Games that defined Sega Dreamcast
by Blake Snow 
{ Apr 10th 2006 at 11:30PM }
Man, did the Sega Dreamcast
have some quality games. Racket Boy on retro gaming reminisces on the best games that graced Sega's last home console
release. From the article: "This feature... focuses most on the games that gave the Dreamcast its identity -- most
of which were exclusives to the console. This list should serve as an excellent starting point for anybody looking to
build a quality Dreamcast collection that will hold up to modern games."Here's a sampling of the picks:
- Soul Calibur
- Shenmue
- Jet Grind Radio
- Crazy Taxi
- Virtua Tennis & Tennis 2K2
- Skies of Arcadia
- Power Stone & Power Stone 2
- Sonic Adventure & Sonic Adventure 2
- Full Review of Sonic Adventure 2
- Samba De Amigo
- Virtua Fighter 3TB
- Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future
- Chu Chu Rocket!
- Phantasy Star Online
- Street Fighter 3:Third Strike and other Fighters
- Ikaruga
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Lou @ Apr 10th 2006 11:36PM
And almost half found a happier and enhanced home on the Gamecube...
Scott @ Apr 10th 2006 11:54PM
Completely agree with the list and I'm sure more could be added to it.
Though I despised the Sonic Adventure games. I never could get into them as they didn't have close to the same fun factor as the original Sonic games still do for me.
walrex @ Apr 10th 2006 11:56PM
how did you forget Resident Evil: code veronica
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Space channel 5
Samba de Amigo
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Dead or Alive 2
Grandia 2 House of the Dead 2
Seaman
aaron @ Apr 11th 2006 12:01AM
...and they were pretty much the only good 3rd party games on Gamecube.
Still play my DC for Crazy Taxi(PS2 version sucks) and NFL 2K1(and I have Madden '06...)and, of course, Power Stone!
David @ Apr 11th 2006 12:07AM
I remember when Power Stone was the biggest thing since sliced bread, kinda makes me want an Ergheiz sequel on ps3 ... Hold up......
Michael @ Apr 11th 2006 12:08AM
One more time SEGA...ONE MORE TIME...but this time...try a better approach..though u tried really well just at the wrong time of gaming...
Sean D. @ Apr 11th 2006 12:15AM
I'd put Rez, Puyo Puyo Fever, and Jet Grind Radio on that list too.
Best 4-player party system EVER! I still play mine at least once a week with my roommates!
Mr. Umeadi @ Apr 11th 2006 12:19AM
Follow your Dreamcast.
murph @ Apr 11th 2006 12:27AM
Chu Chu Rocket would be awesome on XBLA.
ChronoZaga @ Apr 11th 2006 12:29AM
Ah, Power Stone...
Chris @ Apr 11th 2006 12:43AM
Man, I still adore my Dreamcast. I am about to pick up a copy of powerstone 2. Got Soul Calibur on ebay. Graphics on that are nearly as good as SCII on the current consoles. And Skies of Arcadia is one of my favorite titles on my Gamecube.
boots @ Apr 11th 2006 12:44AM
Too bad it was like a Saturn 1.5 (no BC, no DVD player, lack of support, relatively expensive to produce memory cards, crappy controller). I mean, the freaking console was "only" twice as powerful as an N64 (give or take; I know it is not all about the numbers on paper, but bare with me). In fact, I'd say that if the fight was between N64 and Dreamcast, the fight would have been neck and neck, although the industry wouldn't have grown to today's levels; hell, it wouldn't have even grown up, it wouldn't be taken so seriously, and game budgets would be much smaller. It's good to have Sony and, I hate to say it, Microsoft for making the industry grow at a much faster pace (Excluding company buyouts by Microsoft which might end this up in a monopoly; I hope that doesn't happen).
Anyway, Sega is still a great company that does some great fighting, adventure and RPG games, and many good arcade racing and shooting games.
Aresef @ Apr 11th 2006 12:44AM
Shenmue was a truly wonderful game.
play free games @ Apr 11th 2006 12:46AM
While debatable for their worthiness on this list, I felt that Virtua Tennis and Sega Marine Fishing were excellent games, and great fun. And for the 2D fighter fan, the Dreamcast was gold, with an nice assortment of Capcom and SNK titles.
