PlayCable

Last updated
PlayCable
PlayCable wordmark.svg
Developer Mattel, General Instrument
TypeOnline service
Launch date1980;44 years ago (1980)
Discontinued1984
Platform(s) Intellivision
StatusDissolved

PlayCable was an online service introduced in 1980 that allowed local cable television system operators to send games for the Intellivision over cable wires alongside normal television signals. Through the service, subscribers would use a device, called the PlayCable adapter, to download the games for play on their Intellivision. It was the first service that allowed users to download games for play on a video game console. PlayCable was not widely adopted, due in part to high costs for users and operators, as well as limitations of the PlayCable adapter. The service was discontinued in 1984. [1]

Contents

History

PlayCable was developed as a joint venture between Mattel and General Instrument. [2] The PlayCable service was deep in development even before the Intellivision was widely released. In 1979, tests of the service were announced for several cities, including Moline, Illinois, Jackson, Mississippi and Boise, Idaho. [3] The service was officially launched in 1981. [4] Subscriptions were available for a monthly fee, allowing users access to a selection of games through cable television providers that supported the service. [2] Up to 20 titles were available each month. [5] Former professional baseball player Mickey Mantle appeared in commercials for the service. [6] According to a CED Magazine article, the service was available in thirteen cities in 1981 including Fayetteville, N.Y. However, in spring 1983 the available market totalled 650,000 households. The less than 3% subscription rate was still higher than the rate of Intellivision sales in markets where PlayCable was not available, [2] and Intellivision Productions reports that PlayCable was popular where available. [7] Cable operators complained about the high cost of the computer needed to run the service as well as the cost of the in-home PlayCable adapters; the adapters proved to be inadequate to run the larger Intellivision games being produced. [2] [7] In addition, Mattel Electronics was losing millions of dollars due to the video game industry crash of 1983 and stopped all new hardware development in August that year. Initial estimates by Mattel projected that the service would have 1 million subscribers within five years, [2] however PlayCable was discontinued in 1984, three years after it was introduced.

Implementation and limitations

The PlayCable channel was broadcast from a PDP-11 minicomputer located at the subscriber's cable company using dedicated frequencies within the FM Band of the cable line. [8] A PlayCable adapter peripheral would be inserted into the cartridge slot of the Intellivision Master Component and connected to the cable line. This adapter contained an FM radio receiver, digital interface, 512 word firmware ROM and 8K of RAM for game storage. [9] When turned on, the firmware within the PlayCable adapter tuned its FM receiver to the PlayCable catalog channel, always broadcast at 107.7 MHz, [9] and downloaded a program to the adapter's RAM. This program would display a menu of 15 available titles that could be played. The selection of games changed at the start of each month, and after October 1982 was increased to 20 titles. Users chose a title to play using the Intellivision controller keypad. Having chosen a game, the menu program would request that the adapter firmware re-tune the receiver to the channel broadcasting the selected title and wait for the start of its code. Once the title was found in the data stream and downloaded to the adapter's internal memory, control was passed to the game, starting play. [2] Depending on the size of the game, the entire loading process took an average of between 10 and 20 seconds. [9]

The 8K of memory inside PlayCable adapters proved to be insufficient for the larger games that Mattel started to release in 1983. [2] [5] To this point PlayCable was compatible with 90% of Mattel's catalogue of Intellivision titles, with only Chess and three Intellivoice games proving problematic. Compatibility fell with the introduction of 12K and 16K titles, such as Pinball and Bump N Jump, and the release of games dependent on the Intellivision Entertainment Computer System (ECS). Despite this, 47 titles in the full 61 game Mattel catalogue were compatible with PlayCable when Mattel Electronics closed its Intellivision business in early 1984. [9] Therefore, the fact that PlayCable was restricted to first party titles, effectively blocking 33 compatible third party games, had a larger impact on the potential catalogue of games the service could have offered.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari 5200</span> Home video game console

