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An illustration of the inside of an aircraft detailing the workings of the Gateway System
The Nintendo Gateway System was a version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that was developed by Nintendo and manufactured by Matsushita Avionics, Rockwell Collins, and Thales Avionics for inflight entertainment systems and LodgeNet for hotel televisions. The system, which began operations in 1993, was part of a much larger computer and television system that allowed air passengers and hotel guests to not only play video games, but also watch movies, listen to music, talk on the phone, and even shop (while inflight) or access cable television services (in hotels), before the advent of the internet.
Upon its release, there were ten games installed in the aircraft version of the system, which included The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, F-Zero and Super Mario World. The hotel version of the system launched with almost fifty games from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, with additional games from the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube being added in late 1999 and 2002, respectively. The hotel version of the system would prove more popular than the aircraft version, with 530,000 hotel rooms being equipped with the system by 1999.
The Gateway System controller
The controller, or remote, for the aircraft version of the Gateway System had a button set-up similar to the Super NES controller, which also doubled as a remote for the movies and music aspect of the system. The hotel version of the system utilized modified versions of the standard controllers for the video game consoles, with additional features including extra buttons that were added to allow for the purchasing of access to games on an hourly basis and the incorporation of features that would make them function as television remote controls.
In addition to inflight entertainment systems and hotels, there were plans to utilize the Gateway System in cruise ships, but this was canceled during the system's development.
The airline version of the Nintendo Gateway System would be discontinued between 2008 and 2012 due to the increased proliferation of smartphones and a decline in the system's usage rate, as well as developments in software technology that allowed newer inflight entertainment systems to run on the Android platform. The hotel version of the system would be discontinued by 2013, when LodgeNet was rebranded as Sonifi Solutions.
The Gateway System was featured in an article in Nintendo Power V57 in 1994.
External links[]
- Nintendo Gateway System at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia