By Brian Norman
Staff Writer, Puzzle Game Master

If you are under 25 years old, you may have never heard of Sega Channel. Hell, if you are over 25, you might not have either. I was lucky enough to have it for about 2 years when I was growing up and it brought me a lot of great times. It also helped me find a few great games to add the collection. Let’s take a look at this building block to online gaming as we know it.

Sega Channel was an important piece of gaming history. Although not the first service of its kind, Sega Channel garnered more success than any of its predecessors. In researching for this piece, I learned that before SC there was Atari’s GameLine and Intellivision’s PlayCable. Sega Channel was moderately successful, getting about 250,000 users. I see SC as a precursor to the Xbox Live Arcade and the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console.

Sega seemed to have a penchant for adding on to the Genesis system. The add-ons included the Sega CD, the 32X , the power base (a backwards converter for master system games) and the Sega channel of course. I really can’t think of another system around the time of Genesis to do anything like that. Even a game or two seemed to be set up like that, such as Sonic and Knuckles, with its lock-on technology. I liked the Sega CD to some extent, with classics like Dragon’s Lair and Sewer Shark (guilty pleasure), but the system also lead to many bad live action video games. The 32X was one of Sega’s big time flops, with very little developer support it was M.I.A. in no time. However, Sega Channel rocked, and I will lay it down for you as to why.

The service gave subscribers access to 50 games a month using a cable modem adapter for the Sega Genesis, and I loved it. It was like paying for five rentals per month but getting way more. At power up it would load a game menu that was categorized for sorting games by things like Wings N Wheels, Classics, The Think Tank, etc. The service also featured sneak peeks and demos of games that were not released yet, and Sega Channel exclusives like Golden Axe III — a great old school side scrolling beat em’ up — and Mega Man: Wiley Wars, which was a collection of the first three Mega Man games. Another great feature was the contests they would run on the service. The only one I can remember was for the 1996 Olympic Summer Games in Atlanta, where you competed for records in different events.

This trip down memory lane for me includes playing some great games, and some truly bad but hilarious to play games. I remember staying up way too late playing Time Killers with my friend Justin; it was a crappy fighting game where you could kill your opponent at the start of the round by decapitating them. I also remember yet another sub-par fighter called Primal Rage, the most basic of fighters but with crude/lame humor, like a giant ape pissing on a dinosaur, as if we don’t see that every day, I mean really. I see giant apes pissing on things constantly, but I don’t decide to feature it in a weak-ass fighting game. Sega Channel also brought me cool games like ShadowRun — not the awful bomb that dropped in 1997 — Gemfire (a strategy game like Risk set in medieval times) and Haunting Starring Polterguy. I’ll dive into that one another time because it deserves a story unto itself.

There were times when the service would lock up, and I would be calling the cable service at 1 in the morning getting them to reset transmission, and the 50 game lineup didn’t fully change every month, but all in all Sega Channel was an excellent service that gave gamers access to a variety of games and lead to some they may never have found before. Sadly, the Sega Channel only lasted four years, but I think it opened the door for the latest generation of online game marketplaces, and it will always hold a place in my gaming heart.

Front page photo from nintendoagemedia.com, Sega Channel Adaptor photo from vglounge.com, Sega Channel screen from wn.com, Sega Channel Sonic screen from okaygeek.com.