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Dreamcast Tribute Revisits Cult Console, Games
Buster Chan writes "NTSC-uk has begun their two-week long tribute to the almighty Sega Dreamcast, including an editorial recounting favorite memories of Sega's final (so far) hardware, as writers 'give their views of one of the most prolific consoles of recent times', the first 128-bit console. They also run new reviews revisiting Cosmic Smash, checking out Get Bass, and analyzing the very Japanese Tokyo Bus Guide." Although it was so long ago we can barely remember, what were your favorite Dreamcast titles?
soulcalibur bizzzz so many hours, so much fun
What makes me sadder is that to this day the dreamcast is the only current gen console that has an official arcade stick. It came with internet browsing software, and everywhere dreamcasts were sold you could pick up an official keyboard and mouse as well which helped immensely in fps games... The Dreamcast was well ahead of its time. *sniff*
My favourites DC games are:
Illbleed
Powerstone 2
Grandia 2
Le Mans
Record of Lodoss Wars
Looney Tunes Space Race >_>
Rival Schools 2
and of course Soul Calibur
While there were many, many good games for the Dreamcast, the one that stands out in my opinion is Ikaruga. In my opinion, it's one of the best verticle shooter games ever created.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
oh yea, this game has a style all it's own.
close second is shenmue. it's fun to buy soda and wander around japan.
Typing of the Dead ... the greatest game ever! (okay, not really)
... separates the men from the boys (and the afternoon I played it, women/girls, too). A group of maybe four of us beat it in a few hours, no real challenge. The fun part was finding the special endings (including when the main boss plummets to his death, only to miraculously bungee jump back onto the roof-top where the previous battle just took place, and then burps in your face).
... try to force the players to laugh so hard they lose.
truly awesome game
Man, did i suffer some RSI that day.
Linkage: here
Truly, the best part was the tongue-in-cheek engrish phrases you were forced to spell out. Which i think is a valid design choice
Metropolis Street Racing
One of the few games I felt that I had grossly underpaid. I love that game, it took racing games to a new level. Superb graphics, courses mapped out to block-by-block sections of real life cities. Awesome stuff.
Tho it lacked the upgrade and hotrod aspects of Gran Turismo it excelled in breaking the static driving game formula. Style, overall speed, top speed, number of passes, one on ones. Made it less monotounous than simply going track after track (tho there were hundreds of different tracks).
The AI was pretty weak but was very challenging none-the-less.
The realtime day and night was a nice plus too. If it was nightime in London and daytime where you really live (that is if you set your dreamcast clock correctly) it'd be night in the game, vice versa. Some rewards were only available during certain hours of the day. Made it interesting.
The sound was unique too, had radio stations (course Rad Racer had that) but it felt like you were really listening to the radio with commercials and DJ babble. Also when you went through tunnels the radio would cut out and you'd get static till you exited. Stations also reflected the country you were racing in.
This game later became Project Gotham and the superb PGR2. But it lost much of it's whistles in favor for flashier graphics. If you find this game it's worth the 5$ you'll see priced on it. Knowing how good it was after I played it, I would have gladly paid over $100 for it.
The Original. You know. The first 400 hours of the other's that came out.
I miss that game so much. Maybe it's becuase I played it for the last 6 months before I went to college and had to give it up, and thus have attached this horrible nostalgia to it which rose colors everything. Maybe its becuase I actually made real life friends thanks to that game. Maybe its becuase I remember playing with friends from the GIA before that message board died.
The game was simple in execution and design, the learning Curve for PSO was well within even the casual gamers spectre of grasp. There was no 'how do I wipe my ass' comments, since the lower level functions where easy like that.
The story didn't try hard either, but did enough so that you felt connected. You're on a planet because the only you left died, the colonists ahead of you are dead, kick the aliens ass's. Wash.Rinse.Repeat.
What made you come back where the varying diffuculties, the rare items that dropped maybe once a week, the feeling of glee when that next level lets you kick the shit out of an enemy that whooped your ass before, the comradory of playing with friends.
Oh god dammit. Now I'll have to play the gamecube version again.
X
Powerstone (And Powerstone 2): It was a strangely viewed fighter with interactive objects. When you collected 3 powerstones which appeared randomly on the map, your character would morph into a super character, capable of doing awesome attacks.
Seaman: Not exactly fun, but was interesting. You raised a fish that would talk to you, it was rude (Dialog was written by the folks at Jellyvision, famous for You Don't Know Jack) and funny. Of course, you could talk back with the included microphone, and it understood an amazing number of phrases. However, it was like a real creature, and used the Dreamcast's internal clock, so you needed to check in on it pretty often.
Shenmue was excellent. Some didn't like it for a lack of gameplay, but it had enough story to keep me interested. One of the few games that I liked to the end, and then beat.
