WI: Atari Creates DLC/ Internet Music Marketplace and Internet in the 1980's

"The GameLine was an oversized Atari cartridge (manufactured by a company called CVC) that had the ability to transmit data through a simple phone line. After activating your account by calling a toll-free number -- and supplying your mom's credit card information -- you could connect your Atari to a central computer and download over 80 games for about a dollar each. Every game would then be playable for about five to 10 times before you had to pay to download it again. If the GameLine seems a little expensive, that's because it came from the motherfucking future.

But wait, it gets even more mindblowing: This technology was originally developed as a way for people to download songs into their homes through cable providers. Twenty years before Napster or iTunes, the planned "Home Music Store" would have made it possible for anyone to buy music online. Yes, in an era when people were trying to update their music library from vinyl to state-of-the-art cassette tapes, the "Home Music Store" would have completely bypassed CDs and gone straight to the next format. The only problem: All the major record companies refused to provide music for it, afraid to piss off retailers.

That's when Bill Von Meister, one of the founders of CVC, acquired this brilliant but now completely useless technology and turned it into a way to download video games. But besides the GameLine, CVC started developing other online services like the MailLine (the ability to send electronic mail from your Atari 2600), NewsLine (read news headlines and weather updates, like in an RSS feed) and OpinionLine (an early version of Internet message boards). Add a PornLine and some cat memes and we've got ourselves a full Internet, decades ahead of time.
All these projects would have probably come to fruition if the GameLine had done well, but it didn't. The problem, once again, was that none of the major game developers like Activision, Coleco or even Atari wanted anything to do with it, which meant that the GameLine's impressive 80-game library consisted mostly of obscure, shitty games nobody wanted to play. Add that to goddamn ET and the video game crash of '83, and the whole company went bankrupt.
That doesn't mean Von Meister abandoned his plans, though -- it only means it took him a little longer to realize them. He went on to create another company that reused the same technology: something called America OnLine. So, basically, a failed gaming peripheral nobody wanted anything to do with revolutionized modern life as we know it.

So what if all of that?

 
"The GameLine was an oversized Atari cartridge (manufactured by a company called CVC) that had the ability to transmit data through a simple phone line. After activating your account by calling a toll-free number -- and supplying your mom's credit card information -- you could connect your Atari to a central computer and download over 80 games for about a dollar each. Every game would then be playable for about five to 10 times before you had to pay to download it again. If the GameLine seems a little expensive, that's because it came from the motherfucking future.

Besides the foulmouth, I think there's some substance here. The Atari 2600 isn't a viable platform, however.

The Atari 2600 was no Cray. It ran a MOS chip at 1.2 MHz, 128 byte RAM buffer, 128 colors, and no sound. Not exactly the platform for Napster or iTunes.

For example, the Commodore 64 had a multi-voice audio system and vastly improved processing ability. Perhaps that system could have been a platform for musical downloads. The music would be highly compressed and would probably sound tinny and incredibly synthesized. Most likely, only instrumentals would be available.

One must also remember that modem transmission rates at this time were limited to 300 or 1200 bps. Again, compression and an error-checking download protocol (kermit?) would be necessary. This would prolong the music download to an excruciating couple of hours.

Despite all this, an instrumental polytone musical download service might have been available for home computers with much more memory and processor ability than an Atari.
 
"and would probably sound tinny and incredibly synthesized"

-well it was the early 80's so that would have been par for the course
 
I would think you would have to wait for the advent of the Amiga or at the least the 128D maybe the falcon or ST series of Ataris ...
 
Besides the foulmouth, I think there's some substance here. The Atari 2600 isn't a viable platform, however.

The Atari 2600 was no Cray. It ran a MOS chip at 1.2 MHz, 128 byte RAM buffer, 128 colors, and no sound. Not exactly the platform for Napster or iTunes.

The 2600 most certainly had sound, just not on the 6507 MOS chip. Did you ever play one?

Torqumada
 
The 2600 most certainly had sound, just not on the 6507 MOS chip. Did you ever play one?

Yes, I am old enough to remember and play the Atari. I turned the TV volume off as I found the buzzing noises annoying. Yes, there were a few random notes that the 2600 could play. These few notes would be gravely insufficient for any substantial music reproduction.
 
Yes, I am old enough to remember and play the Atari. I turned the TV volume off as I found the buzzing noises annoying. Yes, there were a few random notes that the 2600 could play. These few notes would be gravely insufficient for any substantial music reproduction.

The 2600 could actually perform a wide range of notes and not randomly. Now, I'm not sure how that would translate to music downloaded, but it shows that the 2600 wasn't as limited as you thought it was. Remember that in the early days of video games, no one was writing actual music for the games. They were seen more as sound effects,than music. They say Rally-X was the first video game to have a real musical soundtrack. It was after the first Nintendo console that video game music really took off.

Edit: Listen here for notes.

Torqumada
 
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One must also remember that modem transmission rates at this time were limited to 300 or 1200 bps. Again, compression and an error-checking download protocol (kermit?) would be necessary. This would prolong the music download to an excruciating couple of hours.

This is the main problem. It's also possibly a problem for anything more than text adventures in games (since they were mostly cartridges, I don't know how much memory games took up in those days).

There's also the problem of disk space to store all of these things once they are downloaded, since streaming music is not going to be possible at those speeds. Even with modern compression algorithms (which frankly hasn't changed that much since the '80's), a 5 MB MP3 would require about 16 320K disks.
 
Crappy connection speeds is indeed the big stopping factor. I mean, just look at the dreamcast's online failures, and those were in days far more used to the internet....however when broadband was only just beginning to spread and not included in the DC.
 
This is the main problem. It's also possibly a problem for anything more than text adventures in games (since they were mostly cartridges, I don't know how much memory games took up in those days).

At the time the maximum memory size of the cartridge was 64K, while most games, were around 16K.

There's also the problem of disk space to store all of these things once they are downloaded, since streaming music is not going to be possible at those speeds. Even with modern compression algorithms (which frankly hasn't changed that much since the '80's), a 5 MB MP3 would require about 16 320K disks.

Agreed that it would take lots of time to do this and space to put it in.

Torqumada
 
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