I guess you could say that the DC is slightly overrated, but it's still pretty good! Miles better than the Saturn, that's for damn sure!

I can certainly agree with this here.

Here are the 2001/2002 (or 2000/2001 in PS2's case) great releases on the other platforms, I left out all of the DC ports: 

Gamecube

1. Super Smash Bros Melee (Fighter)

2. Luigi's Mansion (Action-Adventure)

3. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (Space Shooter)

4. Pikmin (RTS)

5. Animal Crossing (Sim)

6. Wave Race: Blue Storm (Racing)

7. SSX Tricky (Sport)

8. Tony Hawk: Pro Skater 3 (Sport)

9. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Psychological Horror)

10. Metroid Prime (First Persona Action Adventure)

11. Resident Evil Zero (Survival Horror)

12. Star Fox Adventures (Action-Adventure)

13. Super Mario Sunshine (Platformer)

14. TIme Splitters 2 (FPS)

15. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Role-Playing Game)

PS2 (2000/2001)

1. Time Splitters (FPS)

2. Tekken Tag Tournament (Fighting)

3. SSX (Sport)

4. Onimusha (Action-Adventure)

5. Zone of the Enders (Action)

6. Red Faction (First Person Shooter)

7. Dark Cloud (Action-Adventure/Role-playing)

8. Twisted Metal: Black (Vehicle Combat)

9. Gran-Turismo 3 A-Spec (Racing Sim)

10. Klonoa 2 (Platformer)

11. Silent Hill 2 (Survival Horror)

12. Ico (Acton-Adventure)

13. Time Crisis 2 (Rail Shooter)

14. Okage: Shadow King (Role Playing Game)

15. Devil May Cry (Action Hack N Slash)

16. Grand Theft Auto III (Sandbox)

17. SSX Tricky (Sport)

18. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Stealth Action)

19. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (Role Playing Game)

20. Jack & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (Platformer)

21. Shadow Hearts (Role Playing Game)

22. Final Fantasy X (Role Playing Game) 

Xbox 

1. Dead or Alive 3 (Fighting)

2. Halo: Combat Evolved (First Person Shooter) 

3. Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (Platformer)

4. Project Gotham Racing (Racing)

5. SSX Tricky (Sport)

6. Silent Hill 2 (Survival Horror)

7. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (Sport)

8. Elder's Scrolls III Morrowind (Role Playing Game)

9. Hitman 2 (First Person Shooter)

10. Timesplitters 2 (First Person Shooter) 

11. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Role Playing Game) 

12. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Stealth Action)

13. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (First Person Shooter) 

14. 007 Nightfire (First Person Shooter) 

15. Fatal Frame (Survival Horror) 

For its time, the hardware was better than the software - with a few exceptions. Form me, the DC is the definition of "balanced hardware". It wasn't as powerful as the others, but it wasn't very far, and it came first. On the other hand, it had some interesting features (integrated modem / online, VMUs) (not extremely helpful, but new). It could've been the one for the masses.

Mundane and boring? It got a 9.7 at IGN.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/11/04/shenmue

Dreamcast isn't overrated NOW. It was underrated THEN. I was 20 when that console came out and when I got one, I was enjoying it so much, PS2 didn't even phase me. Hell, when it launched, I use to flip it off in the stores and laugh with my friends. We seriously didn't care because Dreamcast was that awesome as far as we were concerned.

I think the majority of praise it's getting now is from people who weren't around then. Because if the Dreamcast was this popular in 2001, we'd still be playing Sega consoles today.