jojo29 @ Apr 11th 2006 1:09AM
To #9:
MS DID NOT make the industry grow at all. Xbox had LESS than 5 great hits: Halo Series, Fable( which by the way is on PC, and umm. THATS IT. Almost every other game on xbox can be found on any other system. Right off the bat, Nintendo HAS, Mario, Zelda, Metroid to name a few, Sony has FF, Killzone(ok maybe not that game) Kingdom Hearts, Socom, Metal Gear( ok maybe not exclusive), Xenosaga, Gran Turismo, God of War, Ratchet and Clank, Jak, etc... DO NOT PUT MS in that kind of pedestal, the only thing that they did was take A genre, FPS, and mainstream the hell out of it, i.e, theres NO story to it, only multiplayer which it does do well, BUT i feel Metroid had the BETTER single player experience.No you say? ask yourself this: IF Metroid had the multiplayer aspect that halo has, then NO ONE would even have looked at Halo.
deft @ Apr 11th 2006 1:11AM
*Hugs his Dreamcast*
Dman @ Apr 11th 2006 1:13AM
Dreamcast was, by no means, in a console battle with N64 (that would be the Saturn and the N64 was long gone by then) nor was it only twice as powerful. It was more of a weaker PS2, which I'm still not convinced was THAT much lower in performance. And no it didn't include a DVD player, it was released when the DVD format was just taking off and only Sony along the other major electronics companies were making them.
It did however, have the first success online console games, for free, until the end of its life span.
That game list seems like it could be doubled to me. Wasn't Dead or Alive 2 out on DC first as an exclusive?
cooper @ Apr 11th 2006 1:15AM
toss in seaman and MvC2 and its complete.
D dogg @ Apr 11th 2006 1:21AM
I wasn't a Shenmue fan but I will say that Skies of Arcadia was reminiscent of the first time I played Final Fantasy VII.
Skies, to me and many of my friends, was the unofficial gameplay sequel to FF7, both story driven and fun combat allowing each other to coexist perfectly with reason. The ship battles were also very fun.
Sure could use a sequel to Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star (I & II were great, III left a bad taste in my mouth and IV was decent but nothing special)
Ryo Hazuki @ Apr 11th 2006 1:42AM
What about Grandia II!?! It was arguably unpar with Skies of Arcadia. It came out on the PS2 but it sucked. I swear PS2 isn't that much powerful than Dreamcast. If games were still being released they wouldn't look all that bad. Matter of fact...most of the games on Dreamcast looked damn good. Soul Caliber, Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, Crazy Taxi and Dead or Alive 2...all of these games still hold up pretty well. Some aspects of the hardware were more powerful than the PS2. Someone help me out here... I remember that Jet Grind Radio couldn't be ported to the PS2 on behalf of the cell shading and color palette. Correct me if I'm wrong.
embassy @ Apr 11th 2006 2:01AM
yeh throw Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 aka the best multiplayer 2-d fighter ever..on there and its a wrap...and possibly Resident Evil: Code Veronica...i hated RE games but that game had the best graphics of its time...
whiteguysamurai @ Apr 11th 2006 2:02AM
"Too bad it was like a Saturn 1.5 (no BC, no DVD player, lack of support, relatively expensive to produce memory cards, crappy controller). I mean, the freaking console was "only" twice as powerful as an N64 (give or take; I know it is not all about the numbers on paper, but bare with me). In fact, I'd say that if the fight was between N64 and Dreamcast, the fight would have been neck and neck, although the industry wouldn't have grown to today's levels; hell, it wouldn't have even grown up, it wouldn't be taken so seriously, and game budgets would be much smaller. It's good to have Sony and, I hate to say it, Microsoft for making the industry grow at a much faster pace (Excluding company buyouts by Microsoft which might end this up in a monopoly; I hope that doesn't happen).
Anyway, Sega is still a great company that does some great fighting, adventure and RPG games, and many good arcade racing and shooting games."
You have no fucking clue about you're talking about.
The dreamcast was, and still is a geometry powerhouse, or have you never heard of a concept called tile rendering, no, it's not a buzzword like blast processing, it means dreamcast has no theoretical limit to how much geometry in a scene, because all unused overdraw is not rendered.
N64 could have never dreamed of that, nor ps2 or even xbox/xbox 360, non of those use and real hidden surface removal, all the xbox and the xbox 360 use is 24 bit z buffer, and that's a joke compared to tile rendering.
Dreamcast was capable of things that would make ken kutargi green with envy, but alas it was a victim of the times, and the idiot playstation populace (whom sega of it's own fault created) there was no such thing as middleware, all games had to written from scratch, and even if the dreamcast was a stap to program for, it was harder then just firing up renderware and making an engine.
Dreamcast is, and will always be proof positive of what was possible with video games, and will always be a benchmark that pretender like nintendo will be forced to follow.
Lee @ Apr 11th 2006 2:50AM
That was whiteguysamurai everyone, clearly, loves his dreamcast very much.
