shadyspace
Banned
(all credit to this Cracked article for leading me down this wiki-hole)
Gameline was a specialized Atari 2600 cartridge put out by the Control Video Corporation that let users download games through a telephone connection. It had no monthly fee; it used a pay-per-game model of about a dollar per game. Games were able to be played 5 to 10 times before a user would be required to re-download and provide further payment. Free games were even provided on a user's birthday.
Now, the most interesting part of the Gameline story (beyond even it being a video game download service that debuted in the early 80s) is actually borne not of it's success, but it's failure. Before it became one of many victims of the 1983 video game crash, plans were in place for additional internet-like features to the Gameline: Stock quotes, headlines, e-mail, even rudimentary message boards. The Gameline was not around long enough for any of these services to be implemented.
Two years later however, the minds behind the Gameline debuted Quantum Link for the Commodore 64 and 128. This service offered everything the Gameline was meant to and more. Along with headlines and email, it added file sharing, online multiplayer games such as chess and poker. It even had instant messaging! It cost $9.95 a month and included an innovative GUI that was ahead of it's competition:
CVC (now named Quantum Computer Services) had licensed the online service PlayNet, of which they built Quantum Link from. In 1989, the people at QCS changed their company's moniker yet again. To America Online. Quantum Link was ported to IBM PCs where it became the first version of AOL. The very service so many of us here today used to connect to the Internet for the first time.
PlayNet code could still be found in AOL software as recently as 2005.
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameLine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayNET
Gameline was a specialized Atari 2600 cartridge put out by the Control Video Corporation that let users download games through a telephone connection. It had no monthly fee; it used a pay-per-game model of about a dollar per game. Games were able to be played 5 to 10 times before a user would be required to re-download and provide further payment. Free games were even provided on a user's birthday.
Now, the most interesting part of the Gameline story (beyond even it being a video game download service that debuted in the early 80s) is actually borne not of it's success, but it's failure. Before it became one of many victims of the 1983 video game crash, plans were in place for additional internet-like features to the Gameline: Stock quotes, headlines, e-mail, even rudimentary message boards. The Gameline was not around long enough for any of these services to be implemented.
Two years later however, the minds behind the Gameline debuted Quantum Link for the Commodore 64 and 128. This service offered everything the Gameline was meant to and more. Along with headlines and email, it added file sharing, online multiplayer games such as chess and poker. It even had instant messaging! It cost $9.95 a month and included an innovative GUI that was ahead of it's competition:
CVC (now named Quantum Computer Services) had licensed the online service PlayNet, of which they built Quantum Link from. In 1989, the people at QCS changed their company's moniker yet again. To America Online. Quantum Link was ported to IBM PCs where it became the first version of AOL. The very service so many of us here today used to connect to the Internet for the first time.
PlayNet code could still be found in AOL software as recently as 2005.
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameLine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayNET
