I came across a couple of interesting articles about a modem developed for the NES, Genesis and SNES in the early ' 90s -- the Teleplay --that almost made it to the market, but was scuttled by indifference from Nintendo and Sega, intellectual thievery from AT&T, and squirrely investors.

What' s especially interesting to me is that this product, which was fully developed and ready to roll, offered cross-platform play. Someone with an NES could play against someone with a Genesis. It also enabled keyboard connectivity.



Vintage Computing and Gaming has a scan of an advertisement that ran in EGM circa 1992.

LostLevels.org has an article by Frank Cifaldi with an interview with the lead developer of the Teleplay modem, Keith Rupp -- plus screenshots, additional scans of ads, and photos of the Teleplay unit itself.

Just think about how the Teleplay could have changed the history of console gaming. Cross-platform play is something that lots of gamers still want.