send and receive email - something that seems so simple and silly to be excited about now - was a huge deal for me back then. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into this!
XBAND was incredible. SOOOOO far ahead of its time.Those os us that got to experience it in the mid 90s really got to be part of something special.
Thank you so much for this documentary, it was an awesome trip down memory lane! I too was one of those who racked up a huge phone bill playing MK2 nationwide. Shortly after that the "local" phone area got expanded for my state and I could find local matches....man great times!
Thank you WWG for completing this video. Thank you Tommy for continuing a project that past Xband players like myself had always wanted to get into. Mike B. and I both sought out past players after the closing of the service and kept everyone connected with old Xband e-mail list, AOL and Netlink forums; and as many other ways as possible. Many of my close friends today are people that I meet on Xband in 1994; some of which I see in this video via old X-mail messages we would send!
Some of us now work for Intel, Microsoft, Namco and other gaming & tech companies. I can't express enough how amazing this video is. Such an amazing part of gaming history. Thank you again to everyone that helped make this possible and thank you Catapult for effecting all of our lives in such a positive way.
Clinton a.k.a. "Shinobi-X"
Clinton... I know exactly who you are, and I apologize to you for leaving you out the credits. Thank you so much for your contribution to Xband as a whole
^i^AngelOfDeath that gamer tag sound familiar 😂
I'm Jonathan in the video. Nice to meet you. I remember efforts over the years to keep people in touch and a few websites that disappeared. I think the most successful one has been a Facebook page.
This is incredible. Thank you for adding to the archives of video game history.
It was my pleasure. thanks for watching.
Great documentary, smooth editing and voice-over. Thoroughly enjoyed this!
Looking forward to the other videos on your channel!
Thanks! I know there's a lot of gaming content on RUclips so I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to watch.
I grew up in the UK and I had never heard of this before. I would have lost my shit if I knew something like this existed back then! Great video
Mr_Gixxer Same. Problem was BT charged for all calls, plus a 5p call setup fee. In the US local calls were free. I hate to think what my phone bill would have been 😂
This 40-year-old appreciates the shit out of this video. I grew up in poverty, so I never had the opportunity to experience XBAND first-hand, but always wanted to. This well-edited, in-depth documentary not only satisfies 90's-kids, but should help educate the latter generations on the history of video games and online video gaming in particular. Cheers!
and subbed, for the record. Dig it.
Thank you so much. I loved XBAND as a teenager. I just wanted to do it justice.
@@WrestlingWithGaming You certainly did. Thank you.
This 15-year-old finds it really intriguing that true online gaming started off this way. I thought the only add-on that brought the system online was the Satellaview, which could broadcast and download games to your system. But, it only existed in Japan. But X band seems like Xbox live, but in the nineties. Its got messaging, it has live gameplay across systems, it's true online gaming.
I remember when this came out i was blown away i thought the future is here in 95 jamming to alice in chains kicking ass in killer instinct
I love Alice In Chains and this comment just made me so happy. I’m a younger dude so this was before my time but I wish I was born during this time and these are the type of golden era images I get in my head
@@Max_Payn3
Then you young sir, are an Old Soul !
I grew up during this time & I can say, things were so much more Magical and Mysterious back then-
Games were Better when you got one because you didn’t have “Before you buy” Videos leading up to their Release, that completely ruins some of that Excitement today…
There were also More Risks taken in Video game Design because game Companies that are Huge multi-Million dollar Companies now, we’re just starting to Explode and the Variety of content they put out was often More Unique and.. They took risks back then that lead to what we have today- But w Internet & marketing nowadays, Companies don’t wanna takes such risks as much these days which has lead to Stagnant re-releases and Copycat game franchises where Now, Very few games or devices come out now, that still Have that Magically Mysterious Excitement about them!
But hey, I often wish I was born Before Technology happened at all, like maybe the days of the Wild West, due to things that Negatively affected my life now, that COULD NOT have happened back then!
