Dreamcast

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Dreamcast
It's Thinking.
Developer: Sega
Release Date: JP: November 27, 1998
NA: September 9, 1999
EU: October 14, 1999
AU: November 30, 1999
Predecessor: Sega Saturn
Competitors: PlayStation 2
Xbox
GameCube
Generation: Sixth generation

The Dreamcast was Sega's final home console, succeeding the Sega Saturn, and was the first console of the sixth generation of gaming, released in 1998 for Japan and 1999 worldwide and was discontinued in 2001, before the release of the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube.

The Dreamcast was the 4th strongest console of its generation, behind the PlayStation 2.

Why It's Thinking

  1. It ends the Sega console market on an extremely high note. That's why, this is Sega's farewell console.
  2. Many great titles, including Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, Metropolis Street Racer, Jet Set Radio, Ikaruga, Crazy Taxi, Power Stone 2, SoulCalibur, NBA 2K and NBA 2K1, NFL 2K and NFL 2K1, NHL 2K and NHL 2K2.
  3. It was the first home console to include a modem to connect to the Internet for online play out of the box. Some online games even work to this day through homebrew servers.
  4. It was very powerful at the time it was released.
  5. Lots of high-quality sports games and arcade ports. Speaking of arcade ports, the Dreamcast was based on the Naomi hardware, and thus many games for the Naomi had arcade-perfect ports to the Dreamcast.
  6. It supports native VGA and can output a lot of its games up to 480p.
  7. The memory card for the Dreamcast, the VMU, not only allowed gamers to save data but also offered gameplay features and even acted as a handheld gaming device itself. During gameplay, it shows mini-images relevant to the game. Some games even use this feature for actual gameplay purposes. This idea would be used further for the Wii U.
  8. It also works as a CD player and an online browser, though browsing no longer works without a modern adapter like DreamPi.
  9. More than 700 games for the system, an impressive feat considering it was on the market for less than 3 years.
  10. There was even a cable that made it compatible with the equally underrated Neo Geo Pocket Color.
  11. The console supported order-independent transparency, which annihilated transparency issues.
  12. It is very durable as seen in WIRED's Console Wars, where it survived a 15ft drop and being drenched in a whole bottle of Mountain Dew.
  13. there was even the Jump Pack which allowed the controller to rumble, like the Nintendo 64's Rumble Pak.
  14. It even has its game disc format "GD-ROM", which has 1GB of storage which is more compared to the PS1 and Saturn's CD's 700MB of storage.

Bad Qualities

  1. Poor release timing: When the Dreamcast was released the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation was still very relevant and popular, by the time the other 6th generation consoles were announced the Dreamcast was already seen as "old news" by many.
  2. Like the Sega Saturn, many of its games were arcade ports, which while still solid games, were lacking in actual content, and arcade ports in consoles were declining in popularity at the time.
  3. The previous failure of the Sega Saturn had left Sega in an extremely precarious financial state. This led to a lack of confidence in the system's future, both from customers and third-party developers. Some publishers such as Electronic Arts outright refused to support the console and many third-party games were just ports of N64 and PS1 games.
    • Many notable third-party video game franchises were absent from the Dreamcast, including Mega Man, Castlevania, and Contra.
  4. The PlayStation 2 quickly overshadowed the Dreamcast as soon as it was announced for multiple reasons:
    • The PS2 had a built-in DVD player, which at the time was a big selling point as it made the PS2 the cheapest DVD player on the market, meanwhile the Dreamcast had no DVD functionality.
    • Sega, already struggling financially from the failure of Saturn, drew themselves into a price war with Sony and ended up selling Dreamcasts at a completely unsustainable loss.
    • The PS2 was fully backward compatible, letting PS1 owners play their old games with slightly improved graphics, and giving it a massive existing software library to attract people without a PS1. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, wasn't backward compatible with Saturn at all.
  5. The online functions were very primitive due to technological limitations at the time.
  6. There weren't many standout 3D platforming and JRPG games exclusive to it, both of which were some of the most popular genres at the time.
    • Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Skies of Arcadia, and Grandia II were the only big standout exclusive games in either of those two genres and all of them were ported to other platforms after the Dreamcast's discontinuation.
  7. The controller is huge compared to previous Sega controllers, being roughly similar in size to the Xbox Duke controller.
    • The controller lacks a second analog stick and only has one pair of L/R buttons, this makes camera control uncomfortable in many games.
    • It should be noted that the Dreamcast is perfectly capable of supporting a controller with two analog sticks (since there was one) and this fault in the Dreamcast could probably have been rectified if the console hadn't failed.
    • It also has an awkwardly placed bottom cord which can be annoying when moving the controller around.
  8. It used Sega's proprietary GD-ROM discs. These were designed to be superior to CDs with their 1 GB capacity and better copy protection but were quickly outmatched by consoles using 4.7 GB DVDs. It wouldn't have been bad if it was used for Saturn instead, but since DVDs have four times as much space as GD-ROMs, it quickly fell out of favor.
  9. The Dreamcast relied on software sales to turn a profit, however, it was quickly discovered that games could be burned to CD-ROM discs and read by abusing the console's MIL-CD support. This exploit resulted in rampant piracy that substantially impacted sales of legal Dreamcast discs.
    • Pirated discs tend to downgrade the performance of games because they need to cram 1GB onto a CD-ROM.
    • The last batches of Japanese Dreamcasts (3030 model) generally cannot read CD copies of games due to the removal of MIL-CD support and other alterations, but by that point, it was far too late.
  10. The optical drive is prone to scratching discs, this indirectly encouraged the sale of pirated discs. The read head motor is also very loud.
    • Another common issue with the optical drive causes games to crash randomly and display a message saying "Please wait while disc is being checked"
  11. The cooling fan, along with the optical drive together is noisy.

Maintenance

  1. The Dreamcast's AC adapter is non-proprietary, so if you break or lose yours, it'll be easy and cheap to get a replacement.
  2. The VMU's battery drains very quickly, however, it can still keep saving files with a dead battery.
  3. The Dreamcast has an internal battery for the clock, most of these clocks, however, are no longer working. To replace the battery, the controller board has to be lifted out, and the battery stand has to be unsoldered and replaced with a new stand with a new battery. NOTE: The battery MUST be a rechargeable cell battery or else it will NOT work and will cause leaking.

Reception

When first released, the Dreamcast was extremely popular and highly successful, with it breaking several records at the time. However, its popularity was very short-lived, as it was quickly overshadowed by the PlayStation 2. The system was discontinued less than 2 years after its North American release due to bad sales and lack of funds from Sega.

As Retro Gaming became popular, the Dreamcast became a cult classic. It is now considered a great system despite its short life and commercial failure. It is widely considered the best console Sega ever made and is well remembered for being the final Sega console.

When James Rolfe in his Angry Video Game Nerd persona reviewed Sonic Shuffle for AVGN Wishlist Part 1, he acknowledged that the Dreamcast was a good console to go out on, after many ups and downs from the company.

Ever since the Dreamcast's discontinuation, many Sega fans remained hopeful that Sega would eventually release a new console. Over the years, there have been multiple attempts to convince Sega to return to the console market but all of them have failed, as it's unlikely that Sega would have the resources or the money, plus their IPs are all third-party now.

The Dreamcast has built a very dedicated homebrew community that continues to release games to this date.

Trivia

  • As mentioned above, Microsoft helped Sega develop some of the concepts for the Dreamcast including the Internet modem. Some of these concepts would later be used on the Xbox, which created a theory that the Xbox was a successor to the Dreamcast.
  • The console's codename was Katana.
  • The swirl logo's color is blue in Europe. Rumors say it was to avoid copying the logo of a German game company called Tivola.
  • If you try to play a Dreamcast game disc in a CD player or any device capable of playing audio CDs, it will play a recorded message telling the user that the disc is for use only on a Dreamcast and to not attempt to play track 1 as it contains game data.
    • Seaman, Shenmue, and Skies of Arcadia instead have a humorous message that is voiced by the game's characters.
  • Even after it was discontinued, game releases continued to trickle in Japan (though the vast majority of them were Naomi ports) until 2007, with Karous as the very last officially released Dreamcast game.

Good/Decent Examples of Dreamcast Games

Bad/Mediocre Examples of Dreamcast Games

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