Looking back on the Dreamcast

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This ign article might be interesting.

Dream On: Revisiting Sega's Dreamcast
We rank every single US-released DC title with new impressions, screens and video.


May 30, 2006 - It's a date Sega fans will never forget -- 9.9.99.
It was a day of promise, a day for dreams.
Sega had been through a rough patch, having failed financially with the Sega Saturn.
The high-priced console never caught on in the U.S., but the affordable (and powerful) Dreamcast was certain to be a different story.
Price at just $200 bucks and launched with more than a dozen titles, the Dreamcast was destined to return Sega to prominence.
It was a time of great hope for Sega lovers.


A developer friend of mine said that one of the reasons EA didn't support the Dreamcast was the decision to go with the NEC Power VR chip , instead of the 3dFX chip .
Which , no doubt , contributed to the demise of 3dFX , due to the fact that they lost a whole R&D cycle , working on said chip .
 
Pretty decent article... I still think if there was support the DC could've held it's own. Even though I survived for roughly 1 year, it showed fantastic promise. I only wonder what developers could've done with the hardware if they continued working on it.
 
Looking back on the Dreamcast? Looking back on the Dreamcast, it was better than the Gamecube, PS2, and XBox...possibly combined. I don't think I could comprehend the greatness it would have achieved if it had lasted through the current cycle that just finished up last year. Sega did us a favor by ending it early, we would have all been swallowed up by the omnipotent Sega Dreamcast.
 
The Dreamcast was FANTASTIC for its time but I'm not so sure a lot of games hold up too well now. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Soul Caliber are the only two that I can think of... I did love Shadowman, Legend of Kain: Soul Reaver, Crazy Taxi, Hydro Thunder, Power Stone, NFL2K and a bunch of others though...
 
I didn't get one until last summer, but from my limited experience I think its a great system. It really is on par with all the other currnent gen systems, and if developers were still making games for it they would no doubt be similar to what is out now.

The DC really had everything you could need in a console. Online play, lots of different peripheral controllers, some portable features for the VMU.

It doesn't seem like it had enough of the big mainstream titles to really sell systems though. If it had launched with a better looking version of Madden or something it would have done better. A lot of the early games were similar to games that were also launched on the Playstation, and the PS was king in 1999. The DC controller is also not very good in my opinion, but I don't think this played a big part in its failure.

I don't have much knowledge of the pricing for the system since I got the system for $15, extra controller for $1 and VMU for $3. Were these things highly priced around launch?
 
I still have and love my Dreamcast. The graphics are awesome still even now. And I confess, I like (even though it's only one stick) the analog. I loved the packaging of the whole system, and though I never used it, the modem was brilliant. I liked how heavy, but dense the machine was. Seemed well designed. It also launched at a pretty nice price if I recall correctly. I got one pretty early on into the cycle. I remember watching a store demo of the whale smashing through a bridge in Sonic. Ok, these really are next level graphics I decided. A noteworthy jump.

Those were exciting times, my first copy of (especially, who was with me here?)... Shenmue ...Seaman... Virtua Tennis... Skies of Arcadia... heck even Crazy Taxi for a hot minute.

Man, I'm tempted to fire her back up! Man, I gotta stop sucking this machine off every time a thread starts! :lol:
 
I like the dreamcast. I too only got one when they were $15 or so at Ebgames. It has a lot of good games. The one thing that really bothers me about the system though is the controller. It hurts my hands after playing for too long. I haven't had that problem with any other system. I do think it died prematurely.
 
Got one at launch and another for $15 at eb (for back up). I still play quite a bit. If you think about the DC is almost 7 years old! And games are still largely playable and some hold up very well. Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxis, Virtua Tennis....hell I'm currently playing a season of NFL 2k2 and that isn't too far off.

Recently I unlocked all the characters in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (in arcade mode not the "leave training mode on" way.)
 
