"One of the great consoles. A must own for anyone that likes good games :P"

Sega started out servicing Arcade game way back. They moved into the video game console industry in the early 1980’s. Their “Master System” competing with Nintendo’s “NES”. Next along was the Genesis (or Mega Drive in Australia), which was pretty much in direct competition with the Super NES (from Nintendo). Next was the Saturn, which sold very poorly, and ended up being deemed a failure by many gamers all around the world. I must admit, I haven’t play very much of the Saturn because they were hard to find in Australia, but what I did play was nothing amazing. After the Saturns “failure” Sega fans awaited the next sega console, which was to be released Towards the end of 1999 in the US (9/9/99) and pretty much christmas in Australia.
Sega had promised a great console, and great consoles are meant to sell very well too.
How did the Dreamcast turn out?
Read on to find out.

Durability
The dreamcast is definitely not indestructible (unlike my Nintendo 64, which has been dropped off my TV, stood on and even had me body slammed on top of it (by accident mind you)). But the Dreamcast is fairly solidly built. I certainly wouldn’t dare to step onto of my dreamcast, and I would expect it to break if it fell off my TV, but luckily nothing has happened to it, so far.

The case is strong all over, but the CD flip-up lid is a little weak, and would probably get damaged much easier than the rest of the console.

Sound
With one Gigabyte per Dreamcast Game disc, and a very nice sound card the Dreamcast is very capable of delivering top notch sound effects.
And guess what? It does.
There are games with great original sound tracks, and some with sound tracks made up of “real” songs. A prime example of a great game, with “real” songs would be Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. It’s got 14 “real” songs on the sound track, which are all high in sound quality, and there is still plenty of room for a huge, and excellent game.
It’s really up to the game developers as too how good the sound and music in games are, because the Dreamcast’s sound card, and storage capacity isn’t holding them back one ity, bity bit.

Graphics
As with the release of every console so far (Though the GameCube and Xbox release is looking like they will be pretty much equals in most areas) the newest console looks best.
The Dreamcast was miles ahead of the N64, and lightyears ahead of the Playstation. In fact, even when the Playstation 2 came out, the best looking games on the Dreamcast, looked better than the first fleet of PS2 games (well, from what I’d seen at least).

Sega said that the Dreamcast could do 3 Million polygons a second, and this was an actual in game figure (Microsoft first said the Xbox could do 300 million a second, and Sony said the PS2 could do 125 million. Later the PS2 dropped to 70 million, and the acknowledged the fact that that was not an in game figure. The Xbox’s count dropped to 125 Million). Funny thing is, the Dreamcast ended up doing 4.5 Million polygon’s per second in game. But then again, Nintendo said the GameCube could do 6-12 Million polygons in game, and it’s already doing almost 20 Million and it’s not even out yet.

Now that I have the polygon crap out of the road (everyone seems to care about nothing but the polygons per second count of a console) I can get down to business. The Dreamcast is capable of amazing graphics.(but when compared to the next gen consoles, primarily the GameCube, you can see how much better each new console is getting).
The Dreamcast can also do some pretty cool effects, which make a game look like it is a cartoon (see Jet Grind Radio and Looney Tunes: Space Race). If you want to see an example of the high quality graphics the Dreamcast can produce see Soul Calibur (for first gen graphics) and Shenmue and Test Drive Le Mans.

Games

The Dreamcast has loads of really great games. It had great 3rd party support, until Sega announced that they were becoming a 3rd party themselves, and then games were being cancelled left, right and centre. You’ve got a few AAA titles, and loads and loads of great games that are a great purchase for any gamer.
Some of the great Dreamcat games:
<*> Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
<*> Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
<*> Daytona USA 2001
<*> Jet Grind Radio
<*> Resident Evil Code Veronica
<*> Powerstone 2
<*> Grandia II
<*> Skies of Arcadia
<*> Shenmue
<*> Crazy Taxi
<*> Crazy Taxi 2
<*> NBA 2K
<*> Chu Chu Rocket
<*> Soul Calibur
<*> Marvel vs Capcom 2
<*> Looney Tunes Space Race
<*> Rayman 2
<*> Sonic Adventure 2
<*> Phantasy Star Online
<*> Ferrari F355 Challenge
<*> Test Drive Le Mans
<*> Metropolis Street Racer
<*> Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

These are just some of the great Dreamcast games that are out. There are plenty of other really good Dreamcast games that are out, or coming soon. A console is nothing without games, and the Dreamcast has heaps and heaps of games covering every conceivable genre, and amongst those games are a lot of really fun and enjoyable games, plus some absolute gems.
In such a short time the dreamcast gained such a great collection of games (many of the exclusive). If only the Dreamcast would have been able to go on for longer. So many more great games would have come out, and the Dreamcast would have been even more of an essential purchase.

Controller

Well, lets see now. If you want the best controller ever know to exist, hold the GameCube controller. If you want a very good controller, grab a Dreamcast controller.
The Dreamcast controller has 7 buttons, a digital-pad and a thumbstick. There are four main action buttons, in a diamond shape (X, Y, B and A). There are two pressure sensitive shoulder buttons that are like gun triggers, a triangular shaped start button, a good quality 8-directional Digital Pad and a nice Thumbstick.

The Digital Pad is one of the best I’ve used because of it’s responsiveness. This is kind of essential though, because a lot of people use the D-Pad for fighting games, and the Dreamcast has a lot of fighting games. The thumbstick is good and all, but I do have one little complaint about it. My thumb tends to slip from it a bit, causing my to have to let go, and re-position it again. This is only minor, but can get a tad annoying.
There are two ports on each controller. You can have a VMU and Rumble Unit in, two VMUs in etc.