In the real world...Ikaruga...rocked. I remember tipping my TV on it's side to play it as it was meant to be played, good times. Powerstone 2 was disappointing, and I think the console was a far better 2 player machine than it was for 4 (Ikaruga, Soul Calbur, countless SNK/Capcom fighters, DOA2, VF3, erm...SA2?).
It was definitely a beat'em'up machine, at least that's where I think it shined the most. I remember it also being my emulator machine before I modded my Xbox, played a bunch of Mega Drive RPGs on that thing (SNES didn't run too well, at least at the time I was into DC homebrew).
Though jojo, you give Xbox far too little credit. Its excessive FPS shadow a number of excellent games it's had. Not only a decent number of exclusives that more than compete with Nintendo, but even multi-platform titles put the other versions to shame. Jade Garden, KOTOR, Forza, Ninja Gaiden, DOA series, Ghost Recon/Rainbow Six series, Splinter Cell, Morrowind, Panzer Dragoon Orta...well, those are the decent ones I've read off my shelf anyway.
And with the PS2 selection being better than that, I'm not surprised personally that despite a small few shining first-party games, Nintendo was behind this gen in the home console market.
And Metroid with multiplayer wouldn't have stolen a thing from Halo. Besides, Metroid's far more of a first person adventure rather than a shooter, shooter's don't have such awkward controls.
Shame Sega's games have been a bit under par recently as well, aside from Monkey Ball we've seen some pretty poor games from their side.
Andrea @ Apr 11th 2006 3:27AM
Still no good emulator for Dreamcast? When released the DC was similar to a good PC, so the specs should not be that high for a HLE emulator... I'd love to play Soul Calibur in my PC :-)
Lee @ Apr 11th 2006 3:35AM
Andrea, yeah, if your PC's up to it there are a few emulators out there that'll run Soul Calibur. Looks great at 1024x768. Chankast is the one I've had the fewest problems with.
But damn Ikaruga screws up on the second level when half of the bullets are invisible. No hi-res Ikaruga action for me. :(
phipscube @ Apr 11th 2006 3:55AM
#17 If I remember rightly, the reason why Jet Set Radio (As its originally known in Japan) never made it to PS2 was plain and simple. JAGGIES!! (PS2's Lack of anti aliasing hardware) It looked like shit basically, and in no way as Cartoon like and smooth as the DC. Compare Rez and Crazi Taxi on PS2 to the DC version's and you'll see what I mean. although not quite as obvious, the jaggies can't quite escape the PS2...
#19 Well said. Technically the DC would still be holding its own even now.
The Dreamcast really is something special. Its such a shame it died right at the point it was taking off. If Sega had money back then, the DC would have killed PS2. Sony were very, very lucky. I think Microsoft are trying to emulate what Sega did back then with the early launch of Xbox360, but i'm not sure it will work the same way, they dont have the same passion, they say they have, but I don't FEEL it. Plus Microsoft will NEVER be able to make as many quality titles in house as Sega did.
The one thing that amazed me about Sega with the DC was how many amazing quality titles they had out in the first year of launch... they really tried hard, seriously hard because they knew it was thier last shot, and ironically people started to notice just at the point where Sega pulled the plug.. it must have been very frustrating for them to see that.
Sega today are not the same Sega of yesterday, there will never be another console like DC even if Sega try to come back into the hardware biz. It would be much like when Atari were taken over by the Tramiels in the 80's... and if that wasnt bad enough, they are being pulled down again as a software publisher. What a shame.
I just hope that Sega can get some decent software out from now on because history seems to be slowly repeating itself. I'd hate to see the Sega name vanish completely, but id rather it did than be associated with the crap that seems to be coming out of late (Especially the sonic franchise).
Im a proud owner of one of the first 100,000 (Orange box) DC's from launch, and still play it now alongside my PS2 and Xbox360. Its funny, I've never had a single problem with the machine in 8 years either... thats quality for you.... eh Sony.
OH!! And Rez should be at the TOP of the list... Why its not even there is an offence.
Karl Rove @ Apr 11th 2006 4:06AM
I liked my Dreamcast, but thought the controllers might have been a little too funky for the public.
I would add to the list:
Mr.Driller - Simple but fun
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - Awesome
Quake III Arena - Graphics blew away other consoles, but no one noticed :(
The dreamcast was a completely underrated system that was overshadowed by the PS2 long before the PS2 was actually released. Many of the PS2 games never matched their Dreamcast versions. I was even looking forward to the PS2 but was disappointed when I found out what an over-hyped piece of crap it was. I have a feeling the same thing will happen with PS3. Oh well I'm a pc gamer so I could care less either way :)
D dogg @ Apr 11th 2006 4:11AM
Just for the record...