I actually got interviewed by a Sega rep near the end of the DC's (official) life - I was at a local BB looking at the DC games- and she told me that one of the big nails in the coffin of the DC is that Sony wouldn't let any store sell PS2's or the games and accessories for it unless they gave double the shelf space that the DC had for the PS2.

Shame too, I love my little DC...
 
[quote name='peteloaf']I actually got interviewed by a Sega rep near the end of the DC's (official) life - I was at a local BB looking at the DC games- and she told me that one of the big nails in the coffin of the DC is that Sony wouldn't let any store sell PS2's or the games and accessories for it unless they gave double the shelf space that the DC had for the PS2.

Shame too, I love my little DC...[/quote]

Isn't that the truth. I think that still applies today. Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance sell tons of titles while they get 1/4 of the section @ Best Buy that the PS2 gets! The PS2 games have two rows at my Best Buy!
 
There are still new Dreamcast games every couple of months. Under Defeat was a fairly recent release, Radilgy before that. Sega has also started selling Dreamcasts again in Japan, though they're all refurbished. Its still around... Sega's last Dreamcast game was in 04, not that long ago.

Its actually a viable option for smaller developers, and ports of games from Naomi arcade hardware. They'll do a smallish run, if it does well enough, a publisher will pick them up and bring it to another platform. Look at Chaos Field and Ikaruga. Radilgy is coming out for PS2 and GC soon.

Check out this interview with G. Rev, its a month old, but its still pretty good. Good to hear that they're on board with Xbox 360 and possibly getting games brought here on that platform.
http://www.got-next.com/features_read.php?id=344&pno=0
 
i got my dream cast after christmas and it cost about $250,i just wish i had the internet back then to play games online.but i still had alot of fun with it
i remember the hype lots of the games had i still have the origanol sonic adventer 2 for it sometimes i play it.
btw do any of you play it online?
 
I remember staying up all night with my brother and cousin playing that olympics game where you could unlock the silver guy who would make computery, warbly noises. Laughing our asses off, me trying to find the best way to position that big controller and wiggle the stick as fast as I could.

UFC and Toy Commander were fun, too, but I sucked more at them. I just couldn't get the steering in TC, but I liked the game, overall.

I still have a bunch of unplayed DC games. SEGA!
 
[quote name='mr ryles']So the dreamcast failed because EA didn't support it? I believe it. *No sarcasm*[/QUOTE]

Well it certainly didn't help it. EA puts out a lot of games, and while most are crap there are some good ones. Whether its good or not, Madden is one of the games that people always look at when comparing a new gen system to old ones. I later realized that the 2K series was better, but this wasn't until 2005 on the PS2. EA makes "mainstream" games but a lot of the "best" games on the DC weren't really the ones that would appeal to everyone. Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia are excellent, but I'm not sure I would have paid $40-50 for them when they were released without knowing how good they are now. One thing that puzzles me about the DC is that it seemed to have superior versions of some of the most successful franchises on the PS1, like Tony Hawk 2, Legacy of Kain, Tomb Raider, etc. but they didn't really seem to catch on.

I think the DC failed because of the PS1. It was by far the most popular console when DC launched and wasn't winding down at all as there were still a bunch of great games coming out for it. I know I still have an EGM from when the Dreamcast launched, so I might go take a look and see what was new for the PS at that time.

There's probably a lot of truth to that thing about Sony and the shelf space, I don't really recall ever seeing a lot of DC games for sale anywhere, but then again it might have been because I wasn't really looking.
 
[quote name='Stoneage']I remember staying up all night with my brother and cousin playing that olympics game where you could unlock the silver guy who would make computery, warbly noises. Laughing our asses off, me trying to find the best way to position that big controller and wiggle the stick as fast as I could.

UFC and Toy Commander were fun, too, but I sucked more at them. I just couldn't get the steering in TC, but I liked the game, overall.

