In the last installment we talked about Treasure Conflix, and today we’re talking about the platform itself, the Nintendo Satellaview. The Satellaview was created as a partnership between the broadcasting company St.GIGA and Nintendo’s R&D2 Division, the team responsible for the original Super Famicom. It was released as an add-on in 1995 and was a somewhat unique approach to an online service.
The system required a broadcast satellite just like you’d need for television, but instead it would broadcast digital data like games, news and hints through the service. It was reasonably successful with roughly 100,000 users at its peak and around 230 games were produced for it. Games ranged from ports of popular games, competition games for prizes, live broadcast games narrated by professional voice talent and original games. The weekly broadcast format was used to release certain games episodically over the course of several weeks, including games in the Zelda and F-Zero series. The Satellaview ran officially until 1999 when Nintendo dropped support but broadcasts from St.GIGA continued through June of 2000.
The Satellaview was like many online services in the mid 90s and featured a mini “world” where you moved your avatar around and communicated with NPCs to access the various features, similar to Nintendo’s Miis in later consoles. Music plays while you’re walking around the world and accessing the features, such as seeing the upcoming broadcasts or when downloading new games. The music for the Satellaview was composed by three veteran Nintendo composers: Akito Nakatsuka, Naoto Ishida & Yuichi Ozaki, which we believe are the primary composer and two sound designers respectively. The service may be offline but we can still enjoy some of the very characteristically Nintendo music, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
All tracks composed by Akito Nakatsuka, Naoto Ishida & Yuichi Ozaki
Track List:
- 00:00 St. Giga Logo & Title
- 01:45 Naming Screen
- 04:03 Town
- 11:35 Overworld
- 14:11 Soundlink Schedule
- 20:50 Download 1
- 22:40 Download 2
- 26:55 Download 3
- 33:00 Breeding Charts (from Satesopo DX 4)
- 39:16 Error Screen
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:12 — 55.3MB)
These songs & the description you gave this service sound cozy. Too bad I wasn’t alive during then, ha. ha. :(
To be fair, since it’s an online only service not that many people experienced it to begin with. It’s been fun rediscovering some very obscure music though.