Sega Dreamcast

[Kong Wen]

Sega's final home console (so far), the mighty Dreamcast, turned 15 years old yesterday. I know we have at least a couple of Dreamcast faithful among us, so it seemed like a fitting time to open up some discussion of this underrated classic system.

What are your best Dreamcast memories?

What are some hidden Dreamcast gems that a retro enthusiast might want to hunt down?

[VictorViper]

The Dreamcast was at its best when playing NAOMI-based arcade games (arcade architecture based on the DC allowed for excellent home ports) and letting their top teams go wild (AM2/Sonic Team/Smilebit). The hardware allowed them to leverage some pretty excellent third party arcade titles that used NAOMI as well, from Capcom, Tecmo and Namco, among others. It also ran SEGA Model 2- and 3-based games flawlessly. Having a system that could run arcade games (almost) natively - and not just familiar ports, but brand new releases as well - was a dream come true for an arcade rat chronically low on quarters. Until the Xbox released (which ended up receiving many excellent games that would have otherwise landed on the DC), no other console could touch the sheer variety of experiences available for couch-based multiplayer gaming.

Hardware anti-aliasing, 480p AND VGA output, out-of-the-box online support (and later broadband!), and an unusually high number of games striving for 60fps gameplay were all revelations for me. It's no secret that this is my favourite home console of all time, so I've got fond memories aplenty, but here are a few notables:

- Getting my Dreamcast two days after the Japanese launch, including Virtua Fighter 3. MvC, SEGA Rally 2 and Sonic Adventure came very shortly after
- Doubles Virtua Tennis competitive drinking
- Phantasy Star Online (obsession)
- Unreal Tournament with online and mouse + keys support
- Decent shooter support (Psikyo!!)
- Skies of Arcadia (obsession)
- Shenmue. Love it or hate it, there was nothing else like it on consoles.

[Claytone]

I've certainly had fun with the Dreamcast I bought last year. My favorite game that I've played for it so far is probably Space Channel 5. I found it ultra-charming and very fun. The copy I got was also still factory sealed after all these years (and I still managed to get it for 10 bucks), so that was cool.

Certainly I'd like to get more into the library in the future. A buddy lent me Bangai-O, which I haven't played enough of (it's pretty great), and I'd still like to try the bizarre Caution: Seaman. Oh! And one of those homebrew companies is porting Kojima's Snatcher to Dreamcast, which I think I may pick up. May seem like a silly alternative to just emulating it, but I believe they plan on including some bonuses here and there, so it'll be worth it to me.

Pretty great console with a lot of potential that was killed by the infinite momentum of PlayStation at the time (not to mention Sega's poor decisions at the end of the Genesis's lifetime and the entire Saturn's lifetime). It's really pretty impressive it got as much good software as it did in its tiny lifespan.

[Kong Wen]

Are there any heretofore unported exclusives that I should check out? Time Stalkers apparently has a cameo by Jogurt the Yogurt. That's all I know.

[VictorViper]

The DC has a ton of as-yet un-ported exclusives (if you exclude MAME emulation). Some of the bigger cult titles ended up getting ported/localized to GCN and PS2, but a very large proportion remains DC-only.

[TheGreatNads]

My best memory of the Dreamcast is getting it dirt cheap, $20 with 2 controllers, a game(Magforce Racing, so not a very good one), and a case to store it all in. Playing the Giga Wing and Mars Matrix ports was pretty fun too. I enjoyed Shenmue as well for whatever reason. Seems like I might get some of the same appeal with the last gen Deadly Premonition game.

