Never owned one and looking at that pitiful list of bangers, I didn't miss out on a single fucking thing. A console and lineup of games which was so shit it killed Sega off as a console manufacturer

I once did a post on here that contained kind of an ode to the aesthetics of the Dreamcast… I think we were listing top three best looking consoles? I keep trying to look for it but can never find it.

Edit: Found it, using Google search instead of forum search backfired.

Sega Dreamcast (1998)



The Dreamcast is a rare console whose exterior design and actual usage experience are ineluctably linked. Is it possible to look upon the console’s cloud-like exterior without hearing the gentle plink-plonk of its start-up sequence, and seeing its sky-and-sea inspired UI in the mind’s eye? The design resists straight lines – straight lines do not exist in the chaotic rumples of a cloud or the ever-changing surface of the churning sea… and they do not exist in our dreams. We merely look at the controller and the VMU’s screen and gameplay possibilities are an undeniable reality. A distinctive gentle purple cord connects the controller to the console – is it electrical wiring conveying charges from control inputs to a machine, or is it a psychic umbilical cord, sending our most heartfelt wishes and desires to this self-acclaimed caster of dreams? The Dreamcast design is modest and unassuming, perhaps easy to overlook among showier consoles, but unlike many of those consoles it forms a core part of the nostalgia for its platform. Like a dream, the design of the Dreamcast may easily slip from the conscious mind but it will live on inside us forever.

Ah, the Dreamcast - that console has some strong memories for me. 

A Background into How The Dreamcast came to be in House Cinty

It was my oldest brother who first bought a Dreamcast into the house. We used to play Soul Blade together on the Playstation and when he heard that the follow up SoulCalibur was a Dreamcast game (and saw the screenshots) he knew he wanted one. It was also a good time for me, as I basically got to spend his money (albeit, usually on 2nd hand copies and the like) as I had become the go-to person for game recommendations ever since I convinced him not to buy FIFA and actually buy ISS Pro Evolution instead. 

So yeah, played a fair amount of that lovely machine, and then my other brother actually got one once they became dirt cheap so we were actually a 2 Dreamcast household. I eventually got one of those 2 as a hand me down, so absolutely zero complaints there. 

A summary of several, but not all, standout titles on the machine (based on personal affection for them)

But what about The Games and The Memories? Well, there were plenty of both. My standouts would be:

1. Dead or Alive 2



Yes, the DC was originally bought for SoulCalibur (and we played plenty of it) but it was DoA 2 that ended up being the main go-to punch punch. Yes, it was very bouncy, and the characters were incredibly sexy (fun fact, my oldest brother was a Kasumi fan, but I was more into Ayane and Lei Fang), but it was also a bloody fun game.

The environment destruction felt genuinely mindblowing at the time, letting characters crash through scenery into entirely new areas with no loading or stuttering! It was colourful, blazingly fast and had one of the best parry / counter-hit the series has ever seen - pick a character like Ein, for example, and you could straight up batter your opponent without having to throw a punch. 

Just a really, really good fighting game. Possibly my favourite of all time. Yes, more than Power Stone 2 (I am so sorry, gav)

2. Shenmue




Something, something...looking for sailors.

Good god, this game was special. 

This was an older brother purchase, rather than an oldest one, and it was a game that we played together. I remember sitting in the bedroom while we tried to work out where to go next, tried to unravel the mysteries. 

There's a bad game design philosophy that permeates the wishes of some players - what if every building could be entered and... - in short, the idea of immersion as a completely explorable world rather than something curated, the idea that quality can be maintained while generating huge amounts of redundant content, that levels can be thoughtfully designed while still allowing players to go anywhere and do anything. 

Shenmue, while not quite a go anywhere, do anything teenage dream game, is I would argue of that ilk. It is the from the mind of a man who clearly didn't give a fuck about Game Design Best Practices™ - it is at once excessive and bloated and obscene, and yet small and intimate. The amount of minutiae, and the focus on real day / night life cycles gave a texture and believability to the small game world that has rarely been matched anywhere else. And it helps that the story and characters, while not the deepest in the world, absolutely bang...

I adored Nozomi, I wanted to catch Lan Di, I was scared of Chai. I had so much fun driving the forklift! The forklift is a character, right?

Yu Suzuki is...not a great modern game designer, lets be clear on that. But his arcade chops are unmatched, and Shenmue 1 and 2 were absolute triumphs - glorious, glittering Heaven's Gate-esque excess of the highest order, and utterly, utterly captivating. 

And, funnily enough, Yu Suzuki was behind another of my DC faves...

3. F355 Challenge 



Christmas day - my brothers and I got these thick old dressing gowns from our nan. And my oldest brother also got a F355 Challenge and Steering Wheel bundle (though he had to put some of his own money in, as we generally didn't do expensive gifts). 

This is one of the defining Christmas memories for me, as we set up the Dreamcast and steering wheel just played this the whole day. 

F355 is butter smooth and an absolutely glorious feeling game, with a handling model that feels quite sim-y despite the game's arcade roots. The game has arcade modes and a campaign and all kinds of races, but the true fun was to be round in just doing hot laps - one track, take it in turns doing a set of laps, and try to shave time off. First it was seconds, then tenths, then hundredths. 

The first few laps were a surprise, as it became clear that breaking and throttle management was actually a thing, though our obsession in recent years with Gran Turismo 2 had prepared us well enough on this front. 

And so we just played it, taking turns, stopping to eat food, coming back to that game - spending the whole day in our dressing gowns. Just a great Christmas, and one of my favourite racing games ever (and, for a long time, one of my All Time Top 10 games, if not still).

