The Saturday Scan - Nintendo Airlines
This week's Saturday Scan is less of a teaching-about-some-obscure-crap thing and more of a question thing.
I've never been on an airplane in my life, so I have zero experience with this thing. Luckily, extensive Nielsen research tells me that the audience for Error Macro is comprised entirely of international jetsetters. So: Anyone ever used it? Is it still around? Does it still offer 15 year old SNES games? I notice that the Nintendo Gateway website is still up, albeit with a copyright that says 2001 and web design that says 1997. It lists Gamecube games for the hotel system and GBA titles for the airline system -- as far as I can tell, Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls is the most recent title available -- so I guess it still must be in use somewhere. But really, how far are you going to get in Dawn of Souls on even the longest flight?
I'm also curious about the handful of Japanese games (Panel de Pon, Picross 2, Yakuman, etc) listed, given that the site is in English, the instructions are in English, and there's a column for ESRB ratings but not Japanese CERO ratings. There don't seem to be any region restrictions on offering any of these titles, so it's possible that they were available for play on American flights. Though that does make having Panel de Pon and Tetris Attack on the same list kind of redundant.
Also:
EXCLUSIVE PIX OF WIIMOTE PROTOTYPE
Disclaimer: Please do not actually believe that the Gateway controller had any influence on the design of the Wii remote.
Comments
It's still around. I played Megaman X2 for about three hours in the AM coming home from Manila, once.
Posted by: Alan | February 10, 2007 3:52 PM
I've seen SNES, N64 and GameCube offered in hotels through a company called LodgeNet. Don't know how obscure it is.
Posted by: LCadwallader | February 10, 2007 4:46 PM
Never seen these, but I did get a dirty look on an airliner once because I was reading a Halo novel.
In retrospect, I probably deserved it.
Posted by: Sarchasm | February 10, 2007 6:23 PM
Wow. I've never heard of this. I've also never been on an airplane either, though...
Nice find.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 10, 2007 7:38 PM
They had this system (or a very similar one) on my first flight to Japan on All Nippon Airways back in 2002. As I recall, the up button on my controller only worked 50% of the time, which made Street Fighter 2 more or less impossible. Mario All-Stars was fine as long as you avoided climbing as much as possible.
None of the American airlines I've flown internationally since then have had anything like this, unfortunately.
Posted by: Ryan | February 10, 2007 8:36 PM
In December 1997 I flew to England with my marching band. We needed two planes because we had like 180 people and they couldn't book us all on one flight. My flight absolutely sucked.
My friend's flight, though, had TV monitors on the back of every seat. His flight had that controller with Mario Brothers on it, and he said that he didn't even have to pay. For those phones on planes, you usually have to slide your credit card first, but he said that these were free.
Posted by: Whittle | February 11, 2007 8:19 AM
I played it on a Virgin Airlines flight to London 2 years ago. I had never flown before, and it was kinda fun.
Posted by: Dendo Star | February 12, 2007 12:05 AM
It has occurred to me I have not provided any facts. A-duh.
The library of titles was kinda lackluster, but I remember it had Mario World and Zelda, which was awesome. And yes, it was free. The controller was funky for playing SNES games, but it was functional enough.
Posted by: Dendo Star | February 12, 2007 12:14 AM