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Forums - Gaming Discussion - The Dreamcast turns 20

Most underrated console of all time for me. Sadly I got on board with the console and Sega just after they were exiting the hardware business - though partly beneficial too as they had just drastically dropped the price which is part of the reason my sister and I had decided to get it in the first place. Funny enough - my sister had basically gotten obsessed with this obscure dancing/rhythm game called Space Channel Five that our cousins had shown us, and played quite a bit at their place. So I didn't even have to buy it, she did! XD

But once she did, along with Space Channel 5, I beefed up our library from there - I got Crazy Taxi, which I still love, what with the frantic arcade nature of the game. Was looking for a good RPG and after doing a bit of research snagged Grandia 2, which turned out to be a fantastic RPG with what's still one of my favorite battle systems of all time. Sonic Adventure was a blast, Chu Chu Rocket - so much fun with 4 players, Tony Hawk 2, Power Stone 2 (Smash Bros-esque arcade fighter, super underrated brawler), Virtua Tennis, Soul Calibur, House of the Dead 2.. Great memories.



 

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Definitely a good console. Of course, every time I think of Dreamcast, I can't help but think of this classic.



Shadow1980 said:

I bought one on launch day. They didn't have preorders back then, so I got to Walmart early in the morning and bought one (I worked there at the time so I got a 10% discount, too). I bought Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure to go along with it.

The system had a lot of potential, but the damage had already been done to Sega's reputation thanks to the Saturn. Despite a strong launch (569k in Sept. '99, and 1.47M for the last 16-½ weeks of 1999 as a whole), it absolutely cratered at the start of 2000, and despite a price cut its sales in 2000 as a whole were even less than in 1999 despite having a whole year (though it did narrowly defeat the PS2 in Nov. 2000; the PS2 was heavily supply-constrained, but still).

Indeed. Costumer confidence in Sega was low...with rumors of them going under every other week, and the massive PS2 hype DC sells stagnated. The bigger issue was Sega's huge debt, perhaps with deeper financial pockets they might have been able to sustain the DC through out that Gen, like Nindento sustained the GC and Wii U in their respective runs. But Sega really needed the DC to be a smash hit from the get go and it wasn't despite the fact that for the first 2 years it was actually a Better console than the PS2 ( Sony's launch lineup was pathetic). The rest is history.



Piracy killed it imo, it was bad because people tried to get games on a cd that was like 700MB while DC games could go up to 1GB but in the end so many prefered to play a pirated downgraded game.

Remember when friends showed of their cd/piratedgames collections in those bags:






Back when I was in maybe first grade there was the SNES kids and the Genesis kids, but Sega seemed to disappear from my social bubble after that. Once the N64 vs PlayStation generation kicked off, I remember knowing of the Saturn's existence, but thinking that it was not quite on the same level as the N64 and PS1 (as in, a generation behind, or something).

When the Dreamcast came out I knew a couple people that had one, and by that time I was very much into videogame magazines so I knew about most current events in the industry. The DC seemed like a cool console but I never took it seriously as Sega had lost most of their credibility by that point and (to me) it was clear that while it might be a cool product to own, it wasn't going to be a major competitor.

To this day I have never legitimately owned a Sega console.



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konnichiwa said:

Piracy killed it imo, it was bad because people tried to get games on a cd that was like 700MB while DC games could go up to 1GB but in the end so many prefered to play a pirated downgraded game.

Remember when friends showed of their cd/piratedgames collections in those bags:

Piracy is always bad, but the DS, 3DS platforms have been riddled with piracy too. Piracy was really the least of Sega's troubles. The PS2 and their own monumental debt is what did Sega in. I think people put too much emphasis on piracy, but take Piracy away and the DC would have still tanked.



I may have missed the post but Damn it Jet Grind Radio is one of the best games ever.



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What more can be said about the Dreamcast? It wasn't the most powerful. It wasn't the best selling. It wasn't the most feature packed. It didn't have the best controller. It made up for all of that by offering the most innovation and the best library of games around for the short time it was alive. I didn't even want a Dreamcast but after I got it home, I was in love.
Man, 20 years went by so fast!



Rustuv said:
I may have missed the post but Damn it Jet Grind Radio is one of the best games ever.

Sorry to have missed it. JGR is probably a better game than some of the games in my list. But I didn't list it mainly because unfortunately I didn't play the game.



I rented a Dreamcast for a weekend. Soulcalibur looked pretty, better than the arcade version. But I had FF8 to play and FF9 was coming the following year. Then there was the PS2 and the Gamecube.

When Sega went third party, I bought Virtua Fighter 4 on PS2 day one, then got Skies of Arcadia Legends for Gamecube. Sega is one of my top tier third party developers now, thanks to Valkyria Chronicles and Yakuza. It's honestly too bad they didn't hold on to 2K games. They wouldn't have been able to make NFL games but they could have done MLB and NBA games and become the second largest sports game company after EA, at least. I never owned a Sega console, but I'd rather they were the third competitor in the market than the Xbox line.