Better to compare games on both systems. Grandia II looks better on DC and so does Ecco. However, those were not meant to be multiplatform in the beginning but DC exclusives. They only released on PS2 because of the DC failure. Code Veronica is another that can be compared. Better to do that than compare GTA to Soul Cal.

The Dreamcast architecture is very different compared to the PS2. The Dreamcast is a very well-balanced console with equal emphasis on processing power, bandwidth, textures, presentation, audio. Whereas the PS2 is designed for huge processing power and bandwidth, it then sacrifices textures, presentation, audio. This means some of the early-mid 6th gen multiplats would've been superior on Dreamcast if they didn't bother to make a custom PS2 version.

Dreamcast games run at a very small range of polycounts. If a Dreamcast game has effort put into it, then it runs somewhere between 800,000 - 3 million PPS. There's essentially no exceptions to this. This is compared to 1 million - 9 million PPS on PS2.

Not really, the fact that a game is on 2 system wouldn't prove which is better. We have had games on PS2 and Xbox that looked and worked better on PS2, and we have 2 games on PS4Pro and X1X that look and perform better on PS4Pro. That is just poor optmization on the better HW.

Any no game would really look as good as possible if the game wasn't coded specifically for that console. Most wouldn't even work out.

But sure enough I agree they have different phillosophy and architeture, but not sure I would say DC was well-balanced or without bottlenecks. Sure enough it would be more balanced or easier to code for than Saturn that they were caught in the middle of 2D to 3D due to PS surprising them and they putting "two architetures" to compete and ending up being a nightmare to code for.

Unfortunately DC had almost 0 success in Brazil (I loved when I saw in a magazine, but only saw one in person when I bought a used one over 10 years after if left the market).

What I said was proven with months of research by extracting models on many many many many games. I didn't personally extract them but I know some people who have. PPS is Polygons per second btw. PS2 was a worse machine than DC with texture work,that's just fact. Dreamcast was mainly falling behind the PS2 was in shadows and frame-buffer effects. The PS2 is capable of 1.5-3x more polygons than Dreamcast. It's not 6x like what was stated back in the day.

I don't really agree with you on the "Dreamcast look" thing, but I really do agree with you that ZOE and MGS were something of a departure point in the PS2 pulling away from the Dreamcast. I remember some of the staff of EGM saying much the same thing regarding ZOE, and after playing it shortly thereafter, I very much agreed. It's times like these I wish I still had those old mags.

Dreamcast. Still my favorite console.

I bought a new house last June and had to sacrifice my magazine library during the move. Almost complete runs of every mag I could get my hands on. Those things were worn out and loved! I know how you feel. Especially when it comes to quotes that nobody else seems to remember. One magazine called Insight actually gave away the MGS2 twist a year before the game came out!

I'm not a technical guy so I can't really say exactly what I mean but, compared to other 5th gen consoles, Dreamcast games were really colorful, had high enough polygon counts but lacking in finer details. They looked a lot less refined.

Look at games like Outrigger (my last Dreamcast game), Virtual On, Blue Stinger, Zombie Revenge,  Daytona USA, Grandia 2 Maken X, Trickstyle and tons and tons of others. And this could very well boil down what game engine they were using. Games like RE Code Veronica and a few others stood out.

At the time, they were still "good enough". Shenmue was my go to game when arguing with my PS2 owning friend over which system had better looking games (he had Onimusha) and later, I even argued that Soul Calibur on Dreamcast looked better than SC2 on GameCube. But, to me, many Dreamscast games I owned were graphically on the level of Oni on PS2. Playing Shenmue now, even that game has that "Dreamscast look"compared to other games I enjoy going back to.

But that's just me. I respect your post. Just trying to explain what I meant.

There are more than 12,000 of video game magazines archived in the Internet Archive (more of 5,000 in English), many of them searchable by keywords:

https://archive.org/details/gamemagazines

Computer Gaming World also has all of their issues from 1981 - 2006 online for download: http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1981&pub=2&id=1

Kultboy.com has over 750 German magazines online (over 20,000 reviews + previews) https://www.kultboy.com/index.php?site=kult/kultmags

I really don't miss searching through stacks of paper for an old article.

😳

Thanks for this! I procrastinated when all of the issues of Nintendo Power were put online so I only saved a couple of issues. This is gonna be great!!

The Original Xbox. The gulf in power between them was gigantic, to be fair the gulf in power between the Xbox and the PS2 as monumental as well. The Dreamcast had some truly great games, but nothing on the level of Halo, and Halo 2. Those games defined a generation. We can add Dead or Alive 3, Ninja Gaiden, Half Life 2, Forza, KOTOR, KOTOR2, Jade Empire, Doom 3, The Chronicles of Riddick: EFBB, Morrowind and Sega's own Stunning Panzer Dragoon Orta. Most of those games couldn't run on competing systems.

The Dreamcast had Skies of Arcadia, and other unforgettable titles, I think a more fair comparison would have been for it to be stacked against the GC and PS2. I owned the 4 systems during that era, and honestly most of my time playing was spent on the Xbox. Save for my time playing JRPGS which I mostly played on the PS2, and games like God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Wind Waker, RE4, and Twilight Princess, the xbox ruled the living room, especially with four friends.

Tbh even when compared to other platforms of the era the DC is still beaten out by them, PS2 off sheer library alone is a better platform while GC had a number of  titles of its own that define in Prime, RE4, Melee, Symphonia, Baten Kaitos, PM::TTYD etc...

DC was a good platform that was unfortunately in a strong gen that didn't have room for it.