The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600 at the time of the 5200's launch. Created to compete with Mattel's Intellivision, the 5200 wound up a direct competitor of ColecoVision shortly after its release. While the Coleco system shipped with the first home version of Nintendo's Donkey Kong, the 5200 included the 1978 arcade game Super Breakout which had already appeared on the Atari 8-bit family and Atari VCS in 1979 and 1981 respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cable television</span> Television content transmitted via signals on coaxial cable

Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadcast television, in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves and received by a television antenna attached to the television; or satellite television, in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth, and received by a satellite dish antenna on the roof. FM radio programming, high-speed Internet, telephone services, and similar non-television services may also be provided through these cables. Analog television was standard in the 20th century, but since the 2000s, cable systems have been upgraded to digital cable operation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Game Boy Advance</span> Handheld game console by Nintendo

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, 2001, and in mainland China as iQue Game Boy Advance on June 8, 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intellivision</span> 1980s home video game console

The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984, Mattel sold its video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors, eventually becoming INTV Corporation. Game development ran from 1978 to 1990, when the Intellivision was discontinued. From 1980 to 1983, more than 3.75 million consoles were sold. As per Intellivision Entertainment the final tally through 1990 is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 million consoles sold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mattel Aquarius</span> 1983 home computer

Aquarius is a home computer designed by Radofin and released by Mattel Electronics in 1983. Based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor, the system has a rubber chiclet keyboard, 4K of RAM, and a subset of Microsoft BASIC in ROM. It connects to a television set for audiovisual output, and uses a cassette tape recorder for secondary data storage. A limited number of peripherals, such as a 40-column thermal printer, a 4-color printer/plotter, and a 300 baud modem, were released. The Aquarius was discontinued in October 1983, only a few months after it was launched.

GameLine was a dialup game distribution service for the Atari 2600, developed and operated by Control Video Corporation. Subscribers could install the proprietary modem and storage cartridge in their home game console, accessing the GameLine service to download games over a telephone line. GameLine had an exclusive selection of games, and its pioneering business model eventually gave rise to America Online. Despite being ahead of its time, it wasn't very popular, possibly due to its price of $60 for the hardware, $15 for the membership fee, and $1 per game, which you could only keep for a week.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yamaha YM2413</span> FM synthesis sound chip by Yamaha

The YM2413, a.k.a. OPLL, is a cost-reduced FM synthesis sound chip manufactured by Yamaha Corporation and based on their YM3812 (OPL2).

Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sega Channel</span> Online game service for the Sega Genesis

The Sega Channel is a discontinued online game service developed by Sega for the Sega Genesis video game console, serving as a content delivery system. Launched on December 14, 1994, the Sega Channel was provided to the public by TCI and Time Warner Cable through cable television services by way of coaxial cable. It was a pay to play service, through which customers could access Genesis games online, play game demos, and get cheat codes. Lasting until July 31, 1998, the Sega Channel operated three years after the release of Sega's next generation console, the Sega Saturn. Though criticized for its poorly timed launch and high subscription fee, the Sega Channel has been praised for its innovations in downloadable content and impact on online game services.

<i>Intellivision Lives!</i> Video game compilation

Intellivision Lives! is a compilation of over 60 Intellivision video games, originally produced by Mattel Electronics and INTV Corporation between 1978 and 1990. Using original game code and software emulation, Intellivision Productions released the compilation on a Windows and Macintosh hybrid CD-ROM in December 1998. Additional versions were then released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube by Crave Entertainment. In 2010, Virtual Play Games released a Nintendo DS version.

<i>Intellivision World Series Baseball</i> 1983 video game

Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball is a baseball video game (1983) designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, and published by Mattel for the Intellivision Entertainment Computer System. IWSB was one of the first sports video games to use multiple camera angles and present a three-dimensional perspective. It was also the first statistics-based baseball simulation game on a video game console; all prior console baseball games were arcade-style recreations of the sport.