Dreamcast failed because the games didn't sell. They may have been fantastic games but most everyone I knew on campus (I was at college at the time) had their nice, "home brew" was it, Dreamcasts with a stack of pirated discs next to it.
No, Dreamcast didn't fail... users pirated it to death. I think that is some hackers are not willing to release their hacking secrets for consoles because they are only shooting themselves in the foot as gamers.
Yes, the very gamers that read this blog and other websites killed the Dreamcast... and the hackers.
:(
MooNKnighT @ Apr 11th 2006 4:44AM
Ahh...the Dreamcast one of my favorite systems of all times. The reason alot of games looked better on the DC than on the PS2 is because the DC had more video memory than the PS2, on paper the PS2 was more powerful but because it only had 4MB of VRAM, thats like driving a ferrari with bald tires. DC was first to go online(USA), to offer downloadable content(USA version of Skies of Arcadia),the VMU's genius I could take my chao on the road and make it stonger. The only reasons sony was able to crush these guys was because SEGA didn't have much cash left after the saturn and the dreamcast was hacked(no mod chip needed)so early in its life, after that developers wouldn't put there game on the system.In 2000 most people got a PS2 just so they could watch dvds. The Dreamcast not only had better games than the PS2 but it had more of them, and by 2004 the reason most people bought a PS2 is because it had more games than XBOX and Gamecube. Today we can still see dreamcast influence.Any one here thats older than 20 knows what I'm talking about(Shenmue I&II)
epobirs @ Apr 11th 2006 4:57AM
Whiteguysamurai,
I don't know what universe you've been living in but it isn't the one in which the Dreamcast as humankind knows it existed.
Middleware goes back far before the Dreamcast era. Packages like Renderware were outgrowths of products that started mainly on SGI hardware in the 80s. The main difference was that Game Developer magazine and the Game Developers' Conference made such product more visible to the general public. If you were actually in the development field and got on te right mailing lists there were plenty of products on offer. Sega made investments in this area just like any other platform producer. For example:
http://www.segatech.com/technical/critools/index.html
You make out tile rendering as some sort of miracle technology and it just isn't so. The concepts were around at Siggraph and demonstrated frequently long before the Dreamcast. The folks at Microsoft Research were greatly enamored of it and boards based on PowerVR were competing with Voodoo based boards when the Saturn was still Sega's main platform. Boards like the Matrox M3D were similar to the 3Dfx products int hat they were solely 3D boards used in conjunction with a system's existing 2D video functionality.
The PowerVR stuff made certain things easier to do, mainly stuff having to do with lighting and shadows but those weren't very useful if you didn't compete very well on the stuff that had to happen before those effects became an issue for a game. This included cases where devs optimized for the PowerVR in games bundled with the boards. PowerVR lost out to Voodoo fair and square, by making a better platform for developers. Even the chip used in the Dreamcast appeared as a PCI video board but drew very little interest. It was optimized for 640x480 at a time when higher resolutions were becoming standard in PC games. Worse, it just didn't stand up very well as a target for Direct3D work, which was becoming important by then. Nvidia made an early commitment to D3D and working with Microsoft, and gained big advantage over 3Dfx as a result. When 3Dfx came to a difficult technology transition they fell behind schedule badly and never recovered until the remainder of the company was acquired by Nvidia. (Plenty of the people at both companies had formerly worked together at SGI, along with the ArtX guys who ended up with ATI. Small world but you wouldn't want to paint it.)
This article offers a simplified take on where the Dreamcast hit throughput limits on finished pixels far short of its geometry throughput:
http://www.segatech.com/technical/polygons/index.html
Since GPU-based T&L caught on the ability to do insane amounts of geometry has lost its novelty. Nobody has any problem producing far, far more polygons than can be rendered in usefuk finished form each frame.
Cranking out tons of geometry has limited value, especially in realtime rendering. It isn't enough to describe the polygons' borders, you also have to put something interesting inside those polygons unless you want a wireframe world. How to maximize this has always been the subject of competing designs. The big thing is not to waste processing power drawing things the viewer cannot see. This means things not currntly in front of the camera POV, behind other solid objects, or simply too distant to affect any pixels. Along the way you can derive information that serves other issues in complex rendering.
The tile based approach has great advantage going in but runs into big hassles when it comes to scaling up the card designs and dealing with new features as they become required. Both the PowerVR and Kyro series had momentary days in the sun and then were consigned to the bargain basement as Nvidia and ATI would move several generations ahead as the tile based products were struggling to get their next generation out the door. If the big GPU makers only produced a new generation every three or four years the other guys would still be competitive but the complexity of the tile based products makes the development cycles uncompetitively slow.
