PlayCable: Downloading games through Cable TV in the 80s

Think downloadable console games are a modern invention? Cute. But no. PlayCable Intellivision had this option before it was cool.

Back in 1980, when everyone was swapping cartridges and the internet was still very far from invading every aspect of our life, Intellivision owners could download videogames directly into their console.

Yes. In 1980.

They did it by using PlayCable, developed by Mattel Electronics and General Instrument.

PlayCable was a subscription service for the Intellivision that distributed videogames through cable television lines. PlayCable Intellivision subscribers received a special adapter that plugged into the console's cartridge slot and connected to their cable service. Switch it on and, instead of inserting a cartridge, there was a menu filled with games ready to download.

Sounds suspiciously familiar, huh?

At first, there were 15 rotating games, later expanding to 20, and they were changing every month. So players all they had to do was to pick a game, wait for about 10–20 seconds, and the game would be loaded into the adapter's memory. And no physical cartridge required. No trip to the store. Your cable company was the videogame store.

In 1980.

But ok, let's be serious. Calling PlayCable the literal Xbox Game Pass of the '80s would be a little too much. There was no internet connection, no cloud saves and no achievements informing your friends that you had just spent six hours trying to beat the same boss. Trying. But never succeeding.

However, the core idea is pretty much the same: pay a subscription and gain access to a regularly changing library of downloadable games.

But you couldn't have multiple games installed at once. The PlayCable adapter contained only 8K of RAM and had no permanent storage, meaning every game disappeared after the system was switched off. Want to play again tomorrow? Download it again. But games used to be small so there was not a lot of waiting time.

Unfortunately, PlayCable's futuristic ambitions didn't guarantee success. Equipment was expensive for cable operators, newer Intellivision games ended up becoming too large for the adapter's limited memory, and the videogame crash of 1983 certainly didn't help. The service disappeared in 1984.

But its legacy lives.

Decades before Game Pass, PlayStation Plus or digital storefronts become the norm, someone had already looked at a television cable and thought about selling videogames through it.

And somehow, it worked.