Full Sega Channel assets and literature released!

[Greg2600]

The Secrets of Sega Channel: VGHF recovers over 100 Sega Channel ROMs (and more) | Video Game History Foundation
https://gamehistory.org/segachannel/
Our project to preserve the history of Sega Channel — including over 100 new Sega Channel ROMs.

Amazing how much of the Sega Channel finds were due to a chance encounter at GDC. A very worthwhile project. Frankly I think the information gathered by former Channel executive Michael Shorrock a lot more interesting than the roms. "Express Games," the selected successor to the Channel, was previously unknown. I'd also like to see how they were delivering web content to the Genesis of all things. Granted I suspect much of that may have become moot once the Saturn Net Link came into being.

[Steve W]

I love hearing about things like this. We know a lot about the Super Famicom Satellaview, but I've heard hardly anything about the background of the Sega Channel. It's a shame that they couldn't have gotten the service up before 1994, when all the next generation consoles were hitting the market. I wonder how it would have done if it had hit around 1991 or 1992, when it was all about 16-bit machines.

[Greg2600]

I love hearing about things like this. We know a lot about the Super Famicom Satellaview, but I've heard hardly anything about the background of the Sega Channel. It's a shame that they couldn't have gotten the service up before 1994, when all the next generation consoles were hitting the market. I wonder how it would have done if it had hit around 1991 or 1992, when it was all about 16-bit machines.

I don't know how successful it could have ever been, frankly, relying on the cable infrastructure of the day. It was almost entirely decentralized, and you wouldn't see the majority of the smaller independents gobbled up by Comcast, Time Warner, ATT, Charter, TCI, etc. until the latter half of the 90's. At which point, SEGA had shifted towards dial up, and Microsoft came in and skipped that for broadband. Trying to get a channel distributed to all those smaller entities was pretty difficult back then. I found the X-Band modem service back then to have far more potential for gamers.