Who Remembers The Dreamcast...? Thread

Hello,

I have not seen anything about the Dreamcast in these recent posts and I am wondering why, it is still a great console and has a great homebrew community. So, who remembers the Sega Dreamcast or who still develops for the Sega Dreamcast?

I wasn't aware anyone developed homebrew for the Dreamcast anymore. I recently pulled mine out of storage to play Half Life Gold. (I was waiting anxiously for Black Mesa, see...)

According to Refraction, a coder who worked on PCSX2 (PS2 emulator) and NullDC (Dreamcast emulator), the Dreamcast lacks the PS2's raw fill rate and hardware power, however this is offset significantly by having 8MB of VRAM, which allowed Dreamcast games to have higher quality textures.

All in all, the Dreamcast was a good console killed by Sega's failing reputation and a lack of quality titles which weren't named SONIC ADVENTURE or SONIC ADVENTURE 2. (Both damn fine games by the way.) Shemnue? Niche appeal.

Edited by: CallistoNTG

It was a hell of a lot easier to develop for than the Saturn and there could have easily been more titles developed for the Dreamcast at the time (or at the very least more of the Japanese titles translated for foreign markets). Such a shame that its capabilities were put to full use in an all-too-short lifespan. I wasn't aware of its homebrew community??

Does anybody think that they should try and reboot the dreamcast system, it had so much potential and still does. i want to see it come back so badly now.

Well they kind of did.

The OS used by some Dreamcast games was based on Windows CE, DirectX.

Edited by: woodsmoke

I remember playing on the club dreamcast all day at my collages Anime club, that thing could have lived longer then it did.

am a huge old fan of the DC,bought mine second hand from GAME originaly,also got the DC keyboard,and found shenmue one and two second hand for cheap from there to.

at least up until last year the dreamcast still has games in production [at least the last time was checking out a import store they did].
from what remember they are obscure stuff tailored for the japanese market only.
even the mega drive [US=genesis] still gets attention from indie developers though unfortunately the games have never lost the rip off price,guess that was a hazard of using carts back in the day.

although nintendo were years ahead of the rest for online access;having designed the giant breezeblock known as the NES to have a modem bay [though only japanese people were lucky enough to put a modem in it,the rest of us just collected dust in ours], the DCs internet access was far superior and light years ahead in terms of what it allowed us to do,a favourite of mine was the exclusive sega forum we had access to,it allowed us to upload VMU data so we coud compete on the score boards and also so SWIM and others coud use the information to cheat.
the only downside was the useless modem and the laser which had a common fault of burning the disc codes and rendering them useless before long.
however it gave many of us access to the internet back then when we coudnt afford a PC/laptop which as a computer geek am truly greatful for.

sega made some amazing consoles and they are so horribly underated,it was a tragedy for gamer choice/freedom,unique,diverse and exclusive console games, and technology well beyond the time when sega left the hardware business.
nintendo had spent so long trying to focus on developing a unique control system to make it accessible to a broader audience that they have forgoten to update the gpu side of it and they and their weak catelogue of games are woefuly flagging well behind the strong developer support of microsoft.
sega shoud never had dropped out,if nintendo drops out we will no longer have freedom of choice in our gaming, we will have one console company which charges a ton because it has no competitors to push the prices down.

anyway sorry for waffle.

I was in Heaven when I bought the Dreamcast. Jet Grind Radio, Dead or Alive 2, Marvel vs Capcom........*droools*

The Dreamcast has several good games but was far from a great system IMO.

MulderYuffie wrote: The Dreamcast has several good games but was far from a great system IMO.

The specs were far better than that of the PS2 at the time. Was there something else about the system you didn't like?

Edited by: togoaway

I still have all my dreamcast games it really sucks how much the classics have been forgotten my favorite is sword of the berserk pretty awesome game but really hard to find now.

The Dreamcast is perhaps the only "failed" system to have such an enduring legacy. Where the 3DO and the Atari Jaguar barely left a footprint, you can find parts of the Dreamcast's DNA in every modern console, from dual trigger buttons to online play to video screens on the controller. I'm willing to bet every creative director behind each of Microsoft and Sony's consoles has a closet in their basement which opens to reveal a Dreamcast enshrined with red candles and ceremonial bells.

Still use mine actively today. Hooked on Starlancer and THPS2 right now, and hunting for a copy of Jet Grind Radio.

My uncle gave me his for Christmas,the only game it really came with was Tony hawk 2 pro skater,which was a blast to play!

JM_Scion wrote: I'm willing to bet every creative director behind each of Microsoft and Sony's consoles has a closet in their basement which opens to reveal a Dreamcast enshrined with red candles and ceremonial bells.

Lord knows I do

Edited by: togoaway

I remember going over to my friend's house when I was little and playing Sonic Adventure and loving it, also there will never be another Gamma :'(

I remember Zombie Revenge - it was a blast playing with some friends, killing zombies with the afro dude that looked like Slash from Guns and Roses.

Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, House of the Dead 2, Ready 2 Rumble

yeah..yeah i remember

I was addicted to SA2 chao garden

I love the dreamcast! My favorite game on there has to be Typing of the Dead. You play with a keyboard
and you kill zombies by typing words!

Edited by: NathanGroovy

steadi wrote:

MulderYuffie wrote: The Dreamcast has several good games but was far from a great system IMO.

The specs were far better than that of the PS2 at the time. Was there something else about the system you didn't like?

Hardly has any games that weren't ported to other systems within it's same console generation.

Those were good days. My favorite game (And probably of all time) Had to be Phantasy Star Online.

Me too. Phantasy Star Online, Sould Calibur, and Shenmue 1 are my DC faves.

Sony having a DVD player in the PS2 was a huge advantage over the Dreamcast. At the time a PS2 was one of the cheapest DVD players on the market. Was a conscious decision of Sega to use their own GD-ROMs instead of DVDs to keep costs down, the PS2 was a better media device.

That being said the DC was totally ahead of its time, having a modem built into the console, was a forerunner of online gaming on consoles and supported many graphical features that a PS2 didn't (like bump/ normal mapping).

Coming off the back of the disastrous Saturn, following on from the disastrous 32X and the disastrous Mega CD the Dreamcast had an uphill struggle from the off. It's a shame it didn't live for longer, EA where still making FIFA games for the PS2 until last year. If you look at the quality of the last FIFA on PS2 compared to versions at the start of the PS2 life cycle it's night and day. It's unbelievable that they where able to squeeze so much out of that hardware when they learnt how. Imagine the great looking Dreamcast titles we could have got if it had just survived a little longer

My dreamcast recently broke T_T

Edited by: Uxernome

I bought a Sega Dreamcast a few years ago on eBay and after I've played some of the great exclusives it had to offer, I had no idea what I was missing.

There are so many exclusive games that I still haven't played yet.

I always thought the VMU was a cool idea, not many Dreamcast games took advantage of it though. I think Skies of Arcadia had a mini-game you could play on it and when you plugged it back in you got new stuff in the main game.