So you my friend are not alone!
@@turismofoegaming8806 you are absolutely right. Everything was better music had more soul, movies had more character and would take risks, video games were more interesting. I’m most definitely an old soul, I grew up listening to 90s rock music during the era where rap and hip hop took over . It all coincides in my mind with western society being in its death throes, but that’s a whole other road to go down!
@@Max_Payn3 If you ask me I think going through the 90s to 2000 & then up to 2011 had some of the best games?!
But the 90’s were my favorite for the magical feeling everything had.. when games went from 2D to 3D, truly was a magnificent time to be alive and gaming!
I LOVED X-band. My first email address was on my SuperNintendo using Xband. Thank you for making this video to talk about this unique but often forgotten piece of history!
I'm featured in the documentary. You were on the snes xband too? And female? That was extremely rare, I knew 3 girls on xband back then, almost everyone was a dude.
@@RawChristianSuperman use to be named David
@@derrickforeal That's a little upsetting.
I had the SNES model and I loved the service. Though I remember running up a $245 phone bill one time. I lived near Daytona Florida and it was 25 cents to connect to server and I didn't know it at the time. My dad hit the roof when the bill came in, hahahaha. But during the modems life, it was the best multi-player experience ever.
I had the snes too, I was featured in this video. I was ULTIMAN and played mostly MK3.
I'm 36 years old, and have been gaming since I can remember with the Atari. I didn't know about this at all, until 2 days ago. found one at a local game shop I go to. Had never heard of it, had never seen it, but I knew I had to pick it up! I mean, I'd never see one again I'm sure. Posted about it online, and got directed to this video by a few people. Glad they sent me this way. Such a great and informative video. Was hoping the revival services were still up and going, but it seems like they're all dead, according to the comments. Oh well, at least I can say I own such a great piece of gaming history.
"what's bumming you out man" "Xband is no more" "what kind of music does Xband make?" lmao...
Speaking as the guy featured in the video, yeah that was pretty much my friends' responses. They had no idea what online gaming was.
It was featured in the gaming press over here in the UK and I was always - damn - why is this network stuff always US-only, =S. Cool to hear Japan and Brazil got their own Xband devices too though, =).
Mostly Accurate Reviews I told my friends to come over and try Activator with me... They asked me what kind of drugs activators were. Life growing up as a Sega Kid.
Sounds like a parental answer
@@ajmetz82 yeah man I'm Canadian I just heard about it now
I remember my friends thinking I was crazy for having an xband modem for my SNES. Seeing the screens in this video brought on an amazing series of memories. 😁
Much respect to these legends who brought me hours of fun at 14.
At the time of me watching this video, the video has one dislike. How someone hated this video is beyond me, by gum, this is better then some documentaries I’ve seen on Netflix!
Thanks!
No this is better than any of the garbage propaganda Netflix makes.
That music alone is excellent. it's so funky and 90's.
This entire project feels like a passion project that somehow managed to make it to market. It's sad to see that this thing died, but I'm so glad that it existed for at least a bit of time.
We didn't even have XBAND here in Europe. And when it got released I was 2 years old. But here I am. Already 45 minutes in. Not realizing it was 45 minutes already!
IT HAS FINALLY HAPPENED!!! So hyped, cant wait to finish watching it but it's been amazing to see how this all came together over months of work. Congrats!
I remember wanting one of these when I was a kid. I was surprised at the pricing for an Xband. Great video!
Thanks! XBAND was really ahead of its time. Those of us that got to use it were really fortunate.
@@WrestlingWithGaming it definitely was.
Wrestling With Gaming i was one of the lucky ones i got one and brought it to my older cousins house and we barley left his room the whole summer it was amazing
@@WrestlingWithGaming i love your hair..
