The Video Game History Foundation preserves 147 lost Sega Channel ROMs, including previously unreleased games
Looks like Christmas came a week early, Sega fans.
In, easily, the most incredible case of video game preservation that I’ve written about here on SegaBits to date, the Video Game History Foundation has recovered a massive amount of archival data pertaining to the Sega Channel, an online games-on-demand service that ran for Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive from 1994-1998 via cable TV services. For almost thirty years, the majority of material here had been lost media. The older folks among you, myself included, must’ve thought you’d never live to see all of this resurface again.
Among all this recovered data is 147 Genesis ROMs used on Sega Channel. That’s right. One Hundred And Forty-Seven. This includes Sega Channel exclusive games never before preserved like Waterworld, The Flintstones, and Garfield: Caught In The Act – The Lost Levels, and it is now available to download via Gaming Alexandria in partnership with the VGHF. That last game took a bit longer than we expected to be released after it was found and demoed just a year ago, but the wait is finally over. We hope you managed to resist kicking anyone off of any tables for a whole year.
Besides just the games, there are also ROMs of Sega Channel menus, some previously archived and some not, some related test ROMs, and even a mock-up of a Genesis web browser planned for the service. You read that right. An honest-to-goodness Web Browser was planned for Genesis that would’ve ran through Sega Channel. There are also tons of advertisements for print, TV, and radio, internal planning documents, user data, fan art sent by subscribers, and a whole lot more for all to view freely.
What to see exactly what was found? Click right past the break and get hooked in.