XBAND

File:X-band logo.gif

XBAND was an early online console gaming network for SNES and Sega Genesis systems. It was produced by a Cupertino, California software company called 'Catapult', and made its debut in late 1994 and 1995 in various areas of the United States. Initially, it had a very limited staff and virtually no advertising. Many avid gamers first learned of it via small news articles that were published in the popular console gaming magazines and strategy guides of the day. By January 1996, XBAND network playability had reached practically every metropolitan area in the country, and several rural areas, but there had only been a handful of advertisements published: the most well known of these such advertisements had appeared in gaming magazines, and were directed towards people wanting to be able to play their favorite videogames against anyone, anywhere, at anytime. The actual XBAND modems were carried by a handful of software and video rental chains across the United States. Internationally, the XBAND saw some limited expansion in the Japanese market, and Catapult was working on PC and Saturn based versions of the platform before the company ceased operations.

Service

XBAND for the Sega Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The concept of playing online was, at the time, fairly new. Arcades were still quite popular, and the concept of online gaming was not yet a household term.

The modem itself was useless until an account was purchased and set up, which required a monthly fee of $4.95 that was based on an amount of 50 "connects" a player was allowed to make without an additional fee of .15 per connect. Another option allowed players an unlimited amount of "connects" for $9.95 per month. A "connect" was made whenever you dialed into the XBAND server to play, or to download mail (called "XMAIL"), or to get the daily edition of the two XBAND newsletters, one which had generic news, and the other was network specific, such as: weekly rankings, tournaments, and contests. Nationwide play was available for $3.95 per hour for the duration of the long distance call, whereas playing against somebody in your local calling area was free.

Up to 4 different codenames could be saved on one modem, and on each of the codenames there could be up to 10 people saved on a friends list for those who wanted to keep track of other players, and the Xmailbox was also limited to 10 incoming and 10 sent messages per each of 4 possible codenames created. There was also an on-screen keyboard that required painstakingly using your controller to type letters, or for a bit of money, an XBAND keyboard could be purchased from the company. Statistics were also kept on each player's rank and how many matches they had won or lost, and how many points they had accumulated in these games. Players could also add information about themselves in their personal info section, along with choosing 1 of 40 pre-set avatars.

XBAND also had an official website where a member could check the statistics of anyone, along with other information and updates that were not available to view on your console.

Gaming

Due to the limits of dial-up, many of the games were high in latency, and the company only improved this based on the demand of the games. For example, in January 1996, Mortal Kombat 3 for the SNES version was nearly unplayable, but in the following months this improved a bit, though because of the complexity and speed of the game, it retained a large number of exploitable glitches. To this day, many XBANDers remember the SNES MK3 as being cumbersome due to lag, whereas simpler games such as Super Mario Kart, or NBA Jam, rarely experienced such trouble. The Sega Genesis counterpart, being much simpler, had nowhere near the same synchronization problems with its games.

When one connected to play, unless you specified someone in particular from your player list, you would be paired up with a random person somewhere in the country (or your local area code depending on your preference settings), who was also connecting to play in the same game. When the network matched two people up, their telephone would ring once, and the big XBAND "X" would slide together on your screen. Moments later they would see the matchup screen, which would display their codenames, city and state, a "taunt" that one could have typed and ready, along with one's avatar.

Demise

On March 16, 1997, nationwide play was no longer available. After this, one could only play with whatever was considered by the phone company to be one's local area. On April 30, 1997, the entire legacy ended: XBAND was no more. Many people were unsure as to why the Catapult company pulled the plug on the project, but some people have guessed many good reasons. They had published it in their newsletter over a month ahead of time that they were shutting down, the writers of the newsletters were unclear to the members as to exactly why. They did cite the reason that they were told as being a lack of popularity, with the next-generation systems coming into full swing, at the time this was the Playstation, Nintendo 64, and Sega Saturn.

However, among the XBANDers there was suspicion that the real reasons for this were the growing number of problems that could not be fixed with their available resources. The most costly of these problems was the free long distance hack. It wasn't actually hacking into anything but through an understanding of telecommunications, someone, somewhere, discovered that with the sounds and other noises the modem used to connect, one could utilize it, (if applied correctly) and force XBAND to get charged for your long distance bill, this information spread like wildfire. There was another company at the time, called SkyTel, that was having similar problems with XBANDers and their own customers, though the details of this are unclear.

Another one of the serious problems, was "pulling" as it was termed, where if someone was losing a match, they could simply pull their phonecord out (or turn off their system) so they wouldn't take the loss, and the other player wouldn't get the win. In spite of complaints, the company could never find a way to discern who disconnected. There was also a lot of vulgar language, which scared away many of the people that were the target audience for marketing, since it was portrayed as being family friendly. A single match of NHL '95, or MK3, could invite some of the most obscene hatemail from sore losers, and there was no filter for it, no blocking mechanism, and no privacy controls.

To anyone who wasn't on XBAND, it might be assumed that they closed because of poor marketing, and this assumption would be partially correct. In its few years of existence, even in its prime, there were still only a handful of advertisements ever made for the XBAND. It was also openly stated from XBAND in their newsletters, that the players were their best form of advertising, and offered the "XBAND 6 pack" in which a member could order a package of 6 modems at discount price, in exchange for a month of free gaming if they signed up a certain amount of people to the service.

The game 'Weaponlord' was a little known fighting game, and the only game to feature the XBAND logo on its box. Some people believe it was created solely for XBAND, as the game was not successful on its own.

The real problem was in fact lack of support by game developers and limited internal resources on the part of Catapult. With the exception of Weaponlord, the only way for a game to become supported on XBAND was for the Catapult development staff to reverse engineer the 65816 assembly language code of the game, and then develop a hack on their end to intercept two-player activity so that the results could be shared over a hi-latency (slow-response time) 2400 baud modem connection. Catapult attempted to move to next generation platforms but were blocked by the hardware manufactures, and in Japan where the XBAND (14,400 baud modem) was tested for a short time for the Saturn. Stiff competition from Sega's own Sega NetLink service marked the end of their console efforts. An expansion into the PC market also didn't pan out as developers frequently opted to include their own TCP/IP network linking rather than deal with the subscription based XBAND service.

Publishing statistics

File:Xbandscore.jpg

Tips and Tricks Magazine April 1996

Despite poor marketing the XBAND team took another attempt to attract the mainstream of gamers who were left in the dark about the modem by joining forces with a number of gaming magazines, starting on the web with Game Zero magazine and then later in the print magazine Tips and Tricks Magazine. Daily stats were accessible via 'XBAND News' on the modem although they were not visible to the general public. Publishing stats added a 'cool' factor to brag about in the early forefronts of online gaming. The top ranked gamers of the previous months were published first in January of 1996 in Game Zero (see external link below) and then later on in Tips and Tricks starting in early 1996.

Supported XBAND games

Genesis:

SNES:

Saturn (Japan XBAND branded releases only)

External links

Some archived pages of Catapult's "XBAND XClusive" on GameZero.com
a writeup of the service from [www.sega-16.com]
Gamer's Graveyard Article
Popular "Blog of the Day" entry on 1up.com about one gamer's look back on his XBand obsession
"Former Xband User Contact List" created by former SNES Xband user $aVaGe DeAtH