I still have a bunch of unplayed DC games. SEGA![/quote]
i was affraid to say it but toy commander was one of my fave games allso man that dreamcast has my best memories with it,me and my old friends just playin it all the time.
I even had a dreamcast bday cake it looked just like it.
 
[quote name='lionheart4life']I think the DC failed because of the PS1. It was by far the most popular console when DC launched and wasn't winding down at all as there were still a bunch of great games coming out for it. I know I still have an EGM from when the Dreamcast launched, so I might go take a look and see what was new for the PS at that time.

There's probably a lot of truth to that thing about Sony and the shelf space, I don't really recall ever seeing a lot of DC games for sale anywhere, but then again it might have been because I wasn't really looking.[/QUOTE]
DC failed because of the false hype surrounding the PS2, and their complete inability to market anything. It also didn't help that retailers hated Sega, some stores like KB Toys had stopped carrying Sega products completely in the Saturn days. They still did very well in their first couple years though.

Soul Calibur came in as a launch title and blew everything away. I've never been more impressed with a launch title, or with any other step from one generation to another. Then the promises of the PS2 came.

"You can communicate to a new cybercity. Did you see the movie The Matrix? Same interface. Same concept. Starting from next year, you can jack into The Matrix!"

"It will also let users produce game characters comparable in image quality to Walt Disney's Toy Story."

I'm still waiting for the PS2 game that can blow away the Dreamcast like Soul Calibur did to PS1. Sony's superior marketing (and Sega's incompetence) was what did it. Sega was never a very well run company.
 
I do remember seeing some Dreamcast commercials, but they really didn't showcase the system or have anything to do with gaming in general. I also remember going to TRU a couple weeks before the Dreamcast was coming out, and the only mention of it was a sign with the release date on it that was barely visible on the way out of the store. If I didn't read EGM then I probably wouldn't have even known Sega had a new system coming.

Metal Gear Solid 2 was amazing to me as my first PS2 game, but launch games like Smuggler's Run weren't really any different that what could be done on the DC. I'm still waiting for a lot of the features I wanted in PS2, like actually using the harddrive. I thought having a place to cache games to and unlimited save space was a good idea, but I never bought one since practically nothing uses it. Online play was also extremely underwhelming, especially for games that keep won-loss records and ranks. For many games, especially sports titles, it takes longer to find someone who will play normally and actually finish a game than it does to actually play that game.

Dreamcast's online was really ahead of its time. We didn't even get broadband until 2002 I think, and surfing the internet was hard enough on a dial up connection, I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to actually make it through a few games on DC with it.
 
Freaking Konami also didn't put out any DC games. The DC still rocks if you use a VGA box. I would take it to the local post office store my buddy worked and played it durring office hours. We would get tons of people saying how amazing Virtua Tennis looked when we used my VGA box.

The system has a ton of gems that are sure to be worth some cash in the years to come. You've not played a crazy game untill you've played Bangai-o or Mars Matrix.

At this years E3 you should have seen me own the Power Stone collection on the PSP thanks to my practice on the DC version.

Oh and who could forget Free PSO ? Man that was fun, using the keyboard was amazing.

KB & M on a FPS console game ! How could you not love that ?

And the fishing controller, with motion sensor ! Dear god that thing was fun.

Also the DC was also the place I played MGS & GT2 thanks to bleem.
 
[quote name='KingDox']Freaking Konami also didn't put out any DC games. [/QUOTE]


If I remember correctly, they were working on an exclusive Castlevania, but cancelled.
 
[quote name='SMMM']If I remember correctly, they were working on an exclusive Castlevania, but cancelled.[/QUOTE]
Castlevania: Resurrection.

Konami still had Air Force Delta, DDR, and Silent Scope on the system. Certainly not their best stuff though.

Capcom gave the Dreamcast absolutely everything they had.
 
[quote name='dafoomie']Castlevania: Resurrection.