@@WrestlingWithGaming I was a kid growing up in Alabama in a small town and not many people had the Xband except the Kids' parents that had money to blow and coming from where I did not everyone didn't had money to spend like that.. So I started hanging out with the kid who had xBand on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and my God I was blown away.. I didn't wanna leave his house.. I was begging my mother to let me spend the night and she did and I fell in love with xBand.. Great times as a kid growing up in Alabama..
"There was no one for a year"
I feel his pain. I was so excited for xband but I had to call into Watertown to play with 1 person.
Oh man, I have the SNES keyboard and it's in great condition. Didn't realize it included the firmware update. So cool. I just connected it to my Xband and it still works. Great vid man.
You have the Xband keyboard? Dude, there is one up on ebay right now for $1300.
As a Brazillian, i loved Othmer talking about the Tectoy guys bringing the "mega net" to Brazil, those guys are legendary. Thank you Othmer!
WOW! This was phenomenal. I'd gladly buy this on dvd/bluray and put it on my shelf. I could never convince my parents to let me get an XBAND, and I always knew I was missing out. Thanks for making this, and thanks to everyone involved with XBAND.
Thanks a lot! This one was definitely a labor of love.
Who knew that Shooter McGavin was so good at game development.
Well all those pieces of shit he ate for breakfast gave him the energy to do so.
YOOO CAN DOO IT!!!
Incredible documentary dude.
I got tears in my eyes. I miss those days real bad.
This thing brought hundreds of hours of pure bliss to people back then and was so ahead of its time.
Thank you for the video, WWG.
And thank you to everyone who participated and built this crazy piece of tech.
Thanks so much! XBAND was really magical for those of us that got to experience it. I loved XBAND as a teenager and really wanted to do it justice. It's been really heartwarming to see people share their XBAND stories in the comments here and on twitter. It's also been fun seeing people who never heard of it be blown away by XBAND.
I really hope this video gets some traction, not for me, but so that XBAND and the people behind it can finally get the recognition that they truly deserved. These guys built the future.
Being from the UK I didnt even know this existed, but it is truly amazing what those guys did and agree that online gaming wouldnt be what it is today without them. Bravo chaps!
I wonder if the Dreamcast would have had the modem if this hadn't already laid the groundwork?
I was a beta tester on the ps2 network before they released that to the public... This is much cooler
I loved the PS2 network. I played the shit out of Final Fantasy XIV. I felt like the coolest kid on the block with my USB keyboard lol. For real though.. I gave 800+ hours of my life to that damn game.
Yeah, the ads were a big problem. I remember seeing those ads in magazines and having no idea what the product did because I really didn't know what the internet was until my family got our first computer in 96.
Great video.
300 dislikes!? Wow. For me, this is one of the greatest gaming videos I have seen. It was well produced, informative, exciting and fun. Screw the people who downvote this. I was entertained and I learned stuff I never knew. Really !!#%! well done, guys.
Thanks!
I guess they probably disliked the video, because they were probably jealous of not owning or growing up with it. XD
As a CS major it was really great to hear how they overcame all these technical challenges.
I remember telling dad about it. He was actually interested! Holy smokes. We got it and I remember him playing NHL 95 (later 96) and Madden 96 til the wee hours of the morning.
We could message, chat, or even play a secret pong game. It was amazing. It wasn't until Dreamcast that we got to play like that again on a console. I was Mork on Genesis Xband.
I was undefeated on NHL95 on Xband 😂
Hey man I just wanted to let you know I truly appreciate what you do. You can tell it’s a true work of passion. I was a console gamer when I was younger and drifted over to PC during high school, in my adult years (now 34) I’ve returned to Xbox One X and PS4 Pro after growing tired of constantly sinking cash into new GPU’s, CPU’s, etc. I spent a decent amount on a nice LG OLED, both consoles and a high end Denon/Rotel 11 channel Dolby Atmos home theater and with the exception of the TV I’m future proofed for quite sometime with HDMI 2.1 being upgraded via firmware for my AVR. Anyways, I spent 4 years in the Army with 18 months in Iraq and suffered from pretty intense PTSD and became completely anti social. Gaming allowed me to re connect with a lot of my battle buddies and friends in the comfort of my own home and this was a small stepping stone to the relatively normal life I live today. It’s people like you who preserve the history of where today’s games come from that pave the way for tomorrow.