Sonic Adventure. Come on, you gotta admit that "Chao Adventure" was pretty damn cool. The memory card being a mini gaming system was waaaay ahead of it's time.
Well, back to searching for a mint-condition copy of Splatterhouse 3 for SEGA Genesis, a game I stupidly sold during the golden age of gaming, not realizing that the good times wouldn't last forever.
SEGA!
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Shenmue II. Of course, I had to import it from Europe which meant using the annoying boot disk, but it had full Japanese voice acting w/ decent subtitles, so it kicked ass.
[o]_O
But I'm a sucker for shmups. And I'm lovin' Tumiki Fighters :x
The gord speaks the truth about the dreamcast 128bit myth
* Resident evil 2 (or is it 3?) formatting a non-VMU memory cards if it finds one (two different types of memory cards, one launched later and not backwards compatible - nice going)
* Games like Skies of Arcadia letting you know hidden items are near by making the VMU beep and the rumble thing rumble - again, both lost on some players.
* Sega explaining they don't need to perform any usability testing since any usability issues (like using the SAME TRIGGER BUTTON to spray paint AND center the camera in Jet Grind Radio) would be caught by their QA.
* Sega announcing games will be pay-to-play, essentially killing the online servers.
* Sega making Alien Front Online offline forever (less than 10 months after the game's launch) by hardcoding an IP address they lost on the client side, and refusing to admit any responsibility since customers can still play the offline training missions. - This would actually make a very winnable class action case (how long do companies have to support an online game if they did not announce a cut-off date before people purchased it - if you want to get a class action victory under your legal belt, lemme now).
I'm not that sorry to see SEGA leave the console market. Admit it - Nintendo was always the funner of the two. I am sorry they were replaced by our favorite monopoly, but that was obvious the moment they signed that windows-CE-libs-for-DC deal. Let's home the market will be able at some point to support a new console (hardware + software) company - but it doesn't seem that likely just yet.
Only Sakura Taisen, the epic mech-strategy/love-sim could make me write something like this: A very long essay about my experiences with Dreamcast and Sakura Taisen
Later I discovered the deliciously immersive Shenmue I & II; the final disc of II might be the most beautiful gaming I've ever had.
Games like these and other quirky and original titles are what makes DC my favorite console. At first I was turned off by the WinCE logo and the non-fighter-friendly controller, but once I realized the intoxicating level of creativity going on with this system, I was in love with it.
You can still buy one, and at 50 bucks for a new one and 30 or so odd for a used it is hard to go wrong. In silicon valley 30 dollars doesn't even pay for the sushi.
Something about that crazy Maraca controller. Of course it was a pain in the ass to find but damn it was fun.
this game should be on every console,
excellent multiplayer. shenmue was also
pretty slick.
Why? They are absolutely hillarious and fun to play. There's just something about a game in which you can't help but move to the beat. Who in the world would've dreamed up a game in which you shake maracas like an idiot to the beat of hit latino songs with psychedelic colors starring a monkey and dancing cucumbers with sombreros (as far as I can tell- who knows)? The Sonic team that's who! Or Space channel 5 in which you are a cute girl reporter in the future fighting aliens who, guess what, make everyone dance!
Sega really had something going with it's music genre, it's too bad the console was so short-lived.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
The SHA-4 (well, SH7750) which powers the Dreamcast is _very much_ a 32-bit architecture. 32-bit memory/IO addresses, 32-bit words, 32-bit FPU, 32-bit aligned. However it can dispatch 2 integer instructions simultaneously (like the pentium), while chewing on up to 2 FPU ops as well. This is how 32 + 32 + 32 + 32 = 128 bits is claimed.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Still, the architecture is very nice and allows for high throughput without needing a lot of cache, deep pipelines, or high clock speed.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Rez is awesome.
What a game.
Damn I hope they make another one.
For those interested, go check out Lionheads latest Minter project, Unity.
Awesome stuff
Skies of Arcadia: a engrossing cartoon style rpg, with overtones of Miyazaki's 'Castle in the Sky' and 'Nausicaa' along with WW1/WW2 type sea battles of giant iron juggernauts with quite a bit of buckling your swash thrown in :-) .... absolutely TONS of mini-games and side-quests to undertake, great use of the DC peripherals (mini visual VMU games, rumble pack use in-game, etc). A classic.
:-)
Metropolis Street Racer: Excellent racing game featuring real streets and scenery of cities across the world. Good physics and handling of the cars; you can actually tell the difference between them.
Rez: Trippy shooter. Brillian use of timing and interactive sound and music. The minimalistic wireframe and shaded graphics bring it, for me, to being the closest thing to being in the world of Tron, than anything else.
Shenmue/Shenmue II: Flawed, but a huge virtual world. Absolutely massive.
