Here’s a shot of fighting game nostalgia all the way from 1996. Tips & Tricks magazine would print that month’s top Xband players for both the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Xband Video Game Networks.
Genesis Games = SSF II, MK II, and Primal Rage
SNES Games = SSF II, MK II, and KI
*WeaponLord was also playable on the SNES Xband, but I don’t think it ever showed up in the printed rankings. *
I know there are a lot of former Xband users here, so I figured I’d post these up in case they were interested in seeing them. Special thanks go to Tips & Tricks editor Chris Bieniek for scanning all of these. For those of you who don’t know what Xband is, search that term on YouTube or Wikipedia for more information
very cool thread. xband was the first online service for consoles on the SNES. Cigarbob and kuroppi were talking about the better players on xband just the other day on ggpo. dream theater = og???
do any of the OG’s have any VHS sessions of some of these battles? I want to see what online looked like back then.
I really wish we could find some guys to upload any video they have of them playing any fighting games on Xband. There are only two related things on YouTube at the moment:
[media=youtube]ShsUIoPsfQs[/media] - Two guys from Japan playing SSFII on the SFC
[media=youtube]WhH8_876BQ4&feature=related[/media] - An extremely weak MKII match.
I’d be willing to bet that someone here has an old VHS tape with some XB footage on it.
Oh yeah, I was playing SNES SSF2 for a good while. I had the same gamertag back then too. Dream Theater kicked my ass several times, and I remember a guy named Vincent Delpino who always managed to beat me with Ryu every time. I fucking hate Ryu because of that guy.
The games were surprisingly smooth, but there was a weird latency to it, it took a while to get used to, but once you did, it somehow felt natural. It’s hard to explain.
I remember the days of “pulling”, of the few matches I would manage to best my opponent, some of them were pussies and would either shut their SNES off or pull out the phone cord, which XBand managed to find a way to detect after a while, and would award you the win anyways the next time you logged on.
One thing tho, typing emails or chatting with the SNES controller sucked ass.
I have no idea why I never broke down and bought a keyboard, especially towards the end. They were nearly giving those things away.
I didn’t get on until the summer of '96. Towards the end of that year and the beginning of '97, the win swapping took off and completely ruined the rankings. I wish I would have been on from day 1. It was still a great experience though. Made a lot of friends that I still keep in touch with this very day.
this is an awesome thread, thank you for the heads up!
i’ve been an online gamer of sorts since the early days of MUDs, but xband with KI and SSF2 (and a little doom) was the most fun i’ve ever had playing online. i miss waiting until the end of the match to hit whatever the button was as fast as possible to open up a chat session and congratulate or talk shit to whoever you played. to this day, i’m still good friends with a few people i met locally on xband, and every time i see them it’s the first thing we joke about.
i ranked one time in ssf2, and that is the highlight of my fighting “career.” that was quite an accomplishment considering how many people were bitches and would disconnect to avoid losing. that was when i spent a lot more time playing sf2 and spent all of my free time in the arcades instead of homework.
ki was my game of choice though. i’ve always been terrible, and could only ever do the more common combos, but it was so much fun. ugh. i loved xband. it was so much simpler back then.
and i own wizard! he has fucking tapes of ki matches, but wont release em. jerk! of course he will tell fools i swapped. yet its funny, he appears on the list with seifert(another local) at the same time
$avage death. haha, thats a name i will always remember from back then. good shit man.
lol at magnus zhor. 600+ wins in 1 week. that guy sucked so much. that was king cheater
This is incredible… I was SouL SteaLer X and KoMbAtGoD-tEk- on SNES XBand Fucking memories, man. I used to write Nation X News, which had a fuckton of readers. sigh I still have my modem stored away in a box somewhere. Dream Theater > everybody else who ever played on XBand. I’m proud to say that Jason’s been kicking my ass in fighting games since 1995 lolol. Old school ftmfw He, my good friend SphiNX, and WaRGoD were the only players that were better than me in MK2. I also (legitimately) cracked Top 10 in NBA Jam TE, KI and UMK3. Xband = <3
Massive props to xband411 for putting this together
haha soul stealer. haha i remember talking to you guys via the hacked voice mail skytel shit. i think we talked on the phone a couple times right?
yeah you guys raped me at mk2. i couldnt play it well on xband =(
xband was the best. cheating or not. its awesomeness still resonates with me, even with advancements like xbl, psn, ggpo. i still think nothing matches the charm ox xband!!!
Lol @ Skytel. Dude, us XBanders systematically crumbled that empire. That was back when pagers were hot hahaha. I miss my adolescence I talked to a ton of people on that thing, so there’s a good chance we talked I sent out a bunch of broadcasts too. I couldn’t agree more that nothing matched the charm of XBand. I even remember my XBand password on my SNES controller (X,B,B,A,B,Y — for XB, baby!)
It truly is a shame that XBand never took off… you guys remember resetting the modem so you wouldn’t get charged for Nationwide games? lol
Fucking memories, man. I used to write Nation X News, which had a fuckton of readers. sigh I still have my modem stored away in a box somewhere. Dream Theater > everybody else who ever played on XBand. I’m proud to say that Jason’s been kicking my ass in fighting games since 1995 lolol. Old school ftmfw 
I talked to a ton of people on that thing, so there’s a good chance we talked 
I sent out a bunch of broadcasts too. I couldn’t agree more that nothing matched the charm of XBand. I even remember my XBand password on my SNES controller (X,B,B,A,B,Y — for XB, baby!)