But I can't say I ever got huge into the Dreamcast. I'm sure the Soul Calibur port was awesome for the 10 minutes it came out, but you know, I had fun with Soul Calibur when I first played it in arcades as well, having a better version on the Dreamcast wasn't that big a deal to me. Plus, as I get older, I realize Soul Calibur kind of sucks. These days most of the games people rave about are available on multiple other systems and frankly the Dreamcast controller is not very good. I had some fun with the Dreamcast, but it's not one of my favorite systems really. The Dreamcast certainly was cool at the time, it was like a combination of quality arcade ports(typical of Sega systems) and wacky experimental games(+peripherals), some of which have been brought up already, but I think it holds up pretty poorly. I didn't buy it until years after it came out and I don't feel I missed anything.

As a shmups fan, the Dreamcast era in general was sort of a terrible time. You had Cave games which were ok, but those didn't make it to the Dreamcast. Instead you had a bunch of boring shooters that were usually designed around some gimmick, but were pretty lame in terms of enemy patterns, bullet patterns, amount of stuff going on-screen, level design or whatever. I mentioned some Takumi games above which were great, but they are the exception. There were also some Psikyo ports which were good, I'll throw Triggerheart Exelica out there as well(although I've hardly played it), but most Dreamcast shooters I'll go ahead and say I think are incredibly mediocre.

Games like Ikaruga, Psyvariar, Under Defeat, and the numerous other shooters put me to sleep, even though the first two I mentioned actually had good ideas in terms of the core mechanics(the moment to moment gameplay was lacking though). Even playing something like Raiden 3 on PS2, which frankly everyone considers a pretty mediocre entry in the Raiden series, I found more fun than 90% of Dreamcast Shmups. It was a huge downslide compared to the previous era in terms of console ports, that goes for all systems of that generation, but for whatever reason the Dreamcast has this great reputation. The Shmups on the Dreamcast are overpriced and overhyped. The best ones actually got released in North America and you can get them for at least a cheaper price than the supposed amazing imports, so by all means play Mars Matrix.

Also most of these Shmups games are hilariously overpriced these days, the Dreamcast wasn't region free nor as far as I know did it have a simple device like the Saturn's Action Replay, so importing was more a pain in the ass. In the end it's not worth it, so I'd summarize the Dreamcast as an ok system to pirate stuff onto, since you don't have to any kind of modding.

I also don't like the nostalgia certain people seem to have around the system. I'm not talking about anyone here, but I have often run into this weird tendency where people want to keep the Dreamcast in this bubble. So every port of a Dreamcast game to another system is supposedly inferior in some mysterious way. Or independent games still designed for the Dreamcast are treated like gems. Or people pretend the systems didn't fail like crazy. Or the original Soul Calibur was a perfect game while all sequels are really awful, and as for the previous entries, who knows or cares? That sort of thing. It's a "cult" following kind of thing resulting from the fact that the Dreamcast had a bunch of hype-based momentum at one time and then quickly died out. But really, it was a fine system, I get it, but move on people.

[VictorViper]

You never saw an action replay card for making imports easy because it was so easy to break the region test with a simple boot disc. I believe there was an actual disc available for purchase briefly that bypassed the region protection without allowing pirated games, but it didn't fare well. Because hey, why not make a boot disc for free and opt not to pirate?

[EDIT] I'll agree there are certainly better systems for shooters out there, but I'm easier on a lot of them compared to you, and it remains true that several are not otherwise (legitimately) available on other systems. Zero Gunner and Gunbird 2 are particular favourites of mine, and Mars Matrix is legendary. Giga Wing is a bit of a guilty pleasure, too. Border Down is usually pretty highly regarded as well, is it not? Also exclusive. And of course, those "posthumous" German shmups that are otherwise only available on Neo-Geo AVS/MVS...

[TheGreatNads]

Giga Wing a guilty pleasure? Ptttttttttttttttttttttffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff. Like I said, the Psikyo games, especially Gunbird 2, which I am also a fan of, were good. Border Down is a much better product than Under Defeat, it's fine, but the fact that it's arguably the standout hori on that system I would consider telling of the quality of shooting games on the system.

[link64]

I think you kind of had to own one at the time to be truly into it, however I still think it holds up better than the N64.