{"id":272,"date":"2007-02-19T14:36:34","date_gmt":"2007-02-19T19:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=272"},"modified":"2014-05-28T10:15:15","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T15:15:15","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-baton-teleplay-modem-for-nes-and-genesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/272\/retro-scan-of-the-week-baton-teleplay-modem-for-nes-and-genesis","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">Retro Scan of the Week:<\/span> Baton TelePlay Modem for NES and Genesis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"caption\"><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/teleplay_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/teleplay_small.jpg\" alt=\"Baton Teleplay Modem Advertisement\" class=\"centered\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption_text\">When I first saw this ad in EGM around 1992-93, I wanted one of these modems <em>so bad<\/em>.  I was hugely into BBSes and computer telecommunications at the time, and the thought of using one on a console to play games with friends was awesome.  My best friend called my BBS, and my imagination went wild thinking about all the fun we could have with a pair of these modems.  That is, assuming the games were good.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, I convinced my mom to call Baton (being a about 11 or 12 years old then) to see if she could order one, but by that time either the phone number was already disconnected, or she didn&#8217;t get an answer.  Or maybe she did talk to somebody &#8212; my memory&#8217;s fuzzy on that point.  I was hugely disappointed.  Crushed.  The Teleplay modems never showed up in stores and I never heard anything about them again.<\/p>\n<p>I did get excited when Xband modems came out some years later (for the SNES and Genesis), but I found the experience with their service somewhat lacking.  I wanted a direct player-to-player connection with no game broker or middle man.<\/p>\n<p>For more on the story behind the Baton Teleplay modem, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lostlevels.org\/200310\/200310-baton.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Frank Cifaldi&#8217;s investigative piece<\/a> at Lost Levels Online.  I&#8217;m really glad he took the time to research the company so that their story isn&#8217;t completely lost to history.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, I forgot to document the issue number this ad appeared in when I scanned it some time ago.<\/p>\n<p><small><em>If you use this image on your site, please support &#8220;Retro Scan of the Week&#8221; by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry.  Thanks.<\/em><\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I first saw this ad in EGM around 1992-93, I wanted one of these modems so bad. I was hugely into BBSes and computer telecommunications at the time, and the thought of using one on a console to play games with friends was awesome. My best friend called my BBS, and my imagination went [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,22,26],"tags":[313,150,295,523,265,124,846,60],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-nes-famicom","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","tag-313","tag-advertisement","tag-egm","tag-genesis","tag-modem","tag-nes","tag-online-gaming","tag-retro-scan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}