Pixel Radio: Broadcast “Downloading”

Radio has been a part of gaming since home consoles and personal computers have. This is the first part of a short series discussing how radio has interacted with video games throughout gaming’s short history.

Initially, this was a single blog about how games have used the radio for world-building. That’s not what this is though. Long story short, I went down a rabbit hole to get here. What surprised me was that radio had a hand in popularizing not only owning games but “downloading” them.

When the first microprocessor computers were released (ie. Apple II), they used audio cassettes to store data. The affordability of cassettes was actually what led to a small boom of home computers in the late ’70s. However, it wasn’t until the early ’80s that the dutch broadcasting engineers at Nederlandse Omreop Stitching (NOS) would learn that you could broadcast data to a computer that uses audio cassettes for storage. This acted as a sort of early wi-fi in that you could “download” these games onto cassettes. In reality, you were recording data that could be played as a game.

After realizing you could do this, NOS started a radio show called “Hobbyscoop” and started to transmit using a cassette format called BASICODE. They’d sell compatible cassettes at affordable prices as well, making Hobbyscoop a major success among people in the tech community. From there, the Yugoslavic radio station, Ventilator 202, would start broadcasting programs as well, making 150 broadcasts between 1983 and 1986. But it wasn’t just video games being transmitted like this. People would also broadcast things like encyclopedias, educational tools, calculation programs and flight simulators.

In experiments done through the BBC’s attempt at broadcasting data, they found that A.M. radio was actually better when it came to transferring the data. There was no real explanation as to why, they just found that it worked better. If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s because A.M. radio is less affected by electrical or physical interference, which a computer would definitely provide. Additionally, A.M. (which stands for amplitude modulation) doesn’t deal with frequency when broadcasting data like F.M. (standing for frequency modulation) does. Because this data uses frequency over amplitude, there’s less variance on A.M. broadcasts. So while you’d get the information faster on F.M. radio, it’s more accurate on A.M.

So… why did it stop?

Well… the answer’s pretty boring. Technology evolved and required more space. Audio cassettes couldn’t keep up with the storage demands that 16-bit games required. People who owned home computers started using floppy discs or hard drives and the broadcast “downloading” market died. The final broadcast aired on Ventilator 202 sometime in 1986.

We wouldn’t get this sort of easily accessible data transfer until wifi was created five years later in 1991. Even then, the general public wouldn’t have access until the late 90s.

I just touched the surface and left out most of the technical jargon. So if you’re interested in learning more information about this fascinating subject, make sure to check out my sources linked below. In the next blog, I’ll be discussing how radio has been used to enhance world-building in video games. So make sure to keep an eye out for that when it comes out.

Make sure to tune into my radio show Pixel Radio here on NR92.com as well. It starts every Thursday at 5 p.m. following The ‘Tism Train, which starts at four. Just press that play button in “Listen Now.”

Sources:
https://interestingengineering.com/science/you-could-download-video-games-from-the-radio-in-the-1980s
https://www.diffen.com/difference/AM_vs_FM

Header image created by myself

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