Dreamcast will always be the underdog that never got a fair shake, which is why I think it's so beloved to this day. It was following up the Saturn, which was a pretty severe misstep on Sega's...
Exemplary
Dreamcast will always be the underdog that never got a fair shake, which is why I think it's so beloved to this day. It was following up the Saturn, which was a pretty severe misstep on Sega's part. Not only did they launch the Saturn as a surprise in the US, but it was also notoriously hard to develop for. It was also expensive.
The Dreamcast was Sega's attempt to atone for these significant sins. The launch date couldn't have been more memorable (9/9/99 in the US) and they made it much more developer-friendly. Its texture processing made its graphics appear much more exciting and detailed than the muddy/cartoony N64 games of the day, and it was beating its competitor (the PS2) to the market by a fair amount. And it only cost $200.
It also had a really solid launch lineup. I realize how dated it appears now, but Sonic Adventure was a flagship showcase title that knocked everybody's socks off. The promo footage from Emerald Coast, with 3D loops, an outrageous sense of speed, and that orca scene... It was simply unparalleled at the time. Super Mario 64 showed us what platformers could do with an extra dimension--Sonic Adventure showed us what they could do with an extra 120 MPH.
That said, I also have to acknowledge that the Dreamcast was, well, weird. The controllers had triggers instead of buttons? Saves were stored on removable minigame screens? You could buy a VGA box to hook the system up to a computer monitor? The discs weren't CDs but they weren't DVDs? It had games with names like "ChuChu Rocket!" and "PenPen TriIcelon?"
But it was also forward-thinking! It had a built-in modem. Heck, it had a built-in clock! It had keyboard and mouse peripherals. It made it easy to port games from the arcade and computers. It courted the fighting game audience, which is a romance that hasn't ended to this day.
So many of its games were landmark in their own special ways. I remember thinking it wild how Metropolis Street Racer would read the time on your system clock in order to adjust the time of day of the races. Jet Grind Radio put the now-iconic cel-shading style on the map. Shenmue brought us quick-time-events (for better or worse) and was so far ahead of any other game in its ham-fisted attempts at establishing verisimilitude.
Despite its strengths, the system wasn't a surefire success, and it suffered mightily out of the gate. This was made all the worse by Sony's escalating marketing campaign for the Playstation 2. Because the PS2 wasn't coming out for a while, Sony made tantalizing claims--none of which could be verified, of course. As such, what the Dreamcast could definitely do was pitted against the attractive possibilities of what the Playstation 2 might be able to do, and many gamers threw in their lot with the latter.
I remember, during the Dreamcast's heyday, Sony claiming that the PS2 could run the ballroom dancing scene from Final Fantasy VIII not as a pre-rendered cutscene, but in real time. Absolutely incredible! It also happened to be patently false, but it captures the kind of marketing that the Dreamcast was up against. The Dreamcast was the little system that could, but the Playstation 2 was the big system that would--but only after it was out, of course, so keep waiting, please!
It didn't help that the Dreamcast also got its fair share of poor titles. It being easy to develop for was now a double-edged sword, because while it brought us some amazing games, it also gave us ones like Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire? The signal to noise ratio is dangerously low on the Dreamcast, and, the system existed long before you could find out everything you wanted to know about a game by watching someone play it on YouTube. People were taking full-price gambles on the few games they could find on the shelf at Best Buy, and they were being disappointed by outright awful titles.
Furthermore, the system's anti-piracy measures were obliterated fairly early on. I don't know if there's any other console that can so easily play bootleg games. It didn't require any modification or technical know-how. You didn't have to solder on a chip or do some fancy BIOS flashing. All you had to do was download, burn, and boot--something that nearly everyone had the means and knowledge to do by then thanks to Napster and its progeny.
Somewhat ironically, one of the factors that potentially killed the system has also kept it alive so long. The piracy scene has helped the Dreamcast stay relevant long past its death, allowing people to play the games they always wanted but could never find copies of. It allowed for easily playable imports, so western gamers could experience classics like Ikaruga. It also created a small homebrew community. People made their own games or hacked together solutions for pre-existing ones (like ROMs). For a while, the Dreamcast was the first real contender for a easy TV emulation box. I remember following the updates of a developer trying his damndest to get SNES games to run on an emulator at full speed on the Dreamcast. And he did it long before crowdfunding would have gotten him thousands of dollars a month for his efforts.
