Page 20 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #41 FREE Edition

ROM data was stored in the unit’s 8 KB memory capacity and could be played in perpetuity or until overwritten by newer content.
Concurrent with the release of
the Intellivision itself, testing of PlayCable’s technology began in 1979 in several major mid-western cities, but wasn’t made available for widespread consumer adoption until its ‘81 North American launch. Mattel initially aimed to enroll over a million U.S. PlayCable service subscribers within its first five years. While the PlayCable enjoyed a semblance of success
in select markets, it was adopted by less than three percent of available Intellivision households, thus leading to the service’s premature cancellation in 1983. Nonetheless, the Intellivision PlayCable became the earliest permutation of what would lead to future online gaming subscription and download services like Xbox Live, the PlayStation Store, and Nintendo’s eShop.
Atari GameLine (1983 - 1984)
By 1982, Atari had successfully shipped over 15 million 2600 console units, vastly outselling all other video game hardware competitors. So, it seemed only logical that the 2600 would serve as a suitable proving ground for another attempt
at harnessing the potential
for budding online service technologies. Following in Mattel’s footsteps, Atari pursued a similar game downloading methodology with their GameLine service in 1983. Cable TV technology pioneer William von Meister had proposed creating a type of music transmittal service with cable providers via modem technology he had previously acquired, but when those providers backed
out due to legal concerns, von Meister decided to repurpose the technology for use with the Atari 2600.
The GameLine service was
distributed and operated by Control Video Corporation (CVC). The GameLine Master Module device resembled an over-sized, silver Atari cartridge and acted
as the interface between the 2600 console and CVC server. Retailing for $60, Master Module housed a 1,200 Bps modem and contained
8 KB of internal memory. The module was connected to standard phone jacks with a telephone cable.
For a membership fee and a per- game fee, users could download third-party Atari games and play them for a limited amount of
time and/or set number of plays. While Imagic was the largest of these aforementioned publishers, CVC encountered pushbacks
when attempting to obtain licensing agreements with other big names like Parker Brothers and Activision. CVC planned to broaden GameLine’s services by including sports scores, news, and even an early form of electronic
mail, but as with many smaller video game companies in 1983, the industry-wide crash brought about the end of CVC before many of these bigger ideas came to fruition. The GameLine service was subsequently discontinued in 1984.
From the ashes of CVC would rise a company called Quantum Computer Services (we’ll get to them in a moment) and, perhaps most notably, America Online (AOL) several years later.
Commodore 64/128 QuantumLink (Q-Link) (1985 - 1995)
In a time when personal computers were perceived as luxury items reserved for the very rich and tech-savvy, the advent
of the Commodore 64 re-wrote all the rules. With an MSRP of only $595 USD at its 1982 launch and a relatively easy to learn interface, the C64 would go on to become the best-selling single computer model of all time, according to the
20
OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #41