Nintendo Gateway System

I have written up a new article on the Nintendo Gateway System. This was a networked system that allowed SNES (and later other systems) games to be played on a pay-per-hour basis on airplanes and hotels. Despite how prolific it was, there is hardly any information about this system on the Internet. Perhaps of most interest here was that there were three exclusive SNES games for the system, probably designed for airplanes. I don't know if we will ever get to see them live now, since these systems were likely rendered obsolete years ago. If anyone has any leads, I'd be happy to hear about them!

http://www.snescentral.com/article.php?id=1019

 

THank you for sharing.

Mario looking scary, hehe...and the black controller looks soooo Wiimote

 

I had some of the boards out of the SNES version - they were about 4" square and had what looked pretty much like a standard SNES chipset on them along with some extra RAM that presumably contained the downloaded game.

 

totaly a WIImote

 

I forgot to upload a PHP file that displayed a bunch of the information that was supposed to be in the article, I have fixed that!

 

Hmmm, could that be related to this?

http://imgur.com/a/Gsti1

This is a playing card that my friend found at school (and gave to me) ages ago, and I still have no idea how it even got there. Google points me to this goofy ad:



Is that related to the Gateway System?

 

That Youtube ad almost looks too recent for the Gateway System (2012). I would suspect that it is something more recent.

Though the card could be from it. It should be noted that Singapore Airlines did have the Gateway System.

 

The ad is most certainly not from 2012, that's just the upload date. And if you look at the card, it has that "Krisworld" thing just like the ad does.

 

Heh, there is a surprisingly detailed section on Krisworld on Wikipedia.

Looks like the ad was released in 2003, so it may have been the SNES version. Looking through Google, it appears that they had versions of it with Game Boy games as well (circa 2007). In all likelihood, that was also the Nintendo Gateway System.

 

Great article, thanks for sharing! Last time I encountered one of these was an N64 LodgeNet at a hotel in Salt Lake City in 2007, I wanted to unplug everything and take it with me, and ask them to sell me the server

 

Based on the video, they were running a Panasonic K series IFE system - and they certainly did support SNES games (in fact, the boards I have came out of some K series underseat boxes).

 

I remember going to hotels when I was younger and they had a special N64 controller connected straight to the TV. I'll keep up with this. It'll be interesting to see what gets uncovered.

 

[offtopic]

That would be "lodgenet", there are a few threads on it around.[/offtopic]

 

You are correct. My fault, thank you for that. Sorry to be [offtopic] haha.

 

Lodgenet used the Nintendo Gateway System, so it isn't really off topic.

 

Oh, so NGS is more of a blanket term? TIL. Well, maybe should've actually clicked through to the article... derp.

I'm especially curious about the GC version, since this is my first time hearing about it. The other systems I already knew under different names. Anything else out there, per chance?

 

I flew to indonesia with SIA and used the Krisworld system back in 2004. I recall the mpeg-system was from Sigma Designs. It flashed this on screen very briefly as video started to play. I purposely stopped & started video a number of times, as i was working in the multimedia biz those days, and wanted to see the chipset number(s) it displayed at that point. The games were gameboy games, and there was a lot of input lag. The controller looked like this.

For an economy flight, i found the system very nice, they had a lot of popular movies in mpeg-1. Didn't bother with the gameboy games on it, i had a PSP with me at that point.