Because its games are easy and free to come by through piracy, and because the system significantly undersold (leaving the world with a glut of Dreamcast-related product), it has never really had a reason to die out. It is the only retro system I have held on to and that, to this day, I still have hooked up to my television. I don't play it frequently, but every so often I return to it and play an old favorite or try out something new. With every other console, the cost of the games or trouble of hardware modifications rises over time, eventually freezing out everyone but the most dedicated collectors. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, works for anyone willing to push past the (admittedly small) moral dilemma of pirating decades-old software.
In fact, if anything kills the Dreamcast as we know it, it'll be that people have finally stopped putting optical drives in most computers, moving the system into the realm of other consoles that require legitimate effort to run as original hardware. CD burners will someday soon be specialized hardware rather than commonplace, and you'll have to choose between tracking down a drive and some CDRs or tackling the more robust modifications that replace Dreamcast's game storage and delivery method outright. Those are the kind of enthusiast steps that other consoles' communities have always had to take, so, as the Dreamcast moves slowly in their direction, we are watching the sunset of the world's most accessible "modded" console community.
Though its time was short-lived, its legacy was undeniable. Nobody ever seems to acknowledge this, but the Xbox straight up stole its controller layout! It uses an only slightly modified version of it to this day! As I mentioned in another comment, the VMU's off-screen information conveyance was later used by the Nintendo DS and Wii U. It put a modem in every console in 1999, knowing that internet gaming was the future. Some people are still playing Phantasy Star Online 2 on their Dreamcasts, online, today!
In some ways, I'm actually glad that the Dreamcast wasn't the runaway success it deserved to be. Why? Well, for the very reason that I don't have any desire to type up something of this level for any other system that I've ever owned. Don't get me wrong, I loved my NES. I loved my Playstation. I loved my PS2. I loved my PC through all of those console cycles. But none of those have the identity or staying power of the Dreamcast because all of them lived up to (or even past) their potential. The Dreamcast remains the one that got away--the hidden gem or the unsung hero. It plays to my sense of justice and allows me a different kind of appreciation. Instead of the shining star admired by all, it's the diamond in the rough, loved deeply and strongly, but only by a few.
The article briefly mentions them. It was always neat to be able to copy save data over without having to be near a console. But those things were Sega's real battery eaters. They would eat up two...
The article briefly mentions them. It was always neat to be able to copy save data over without having to be near a console. But those things were Sega's real battery eaters. They would eat up two CR2032 batteries in a week without even touching it.
Fun fact: the CPU in the VMU is code named the Potato Chip.
A long time ago I remember reading an article about how the VMUs were supposed to recharge when plugged into the controller. I can't remember the reason for this concept falling through (e.g....
A long time ago I remember reading an article about how the VMUs were supposed to recharge when plugged into the controller. I can't remember the reason for this concept falling through (e.g. technical hiccups, cost-cutting measure, etc.) but for whatever reason it didn't end up being implemented. Unfortunately, this made the VMUs almost dead on arrival because they didn't live long enough to do all the cool stuff they were supposed to. To add insult to injury, they also make that horrible screech on boot when the batteries are dead, which seems like an almost deliberately antagonistic move at this point.
Now, I have been looking for an actual source for this information, and, after some extensive searching, I simply cannot find one. That means it might be misinformation. It could have been inaccurate reporting at the time, I might be misremembering, or I might have full-on incepted myself and created this information in my own head. If anyone else can find something to corroborate/negate this, I'd love to know if it's accurate.
Sony actually did, around the same time -- the PocketStation. It's a pretty decent analogue for the VMU, but it only came out in Japan, during the tail of the PS1's life, and of course never came...
I'm not sure if any console has had something like that since.
Sony actually did, around the same time -- the PocketStation. It's a pretty decent analogue for the VMU, but it only came out in Japan, during the tail of the PS1's life, and of course never came with the system.