Anyone that thinks the Dreamcast is overrated probably never played the right games for it. It had a pretty good lineup of games. Some of the good ones are Crazy Taxi, Crazy Taxi 2, Shenmue, Shenmue 2, Soul Calibur, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia II, NBA 2K, NBA 2K1, NBA 2K2, Virtua Fighter 3tb, Powerstone, Powerstone 2, RE: Code Name Veronika, Dead or Alive 2, Samba De Amigo, Sega Bass Fishing, Sonic Adventures, Sonic Adventures 2, NFL 2K, NFL 2K1, Space Channel 5, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing 2, Marvel Vs Capcom, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, NFL Blitz 2000, NFL Blitz 2001, ChuChu Rocket!, Sega Marine Fishing, Sega GT, Sega Rally 2, Virtua Tennis, Virtua Tennis (Tennis 2K2), and Jet Set/Grind Radio.

Sonic Adventure games got like 9's across the BOARD back when they came out. It would be more accurate for you to state that they were terrible "in your opinion" than just terrible because clearly, they were not.

Not an over rated console in the slightest. Just that if you weren't into it at the time, you missed a lot of the magic. Gaming moved very quickly between 1997 and 2003. There was certainly far more progress in those  years, than we have had in the 12 years since.

You have to remember those games WERE exclusive when they came out. I mean you don't see people say the SNES sucks now, because you can get all it's best exclusives on Virtual Console. They are still SNES games even if you can now play them elsewhere just like much of the Dreamcast's best software was exclusive when it launched.

The Dreamcast was pretty much a full specced Aracade Cabinet in your front room for under £200/$200. That was incredible at the time. I can definitely see why many people now, would go back and wonder what all the fuss was about with some of the games, particularly games like Quake 3 Arena, Phantasy Star Online and Metropolis Street Racer. But at the time they came out, they were all at the very peak of what console gaming could offer. There was also a seismic shift in what was expected of a game between 1997 and 2003. I mean in 1997, a racing game could be released with a handful of tracks and a couple of cars, and you could slap a $60 price tag on it. You tried doing that in 2003 with anything less than 30 tracks and 200 cars... well... guess this is why the racing genre has died a death ;)

As for the VGA box. I can only presume you didn't have a Dreamcast at the time? It used to be very easy to get a VGA box (the official one only saw a very limited release) from any major retailer like Electronics Boutique for about £15. The device allowed you to play games in 480p, something no other system had previously offered, and also something which was far less frequent amongst the successor consoles where 480i remained the norm.

The lack of Component? Well nothing really used component back in 1998. PS2 in 2000 added it, but that was more for the DVD aspect than gaming, as the lack of 480p software content supports. No system prior to the Dreamcast did, and even when the GameCube launched 4 years later in Europe, Nintendo still decided component wasn't necessary for the European market.

As I say it was a huge transitional time for both visual technology and video games. If you had the system at the time. The praise makes a lot more sense, than if you decided to jump in later on. 1999-2001 were my favourite video gaming years, and it was pretty much all down to the Dreamcast.

I love Sonic Adventure, it was the first game I got with my Dreamcast back in 1999 and blew my mind, but even I'll be the first to admit, I can see why people would look at it now and think "how did that get 9/10?". As I said in my post above, it all moved very quickly, but when Sonic Adventure came out, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Mind blowing visuals, lots of different activities to do. There were some slight issues with the camera, some poorly written sections etc. but they were flaws you could see past because you were playing the future and it was just so much shinier and cooler than anything else you'd ever played.

Fast forward 15 years though, and the graphics are no longer mind blowing, the music also doesn't hold the same nostalgia over newcomers (takes me right back to 99 every time!) and you've got a mediocre platformer, with some pointless story sequences, jaunting animation/voice acting (which again, was really impressive at the time) and by modern standards, some awful camera issues.

But Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye on the N64 would suffer a similar harsh appraisal by many now, particularly if they weren't into Nintendo. This is the problem with trying to treat retro games by modern gaming standards. Yes some age exceptionally well (particularly 2D), but for the most part, the PS1 catalogue now is a pixellated, warping low frame rate mess. Only the very best remain remotely comparable to modern gaming but we as gamers seem hell bent on holding them to those standards, and judge them as being over-rated when looking back in time.

Skies of Arcadia and Shenmue say NO!