At some point, I would like to do an article on the Nintendo Gateway System. This was a device that allowed you to play Nintendo games and other media on planes, cruise ships and hotels. The system originally launched in late 1993, and there is a good article on it in the February 1994 issue of Nintendo Power. The original website for the Gateway System is gone, but archived on archive.org. On the SNES side of things, there were three exclusive games: Hangman Noughts & Crosses (tic-tac-toe) Postcard Puzzle Of those, only Noughts & Crosses has ever been found. It is a SA-1 chip game to boot. A good picture of the system is on Nintendo World Report Of course, the big question is, has anyone ever come into possession of this system? In my files archive, I found some pictures that someone took playing the system while on a plane. The controller has more than a passing resemblance to the Wii Remote, though with a button layout that makes playing SNES games possible. This is certainly an obscure thing that I would like to shed some light on.
IIRC Hangman and Noughts & Crosses are in Hotel Units as 'exclusive' games. Postcard Puzzle is probably in there too. Some airlines are reusing those things as remotes now, they were on my flight to Japan and back a few months ago. Noticed the Super Famicom buttons.
SA-1 for Tic-Tac-Toe? That's insane. When I read the topic title I thought, Nintendo, the gateway drug to other game consoles.
I'm guessing they were going to make them a Nintendo Power game.\ pic of PCB http://www.snescentral.com/cart.php?id=0788&num=0
I also played the airplane SNES thing when I flew from Osaka to Sapporo on JAL. If I remember, it seemed to have several US titles (rather than the Japanese versions). Anyway, I wrote this on my page: "I took my next flight to Sapporo airport, way up north. Along the way, I was able to play one of the fabled entertainment systems installed in the back of the airplane's seats: a PC-based map viewer and a Super Famicom with a selection of games. That was cool, but I crashed the software somehow (that's how I know it was a regular DOS (?) PC), and I was expecting the plane to crash anytime soon, or at least get chewed out for something... but no problem. The system came back on in a few minutes and I had one more go of Shanghai before we landed."
I'm pretty sure Virgin Atlantic had SNES games for a while. It had Mario World, F-Zero and a few others I forget now.
It seems the gateway system got upgraded to game boy advance at one point: http://tinyurl.com/33mp4tx
I remember the hotel varient being called the Super Famicombox. There was one on ebay a few years ago from what I remember, along with a few ordinary Famicombox's which went for high prices too.
Nope, not at all. From what I read, there were at least 4000 of these units installed in planes in the US by the middle of 1994, and they persisted until the mid 2000s (though upgraded to play N64 and Game Boy Advance). Also from what I read, the Panisonic unit may have emulated the SNES to a certain degree. Also, I already have an article on the Super Famicom Box: http://www.snescentral.com/article.php?id=0099 It really has nothing to do with the Gateway System at all.
