SHIRO!’s first scheduled NetLink Night last Friday yielded a lot of fun — and a lot of chaos.
At one point, nine players on nine Saturn consoles across two continents — North and South America — played a new NetLink-capable version of Disasteroids, a homebrew clone of Asteroids that Slinga developed in 2023.
It wasn’t a smooth experience, with delayed hit detection and explosions, but it technically worked. It’s the first time so many players connected to the same game on Saturn perhaps since Sega’s online RPG Dragon’s Dream.
The meetup, which started at 9:30 p.m. EDT, started off a little slower with a modest eight players on seven consoles. That experience ran more smoothly, but even then there were some hiccups — for example, the high score screen not showing Pudgy Bunny, who was “Dan2” as the second player on my console. The frame rate got a little jittery, too.
But games of Disasteroids begin and end quickly, especially thanks to the server-side lobby, and everyone was having fun despite the issues.
“This is chaos,” SegaRPGFan said in the SHIRO! Discord server that night.
“[Lobbies] are such a game changer,” Shadowmask said. “Matchmaking was such a step but having a live lobby just elevates the whole thing.”
The online play edition was developed by Farkus and Julian with assistance from Claude AI and with Slinga’s blessing. While it’s still a work in progress, it can be downloaded here from Farkus’ GitHub.
In all, 10 players played Disasteroids that night over the course of about an hour: Farkus, CHAP3L, Shadowmask, Johne, SegaRPGFan, Double Dime, Xiden, Pudgy Bunny and mrmxy.
All of them except Pudgy Bunny were in on the most chaotic game of the evening that featured nine players all on separate consoles across two continents.
Unfortunately, that seemed to be too much for the netcode, as players’ ships were barely controllable and seemed to die without getting hit, and each wave ended with an extended sequence of watching players explode — seemingly the game catching up with itself.
The group even found out that the server can handle multiple games being played at once.
”Chapel and I did one while you guys were in another,” SegaRPGFan said.
It was functionality that not even Farkus knew was possible.
”Thanks Claude,” Farkus joked.
Later, the players dispersed into smaller games of Coup, Puzzle Bobble and more Disasteroids over the next half hour before everyone retired for the evening.
An off-screen photo of Disasteroids being played on a CRT. It’s a bit blurry because my phone camera used a long exposure automatically since the room was dark. 
An off-screen photo of Disasteroids being played on a CRT. It’s a bit blurry because my phone camera used a long exposure automatically since the room was dark. 
An off-screen photo of Disasteroids’ postgame high score table on a CRT. 
An off-screen photo of Disasteroids being played on a CRT. I turned the lights on to try to get a less-blurry photo of gameplay, but there’s a glare from the room’s lights on the screen. 
The lights on the Japanese XBand modem light up — it’s a feature Farkus tapped into for Disasteroids. 
My phone camera’s orange light-sensing light caused this shot. It looks ominous. 
An off-screen photo of the lobby for Coup on a CRT. There’s some blue discoloration in this photo that isn’t in the actual game — it’s caused by the CRT’s gun not syncing up with my camera. 
An off-screen photo of Coup being played on a CRT. 
An off-screen photo of Coup’s game over screen on a CRT. There’s some blue discoloration in this photo that isn’t in the actual game — it’s caused by the CRT’s gun not syncing up with my camera.
Making NetLight Night a regular event
By the end, it was agreed that NetLink Night should return.
To that end, the community plans on expanding NetLink Night to two time slots this Friday: an earlier time to accommodate European players before the SHIRO! Show streams, then a later time to accommodate American players. Anyone is welcome to join either time slot, though.
Here are the times in Pacific Daylight Time, Eastern Daylight Time, Coordinated Universal Time, British Summer Time and Central European Summer Time:
NetLink Night meetup time No. 1: 1 p.m. PDT / 4 p.m. EDT / 8 p.m UTC / 9 p.m. BST / 10 p.m. CEST
NetLink Night meetup time No. 2: 6 p.m. PDT / 9 p.m. EDT / 1 a.m. UTC / 2 a.m. BST / 3 a.m. CEST
Meetups are coordinated in the #matchmaking channel on the SHIRO! Discord server. Hope you see you there!
For more information on getting a setup to play Saturn online in 2026, check out this guide.
Too bad this is coordinated via Discord. gross.
What would you prefer?