Topic: Super Famicom Satellaview is now 20 years old

For people who don't know what a Satellaview is, The Satellaview was a Japan-Only add-on for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System released in 1995. It was created in a partnership between Nintendo and St.GIGA, which at the time being a popular Satellite radio company. Similar to Sega's Sega Channel service, its most notable feature was the ability to download games, news magazines and articles from St.GIGA's servers. Other features were to play pop music, advertise, or allow people to listen to radio programs while playing games - for certain special games, particularly the games advertised on soundlink, which were many Mario games. The Satellaview system program ended on June 30, 2000. It continued receiving new games up until March 1999. It is unknown why the Satellaview never went international. The Satellaview was obviously planned in North America as the evidence is the unused expansion port at the bottom of the NTSC version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Also, since the Satellaview program ended, the games that were available on there is now unplayable. But luckily thanks to hackers, the games are now playable on a emulator. (Thanks internet!) The games on the Satellaview were unique or simply ports of SNES games. Here's a list of the games were available on the Satellaview:

Albert Odyssey (Super Famicom game)

Arkanoid

BS Fire Emblem: Archanea Senki

BS Super Mario USA Power Challenge

BS Tantei Club: Yuki ni Kieta Kako

Dr. Mario

Dragon Quest

DynamiTracer

Earth Defense Force

F-Zero

Harvest Moon

Ihatovo Monogatari

Itoi Shigesato no Bass Tsuri No. 1

BS The Legend of Zelda (A remake of the first Zelda game. It featured "Live Voice", where a "narrator" would guide and give helpful hints and advice to the players through the game.)

BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets (A actually sequel to the famed Link to the past. It featured actual voice acting and a different protagonist.)

Lemmings

Radical Dreamers

RPG Maker

SameGame

Shockman

Spriggan Powered

Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Ninja Boy

Sutte Hakkun

True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club

Wario's Woods

Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom

Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge

But why did it ended so soon? Because in 1999, the Satellaview service was controlled by both St. GIGA and Nintendo. After 1999 St. GIGA was the sole controller of the service, as Nintendo broke its partnership with the radio station due to a dispute. However, the service was only turned off in 2000.
Anyway.....the Satellaview is now 20 years old. Have you ever played it?

I've played a number of the games via ROMS and have seen the Satellaview hardware and carts in second-hand stores while in Japan. But never had a chance to play the games on the hardware.

The whole idea was very interesting but something that was very Japanese. A couple of years ago I looked at picking up the hardware but it's always had a high price, boxed, for something that will just sit in a box and could never be played.