If the latter, how did the voice over work?
Except instead of down games over an internet connection, it only had one-way communication. The satellite would just continually retransmit the same games every few min. When you selected a game to download, the Satellaview would wait for the next transmission to come around and save it to the 1MB flash card.
You could then play the downloaded game more or less like any other cartridge. Many releases were just games that had previously been on retail cartridge.
But some games (these soundlink games) were more of an event. Instead of simply downloading the game, there was a scheduled hour to tune in, and everyone would play the same game in parallel, with roughly the same progression. New game data would beamed down from the satellite continually, bypassing the 1MB limit. Most of this streaming data was CD quality audio, either narration (often live preformed narration) or music, but it could also stream code or graphics too.
I understand it did have some ability to handle multiple tracks of audio, but most of the time the game was designed to work with only one track of audio, hence forcing the players down the same progression based on time.
And Sega offered something similar in the USA in the early 1990s too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel
I think Satellaview in Japan, was the first service of that kind, which was truly successful though.
https://www.intvprime.com/intellivision-faq/intellivision-fa...
https://www.intvfunhouse.com/mattel/playcable.php
(The Atari 2600 got a competitor but despite being the older console it was released in 1983: https://www.wired.com/story/streaming-games-actually-started... )
So, 43 years ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview#/media/File%3ASa...
There are ROMS available online for some games that existed and there are lists of all games, from the above I think the person found VHS footage from people playing the SNES with some specific f-zero tracks and from knowledge of the existing ROMs of f-zero used the VHS footage to reconstruct the track data, which I think is mostly tile positions, at least afaik the Satellaview games that were additions to existing games usually didn't add graphics only remixed what the game content was.
I think I remember playing a Zelda that was just the map from the NES one with different objectives, so I am going from that.
For SoundLink games, the voiceovers would be streamed from a satellite radio channel while the game ran, and they could also issue game commands. Obviously this also meant you could only play a SoundLink game while it was being broadcast. There were periodic reruns in case you missed a game. The closest modern example I could think of would actually be something like 1 vs 100 on the Xbox 360, which only lasted for like a year if I remember.
Other downloadable Satellaview games worked almost exactly like a modern digital download system. You'd have to download the game while it was being broadcast, but could play it later. Except some of them would also have a start-up limit (like 3DS demos) after which the game would expire and refuse to start. Those are easier to preserve than the SoundLink games, assuming you can find an old Satellaview memory pack with the game data still on it.
Some of the 'games' were actually just magazines or text. There's some really odd ones we've discovered over the years. After Nintendo stopped supporting Satellaview[1], St.GIGA tried to repurpose the Satellaview as a program guide for their own satellite radio service using this feature.
Interestingly, there's a handful of SNES games with the same Satellaview memory slot on them that BS-X does - for example, RPG Maker 2[2]. I'm imagining that they distributed RPG Maker games using Satellaview, but Wikipedia also says RPG Maker 2 was available as both a cartridge and a Satellaview download, which seems like it defeats the purpose of having the cartridge also accept Satellaview memory cards.
BTW, if you think this is crazy, wait until you learn about the SEGA Channel, a cable modem that plugged into your Genesis[3].
[0] BS-X: The Story Of The Town Whose Name Was Stolen
[1] Because, among other things, they wanted to build the N64 DD around RANDNet
[2] Not to be confused with RPG Maker 2 on the PlayStation 2, which is actually RPG Maker 5, because international numbering.
[3] Or Mega Drive. I didn't even know Europe had this until I checked Wikipedia!
96 was already the time i played MMOs on my PC like Meridian 59 with real multiplayer and downloaded from the internet using a 14k/28k/56k modem in that order.