Cross-platform play

Cross-platform play, cross-platform multiplayer or simply cross-play is the feature offered by some games where users can play a game online together regardless of the platform their game is.

Such functionality was first to be pioneered in NES, SNES and Sega Genesis consoles with the Teleplay Modem which would allow owners of these 3 consoles to play together in games developed with this modem in mind, such as BattleStorm, a tank combat simulator developed by the author of said modem, Keith Rupp, who formed his company Baton Technologies in a small office in an industrial park near Skyharbor Airport in Phoenix. Studios like Electronic Arts and Sierra were in talks with Baton Technologies' Keith to release cross-platform games but decided against it as the modem and the games weren't licensed, obtaining a license from Sega and/or Nintendo was hard, and due to pressure by Nintendo of America, most of major retailers refused to exhibit unlicensed titles.

As such, the modem was cancelled as Sega and Nintendo didn't license it as well as the games developed for it, all in spite of Baton Technologies actually having fully-working 2400-bit-per-second prototype modems (with a standard AT keyboard connector for potential internet access) on hands along witn 3 game prototypes were actually made (unfortunately all of them remain undumped to this day) to demonstrate the modem's capabilities.

Another such ill-fated accessory was the unreleased Edge 16 Modem developed by AT&T in partnership with PF Magic and Sega of America. The Edge 16 Modem was supposed to bring cross-play to Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and 3DO. Unlike Baton Technologies, AT&T actually managed to convince Sega to license them instead, but they never delivered, and the unfulfilled promise was actually the reason for the failure of the Teleplay Modem (investors simply pulled of the project once they heard of AT&T's licensed competing project).

Later, a company called Catapult came to the market with their XBAND Modem for SNES and Sega Genesis, which was licensed by both Nintendo and Sega. Similar in many aspects, it actually became the first to officially enter the market and enjoyed a limited success but ultimately failed, and no games were actually supported cross-play, the only multiplatform piece of software was Xmail, an e-mail client that came bundled with the modem.

However, the Sega Mega Drive version of SanSan (an online service for Go, a Japanese board game) released in 1994 for the Mega Modem did offer multiplayer where MD players could play against PC players. It was very niche, though.

It was followed by Habitat II (the successor to the original Habitat releases in 1990 for FM Towns Marty, Mac and PC-9801) which wasn't really a game but a MMO virtual world released in March 1996 for Windows/Mac, with the Saturn client released in July, allowing Saturn players with the Sega Saturn Modem to occupy the same virtual room space with PC players and remaining active for a couple of years afterwards.

The cross-play idea would eventually come with the Sega Dreamcast. Very revolutionary for its time, it pushed cross-play between console and home computer to mainstream with the release of Quake 3 Arena, allowing to set-up a joint PC/Dreamcast server.

And you can still do it to this day! All you need is an unpatched copy of the game for Windows, Linux or macOS, the latest version of the Black Metal Assault server mod and the official Dreamcast map pack.

Another case was 4x4 Evo which supported cross-play between the Dreamcast, Windows and macOS versions (the PS2 version had its own separate servers); it can also be experienced these days with the servers hosted by Dreamcast-Talk/Shuouma, unfortunately they're not multiplatform but Dreamcast/flycast-only.

Additionally, Millionaire Fighting 2001 (the Japanese version of Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001) was the first of its kind (a year before the release of Final Fantasy XI, a JMMORPG which supported cross-play between PC and PS2), the first instance of cross-play between directly competing consoles as it offered online matches between Dreamcast and PS2 players in Japan, which had been previously unheard of. The Dreamcast version was only released in Japan and correspondingly, only the Japanese PS2 version offered cross-play, with other international PS2 releases (including Asian non-Japanese) having removed that unique capability.

It was followed by the aforementioned FFXI as well as a far more obscure game: Aero Dancing i, a Japanese-only entry in the Aero Dancing flight simulator series. Initially a Dreamcast-only game, it later got the PC release for Windows 95/98/Me/2000, which was released featuring cross-play with the Dreamcast version.

In some cases, cross-play can be still be experienced on emulators if there is an official server software client available (or an unofficial reverse-engineered alternative) for the relevant game(s) in question and if the relevant emulator(s) support(s) the online functionality of the emulated system(s) (e.g. a console or a home computer).

See also

• Netplay