Konami still had Air Force Delta, DDR, and Silent Scope on the system. Certainly not their best stuff though.

Capcom gave the Dreamcast absolutely everything they had.[/QUOTE]

I forgot about air force delta and Silent Scope. But DDR never made it to the states. They even had Beat Mania for the DC but it only was in Japan.

I also forgot to mention Twin Sticks. God I wanted those, they were so hard to find.
 
[quote name='dafoomie']Castlevania: Resurrection.

Konami still had Air Force Delta, DDR, and Silent Scope on the system. Certainly not their best stuff though.

Capcom gave the Dreamcast absolutely everything they had.[/QUOTE]

All their arcade-like/ports games, anyway.

Edit: scrap that, forgot about Resident Evil/Dino Crisis
 
[quote name='DrunkTigerWoods']Half my games on DC were Capcom games. So many great fighters.[/QUOTE]


I think I'll give a virtual pound on that one. I just about own all the Capcom fighting games. And the King of Fighters. Dreamcast is a hardcore gamer machine and it always will be.

Viva La Homebrew!
 
[quote name='GTmaster39']I think I'll give a virtual pound on that one. I just about own all the Capcom fighting games. And the King of Fighters. Dreamcast is a hardcore gamer machine and it always will be.

Viva La Homebrew![/QUOTE]

Yes! I got back into gaming a few years ago and got my DC last year. I have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to fighters. I keep jumping around between so many series, I can't get really good at any of them. Anyway, glad to see the Dreamcast get some love.
 
[quote name='4tygames']Isn't that the truth. I think that still applies today. Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance sell tons of titles while they get 1/4 of the section @ Best Buy that the PS2 gets! The PS2 games have two rows at my Best Buy![/QUOTE]


yeah same deal at my best buy, thats messed up
 
I still love my DC. Using the fishing controller with fishing games is a blast, the Capcom games are great, and the Sega arcade stuff is wonderful. However, the thing people often overlook is how good many of the racing games were - the only steering wheel I own is for my DC.
 
[quote name='Machine']I still love my DC. Using the fishing controller with fishing games is a blast, the Capcom games are great, and the Sega arcade stuff is wonderful. However, the thing people often overlook is how good many of the racing games were - the only steering wheel I own is for my DC.[/quote]
racing games bleh!
 
Sony just threw money at the problem until it went away, which is really annoying. To this day, I won't buy a Sony product because - for as "evil" as Microsoft may be - they have yet to pull off any repugnant bullshit like Sony has with their consoles. Sega was already overmatched in terms of marketing their console, the money Sony had was just the icing on the cake.

The DC's premature demise is the main reason I hate Peter Moore and Bernie Stolar...it happened on their watch. Of course, then Moore tries to tell us that it's to benefit everyone, including the consumer. In fact, Moore's lie about them continuing to strongly support the Dreamcast throughout 2001 - which I knew was a lie back then, witness almost every anticipated game being cancelled that year, including Half-Life - is the same reason I knew Microsoft was bullshitting about being behind backwards compatibility for the long run. It came out of Moore's mouth, so don't bother believing it.

Madden would have helped the DC, sure, but I don't think it would have delayed the console's death for much longer.
 
[quote name='KaneRobot']The DC's premature demise is the main reason I hate Peter Moore and Bernie Stolar...it happened on their watch.[/QUOTE]
Their biggest mistake was firing Tom Kalinske. The man was absolutely brilliant. He was the reason why Genesis had any success at all. He was completely opposed to the Saturn, he wanted to delay it for a while and let the 16 bit sales continue. no dice. He wanted to partner with Sony and make a 32 bit console instead, they said no. He wanted to replace the 2 Hitachi processors in the Saturn with one from SGI, and make the system much cheaper. Japan as usual didn't listen to a word he said, and that SGI chip made its way into the Nintendo 64.

http://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/features/misc/quotes.shtml

Tom Kalinske (president and CEO, Sega of America): After my first month as CEO, I told Mr. Nakayama, "You have to get rid of Altered Beast, the title that's bundled with Genesis. It sounds like devil worship. We have to get the price down to $149, and we have to develop more American software." The board spoke for two hours in Japanese and I was just sitting there, not understanding a word. Finally Mr. Nakayama said, "No one here agrees with anything you've said." I thought mine was going to be the shortest career in the business. But as I was walking out, he said, "But I hired you to make the decisions for Europe and the Americas, so go ahead and do it.