I have a sore spot for them because, as with the unreleased GBC Resident Evil, Funcoland took a preorder for the US PocketStation release but were giant nightmares about giving my money back.
I remember playing Final Fantasy VIII for PC as a teenager, and being confused by the little standalone application that was hidden away in the program folder: Chocobo World. It was a port of the...
I remember playing Final Fantasy VIII for PC as a teenager, and being confused by the little standalone application that was hidden away in the program folder: Chocobo World. It was a port of the PocketStation companion game that only saw release in Japan. It wasn't much more than a Tamagotchi, but it was kind of novel.
It really is! Given that it only came out in Japan a couple months after the Dreamcast did, I wonder if there's any interesting story there. The major difference is that it misses out on the cool...
It really is! Given that it only came out in Japan a couple months after the Dreamcast did, I wonder if there's any interesting story there.
The major difference is that it misses out on the cool "screen in each controller" thing the Dreamcast got, but admittedly I can't recall that ever being crucial (I can see how it would be cool for sports games, but I never played those). Although I liked having the little sprite swiping away down there in Soul Calibur.
I think the best actual use for the screens in VMUs was for secretly picking your plays in a multiplayer game of NFL2K. Sonic Adventure also had a pretty elaborate virtual pet thing too; I played...
I think the best actual use for the screens in VMUs was for secretly picking your plays in a multiplayer game of NFL2K. Sonic Adventure also had a pretty elaborate virtual pet thing too; I played around with that a bit but didn't find it very compelling (though I know a lot of people loved it).
Not sure if it was PC only, but Fallout 4 had a phone companion app that linked with the game and worked as the Pip-Boy. I think a few other recent-ish games have had companion apps too. Not...
Not sure if it was PC only, but Fallout 4 had a phone companion app that linked with the game and worked as the Pip-Boy. I think a few other recent-ish games have had companion apps too.
Not dedicated hardware, I know, but it seems to me like the spiritual successor to the VMU idea.
The idea of conveying information to the player on a second screen lived on with the DS and Wii U. Though that was only a small piece of what the VMU did, it was, to me, the most revolutionary. I...
The idea of conveying information to the player on a second screen lived on with the DS and Wii U. Though that was only a small piece of what the VMU did, it was, to me, the most revolutionary. I remember playing Dino Crisis and thinking it was groundbreaking that my character's health was on my controller rather than a HUD. It felt so immersive.
The Dreamcast was such a solid and complete-feeling product in a way that game consoles hadn't been up until that point, and I would argue wasn't really matched by the rest of the 6th gen. Just...
The Dreamcast was such a solid and complete-feeling product in a way that game consoles hadn't been up until that point, and I would argue wasn't really matched by the rest of the 6th gen. Just using the thing is a joy.
Playing one nowadays really does leave you in awe of how much ambition and creativity there was in every aspect of the console and its games. That wave of weirdness that continued a bit onto the PS2 and tapered off later on really does make you yearn for an alternate history where that kind of thing stayed dominant. I think trends have shifted away from the damage done in the 7th gen and games are allowed to be weird, silly, and fun again...but it's hard not to wonder what would could've had in those years if we went a bit differently.
Sega did so much right but just missed trends so badly after the Genesis.
That's really my chief recollection (well, that and burning my eyeballs out by playing Soul Calibur endlessly). Every part of using the Dreamcast felt like a breath of fresh air -- a very distinct...
The Dreamcast was such a solid and complete-feeling product in a way that game consoles hadn't been up until that point, and I would argue wasn't really matched by the rest of the 6th gen. Just using the thing is a joy.
That's really my chief recollection (well, that and burning my eyeballs out by playing Soul Calibur endlessly). Every part of using the Dreamcast felt like a breath of fresh air -- a very distinct deft touch to its interface, both the hardware and software aspects. The first console to recapture that feeling for me is the Switch*.
* Itself a refreshing change since I found the Wii U and 3DS very "heavy" feeling.
Sega had the best joysticks for their Dreamcast controller and earlier Saturn 3D pad. They used magnetic hall effect sensors instead of potentiameters and crazy plastic gears like Nintendo did...