Thanks for the kind words. I've been very fortunate to find an audience that enjoys gaming's history as much as I do. But mostly thanks for sharing your story and for your service.
It's awesome to see people working to revive this server. Truly amazing!
REALLY well done video, man. Great work!
Thanks man! I'm actually just out grabbing some food to bring back and watch your Genesis in 1990 video. Small world!
Great memories. I'm honored and proud to be a part of that gaming history. I still have all my modems and keyboard and some extra modems cuz i bought that 6 pack of modems. I tried to get my friends to play. I played on the SNES as Undertaker-COTN and mainly played Madden 95 because I rarely lost. I won the big xband Madden 95 tournament they held. I also got to test WeaponLord before it came out.
Wow! This is one impressive video. The pacing is impeccable. The interviews are amazing and I’m seriously in awe of your editing. Definitely worthy of a commercial release. This video was worth the wait. Congratulations
Hey Tim! Glad you liked it, man. It was a lot of work but really rewarding. I'm really glad I saw this one through to the end.
Great documentary. Definitely one of the best, most interesting, and most influential console peripherals in video game history, and I'm grateful that it existed.
These men were true heroes. This is so inspiring!
This is video is amazing! You went so in-depth that it reminded me of the Gaming Historian's documentary on Tetris! I had never even heard of the X-Band, and it sounds really, really cool - just way too far ahead of it's time. Hope this video gets a lot of attention, it definitely deserves it. Great editing, great story, & great presentation. Looking forward to the next one!
I figured I was the only one that really remembered x-band. Glad to hear someone is trying to bring it back! And I love the enthusiasm of these engineers.
I remember "The SEGA Channel" on Time Warner Cable back in the day. Never heard of XBAND but it's cool to know it was a thing just the same.
If these guys wanted to make a newer ip based X-Band and fund it on Kickstarter I'd back it in a heart beat.
there are easier ways to play online 16 bit games now...this is too obsolete in our days to even be considered.
There are definitely easy ways to do it through emulation but there are people that prefer to play on original hardware. Nothing really out there for that.
@@lajeandom Yes, but there are people who go out of their way to play games online with original hardware. It would be niche for sure but I think the market is there.
@@WrestlingWithGaming Playing on original hardware is good for couch gaming with your friends or in solo but in a multiplayer online environment, I think it's just a big waste of time and energy. Even the Switch has an online coop mode included for its NES and SNES games, but it's still emulation...you can even have a snes switch controller lol I tried to play with friends and it was really good. Runs almost flawless.
I grew up during the 90s and I'm sad hat a lot of this stuff that looks so good was stuff I never really heard of at the time. The first time I heard about Xband was literally watching this video. I am 35 years old. Maybe it was just people who were into tech who heard of it and who read the tech magazines of the time, but still it feels so strange.
I think the take home message with Xband along with a lot of things is that while video stores had tons of business, people were just there to rent games. They didn't think about playing games overthe Internet. Multiplayer back then was 2 controllers and a television. I heard of Sega Channel around the mid 90s but even that was a limited market and I didn't know anything about multiplayer even if they had it.
Basically you had to be on television to have a good chance of reaching a general audience. Advertising to video rentals and magazine wasn't ever going to produce more than a niche crowd. I know that if I saw commercials for it I would've all but demanded it. Sadly, I was one of the people who wasn't reached on the service, and since I never once heard of Xband except for maybe in passing as it related to Sega Channel (I saw one video on Sega Channel where I might remember it being mentioned) that was probably what it was, simply enough people didn't know about it.
GWS Same I’m 36 and never heard of this and it would have blown my mind back then. I didn’t get into online gaming until Delta Force 50 man death matches over dial up on PC. Think I was 16 or 17 at the time.