Kalinske: The specs for our next-generation console, the Saturn,18 didn't look very good, and it was way too expensive - Sega Japan told us it was going to retail at $549. Then Jim Clark, the chair of Silicon Graphics, says, "I've got this chipset that's a derivative of the MIPS chipset that would be perfect for your system." We call Sega Japan and say this thing will be cheaper than Saturn, and that it will move polygons 50 percent quicker. The Sega hardware group comes over and says that the chip is too big, it won't be efficient to manufacture. Forget it. When I tell Jim Clark this, he says, "What do I do with this now?" And I say, "Well, I'm sure there are a few folks who might be interested in buying it." And he says, "Yeah, I've already talked to Nintendo." The rest is N64 history.

Kalinske: I felt horrible about bringing Saturn to market. I was being forced to introduce the machine with a very high price, and its performance was terrible. We knew it was terrible. Sega Japan said, "You've got to bring Saturn out before PlayStation." Which we did - it came out four months earlier than PlayStation. Then they said we'd only have 70,000 ready by then. Well, how can you introduce a platform with only 70,000 units? I sent a memo to Japan in 1995, saying Sega would be better off just becoming a software company - we could support Sony, and even Nintendo. They sent a reply: "We will always be in the hardware business."

Tom Kalinske (president and CEO, Sega of America): The managements of Sega and Sony were very close. Sony asked us if they could develop software for the Sega CD, and we even taught Sony how to do CD-based games. We ran the specs on what we thought would be the perfect game platform, based on our R&D guys at Sega of America. We took it to Japan, and, believe it or not, Sony Japan agreed that it was a great idea. We'd build a hardware platform together and share the loss, because there surely would be a loss on any kind of hardware platform. Sega would get the benefit of whatever software it developed, and whatever Sony developed belonged to Sony. We went to Sega's board, and they said, "What, are you crazy? Sony doesn't know anything about building a game system, and they don't know anything about software. Why would you want to partner with them?" So that was the end of that.
Click to expand...
 
[quote name='dafoomie']Their biggest mistake was firing Tom Kalinske. The man was absolutely brilliant. He was the reason why Genesis had any success at all. He was completely opposed to the Saturn, he wanted to delay it for a while and let the 16 bit sales continue. no dice. He wanted to partner with Sony and make a 32 bit console instead, they said no. He wanted to replace the 2 Hitachi processors in the Saturn with one from SGI, and make the system much cheaper. Japan as usual didn't listen to a word he said, and that SGI chip made its way into the Nintendo 64.

http://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/features/misc/quotes.shtml[/quote]

Thanks for bringing this to the thread - oddly enough, considering my love for Sega, I'd never heard much about Tom Kalinske. Very interesting.
 
[quote name='javeryh']The Dreamcast was FANTASTIC for its time but I'm not so sure a lot of games hold up too well now. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Soul Caliber are the only two that I can think of... I did love Shadowman, Legend of Kain: Soul Reaver, Crazy Taxi, Hydro Thunder, Power Stone, NFL2K and a bunch of others though...[/QUOTE]

Don't forget that Legacy of Kain ran at a smooth 60FPS which the only Xbox 360 title to accomplish was table tennis.

EDIT: SC II ran at 60FPS as well and PSO was the best pickup and go online RPG EVER!
 
i loved that video,dose any of you still play any games online?
maybe we could have a sega online day or something.
i still remember all those games.
i remember when the saturn came out all so that sonic R game sure did have alot of hype.
 