Sega had the best joysticks for their Dreamcast controller and earlier Saturn 3D pad. They used magnetic hall effect sensors instead of potentiameters and crazy plastic gears like Nintendo did with the N64 so they also last years without breaking down.
I'm considering the same for once mine finally kicks the bucket. I've also been eyeing the wireless mod for the controller, but the price ($150+) has held me back so far. Nevertheless, the idea of...
I'm considering the same for once mine finally kicks the bucket. I've also been eyeing the wireless mod for the controller, but the price ($150+) has held me back so far. Nevertheless, the idea of a full-library Dreamcast that I can play wirelessly from my couch has a powerful pull, and I feel like I'll finally splurge and make it happen one day.
I remember buying a used Dreamcast after it was discontinued and downloading games and then burning them to CD-Rs on my computer. It was really simple to copy and pirate the games.
I remember buying a used Dreamcast after it was discontinued and downloading games and then burning them to CD-Rs on my computer. It was really simple to copy and pirate the games.
Dreamcast will always be the underdog that never got a fair shake, which is why I think it's so beloved to this day. It was following up the Saturn, which was a pretty severe misstep on Sega's part. Not only did they launch the Saturn as a surprise in the US, but it was also notoriously hard to develop for. It was also expensive.
The Dreamcast was Sega's attempt to atone for these significant sins. The launch date couldn't have been more memorable (9/9/99 in the US) and they made it much more developer-friendly. Its texture processing made its graphics appear much more exciting and detailed than the muddy/cartoony N64 games of the day, and it was beating its competitor (the PS2) to the market by a fair amount. And it only cost $200.
It also had a really solid launch lineup. I realize how dated it appears now, but Sonic Adventure was a flagship showcase title that knocked everybody's socks off. The promo footage from Emerald Coast, with 3D loops, an outrageous sense of speed, and that orca scene... It was simply unparalleled at the time. Super Mario 64 showed us what platformers could do with an extra dimension--Sonic Adventure showed us what they could do with an extra 120 MPH.
That said, I also have to acknowledge that the Dreamcast was, well, weird. The controllers had triggers instead of buttons? Saves were stored on removable minigame screens? You could buy a VGA box to hook the system up to a computer monitor? The discs weren't CDs but they weren't DVDs? It had games with names like "ChuChu Rocket!" and "PenPen TriIcelon?"
But it was also forward-thinking! It had a built-in modem. Heck, it had a built-in clock! It had keyboard and mouse peripherals. It made it easy to port games from the arcade and computers. It courted the fighting game audience, which is a romance that hasn't ended to this day.
So many of its games were landmark in their own special ways. I remember thinking it wild how Metropolis Street Racer would read the time on your system clock in order to adjust the time of day of the races. Jet Grind Radio put the now-iconic cel-shading style on the map. Shenmue brought us quick-time-events (for better or worse) and was so far ahead of any other game in its ham-fisted attempts at establishing verisimilitude.
Despite its strengths, the system wasn't a surefire success, and it suffered mightily out of the gate. This was made all the worse by Sony's escalating marketing campaign for the Playstation 2. Because the PS2 wasn't coming out for a while, Sony made tantalizing claims--none of which could be verified, of course. As such, what the Dreamcast could definitely do was pitted against the attractive possibilities of what the Playstation 2 might be able to do, and many gamers threw in their lot with the latter.
I remember, during the Dreamcast's heyday, Sony claiming that the PS2 could run the ballroom dancing scene from Final Fantasy VIII not as a pre-rendered cutscene, but in real time. Absolutely incredible! It also happened to be patently false, but it captures the kind of marketing that the Dreamcast was up against. The Dreamcast was the little system that could, but the Playstation 2 was the big system that would--but only after it was out, of course, so keep waiting, please!
It didn't help that the Dreamcast also got its fair share of poor titles. It being easy to develop for was now a double-edged sword, because while it brought us some amazing games, it also gave us ones like Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire? The signal to noise ratio is dangerously low on the Dreamcast, and, the system existed long before you could find out everything you wanted to know about a game by watching someone play it on YouTube. People were taking full-price gambles on the few games they could find on the shelf at Best Buy, and they were being disappointed by outright awful titles.
