The Sega Saturn NetLink League

Lol I still have the Sega channel just for vanity now.. Back in the day man that thing was a monster Its sad it was canceled.. I remember like 2 weeks ago I was like I wonder what happens if I fire it up lol well the results where as I expected call the cable company signal blocked. I wish Sega would keep certain things alive such as net link browser and Sega channel. I wish I could pay Sega or the cable company to open its doors on those products to have them operational again.. I don't think they would cause its a "thing" of the past.. Sometimes some certain things in the past need to be brought back from the dead. I guess a good example of sega channel would be the wii shop channel.. But you have to pay per game down load instead of subscribing.

Reviving a crazy old thread, just curious if anyone has learned more about how the Sega Channel worked? I have one myself and would kill to have some bootleg way of making it work.

REVIVEDDDDD!!! 5 years later.. I've been researching the sega channel heavily the past few months. With the Saturn encryption finally being broken, I have high hopes that someone will figure out a way to dump roms onto the sega channel cart. Still scouring the net for developments...

Which encryption are you referring to? The CD copy protection scheme, or are you just referring to the NetLink (which wasn't an issue of encryption, but using older technology on newer systems).

I've never seen a Sega Channel in person, but from what I've read, everything was stored in the device's RAM, so was lost on power off. I don't know what its RAM capacity was.

It would be a neat novelty to get games running on it. I don't know how exactly it worked. I assume it was similar to a Video-on-demand service (when it came to game rentals).

I think I'm confused. Wasn't this Sega Channel Dreamcast? Or it was Mega Drive? I don't remember it being Saturn.

Rogue wrote:I think I'm confused. Wasn't this Sega Channel Dreamcast? Or it was Mega Drive? I don't remember it being Saturn.

Genesis/MegaDrive. I don't know the exact subscription method, but it would be provided over your cable TV line. You'd plug it into a special cartridge that you plugged into the top of your game system.

I used this device when it was active. Cousin of mine worked for a cable company at the time and had it Installed for his younger brother.

Is was like on demand before on demand. Basically the menu system was self explanatory. it let you select games that were then downloaded over cable and took a fairly decent amount of time to download. while it did this it would spit text at you about upcoming games. I still remember playing Body Count (pal game) for the first time on sega channel.

Anyway, yes if you reset the device you would lose the game. My guess is that it was basically a "Ram" cartridge.

Was unlimited downloads or use for a flat monthly fee.

Very cool stuff for the time