4. Phantasy Star Online / Ver.2



Mainly, the OG. Didn't play that much of Ver.2 until I got a Gamecube (excuse the vid above being Ver.2), so PSO 1 remains my defining experience for Dreamcast PSO here. 

While the other games listed above were very much about playing and competing with my brothers - this was very much a me game. They didn't like it at all, and it took me a while to even realise what PSO was. I'd never played anything like it. I knew I was ok with RPGs, being deep into a love of Final Fantasy and desperately looking for more, but the concept of this type of pseudo-MMO ARPG? I'd never seen anything like it.

But I played, and I restarted, and I learnt how it was focused on power and build growth and I struggled with solo-ing bosses designed for MP but...eventually I got there. And I played a lot!

This is pure DC-era Sega - weird, experimental, colourful and painfully ahead of its time. So many games do today what PSO set out to do 23 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) years ago. This game laid the groundwork for me falling in love with World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy 14 and Monster Hunter...especially, Monster Hunter. The few times I did go online with it was like stealing a glimpse into a future that only existed on shows like Tomorrow's World.

It's also, in all likelihood, the last truly great game Yuji Naka ever worked on.

Fucking brilliant. I mean...just look at this art!



5. Crazy Taxi

No need for anything except this song when talking about this game. You get it or you don't. 



6. Virtua Tennis 2

For a long time the greatest tennis game ever made. Smooth, fast, arcade-y with glorious depth and some sim-lite touches. This wasn't just Pong with a Slice. 



7. Sega Bass Fishing



By the time we got this, the DC were dirt cheap and everyone was just trying to clear stock. Think we got the game and the Sega Fishing Controller for silly money. It was a novelty, but it was a fun novelty, and emblematic of Sega's try everything, be weird approach to DC game design. 

8. ChuChu Rocket!

One of Sonic Team's best. An inventive and, frankly, insane little puzzler. It...had online play for some reason? It was, effectively, a test run for their online stuff for PSO and only Sega would decide that a weird cat and mouse puzzle game was the right way to do that.



But what a puzzle game!

A summary of some random thoughts about the DC

It was a fantastic little machine, and I have such fond memories of this thing. There's a whole bunch of fun games I didn't mention, like Sonic Adventure (which was genuinely really cool, even if it was no Mario 64) and Rez but it also had some issues.

For starters, the genre spread was woefully uneven - something that also afflicted the N64. it desperately lacked a sim racer at a time when a lot of people were going gaga for Gran Turismo (Sega GT was nowhere near, unfortunately) and while it had some great racing games they were often arcadey and late in the day - hello, MSR.

It was a great console for fast-paces arcade PvP, especially arena FPSes -  Quake 3 Arena, Unreal tournament, Outrigger... 

But, again, online play still wasn't there yet and I doubt they moved the needle much. They were cool as fuck, though. 

There's also a bunch of games on the machine which...were just better elsewhere, alebit sometimes at a later date. Jet Set Radio is cool and all, but JSR Future on the Xbox is just a better game in nearly every conceivable way. Rez and Skies of Arcadia suffer similar fates. Code Veronica is, unfortunately, also just straight up not a very good Resi game and I have no idea why it has accumulated the cult following it has. 

It was a weird one, overall, but I also doubt i'd change anything about it. The triggers (though they don't feel great if you actually go back and pick one of them up today) were revolutionary and are now standard on most non-Nintendo control schemes (baring the Gamecube) and it also felt really nice in the hand. It pioneered online gaming in the console space, it let a bunch of weird ass creators off the leash to make whatever they wanted. And it just...had a lot of really fucking good games.

The Dreamcast is Dead, long live the Dreamcast.

How has no one mentioned the light gun games yet smdh

Cinty, that's quite the post. Bravo
Today I'm uploading a Dreamcast emulator and ROMs to my device as I have little actual work to do today.

Ok, the OG Radio has the better graffiti mechanic - otherwise Future got it licked.

I'm going the other way with the OST but agree with the rest.

The one DC game that i never really got to try, but really want to, is this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segagaga

Imagine there's a translated ROM by this point, so might be worth a look...

Gah... the 90s, take me back for fuck sakes. Much like Cinty, a lot of my gaming back then was with the brother - lugging 5 tonne TVs around the house to do lan setups and what not. Granted this was mainly when Halo arrived, but before that, just before the Dreamcast was my Red Pill. What good times, what magical times. Standout games for me:

- PSO
- Crazy Taxi
- Power Stone
- Headhunter
- Soul Calibur
- Third Stike
- Code Veronica
- Skies of Arcadia
- Gigawing
- Shadowman
- MSR
- Ready 2 Rumble
- Capcom VS SNK
- Gunbird
- Daytona USA

If only we could go back...

The DC was just like the Neo Geo, a home version of an arcade board, so all of the Naomi ports were excellent, and it had a scattering of other great games too (Shenmue is not one of them), however, the controller was shite, and it tried to launch an online service for consoles when most of the world still used dial-up.

Sega's reputation was in tatters, and everyone was just waiting for PS2, so a lot of DC's library ended up being slightly better looking, smoother running PS1 ports.

Like the N64 and many other consoles, the highs were very high, but the overall library wasn't strong enough when compared to it's direct rivals.

Speedhaak wrote:

Gah... the 90s, take me back for fuck sakes. 
...
 If only we could go back...

I'm sure kneecap will be along to disregard everything I've said and splurge all over the DC like the big Sega fanboy he is.

Oh, man, Fur Fighters was legit.

Good work everyone, will hopefully add to the memories sometime later. For now:
I did not realise there was a Frogger 2 on DC, must check it out.
If you still have a console, it's highly likely it will play games burned to CDRs