In a static product like the Dreamcast this was less of an issue but its competitors in the same generation had a brute force advantage on many fronts and other big advantages as well. The throughput of the Dramcast's video was far less meaningful when the shaders on the XGPU allowed effects that simply couldn't be replicated in realtime regardless of the efficiencies of the PowerVR silicon. A PS2 development team would have to work to replicate the best efforts on the Dreamcast but still had overhead left after that if they had the skill in system management. On the GameCube and Xbox there was simply nothing the Dreamcast provided that couldn't be reproduced almost effortlessly. Games like 'Skies of Arcadia' look terribly primitive on the GameCube.
The Dreamcast was a great platform for the time and price point at which it was released. It didn't do miracles, though. And Sega as a company simply lacked the stability and capital to keep up their end of the challenge.
Nithron @ Apr 11th 2006 5:27AM
#23: Quality? Dreamcasts are notorious for failing after a few years. I went through three of them, all of which developed the notorious "Randomly resetting" bug. That is, until i found out you could fix it by opening it up and bending some pins with your fingers.
(Having said that, practically every PS2 owner i know can no longer play CDROMs in their console, only the DVD-based games. I'd expect better from an electronics giant like Sony...)
And amazingly, #19 isn't spewing fanboyish rubbish, the PowerVR chipset that the DC used was actually capable of something called tile rendering, which does prevent processor wastage on drawing stuff you can't see. Maybe that's why the Dreamcast's graphics still look comparable to the technically superior PS2's? Eh... who knows. It's worth noting that some of the best graphics on PS2, Jak and Daxter's later outings for example, were squeezed out by implementing a similar system for reducing off-screen drawing, but made in software.
...Oh, and Saturn 1.5? Dude, if you were supposed to smoke that stuff, it would naturally grow in it's own papery wrapping.
epobirs @ Apr 11th 2006 5:29AM
#23
Jet Set Radio didn't go to PS2 because Sega didn't view it as a mainstream game for that most mainstream of platforms. It notably reserved titles like Jet Set Radio, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and Shenmue II for the Xbox where it felt an older demographic would be more appreciative.
Numerous cel-shaded games have demonstrated that the PS2 could readily support a good port of the game by a competent team. Which is something Crazy Taxi for PS2 lacked. This title was financed and published by the late unlamented Acclaim. Other than convincing Nintendo to release the N64 RAM Expansion separately from the 64DD drive, this wasn't a company renown for advancing quality standards. Their GameCube version of Crazy Taxi is mediocre as well compared to what it should be on that machine.
As for the DC continuing to hold its own against machines regarded as the same generation, despite a gap of three years between DC and GC & Xbox design freezes, don't be silly. The memory constraints alone would continuously impose limits on developers seeking to match their work elsewhere. The goal was to grab the attention of the audience making the aging PS1 a cash cow at a price within temptation distance of what Sony then got for their console. In that it succeeded but few followed with a purchase of the hardware.
#25
Simply not true. If it were the installed base would have been far larger. Hardware sales began to slow well before software support faded. Sega failed to grow the platform much beyond its hardcore gamer audience, which by no small coincidence are those most likely to up on the latest piracy techniques. Not necessarily due to immediate dishonesty but by technological curiosity with the temptation following.
The Dreamcast was a very good try. Many of the critical factors were present but others were not. Too many to reach sufficiently deep into the mainstream market. Thems the breaks. Sega had other options, like being acquired by Microsoft and solving their capital problems in fell swoop but that wasn't something the Board of Directors were prepared to accept. By the time they could admnit to themselves how desparate thing really were the only decent suitor was Sammy and that came far too late for the Dreamcast.
epobirs @ Apr 11th 2006 5:35AM
#28
Tile based rendering is used a LOT in software at many levels of computer graphics. A Google search will produce many examples. It's just proven problematic for hardware implementations for rapidly advancing volume markets.
Meanwhile, ATI and Nvidia (and others) have made great strides in the efficiency of their Z-plane handling and have closed the gap quite a bit. A lot of this is reflected in the Xbox 360 GPU. A tile based GPU could be produced to out perform it but by the time it reached the market ATI would be three generations further along in their technology.
Stu L Tissimus @ Apr 11th 2006 6:56AM
I'm sorry to say that I never owned a Dreamcast.... But I did pick up Skies of Acracida: Legends for GameCube. And my god, the game is amazing. Where in god's name is the sequel?!
