GameTap Brings Retro Games to Life

New broadband gaming service from Turner Broadcasting Systems goes live with 300 arcade, PC and console games we all may have loved at one point or another.

Where do old games go after they fade from the spotlight? One possible place might be GameTap, a new broadband entertainment network from Turner Broadcasting Systems which threw open its doors today to the game loving public.

GameTap, TBS said, is an all-you-can-play” gaming service accessible from up to two household computers. Subscribers download special software to use the service and pay a subscription of $14.95 per month.

The network is launching with some 300 games from 24 publishers, together with hours of original programming. Titles, such as Dig Dug and Sonic Spinball, herald from the early arcades, PCs, and popular video game consoles, including the Sega Genesis and Dreamcast, Atari 2600, and Intellivision. Original programming will include magazine, reality, and lifestyle shows, interviews with the who’s who of gaming, celebrity features, and “game trailers” for the GameTap service.

“We’ve taken GameTap on the road and hosted a few thousand gamers through our experiential marketing programs, and now we’re ready to take GameTap to a mainstream audience,” said GameTap General Manager Stuart Snyder. “GameTap puts an entire library worth of games-both current and classic-at your finger tips. The game community, and for that matter the Internet itself, has never seen anything like it.”