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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Dreamcast vs Original Xbox

 

I prefer...

Dreamcast 45 51.14%
 
Original Xbox 43 48.86%
 
Total:88
Hynad on 10 May 2020
Conina said:
COKTOE said:

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.

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.

OMG thank you for that!!! I've been trying to find an old magazine I'm sure I still have, but for some reason, I can't seem to remember where the heck I stored it.

This is the issue, from 1997, that I seemingly lost, and wanted to read again recently:

https://archive.org/details/GamefanVolume5Issue04April1997/mode/2up

I bought it back then because it had a review of Final Fantasy VII. It is actually from this review that the quote on the back cover of the game in the US comes from: "Quite possibly the greatest game ever made".

Last edited by Hynad - on 10 May 2020

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DonFerrari on 10 May 2020
Leynos said:
DonFerrari said:

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.

DC could be more balanced than PS2, but to claim it was well balanced is a little more than that, and even today we keep seeing when a gen ends that basically all systems had unbalance on them.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

COKTOE on 10 May 2020

Dupe.

Last edited by COKTOE - on 10 May 2020

- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

COKTOE on 10 May 2020
d21lewis said:
COKTOE said:

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.

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.

It's funny you bring up Soul Calibur 1 DC vs Soul Calibur 2 GC, because I was thinking this morning that Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast looked better than Soul Caliber 2 on the PS2. I owned it on Xbox, and it was the definitive version IMO. Anyway, I get you, but just never felt at the time that it had a "look". I would say that the N64 and to a lesser extent, the PS1, were more commonly thought of as having a certain look/looks associated with their games.

In the end though, like you say, it comes down to personal interpretation.

Regarding the mags, I had 3 separate purges. 1999, 2006, and finally 2013. Incite. Ha. I had a few of those, but I don't think it lasted long. I remember one issue had Natalie Raitano from V.I.P. on the cover, and a photo shoot inside. Aaoooga!

Looked it up before hitting submit, and here it is. 



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

COKTOE on 10 May 2020
Conina said:
COKTOE said:

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.

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 the info.



- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."

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curl-6 on 10 May 2020

It's a dead heat now, with both systems tied at 41 votes. Real nail-biter this one, wonder which will end up on top...

SammyGiireal said:
 I think a more fair comparison would have been for it to be stacked against the GC and PS2

Given the dominance of the Nintendo and Playstation fanbases on VGChartz, any such poll would inevitably just lead to GC and PS2 taking up all the votes and attention. I thought this would be more interesting as it's two systems that fall outside the usual Nintendo and Sony debates.



DonFerrari on 10 May 2020
curl-6 said:

It's a dead heat now, with both systems tied at 41 votes. Real nail-biter this one, wonder which will end up on top...

SammyGiireal said:
 I think a more fair comparison would have been for it to be stacked against the GC and PS2

Given the dominance of the Nintendo and Playstation fanbases on VGChartz, any such poll would inevitably just lead to GC and PS2 taking up all the votes and attention. I thought this would be more interesting as it's two systems that fall outside the usual Nintendo and Sony debates.

Also it marks the swansong from Sega versus the newcomer Microsoft. Much better to compare than PS2 and GC against them, also even if VGC would vote GC over PS2 the market already voted that long ago so there isn't much to talk except which game or system someone preffered for personal reasons.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

curl-6 on 14 May 2020

Well shit, after all that it ended up an exact draw! Anyone care to break the tie?



Doctor_MG on 18 June 2020
Pemalite said:

Already demonstrated how faulty it is using controllers to assert that a console is a "spiritual successor" to another console.

I.E. Playstation 5 uses ergonomics clearly inspired by the Xbox One, doesn't mean the Playstation 5 is the spiritual successor to the Xbox One.

Or the Switch Pro controller is also inspired by the Xbox controller, doesn't mean the Switch is a spiritual successor to the Xbox.

Every company takes design cues from another... A good idea is simply a good idea... Again, Sega wasn't the first company to have ports on the controller for expandability, the Nintendo 64 did it a whole generation earlier.

As for the ABXY arrangement, there is only so many ways you can take that approach... And is an argument that is questionable at best.

Six-face buttons has existed for a long time... Again. The Nintendo 64 did it with it's 4-C button layout plus A+B buttons, doesn't mean the Dreamcast was the spiritual successor to the Nintendo 64.
The Xbox used the secondary white/black buttons mostly as start/select for the most part.

See, here is the difference you aren't taking into account. The Playstation and Xbox are concurrent products, same with Switch and Xbox. You can't have "a spiritual successor" when the other company is still in the market. At that point it's just a competitor. But the Xbox and Dreamcast were not concurrent products. This is why one can be considered a spiritual successor. The "spiritual" part meaning not direct but heavily influenced by. 

"Every company takes design cues from another"
And the vast majority of Xbox's design decisions were taken from Sega which NO other manufacturer was copying at the time. Nintendo abandoned its controller ports, Playstation never even copied it...why did Xbox? 

"Six-face buttons has existed for a long time....Again. The Nintendo 64 did it with it's 4-C button layout....doesn't mean the Dreamcast was a spiritual successor"
Okay, Dreamcast didn't have six face buttons, the Sega Saturn did. And again, concurrence. 

"The Xbox used the secondary white/black buttons mostly as start/select for the most part"
This shows me that you didn't even play an Xbox. The Xbox controller had Start and Back buttons. It had no need to use the white and black buttons as start and select. Literally every game I played the "start" button did exactly what it did on other consoles. 

Also, you're trying to explain away individual instances, but it's all too coincidental. The Dreamcast and Saturn featured many things that the Xbox would eventual feature. They had similar controllers, both aesthetically and functionally. Microsoft worked close with Sega for the Dreamcast, which inspired them to enter the console market and compete with Sony. They entered exclusivity contracts with Sega during the early years to remain competitive with Sony. Bill Gates even conversed with Sega about Dreamcast backwards compatibility. It isn't JUST about the controller design. It's about the influence on the console overall, which was shown by third party relations, focus for the console, and controller features. 



curl-6 on 18 June 2020

And Dreamcast retakes the lead again!

Honestly, the 360 seemed more like the DC to me than the OG Xbox, both in its look, and games like Gears going for a kinda more aged version of that console-era-Sega edginess.