Some of you may remember a funny little device that pluged into your Sega Saturn that allowed you to surf the net and play a whopping 5 games online. What? ... you don't? Well that's okay, many people have never heard of this before. The Device I am talking about is the SEGA Saturn Netlink.
The Netlink allowed Saturn users to play games against another anywhere in the World, Much like online gaming today. You could surf the net at a "Blazing" 28.8 kbit/s (and later a 33.3kbit/s modem). At the time Web TV was just hitting the market and it was actually cheaper to buy a saturn w/ a netlink modem than the web tv and service.
Playing Games against someone was as easy as dialing their phone number... actually thats exactly what you did. The best part about the netlink was you didn't need a isp to play the games. You dialed the other person's number and made a direct connection. So that 28.8 kbit/s modem actually played games real smooth with verry little slow down.
Five games were released to support the Netlink modem: 1.) Sega rally Netlink Edition 2.) Daytona U.S.A C.C.E. Netlink Edition 3.) Virtua On Netlink Edition 4.) Saturn Bomberman 5.) Duke Nukem 3D
Some decent Titles worth playing...If you only had someone to play with... Well the good news is, you do have someone to play with! Remember the sega netlink uses a direct connect feature so you can still play those netlink games today. All you need is someone with a netlink that is willing to Play. During my travels I stumbled across www.saturnleague.com . Basically i'ts a community of netlink owners dedicated to keeping the netlink alive. Lots of netlink info for newbs. Use their forums to set up netlink matches and track your scores.
Any netlink owners out there should definatly check it out.