Gareth @ Apr 11th 2006 7:07AM
MSR should be on that list too.
"The dreamcast was a completely underrated system that was overshadowed by the PS2 long before the PS2 was actually released."
You'll find that this was because of Sony's bullshit claims of Toystory graphics, real wind in games and individual blades of grass. All bullshit. And they're doing exactly the same now with PS3. I wouldn't wipe my arse with a Sony console.
phl0w @ Apr 11th 2006 7:14AM
My favourite console of all times. Still playing it more often than any other current(ps2,xbox) or next-gen(360) console. Which isn't a surprise looking at the back catalogue of awesome DC games. In my opinion they look much better than PS2 games and play much better than the XBox ones.
Though, I miss Rez (perhaps one of the greatest gaming experiences of all times) and NHL2k2 on that list and can't quite make my peace with the Sonics and Beat 'em ups except SC. Did you notice that the list features not a single racer? Sure, MSR sucked in its own way (crappy physics and slow framrate), but the concept was one-of-a-kind, and without it, PGRI-III wouldn't have become what they are and F355 showed that sims don't solely belong to the PC.
And then along came Ikaruga... maybe the hardest game of the last years, which made it all the more special and hard to not fall in love with... even for shmups-haters.
Gaming on DC was and will always be something special and a reminder of what consoles should be made for.
striderhayasa @ Apr 11th 2006 7:44AM
Shen Mue. One of the most immersive games I've ever played. My family game it an ovation when I beat the first shen mue. Only four other games have caused such a great round of applause upon completion. Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil Code Veronica (DC version) and Zelda Windwaker.
Limestallc @ Apr 11th 2006 8:02AM
Ah yes, I remember my DC very fondly, I loved Shenmue, Ikaruga, JGR, SC, SoA and sonic adventure. I also loved some of the online games that came out like Alien Front. The only real problem i had with the DC was the controller which was ok for its time but when i try to use it these days i can really tell the problems with it after using my Xbox (especially 360) controllers.
Also a few responses
#19 I dont know if im understanding it the wrong way but i think you said sega created sony, but thats false nintendo did when they backstabbed sony on the CD drive for the SNES.
#10 saying DC was like saturn 1.5 really is an ignorant statement DC could hold its own against ps2, hell DC is way BETTER (im talking graphically as everyone know DC games are way better) to me SC looks better on DC than SC3 on ps2. besides what was wrong with saturn, i love and nurture my saturn.
#28 you should know not to expect anything quality related out of sony
#12 MS will not monopolize the game industry, most of the companys they buy develop for xbox anyway, and buying RARE was a mistake cause they arent a very good developer anyway, i would wory more about EA buying companys then using their horrid buisness practices to completely take away quality from the developers they buy i mean look at westwood. also xbox has tons of great games, i personally own 16 and i believe the average is like 10 compared to the ps2's 3 and the GC's 9 (those numbers arent exact as i dont quite remember where i read that to double check)
im sure i have more complaints and comments that i dont remember at the moment.
Josh @ Apr 11th 2006 8:43AM
I bought a dreamcast when it launched (9-9-99 anyone?) and played it long after I had my Xbox.
Soul Calibur was the awesomest game of all time. And really, everyone knows that.
Dead or Alive 4 looked better on the DC than on the PS2.
Skies of Arcadia looks no better on the GC than on the DC years before.
the PS2 simply hypnotized a bunch of twelve year olds and lied to their parents with all that 'backwards compatability' crap (who f'n plays old game anyways? No one) the absense of which was mentioned above as a detriment to the Dreamcast.. Ummm.. hello? The Dreamcast was an original machine. It wasn't a Genesis 2 or 3. Sega was way ahead of their time, and just like every other pioneer, they get shoved aside by a competitor with a crappier product but better marketing.
I bought an Xbox just to spite the PS2.. the actual machine. I would occasionally buy one, bring it to my house unopened, parade it in front of my DC and Xbox and laugh and point at its inadequacies before taking it back to the store, hoping that it would become depressed and commit suicide the first time some 120lb 11 year old plugged it in.
But maybe that was just me.
CuddleFish @ Apr 11th 2006 8:43AM
Add the great Sega Bass Fishing games to that list I'll be happy. I still have my DC with fishing rod controller to play those games. Sega also had some of the best light gun shooters on their system.
Thomas Crymes @ Apr 11th 2006 8:49AM
The Dreamcast was dead before it was born and didn't know it. The Dreamcast was Sega's last gasp, their futile attempt to regain marketshare.
