{"id":999,"date":"2013-09-02T09:50:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T14:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=999"},"modified":"2013-09-09T09:09:52","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T14:09:52","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-the-sega-channel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/999\/retro-scan-of-the-week-the-sega-channel","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Sega Channel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/segachannel_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/segachannel_small.jpg\" alt=\"Sega Genesis Sega Channel advertisement - 1995\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>&#8220;Get hooked in.&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Since its debut in late 1994, the Sega Channel remains one of the most fascinating footnotes of video game history.  Essentially, the system had two components: a hardware cartridge that a customer plugged into his or her Sega Genesis, and a premium subscription cable TV service (usually $14.95 a month) that provided a selection of games the customer could download.<\/p>\n<p>Games, when downloaded, were saved temporarily to DRAM in the cartridge (which lost its contents when the system was powered off), and the customer could download up to 50 games a month.  The service also provided news about video game releases in the form of text displayed on the screen.  The information transfer was one-way, however, so Sega Channel could not provide truly interactive online content.<\/p>\n<p>When news of the Sega Channel first hit, I called my local cable company as the ad suggests.  Unfortunately, we never received Sega Channel service in our area, so I didn&#8217;t get to try it out myself.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Electronic Gaming Monthly, September 1995, p.39 ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> Did you ever subscribe to Sega Channel?  Tell us about your experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Get hooked in.&#8221; Since its debut in late 1994, the Sega Channel remains one of the most fascinating footnotes of video game history. Essentially, the system had two components: a hardware cartridge that a customer plugged into his or her Sega Genesis, and a premium subscription cable TV service (usually $14.95 a month) that provided [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,27,26,9],"tags":[151,150,581,295,523,60,198,580],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","tag-151","tag-advertisement","tag-cable-modem","tag-egm","tag-genesis","tag-retro-scan","tag-sega","tag-sega-channel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","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=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}