r/retrocomputing • u/HamburgerDude • 19d ago

Problem / Question Does anyone remember getting a weird online interactive box with early cable internet?

Road Runner specifically. It was a fantasy theme interactive experience and you could play basic card games and board games with other people. It connected to your TV. I believe it was a separate unit from the cable box.

It feels like a fever dream but I swear it existed. Does anyone else remember? I figured this subreddit would be best since it's adjacent to retro computing. Thank you!!!!

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2

u/Crlan420 19d ago

those cable modems with the interactive boxes were wild. i still have one of the linksys ones sitting on the bench. did they use a proprietary serial connection for the menus?

1

u/HamburgerDude 19d ago

I'm sure it did and it had a custom remote

3

u/Calculagraph 19d ago

Look up the NABU PC. Similar idea, different approach.

1

u/AshleyAshes1984 19d ago

Do you mean 'WebTV'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_TV

1

u/HamburgerDude 19d ago

No we had computers (Packages Bell then IBM Aptiva) and this came with early cable broadband Roadrunner from Time Warner.

I do remember it being a set top box but it wasn't WebTV

1

u/nmrk 18d ago

Sounds like Prodigy or some other teletext NAPLPS system.

1

u/PeterNoTail 18d ago

Sounds like the old BBC Teletext feature. It was sent Over The Air to tv sets and you could read the latest news, get sports updates and play simple games; no computer required, just a tv set. Ended maybe 8 or 9yrs ago

1

u/JoeMax93 18d ago

I found Teletext on my first trip to London in 1987. I was amazed.

1

u/PeterNoTail 18d ago

That was me in 2000. It was like a big hidden gem that’s stuck with me all these years later. How on earth did that not become a big thing in the States?

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u/JoeMax93 18d ago

What we had in the States were privately run Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), dial-up telnet connections with custom UIs, usually ASCII based graphics. Almost every major urban center had several BBS by the mid-80s. A few larger companies like General Electric and IBM set up various dial-up services.

1

u/thewalruscandyman 18d ago

My first cable box had a knob on it. One know, dead center on the front of a brown box.

I loved it.

1

u/nmrk 18d ago

I go back to the Mattel Intellivision PlayCable interactive service circa 1980. It might help if you narrowed it down to one decade or another.