If you were 5 to 10 years older, you may have been old enough to care when xband came out.
As long as you went to your local video game store often, you would of ran into this. That’s how I found it when it was released. It wasn’t that expensive and back then between BBSes and AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe and Genie. Of coarse the next step was Video Games over Dial Up. And YES there was Internet in 94, I signed up to my first dialup ISP around that time.
- “I think the music that he created holds up really well.”
- early 90s house music starts to play.
Imagine if this had lived long enough to make it to the N64. Online Pokémon Stadium, anyone?
SMASH BROS!!
There where Japanese exclusive online stuff during that time. I dont know about pokemon stadium but 2ed gen pokemon did have some online stuff in it.
Goldeneye64
Project 64 with netplay exists, if you're desperate to do multiplayer Pokemon Stadium! Not quite the same, sure, but it does work!
@@LumocolorARTnr1319 Goldeneye would of sold a lot of units.
This video is top notch. One of the best videogame documentaries on RUclips for sure. I was at the height of my gaming habit around 93-94 but I actually never heard of this service....I recall some of those print ads....but I had no clue what it was. I’m sharing this.
Thanks so much!
Yea I was an mplayer junkie though!! Mainly nascar and ATF gold flight sims. The Janes series. Ugh the feels.
These guys have all my props for creating online gaming.
This was amazingly more interesting than I thought it'd be. I didn't realize how long I'd been watching until it was over.
Glad to hear it. I was a little worried when I was working on this project and started to realize how long the video would be lol. But I also thought it was really important not to cut corners and give these guys the time to tell their story,
Steve Perlman pioneered online streaming with OnLive, I was a beta tester for years. I miss that service!
Onlive sucked because as its users found out you don't actually own the games. And the latency was awful
SentsuizanXS I used it for years and never experience an issue both on PC and the micro -console. Maybe your internet wasn't very good?
The Xband dashboard has better techno music than techno music.
🤣😂😂🤣
Its got a very strong early Prodigy vibe. if you dig it, check out their album Experience. sounds very much like it could be a few extra tracks on that album.
Blasphemy!! Techno is the shit. One of Detroit's best exports.
Totally stumbled onto this via Twitter. Great job! I had no idea there was like this in the mid-late 90s. I feel like telling the story of Xband was sort of a justice to its creators. Honestly, it does seem like the whole concept was just "too new" for us back in the day. You can tell everyone that worked on it had passion for that little modem! Just the way that they talked about it!
It's also good to know that humans online have not changed at all since 1994 with the whole being rude on the internet thing. 25 years and we're still screaming at each other!
Great job though! Awesome little documentary!
Thanks for checking it out! The developers are truly awesome and passionate people. They gave me 18 hours worth of interviews and helped out with follow up questions and assets. Tommy was also a HUGE help as he is the one that got me in touch with developers and also answered a million questions. He's another great, passionate, guy.
Getting to work on this was a real privilege. 14 year old me would've been so stoked that I got to talk to the people behind XBAND. Thanks for giving a little unknown RUclips channel a shot today. I appreciate it 😊
It was way too far ahead of it's time, by about 8 years, if they would have patented the the and then sold it to the console makers for them to put it in the console everything would have been different. But he'll I was 18 in 1995, and knew nothing about it. I was just getting into the internet, and my parent still had a realistic answering machine with tapes. And antenna tv.
It was really fun to be apart of it too
Nostalgia should be categorized as a Schedule I drug. When you announced that you were about to show the revived network, I teared up hard.
What a wonderful documentary. Excellently researched, and well-delivered with a clear point of view; thoughtful and touching, as well.
You can always tell when a content creator truly has a passion for the content they put out. I love your documentaries bro. You bring back that nostalgia from a more primitive but creative time in gaming. I thank you for that.
Yup. I've been playing video games since 1985 and when I saw some friends play online, against real people, at the same time, it was like magic. It was like discovering video games all over again.
