Xband 2.0 Project

[Xranger60]

Newest members Krazystyle83 and Lagunacloud have undertaken a new project: to remake Xband, faithful to the original experience, on the PC. The games will be the original roms, playing on emulators, and the team aims to recreate the entire experience, complete with X-mail, Bandwidth and Xband news newsletters, stats, and more.

They've recently posted a new video on youtube showing some early efforts to manipulate the Mario Kart SNES rom. There's also a very preliminary screenshot to show off the client. Exciting!

A thread has been created and stickied to follow the dev team's progress here.

Meanwhile, for those wondering about the effort to bring the original Xband hardware alive, Warp is continuing to learn more about the Xband, as it is a massive undertaking.

Truly a welcome development for Xband fans longing to play again.

[segasaturndude]

i wonder if they will ever be able toget the servers going for the sega genesis and snes?

[Xranger60]

That's still the overarching goal. Warp has been working to try to revive the Xband hardware in some way, and it's been a huge undertaking, so the hope is that working directly with Genesis/SNES assembly code in a project like this may yield more understanding of the original hardware (eventually). At least in the meantime we'd have Xband remade as a matching service to play the games we love, complete with all of the Xband features, and no need for a phone line.

Matter of fact, patching the roms on the PC has its own benefits: There could be support for games that were never even supported by the Xband service!

[john2kx]

thanks for the heads up (via email).. I'll be keeping my eye on this.. It almost sounds too good to be true..

[Xranger60]

It's something we're really excited about over here, and we're glad to see ya back on the boards! We'd really like to have an active discussion involving former Xbanders as well as those who never got to experience the original.

[Lagunacloud]

Everything needs to be done one step at a time, Krazy and I have been working together for many years now in the IT field, and the one thing that is the biggest project killer, is the injecting of things to do on top of the main goal.

In the interest of the gamers, I for one will not let this project die. So as things stand we have our eyes set on our client that we're building.

Down the road the realms of possibility are endless.

[Xranger60]

Everything needs to be done one step at a time, Krazy and I have been working together for many years now in the IT field, and the one thing that is the biggest project killer, is the injecting of things to do on top of the main goal.

In the interest of the gamers, I for one will not let this project die. So as things stand we have our eyes set on our client that we're building.

Down the road the realms of possibility are endless.

I agree. The Xband 2.0 is a task in and of itself that's easier than reviving Xband hardware, but not trivial. I also think the benefits from Xband 2.0 are really substantial, and on its own, is a project that has a ton of worth. One thing at a time, and the aim is definitely to have Xband 2.0 successful.

[segasaturndude]

do you guys think the sega geneis and snes will be popular again once we get their xband servers goin again?

[Warp2063]

I don't know if they'll ever be "popular" again... I figure that at most we'd be able to scrounge up a few hundred people who still have the hardware and any interest in playing. Even then, I don't think there will ever be a very large community for such a small selection of old games again. XBand 2.0 stands a much better chance of being used by more people now than would be able to play using the old hardware.

[Xranger60]

I don't know if they'll ever be "popular" again... I figure that at most we'd be able to scrounge up a few hundred people who still have the hardware and any interest in playing. Even then, I don't think there will ever be a very large community for such a small selection of old games again. XBand 2.0 stands a much better chance of being used by more people now than would be able to play using the old hardware.

Again, totally agreed. One of the positives about creating Xband 2.0 is that old gamers and new ones alike will be able to play. There's only a very small subset of gamers that have the old modems and even assuming we can get them to work, besides maybe a short burst in Ebay pickups, there wouldn't be any long term huge shifts to the SNES and Genesis to play with old modems.

[segasaturndude]

well as soon as my dad gets his check in im gonna buy a sega genesis, and the xband modem for it, because like i said before once we get it running they will go fast on ebay.

[lazyhoboguy]

Well this sounds pretty awesome. Personally I have little interest in playing old games online through an emulator acting like xband. Since aren't there already lots of other emulators out there that let you play roms online with people? But if this could make it so you could play these old games on stuff like the Super Nintendo with the original console, that would blow my mind and make me really happy.

[Xranger60]

Well the advantage of something like this is that Wins/losses are tracked, there will be profiles, avatars, mail interface, and player matching, so you'll never have to hop on the forums to find someone to play... just press the challenge button and Xband does the work for you.