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History
The history of the Mega Terminal begins with the release of the Mega Modem in 1990. Released in Japan on November 3, 1990, at a cost of ¥12,800, the Mega Modem main feature was the possibility to download additional games through the Sega Game Toshokan (for an additional ¥800 monthly fee). A few games were later released supporting peer-to-peer online play via the Mega Modem. But the Mega Modem had quite a few drawbacks. It was expensive, blocked your phone line and could be ended up being very costly depending on your phone plan.
Release
In 1992, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. decided to released an updated version of the Mega Modem, called the Mega Terminal (MEGA ターミナル). While the Mega Modem worked with analog phone line, the Mega Terminal was designed to work with the ISDN line which was growing in popularity. ISDN line had the advantages of supporting both data and voice at the same time, meaning that you could use your phone at the same time as the modem was being used. The fee structure was also cheaper was as you would get charge by the bandwidth used and not the length of the connection.
The first game to use the Mega Terminal was Go Net. Release in 1992 by Aisystem Tokyo, the game supported both the Mega Modem and the Mega Terminal.
Demise
Just after the release of the Mega Terminal, everything when sideways. With only 10 titles available for the Mega Modem and no other game being in development, Sega unofficially dropped its ambition for online gaming selling the Mega Modem at a discounted price. A few months after, Sega released the Mega Drive Model 2 which lack the DE-9 expansion port, rendering the Mega Termina useless.
Very little is known on this device,
Software
Serial
In an effort to find how many devices have been made, I’ll try to compile a list of known serial number. So far, only 3 have been identified:
- C4 0000084
- C5 0000076
- C6 0000009