This is a definitive documentary. Well done. I loved it.
Im glad someone finally made a documentary on Xband.
And here I was, thinking that I knew everything about Retro Gaming. Thank you for this fantastic documentary!
XBAND, is like the Commodore Amiga of Online Gaming...
Vanessa Palmer so much this!
Indeed
How so? O_o
😂😂😂 First time I fever heard something like that.
Maybe in the US, in Europe the Amiga was hugely successful and lasted many years.
I had no idea I missed out on this during my childhood. Very cool piece of mostly forgotten history.
this is the most 1990s thing you will ever see
This is hands down one of the best gaming RUclips videos or videos in general I have ever watched! Amazing content!
Thanks man, I appreciate the kind words and taking the time to watch. I know there's a lot of options when it comes to gaming channels so again, I really appreciate it.
Dude love it! As a kid during this time mannnnnn we never dreamed about anything like that! It’s hard now to believe we live today without Xbox live psn network, etc.
Same
Had no idea this existed thank you for documenting this important piece of video game history
Thanks for watching
This was well worth the wait. This is another great documentary. I really appreciate the work you put into this, from the interviews, research, and even the demo. I'm glad you were able to get the original Xband creators in the video. I look forward to your next video (even if it's 9 months from now)! PS: This should video should be shown in computer history classes!
Thanks! I appreciate the kind words, I really do. I plan on starting to upload regularly again now that this beast is done. And I say beast with love. Putting this together was a lot of hard work but also a privilege.
This is a really great and important piece on gaming history that should never be forgotten.
Thank you for documenting this.
I watched every minute and as a programmer this was well done.
Good job man keep it up.
Thanks so much. This one was definitely a labor of love.
Gosh I've watched this episode so many times, and every time I always love how it starts with Kurt Loder and an MTV E3 report. Brilliant episode, all of it.
Thanks so much!
Dude you got me interested in a thing that i never heard before and I consider myself a hardcore gamer. I watched the whole thing and this is awesome, you gained a subscriber.
But not only the documentary was awesome but reading the comments of people who actually played with xband, it brings me memories of my first experiences with online gaming (2002 to 2009) and the social interaction with people interested in the same games, communities and the whole social aspect. I dunno, but there is something so charming about the early years of online gaming in a persons life, before the social networking aspect was taken for granted... I have fond memories of Quake 3, Gunbound, Gunz, AoE2, Counter Strike 1.6, Jedi Academy... Games that I played at my local ciber cafe... Damn nostalgia hits hard and i'm not even from the US nor old enough to have experienced this era of gaming in its prime, but that feeling of getting online gaming for the first time is something so cherished and trascendental on every gamers life. That "Impressive" in Quake, "Bomb has been planted" from cs or grtting off the boat and taking the first steps in Darkshore in WoW are specials moments, discovering worlds while sharing with other people is something amazing, its just taken too much from granted nowadays.
I'm Jonathan from the video. Yes, it was an amazing time back then in the 90s. Heck, your best gaming competition was still going down to your local arcade.
XBAND was amazing, I miss those days. I played a ton of MK2 on the Genesis Xband, they allowed me to beta test the super Nintendo version.
This deserves way for views, one of the best gaming documentaries I’ve ever seen
Thanks so much.
Great production quality, dude. And the XBAND dev team seems like a good bunch of guys.
Thanks. Yeah man, the XBAND guys were really awesome.
I'm 38, always considered myself a gamer. Had a C64, master system, master system 2, megadrive, nes, snes, playstation, dreamcast, xbox, xbox 360 and xbox one. My mind is blown that I didn't see this. I used gameshark, maybe I thought this was the same. But either way, this is incredible and there needs to be more acknowledgement from modern devs to this tech. This is the godfather on online gaming. I think it was just ahead of it's time, much like Dreamcast.
This is amazing! This should win a WEBBIE! Outstanding work!