"Sega's Big Comeback"

9.9.99 is a day that I will never forget. After a barrage of ads (who doesn't remember all of the “It's thinking” magazine ads and commercials) and hype it was time for Sega to put up or shut up, it was time for the Dreamcast. Sega showed everybody what they were capable of when they made the Genesis but a many, many stupid mistakes caused them to lose their market share. Sega, determined to get back on the right foot, cut production on the Saturn and started working on a new system, codename: Katana, that would eventually become the Dreamcast. This was Sega's last chance in the console market. Could they right all of their wrongs? Could they give us a true successor to the Genesis? We all waited with baited breath on 9.9.99.

Games are without a doubt what make a system. A system can be a marvel of technology and still suck because it has no games (cough, PS3). The Saturn had a surprising amount of good games considering how hard it was to program for but it's lineup didn't even begin to touch the Dreamcast's. Despite only really being around for two and a half years, the Dreamcast still managed to compile one of the best libraries of any console in video game history. It had almost no holes in it's lineup. Are you an RPG freak? Try some Phantasy Star Online or Skies of Arcadia. Sports gamer? The Dreamcast had Sega Sports (which would later become 2K sports) producing some of the best sports games of all time (NFL and NBA 2k to name a couple) and you couldn't get them on any other console. We also can't forget about Ready 2 Rumble. Racing fan? Daytona USA and Sega GT will keep you occupied. And yes, it even had a good Sonic game. Hell, it even had a great port of Quake 3: Arena WITH ONLINE (more on that later) in a time when “good console FPS” was still an oxymoron.

The best genre, however, was fighting games. Capcom and SNK seemed to love the Dreamcast and ported countless titles to the console over it's life span. The result was almost every arcade classic being made for the Dreamcast. Near arcade ports of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Marvel vs. Capcom, Capcom vs. SNK, and King of Fighters 98 and a less then perfect port of Street Fighter III: Third Strike had fighting game fans clamoring over this system. The only thing that would have made it more complete would have been a great Virtua Fighter game. Virtua Fighter 3TB was released, but it was a rather lackluster title. Regardless, in just 2 ½ years the Dreamcast managed to compile a library better then consoles that stayed around for much longer (N64). If it had a full six or seven-year cycle, then we would be looking at the undisputed best game library of all time.

The Hardware of the Saturn was a mess. It had a motherboard and another board, which I believe was called a sisterboard, attached to it and it was a nightmare to develop for. The Dreamcast, however, was completely different. Developers flocked to this console because it was easy to program for. It also had some awesome extra features, such as the ability to run Windows CE on it, a feature that next generation consoles are just starting to get. It's look was stylish and most importantly it was TINY. In a day and age where consoles are getting bigger and bigger, the Dreamcast almost looks like a handheld. Everything about it screamed simplicity and that was what made it so great.

One of the biggest features that set the Dreamcast apart from it's competition was the fact that it came with a built in 56K modem. It was the first system to come equipped with online and it made full use of it. Games like NFL 2k1, Phantasy Star Online, Quake III: Arena, and Unreal Tournament were all online and all ran great. You could even play Super Street Fighter II Turbo online in Japan! This was truly revolutionary stuff at the time. The fact that it was only 56k made it frustrating at times, but online as a whole was better then the PS2 was for the first half of it's lifespan and better then the Gamecube ever was.

The Dreamcast had a crazy controller. It's pretty obvious that the design for it was lifted from the Saturn's 3d controller and for the most part it faired well. The only genre it was really lacking in was fighting games, which were almost unplayable on it. Luckily, Agetec made a great arcade controller that no Dreamcast fan should be without. The real innovation wasn't the controller itself but what was inside that controller. The Dreamcast memory card (called a VMU) had a screen and was placed inside the controller. This ended up being a great edition to the system as developers came up with numerous creative ways to use it such as the Chao Minigame in Sonic Adventure or, my personal favorite, being able to call plays in NFL 2k so your friends can't peak at your screen. Sadly, no other consoles have revisited this idea since then.

The graphics of the Dreamcast weren't anything special. They looked way better then the consoles in 1999 but they couldn't match the might of the PS2, Gamecube, or Xbox. Good graphics don't make good games, however, and the Dreamcast proved this by making up for it in other ways. We didn't get a graphical powerhouse, what we got was a system that ran smoothly (Xbox 360 anyone?), was easy to program for, and produced some great 2D graphics. Games like Sonic Adventure looked good and ran at blazing speeds. While the system's graphics didn't blow you away, it found other ways to impress you.

The Dreamcast was definitely a system far ahead of it's time with a great game library to back it up, yet it only lasted two and a half years. Why? What went wrong? Well, Sega didn't do anything wrong (for a change). They didn't release any stupid add-ons or stop support of the console. One thing and one thing only did the Dreamcast in: Hype. As the launch of the PS2 loomed in the horizon, people were hyping it up to be a dream machine. Sega released all of the awesome games they could and buckled down. The PS2's launch titles ended up being pretty bad, I'd even go as far as to call it the worst launch lineup in video game history but PS2's started flying off the shelves and everybody forgot about the poor Dreamcast. Now, I have nothing against the PS2, it ended up being a phenomenal console but the Dreamcast was the far superior system for the first year. People gave into the hype and the Dreamcast was the causality. It would have been great seeing the PS2 and Dreamcast duke it out for the entire generation but, alas, Sony forced Sega out of business and now they're making crappy Sonic games as a third party developers. Oh well, at least I still have my Dreamcast to remind me of when Sega ruled the gaming world.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/08

Game Release: Dreamcast Hardware (US, 09/09/99)