3615 SEGA

3615 SEGA was an online service on the French Minitel system. Launching towards the end of 1988 and running through much of the 1990s it was perhaps Sega's first consumer facing online service, pre-dating the World Wide Web by quite some number of years. The service was accessed via dedicated Minitel terminals, which had achieved widespread adoption in France due to being given away to telephone subscribers for free in place of traditional telephone directories. Similar to later dial-up internet services users were charged a per minute fee for accessing services, with commercial services operating on the 3615 code receiving a cut of the profits.

After three years of operation the service was revamped on December 16th, 1992. Content included information on new and upcoming games, tips, product catalogue, aswell as interactive quizzes, competitions, and message boards. Due to the nature of an online service restricted to dedicated terminals virtually no content has survived to this day.

Promotional Material

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  1992 promotional page featuring a rare surviving image of the actual service.

Gallery

• MegaForce13 010.jpg

  Article from Mega Force Issue 13 published January 1993