Furthermore, the system's anti-piracy measures were obliterated fairly early on. I don't know if there's any other console that can so easily play bootleg games. It didn't require any modification or technical know-how. You didn't have to solder on a chip or do some fancy BIOS flashing. All you had to do was download, burn, and boot--something that nearly everyone had the means and knowledge to do by then thanks to Napster and its progeny.
Somewhat ironically, one of the factors that potentially killed the system has also kept it alive so long. The piracy scene has helped the Dreamcast stay relevant long past its death, allowing people to play the games they always wanted but could never find copies of. It allowed for easily playable imports, so western gamers could experience classics like Ikaruga. It also created a small homebrew community. People made their own games or hacked together solutions for pre-existing ones (like ROMs). For a while, the Dreamcast was the first real contender for a easy TV emulation box. I remember following the updates of a developer trying his damndest to get SNES games to run on an emulator at full speed on the Dreamcast. And he did it long before crowdfunding would have gotten him thousands of dollars a month for his efforts.
Because its games are easy and free to come by through piracy, and because the system significantly undersold (leaving the world with a glut of Dreamcast-related product), it has never really had a reason to die out. It is the only retro system I have held on to and that, to this day, I still have hooked up to my television. I don't play it frequently, but every so often I return to it and play an old favorite or try out something new. With every other console, the cost of the games or trouble of hardware modifications rises over time, eventually freezing out everyone but the most dedicated collectors. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, works for anyone willing to push past the (admittedly small) moral dilemma of pirating decades-old software.
In fact, if anything kills the Dreamcast as we know it, it'll be that people have finally stopped putting optical drives in most computers, moving the system into the realm of other consoles that require legitimate effort to run as original hardware. CD burners will someday soon be specialized hardware rather than commonplace, and you'll have to choose between tracking down a drive and some CDRs or tackling the more robust modifications that replace Dreamcast's game storage and delivery method outright. Those are the kind of enthusiast steps that other consoles' communities have always had to take, so, as the Dreamcast moves slowly in their direction, we are watching the sunset of the world's most accessible "modded" console community.
Though its time was short-lived, its legacy was undeniable. Nobody ever seems to acknowledge this, but the Xbox straight up stole its controller layout! It uses an only slightly modified version of it to this day! As I mentioned in another comment, the VMU's off-screen information conveyance was later used by the Nintendo DS and Wii U. It put a modem in every console in 1999, knowing that internet gaming was the future. Some people are still playing Phantasy Star Online 2 on their Dreamcasts, online, today!
In some ways, I'm actually glad that the Dreamcast wasn't the runaway success it deserved to be. Why? Well, for the very reason that I don't have any desire to type up something of this level for any other system that I've ever owned. Don't get me wrong, I loved my NES. I loved my Playstation. I loved my PS2. I loved my PC through all of those console cycles. But none of those have the identity or staying power of the Dreamcast because all of them lived up to (or even past) their potential. The Dreamcast remains the one that got away--the hidden gem or the unsung hero. It plays to my sense of justice and allows me a different kind of appreciation. Instead of the shining star admired by all, it's the diamond in the rough, loved deeply and strongly, but only by a few.
The article briefly mentions them. It was always neat to be able to copy save data over without having to be near a console. But those things were Sega's real battery eaters. They would eat up two CR2032 batteries in a week without even touching it.
Fun fact: the CPU in the VMU is code named the Potato Chip.
A long time ago I remember reading an article about how the VMUs were supposed to recharge when plugged into the controller. I can't remember the reason for this concept falling through (e.g. technical hiccups, cost-cutting measure, etc.) but for whatever reason it didn't end up being implemented. Unfortunately, this made the VMUs almost dead on arrival because they didn't live long enough to do all the cool stuff they were supposed to. To add insult to injury, they also make that horrible screech on boot when the batteries are dead, which seems like an almost deliberately antagonistic move at this point.
