Sega Dreamcast Turns 10 193
traycerb writes "It's been 10 years since 9/9/1999, when the Dreamcast launched on American shores. The hardware was ahead of its time; online capability, web browser, a visual memory unit, and a controller that anticipated the much-loved Xbox 360 controller. The games were amazing: Jet Set Radio (the first popular 3d cell-shaded game on a console), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (still the apotheosis of 2-d fighting; just try finding a copy on ebay), Soul Calibur (still looks good compared to the recent Xbox/PS3 versions), NFL 2K (came out of nowhere, and was so good that it shook EA into spending tens of millions of dollars to seal up exclusivity for NFL rights), and many others. No doubt some of the reasons for the Dreamcast's demise lay with Sega, whose dubious hardware decisions (ahem, 32x) finally caught up to them, in the form of ambivalence from both developers and gamers, just as the console-making world was shifting to the multinationals with big pockets who were willing to spend it on pricey hardware design (or could absorb the cost of faulty hardware design). It was also one of the first consoles widely used for homebrew. In honor of the 10th anniversary, a new game is being released for the Dreamcast, called Rush Rush Rally Racing. The Dreamcast is dead! Long live the Dreamcast!"
Scratching the surface (Score:4, Informative)
For such a short lived console, it's amazing how many great games there are for it. You can't forget about Ikaruga, one of the finest top down shooters ever. Or Rez, one of the finest rail shooters ever. It's got a couple world class JRPGs, Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II, and one of the best adventure games ever released for a console, Shenmue. Then there's Crazy Taxi, Bust-a-move 4, Powerstone, Ecco, Typing of the Dead, Virtua Tennis (so much fun with 4 players), and that's just off the top of my head.
Re:A great console (Score:5, Informative)
You are forgetting one of the most revolutionary games that changed the face of console gaming(okay maybe not), SEAMAN.
It was the game where you raised the fish and interacted with them using the included microphone. I remember buying that game and beating the shit out of those fish.
My little brother also got a note sent home to our parents from his second grade teacher about discouraging him from talking about his semen. Hilarity ensued.
Ataris later consoles were also underappreciated (Score:2, Informative)
Other good consoles that also were under-appreciated were the Atari Lynx [wikipedia.org] and the Atari Jaguar [wikipedia.org]. The Atari Lynx was truly ahead of its time, a full color portable console in the day and age when the Nintendo Game Boy had all of four shades of gray for its games. The games were excellent, including the fully three dimensional Stun Runner and a 3D fighter shooting video game; no other portable console could come close.
The Jaguar was also ahead of its time, with textured 3D graphics in an era when the SNES needed a special RISC chip in a video game to deliver untextured 3D (Star Fox).
Both consoles had the same problem: They were released by Arari. Retailers remembered being burned by Atari in the 1983 video game crash [wikipedia.org], when Atari would not accept returns for Atari 2600s that were not selling in the end of 1983, forcing retailers to sell the consoles and games at a loss, at great financial cost. So, Atari's errors in the early 1980s resulted in them being unable to release a successful console in the early 1990s.
Here you go (Score:4, Informative)
A quick google:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sony/ps1/2008/04/the-rarest-and-most-valuable-playstation-ps1-games.html [racketboy.com]
That wasn't hard.
Re:My first console I bought myself (Score:3, Informative)
Dreamcast was an excellent system and ahead of its time, which could be another reason it failed. Money was a big issue. Tough to go against Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo.
Gamasutra has an interesting article as well on the history:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4128/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_dreamcast.php [gamasutra.com]
Luckily, a few of those GREAT games were ported over to the GameCube, which I still have, like Ikaruga(yes I know it eventually got ported to the XBOX360), Skies of Arkadia, Shenmue, etc.
Re:ahh good times (Score:5, Informative)
There's a good list at Racketboy [racketboy.com]. One that's not on the list is Propeller Arena, a great arcade style dogfight game which was canceled and leaked to the internet.
Re:Skys of Arcadia (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ahh good times (Score:4, Informative)
>>>what killed the Dreamcast was the Sony me
Disagree. Sega has no one to blame but themselves. First I bought a Genesis which was cool. Then a 32X which was only supported a year, and then the Saturn which was only supported two years, and then Sega announced Dreamcast. I (and millions of others) decided we were tired of getting screwed buying 32Xs or Saturns that were barely-supported. So we turned our backs on Sega and their new dreamcast.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice? Fat fucking chance!"
Re:ahh good times (Score:4, Informative)
I think the only conclusion we can come to is that Sega had an array of factors aligned against them, among them their own erratic past in hardware, lingering financial troubles, and Sony's FUD. It's truly a shame that what sank them was their cleanest, most forward-looking console ever.
Re:My PSO hacking days (Score:4, Informative)
Cheating and the game itself were separated. Although I ran around the game like a goddess, my own play character wasn't cheated. I had a character image on my hard drive that I would play with when I wanted to play the game as opposed to cheat in it.
The cheating was a game in itself, to me. I actually found it more fun than the game itself. I didn't like ruining the game for other people.
As for item duping, I can't be completely blamed for that. There's actually a bug in the game's UI windowing system that allowed you to dupe items [youtube.com] without any cheat programs or hardware at all.