Satellaview - St.GIGA Satellite Broadcasts

St.GIGA Satellite Broadcasts

Every day between April 23, 1995 and June 30, 2000, St.GIGA servers broadcast material via the BS network to be received and unscrambled by subscribers to Nintendo's Satellaview service. Although St.GIGA and Nintendo worked as partners between April 1995 and April 1999, tensions between them caused a rift in April 1999 which led to Nintendo's splitting from St.GIGA as well as the end of Nintendo's support for the Satellaview system. Despite this, St.GIGA continued broadcasting alone from between April 1999 and June 2000 when it ceased support for the system as well.

Broadcast material consisted of three types of data:

• Games - Original Satellaview titles as well as software versions of regular NES and SNES games were broadcast every day throughout the lifetime of St.GIGA's support for the Satellaview. Games included SoundLink as well as regular titles, and also included beta versions for upcoming titles and student works. A number of the games were additionally the basis of larger National Events in which players would compete for prizes awarded by St.GIGA.
• Magazines - Digital magazines could be read on-screen, and contained information on a variety of topics such as upcoming video games, music, comedic performances, and the lives of pop idols. Like the games, broadcast magazines came in both SoundLink as well as silent formats. SoundLink magazines were performed by members of various comedic troupes such as All Night Nippon, Bakusho Mondai, Hikaru Ijuin, etc., and often featured special guests. Regular magazines included SatellaGuide (サテラガイド?), publications by Nintendo Power, comics by Lily Franky (リリー・フランキー?), etc.
• Data - A smaller number of Satellaview titles were released as special application cartridges (see below) that possessed the basic gameplay data of the series to which they belonged, and required no downloads to play. These cartridges, however, could be swapped for the BS-X application cartridge to download specific scenarios relating to the series. As such, these cartridges functioned similarly to game-specific Nintendo Power cartridges, where the basic game was purchased separately and then expansion pack material could be downloaded via Satellaview.

Broadcast material followed a regular schedule that allowed Satellaview owners to plan their daily schedules in order to catch the games they wished to play. This regular schedule was changed, however, a number of times throughout the lifetime of the Satellaview to make allowances for such things as increased or decreased SoundLink voice actor availability, customer demands for SatellaGuide support, and reduced support in the later years. Below is a table displaying these changes. (Please see the note below the table)

NOTE: This table displays times when new — formerly unbroadcast — content was transmitted. Rebroadcasts of "Regular broadcast" games were transmitted throughout the lifetime of the Satellaview. As such, non-SoundLink reruns were available for players at some times simultaneously with new SatellaGuide broadcasts between 1998 and 2000.