Now, I have been looking for an actual source for this information, and, after some extensive searching, I simply cannot find one. That means it might be misinformation. It could have been inaccurate reporting at the time, I might be misremembering, or I might have full-on incepted myself and created this information in my own head. If anyone else can find something to corroborate/negate this, I'd love to know if it's accurate.
Sony actually did, around the same time -- the PocketStation. It's a pretty decent analogue for the VMU, but it only came out in Japan, during the tail of the PS1's life, and of course never came with the system.
I have a sore spot for them because, as with the unreleased GBC Resident Evil, Funcoland took a preorder for the US PocketStation release but were giant nightmares about giving my money back.
I remember playing Final Fantasy VIII for PC as a teenager, and being confused by the little standalone application that was hidden away in the program folder: Chocobo World. It was a port of the PocketStation companion game that only saw release in Japan. It wasn't much more than a Tamagotchi, but it was kind of novel.
It really is! Given that it only came out in Japan a couple months after the Dreamcast did, I wonder if there's any interesting story there.
The major difference is that it misses out on the cool "screen in each controller" thing the Dreamcast got, but admittedly I can't recall that ever being crucial (I can see how it would be cool for sports games, but I never played those). Although I liked having the little sprite swiping away down there in Soul Calibur.
I think the best actual use for the screens in VMUs was for secretly picking your plays in a multiplayer game of NFL2K. Sonic Adventure also had a pretty elaborate virtual pet thing too; I played around with that a bit but didn't find it very compelling (though I know a lot of people loved it).
I recall many friends were also sore because it's impossible to get 100% on FFVIII without a pocketstation [even in the western-released version].
The Nintendo Switch is sort of like that. Although the full power of the hardware is on the removable unit which exceeds the capability of the VMU.
Not sure if it was PC only, but Fallout 4 had a phone companion app that linked with the game and worked as the Pip-Boy. I think a few other recent-ish games have had companion apps too.
Not dedicated hardware, I know, but it seems to me like the spiritual successor to the VMU idea.
Watchdogs also had a feature like this which was very well executed.
God damn do VMUs eat batteries like a motherfucker. I have 3 but I don't even keep them powered these days. I love them but jeeeesus
The idea of conveying information to the player on a second screen lived on with the DS and Wii U. Though that was only a small piece of what the VMU did, it was, to me, the most revolutionary. I remember playing Dino Crisis and thinking it was groundbreaking that my character's health was on my controller rather than a HUD. It felt so immersive.
The Dreamcast was such a solid and complete-feeling product in a way that game consoles hadn't been up until that point, and I would argue wasn't really matched by the rest of the 6th gen. Just using the thing is a joy.
Playing one nowadays really does leave you in awe of how much ambition and creativity there was in every aspect of the console and its games. That wave of weirdness that continued a bit onto the PS2 and tapered off later on really does make you yearn for an alternate history where that kind of thing stayed dominant. I think trends have shifted away from the damage done in the 7th gen and games are allowed to be weird, silly, and fun again...but it's hard not to wonder what would could've had in those years if we went a bit differently.
Sega did so much right but just missed trends so badly after the Genesis.
That's really my chief recollection (well, that and burning my eyeballs out by playing Soul Calibur endlessly). Every part of using the Dreamcast felt like a breath of fresh air -- a very distinct deft touch to its interface, both the hardware and software aspects. The first console to recapture that feeling for me is the Switch*.
* Itself a refreshing change since I found the Wii U and 3DS very "heavy" feeling.
Sega had the best joysticks for their Dreamcast controller and earlier Saturn 3D pad. They used magnetic hall effect sensors instead of potentiameters and crazy plastic gears like Nintendo did with the N64 so they also last years without breaking down.
I'm considering the same for once mine finally kicks the bucket. I've also been eyeing the wireless mod for the controller, but the price ($150+) has held me back so far. Nevertheless, the idea of a full-library Dreamcast that I can play wirelessly from my couch has a powerful pull, and I feel like I'll finally splurge and make it happen one day.
I remember buying a used Dreamcast after it was discontinued and downloading games and then burning them to CD-Rs on my computer. It was really simple to copy and pirate the games.