And it's a shame because I've always been a Sega fan and Dreamcast was a wonderful system. The Sega CD/32X and Sega Saturn spelled the Dreamcast's doom. Sega fractured its userbase with the Sega CD and Sega 32X. Then it did a surprise launch of the Saturn because they knew that the Playstation was going to cause them trouble (they even redesigned the console at the last second). The surprise launch pissed off a lot of retailers, and consumer confidence was down.
By the time Dreamcast came around, the public was firmly behind Playstation, and the memories of Sega's past blunders reminded consumers that they should stick with Sony.
It's really kind of sad and unfortunate.
Graham H. @ Apr 11th 2006 9:40AM
PROJECT JUSTICE.
anyone with me on this? i still think its one of the most solid, if frantic, 3D fighters out there.
32_footsteps @ Apr 11th 2006 9:45AM
The problem I have with lists like this is that it's invariably written with an eye to revise history. This isn't a list of games that defined the Dreamcast. It's a list of games that Dreamcast fans wish defined the Dreamcast.
The game that defined the Dreamcast to me was Soul Fighter. Those who had the misfortune of touching it know how miserable it was. It was a miserable experience.
And for the most part, that's the kind of game I knew of, and was told about, for the Dreamcast. For every SoulCalibur, there were a hundred Dynamite Cops. I didn't even know about many of the Dreamcast's best games (like Rez and Ikaruga) until after the system's demise.
On top of that, so many of the titles mentioned were niche titles. Sure, I liked Shenmue, but I know a huge number that didn't (or only liked it for forklift racing, which hardly is a "must buy" reason). Same with Samba de Amigo, Seaman, and Jet Grind Radio. When your "great" games are of very limited appeal (but very powerful appeal within those limits), you're not going to sell much and consequently are going to have money issues.
Piracy certainly did its part to hurt the Dreamcast, but don't overlook the fact that it had many lousy games that did much more to define the system than any game on this list ever did.
phl0w @ Apr 11th 2006 9:52AM
Well, after reading racketboy's article it turns out, that only US titles were taken into account. That's why for example Rez or ShenmueII don't show up. Only reason, why Ikaruga is on this list is that it represents the shmups genre as a whole, since it had a major impact on defining and establishing the DC in hardcore gamers' houses. Same goes for 2D fighters, which are represented by SF3.
So, what this list and his article wanted to explain is that the DC of course had its powerhorses, that are the mentioned titles, like any other console, but it's the quality of shmups and 2D fighting that defined the console over the past years as the best machine for those genres. At least that's what I read out of it.
Either have a look at the first 14 titles which are outstanding titles that don't need reference to their genres, or take shmups and 2D fighting as defining, pick any title out of this pool and you won't get a bad game. Consider both, outstanding titles AND defining genres, and you may get a glimpse of what still is a helluva console.
kneelconqueso @ Apr 11th 2006 9:53AM
Does anyone know where I can find some sailors?
Jaysun @ Apr 11th 2006 10:14AM
Does anyone remember how gawd-awful Sega's marketing was for the DC??? How 'bout all those Space Channel 5 ads? Why they didn't market the games all of us have mentioned here is beyond me. Something like Skies Arcadia ought to be instantly marketable, with its cutesy art style and brilliant gameplay
Angelcurio @ Apr 11th 2006 10:32AM
ah, Power Stone, what a perfect list.
That game really deserves a port to home consoles, not just the psp.
I just feel sad each time i remember the 4 players battles i had with my friends.
phipscube @ Apr 11th 2006 10:38AM
epobirs
If your logic is correct then why didn't Rez appear on Xbox instead of PS2? That game is so far out from how you seem to categorise the general PS2 owner. I think the idea of Jet Set Radio would have appealed just as much to the PS2 masses as to the then small hardcore Xbox market, if not more. Wasn't it maybe because Microsoft had a set amount of exclusive game deals with Sega? But generally at the time, yes, I remember that each development branch of Sega seemed to be going for a specific format, i.e Sonic team initially chose to release on Gamecube, AM2 releasing on PS2 (VF4 etc). And that was very much because they felt Sonic was better for GC owners (more kids appeal apparently) and VF4 would be better for the PS2 (the PS2 owner appreciates a good brawler.. hmmm).
I recall that alot was said about a conversion of Jet Set Radio to PS2, but it never happened for whatever reason. I was really being quite light heartedly piss taking of what alot of folks at the time where slamming about the PS2, and amusingly so. You never hear anyone scream JAGGIES anymore when complaining about the PS2. I do believe that if it were released then it would have looked cack compared to the DC purely because developers didn't know how to effectively program the PS2 AT THAT TIME. As time went on, yes, cel shaded games appeared and looked fine.... But I was talking in a time around 2000/2001 when most PS2 games looked like they had been attacked by mr. Jaggie poo.