The controller is nice to hold, and is constructed solidly.

Overall it’s a good controller, but it’s got nothing on the GameCube controller :P

Multiplayer

The N64, I’d have to say has the best mutliplayer out of the Playstation, itself and Dreamcast. But the Dreamcast still has plenty of great multiplayer games for it.
Chu Chu rocket I’d say is the best multiplayer game I’ve played for the Dreamcast. I haven’t gotten online with my Dreamcast however, because in Australia you have to sign up for a new Dreamcast specific ISP, and you only have the choice to sign up with one ISP, who are too expensive. So, I can’t really comment on the online multiplayer aspects of games. But offline, as I said Chu Chu rocket is my favourite multiplayer game. It’s so damn fun, fast, furious (and I mean furious), intense and addictive. There are also a bunch of fighting games that I love to play with a friend or three, like Marvel vs Capcom 2, Soul Calibur and Power Stonce, or Power Stone 2. Usually, at parties we play the Nintendo 64 most, and about two thrids of the time, and the Dreamcast is the second most played console. It’s got some great multiplayer games that are a blast and you could play them all night (unless you have an N64 :P).

Game media

The Dreamcast game discs may look like your ordinary Comact Disc, but if you think that they are, then you are mistaken.
Your standard CD is either 640mb or 700mb. The Dreamcast game discs are 1000 Megabytes, or 1 Gigabyte. The games load fairly quickly, considering how much is being loaded at a time.
There is rarely a need for a Dreamcast game to come on more than one disc, and exception is Resident Evil: Code Veronica which comes on two discs (due the the **** loads of very high quality Full Motion Video contained in the game). Sega made a good choice using the GD’s to put their games on.

Accessories
**Official**
<*> Visual Memory Unit (VMU) - This is a very innovative little device. It’s just like your every day memory card, storage space wise. I think it can store up to 1 megabyte of saves.
It’s used like the Nintendo 64 memory card in that you plug it into the controller itself. This is where the similarities end. The VMU has a nice little LCD screen on it. The display is in black and white. The unit can for example alert you that you are near a secret, show extra stats and facts in a game, display your exact health and much, much more. It’s a really cool idea having the LCD screen on the VMU. Pull out the VMU for even more of a surprise, because when not in the controller it will run on batteries. And on the face of the Unit you will find an 8 directional digital pad, and A and B button and a sleep and mode button. Yep, you can download mini-games from your Dreamcast games and play them on the VMU. A nice little feature I must admit.

<*> Rumble Unit – Again, this is similar to the Nintendo 64’s rumble pak. You plug it in an it vibrates…. Not a lot more to say really.

<*> Arcade Stick – This is just you basic arcade stick, which miht be a wise purchase if you a fighting game freak.

**Un-Official**

<*> Nexus 4mb/8mb Memory Card (and PC link-up cable) – This card lack the LCD screen of the standard VMU, but that’s not the idea of this card. You can upload you game saves and store them on your PC with the link-up cable, you can also upload saves to the net, or email them to friends. You can also download saves off the net to your card. This is an awesome little device, and I recommend picking one up if you have more than about 10 - 15 games for the DC, or if you want to be able to download saves to your card off the net (including right here at GameFAQs).

<*> GameShark CDX – I personally haven’t had the chance to use one of these, as I’ve never even seen them for sale where I live (somewhere in Australia). But if they are anything like the Nintendo 64 GameShark/Pro Action Replay then they are great for hacking. You should be able to hack new characters, levels, items etc.
I have also heard that the DC GameShark can load import games.

<*> Utopia Boot Disc – If like me, you live outside the US/Canada or Japan one of these is probably a good idea to purchase. This is for playing imports, and as far as I know will work on any Dreamcast around the world and will boot up about 99% of import games perfectly, every time. In Australia just about all of our Dreamcast games are the price they were when they first came out. I wasn’t prepared to pay such high prices when I could import much cheaper from the US and japan. I’ve got one import from japan so far, and the rest from the US. About 2/3 of my DC collection is imported.

Prices Hardware/Games/Acessories

(note: this is based on Australian prices)

When the Dreamcast first came out here, it was $500Au. It didn’t do too great at this price, but remained this high for quite a while. The DC eventually dropped to $300Au, and at that price was much more appealing to consumers. At the moment you can pick up a Dreamcast for a bit under $200Au, a PSOne for about $170Au, and N64 for about $130Au and a Playstation 2 for about $750Au. I’d have to say that the Dreamcast (and N64) is very good value at it’s current price. The Dreamcast controllers are the same price as N64 controllers, the VMU and Rumble Unit however, in my opinion are a little steeply priced. But hey, that’s just me.
The games, as I said before, mostly are still selling for about the same price as when they first came out, which sucks, but that’s why I import a lot.

Pros
(_) An awesome console
(_) Loads and loads of awesome games
(_) Very good value (at the time of writing this review, in Australia).

Cons
(_) Such a great console managed to sell horribly……. I still don’t know how it managed to happen ~_~

Overall
It’s a damn pity that the Dreamcast sold so poorly, because that means that a) Soooooooo, soooo many people missed out on owning one, and b) Sega had to drop out of the console market and go 3rd party (but this itself isn’t horrible).

The Dreamcast is a must have console for anyone who likes good games. Hurry out and go grab one before they become an extreme rarity.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/30/01, Updated 07/30/01