User Summary
Sega Channel was a hardware add-on for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive released in 1994. Its primary purpose was to provide on-demand play of games through a cable television-based delivery system. The lineup of games would change monthly, and could include full games, demos, special editions or limited releases of games, and contests.
The channel actually functioned as a broadcast channel that constantly transmitted the data for the interactive menu and for all the games that were available for that month. After loading the menu, games could be requested from the system, and the Sega Channel device would read that game's data from the transmission and store in its RAM to be played.
Support for the device was finally shut down on July 31, 1998.