You call me "Silly" to say the DC wouldn't hold its own nowadays because of limitations in its hardware?? WTF? I'm no hardware savvy, but to my eyes DC and PS2 games don't look THAT far apart in GFX quality, even NEW PS2 games! Do you remember the old speccy? Why did that magical little thing sell so well compared to the C64 and Amstrad CPC? it wasnt because it was the most powerful... it had the best games and was dirt cheap. If the then Sega carried on how they were going then I don't think Sony would have caught up.... Sega would have been able to bump the price down and still keep on bringing those good games. Plus when PS2 launced it was a very similar situation to what we have with the PSP... NO AMAZING GAMES for a good year after release... Sega would have dominated, at least for quite a while. I remember alot of people switching to DC from PS1, or in my case having both side by side.... it was happening, people were being converted...
Now, I know Crazi Taxi wasn't converted by Sega themselves but AFAIK Rez was handled by the very same set of folks that did the DC version, and I can see with my own eyes that the DC version is visually nicer... you could argue as to many reasons why it was like that, developer bias, being used to the DC platfrom over an inexperience with ps2.. etc etc... but at the end of the day at that time the DC held its own very nicely against the PS2 and I believe that it would now, what with developer progression on platforms as they get more out of them through knowledge. You argument means the PS2 shouldn't be allowed on the shelf compared to the GC and Xbox because its got limited CPU speed blah blah. Thats Silly!! ;)
Nithron
Well, I state my case in fact. I've owned 4 PS2's in 5 years. I had the DC 3 years before I even bought my first PS2 (the dreaded V4). I now have a Slim PStwo which is really working nicely to be honest! I've had this one for little over a year and it has been working great! but still my DC continues to be the most reliable console i've owned (only needing an internal battery change some two years ago). Its also a general fact that PS2's are made like shit, I love my Sony kit, but the Playstation line really is shoddy. If they just made their lasers a little better it wouldn't be so bad, but they must pack the crappest of the crap in the PS range.
Heh, I'm generally pro Sony but if you get me on the old story of Dreamcast and Sega I turn into a big defensive fanboy :)
Matt @ Apr 11th 2006 10:46AM
Also:
Grandia ii
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Bust-A-Move 4
DOA2
Quake III
the list goes on and on...
boots @ Apr 11th 2006 11:27AM
Holy shit. I thought SEGA fanboys were a non-existent breed these days. Turns out I was wrong.
Anyway, don't bash me for being realistic. I don't like the Xbox, but it's true that without LIVE, they wouldn't have shaken Sony's market the way they are doing it now. If it wasn't for Xbox, PS3 wouldn't be the fine machine that it looks it will become.
Hilarious how Dreamcast fanboys say "PS2 won becoz PS2 users are stoopid rotflz". Why are you offended about the Saturn comment? To tell you the truth, the Saturn was a great console. I liked it more than PS1. Too bad the games were better and more on PS1, but Virtua Fighter, Nights and Die Hard were excellent too.
Why Saturn 1.5? I'm not only talking about graphics, just like Xbox 360 wasn't criticized *just* because of its graphics. Dreamcast had no Backwards Compatibility (YEs, people still play PS1 games, included myself; maybe Dreamcast didn't need it much as the Saturn didn't have many games, and anyway, people don't like wasting a whole collection of games; you keep your old systems? Wouldn't you rather play it all in one system then?), no DVD movie playability (part of PS2's success), lack of space on discs just like Gamecube (yeah, their discs did last, but DVD would have been much better), the controller was utter crap with few buttons (why subtract the number of buttons if you are supposed to compete with a standard controller? Same goes for Nintendo Gamecube. I mean, seriously), too bad Microsoft took the same design except "re-mastered" it, and it had no broadband gaming (wasn't their online gaming enabled for phone lines, and free at first?). Did the dreamcast really made games look better than God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 3 and FFXII? Doubtful. Anyway, this list of games, while it is good, there are many more PS2 games that are great, and even gamecube has as many of not more games that are great.
And LOL at "DC had better graphics than PS2, Xbox and even 360".
As a 1st party, Sega's strategy always sucked. They were always beaten (And by a long shot) by Nintendo even when Nintendo was always 2 years "late". Genesis, 32X, Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast... all of them looked like rushed systems as if made just to beat their competition, more than to follow their own path. I also owned a Genesis but I got sick when Sega started to ask for "add-ons" to play the newest games. Gamegear was just plain boring, like the PSP.
Sega is great as a 3rd party.