<i>Shark! Shark!</i> 1982 video game

Shark! Shark! is an Intellivision game originally designed by Don Daglow, and with additional design and programming by Ji-Wen Tsao, one of the first female game programmers in the history of video games. The player is a fish who must eat smaller fishes in order to gain points and extra lives while avoiding enemies such as larger fishes, sharks, jellyfish, lobsters and crabs. After eating a certain number of fish, the player's fish grows in size and is thus able to eat a larger selection of fish. However, while the larger fish becomes a bit faster, he is less agile than the small fish and has a harder time avoiding enemies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intellivoice</span> Voice synthesizer adapter for the Intellivision video game system

The Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module, commonly abbreviated as Intellivoice, is an adapter for the Intellivision, Mattel's home video game console, that utilizes a voice synthesizer to generate audible speech. The Intellivoice is a large, brown cartridge that plugs into the Intellivision's side-mounted cartridge slot; games specifically designed for the device can then be inserted into a slot provided on the right-hand side of the module.

The Entertainment Computer System (ECS) was an add-on peripheral for the Intellivision. It was Mattel Electronics' second attempt at creating a peripheral to upgrade the Intellivision into a home computer, and was rushed into production to appease the Federal Trade Commission after they began fining Mattel for false advertising following consumer complaints about the repeated delays in releasing the originally planned Intellivision Keyboard Component add-on. The ECS includes the Computer Module, Music Synthesizer, and additional hand controllers; each sold separately. Any Intellivision Master Component is compatible and a requirement to use the system. A second requirement is a cartridge plugged into the ECS, although any ECS or Intellivision cartridge will do; pressing anything on the Intellivision hand controllers will then bring up the three-option menu of BASIC, CARTRIDGE or MUSIC.

Various accessories for the PlayStation 3 video game console have been produced by Sony and third-party companies. These include controllers, audio and video input devices like microphones, video cameras, and cables for better sound and picture quality.

This is a list of video game accessories that have been released for the Game Boy handheld console and its successors. Accessories add functionality that the console would otherwise not have.

Commodore 64 disk/tape emulation and data transfer comprises hardware and software for Commodore 64 disk & tape emulation and for data transfer between either Commodore 64 (C64), Commodore (1541) disk drive or Commodore tape deck and newer computers.

Online console gaming involves connecting a console to a network over the Internet for services. Through this connection, it provides users the ability to play games with other users online, in addition to other online services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M Network</span> Video game division of Mattel

M Network was a video game division of Mattel that, in the 1980s, produced games in cartridge format for the Atari 2600 video game system.

References

  1. ↑ Harrigan, Kathryn Rudie (2003). Ventures, Alliances, and Corporate Strategy. Beard Books. p. 169.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Schley, Stewart. "Look ma, no cartridge!". CED Magazine. Advantage Business Media. Archived from the original on 2013-11-29. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
  3. ↑ Fraser, C. Gerald (May 19, 1979). "Cable-TV System to Enable Viewers to Play Games; ABC-TV Leads Networks In Daytime Emmy Awards". New York Times.
  4. ↑ "No. 9 Games by Wire". Next Generation . No. 29. Imagine Media. May 1997. p. 26.
  5. 1 2 Langshaw, Mark. "The History Of Online Console Gaming". Digital Spy . Hearst Magazines UK.
  6. ↑ Connelly, Sherilyn (August 30, 2011). "TV Ads We Can't Forget: Mickey Mantle Goes to Bat for Archaic Gaming Service Called PlayCable". SF Weekly. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
  7. 1 2 "Intellivision PlayCable". Intellivision Lives. Archived from the original on 2002-02-12.
  8. ↑ Weinstein, Stephen B. (1986). Getting the picture: a guide to CATV and the new electronic media. IEEE Press. p.  92. ISBN   0879421975.
  9. 1 2 3 4 PlayCable - A Technical Summary. September 18, 2019. Retrieved January 23, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.