[quote name='DrunkTigerWoods']Half my games on DC were Capcom games. So many great fighters.[/QUOTE]

Same here. There a lot of Capcom fighters I missed out on because I sold my Dreamcast too early. Loved the KOF games that were put on the system by SNK as well :)

I just bought a Dreamcast a month or so ago and I am happy to have it back. I still have memories of countless hours playing Soul Calibur, Power Stone and House of the Dead 2 with my cousin.
 
I have to agree that the PS2 hype and Sega's bad marketing made the Dreamcast stumble out of the gates to a point where it would never be able to compete.

I thought it was pretty affordable for the first next-gen console at the time. I was in high school and easily paid for it with only working a couple weeks during the summer. I think I got mine about a month after launch.

I'd have to say that 80% of my DC games were either Capcom, SNK or Sammy fighters. One of my CD wallets is bursting with fighters.

I hated the controller at first but after playing a lot of 3-D games and going back to the analog controller on the Saturn, I just got used it to. I use converters mostly now because I'm a d-pad killer :cry: and people are practically giving away PSOne controllers.

I love how the import and homebrew scene are making my DC last so long. My friends and I played CvS2 and Ikaruga for what seemed like years before they came out in NA.

I really wish I got to play Samba de Amigo.. The controllers were just to expensive, even the crappy third party ones. I also wanted to try the official twin sticks.

I liked comparing the DC DoA2 against the PS2 DoA2: Hardcore, but maybe that was just me.

I still miss seeing my little fighter kicking and slashing on the VMU while playing Soul Calibur 1.

A lot of you probably already have seen this, but I remember my friends and I passing this around when the DC was still putting up a fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vky8lhWrf4g
 
After reading all the reviews, well the three that are up atleast. I see that my DC library is really lacking. For instance the game reviewed today, Bang! Something, looks pretty damn awesome. And yet I have never heard of it.
 
Personally, I loved the DC and to this day think it was one of the best systems. Way ahead of its time. Just wish the controller was a bit more befitting to the hands. There has NEVER been a game that impacted me as much as when I first put in Soul Calibur and played it. That was a moment I will never forget.
 
The DC still had the best launch lineup in console history. Period.
Sega's marketing does leave much to be desired. I still feel though, that if the DC had the best marketing team in the world behind it, it still could not defeat the hordes of PS2 sheep.

PS2 has some good games, don't get me wrong. But I'm talking about the generation of gamers who will take....let's say Sonic Adventure 1, and compare it to God of War and say "SEE! The PS2 kicks the DC's ass!" "just look at dem graphix"

Had people given the DC a chance, I have no doubt that developers would be doing some even better games with it. Look at SC for example, I'm not sure there are too many games that can compete with it to this day.

Like the Saturn before it, it was the fighter fans system. You just can't beat Capcom and SNK fighters with a PS2 fanbitch strapped to both arms, and that's a fact.
I guess Tekken 2239849234 deserved more than SFA3, SF3rd Strike, KoF, MvC, MvC2, an easy way to import (not really an advertised selling point, but still), I could go on for a while. Such a shame.

The only complaint I really had was the controllers, but I somehow managed. =P
 
[quote name='howlinmad']The DC still had the best launch lineup in console history. Period. [/QUOTE]

True(for just Jet Grind Radio alone); but I have a feeling the Wii will come close.
 
Nice thread, guys. I remember the Dreamcast being the prime sponsor on the Arsenal FC in the EPL. I also remember being too desperately poor to be able to afford a new console back then. :cry:

Even so, I'm still kicking myself over not picking up one of these things when they were being cleared out of stores for $50 and under with games going for a few bucks...
 
Hmm what do you guys think the #1 game is going to be? I think it might be power stone, but then again I only know about 20 dreamcast games.
 
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