Bass Fishing: Huge fun for everyone including drunk students or even grandparents
ecco _ defender of the future best game ever bar none !
:(
Played if from begining to end and I have never found any other game that gives such a feeling of emersion and mood.
Music 10/10
graphics 10/10
game play 10/10
Only thing it did not have (and did not need) was replayerbility.
I remember bringing it to work over xmas with a VGA box and showing some shmuck who had brought in his playstation2 and ssx
He was blown away, i thought he might bin his ps2 then and there !
of and the controls were very intuitive as well.
Anything bad about this game? hmmm maybe the last level was a little to hard but the difficulty level throughout was good.
I never did get the football game cheat to work
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
The dreamcast can emulate the PS1 at full speed yet was released long before. Dreamcast was probably the best machine of them all, technically speaking.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Soul Calibur (blew the arcade version away)
NFL2K (the first "beautiful" sports game, led to what is now a great line of 'ESPN' branded games)
Ikaruga (the hardest goddamned game I've ever played)
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (arcade perfect)
Rez (a beautiful, amazing experience)
Jet Set/Grind Radio (cell shading done right)
Crazy Taxi (insanely fun arcade driving)
Chu Chu Rocket (the best multiplayer puzzle game ever.)
Looney Tunes Space Race (a fun kart-style racer)
PowerStone 2 (chaotic 4-player fighting)
Tennis 2K2/Virtua Tennis (best tennis game, till M$ copied a la Top Spin)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (a port, but great)
Shenmue/Shenmue 2 (immense RPGs)
and of course, the homebrews and emulation (especially Feet of Fury and NESterDC)
The Sonic Adventure games were fun, but never captured the magic of the 16-bit Genesis games. Even with the new Sonic Heroes it's still lacking. Sonic 2 still is the best in the series in my opinion. The voice and music acting since SA1 is just comically bad. Please Sega, restore the dignity in that franchise! The old Sonic games had great music, now we have to deal with bad J-Pop while we fight Eggman (Robotnik).
The Kingdom of Retarsia
Some reason i always decide to pick up consoles when they are on their way out. Did it with saturn, just to own one for 30bux for nostalgic value, and then DC when it it 40. Id have to say my favorite games for it were most definetly: Rez - I dunno what it is about this game, its just so addicting to me. Just really entertaining music/shooter game Tennis 2k- This still reigns as my all time favorite tennis sim, nothing can beat it, tried topspin on the xbox and it just doesnt have the same feel Rival Schools 2- Something about a nonsensical story line about rival clubs in a high school with awesome special moves just made me keep comin back to. Strangely addicting fighting game For those of who are thinking of picking up a used dc i highly recommend finding those, rez may be hard, but the other 2 should be pretty easy to find.
There's a few other titles too, but those three are the reason it's still hooked up (Even though the GC serves up SC2, and Skies could be replaced with Skies: Legends (why bother rebuying?), there is no replacement for the cheese and fun that is Bangai-O.)
The first time I saw Soul Calibur I literally missed my mouth and spilled my drink a la Airplane! Crazy Taxi was an early and more gentle GTA. I left Ecco on the screen as background "art" at a party that had some kids at it...they went nuts moving the dolphin around the screen (and the graphics caused a lot of the adults to beg for turns too). Playing Shenmue inspired me enough to take a trip to Japan (though I didn't get to the area Shenmue takes place in).
This console was my introduction to Lik-Sang as I bought the ethernet adapter, two DC-2-PS2 adapters so I could use a mouse/keyboard with the webbrowser. Hell, I even bought the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio.
I could go on and on about great moments I've had with this console. It "felt" right...I never had a problem with the controller as some people did, and even played Tetris on the memory unit (thanks Marcus!)
To me, this was the first console that got everything right; great graphics, great controller (to me), and an online community through the console itself (modem then ethernet). Though I have an Xbox, it feels like a bit of a warmed over Dreamcast and I still think the graphics on the DC are better than the PS2 (my opinion based on games I've seen).
Definitely Skies of Arcadia. That was one of the most memorable RPGs I've ever played, and I'm right now working on Skies of Arcadia Legends for the Gamecube. Another memorable game is PSO; it was my first MMORPG (Although I wouldn't consider it 'massive', it only supported 4 players per game.)
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
Everybody understands why and how Sega collapsed from a videogame power house to a purely software development company. Why can't Sega learn from its mistakes, get some capital together, and make a new video game console. From this thread, it seems everybody loved their dreamcast and would go out and by a new reincarnation of it. Why can't Sega hire competent managers and marketing people! They have innovative, creative programmers and engineers. Come on Sega, get your shit together!
-Dipster
If you're going to mention Shenmue II (which I found droll), you should also mention Rez!
Rez was another game that was released in all markets except the US.
BTW, the only reason that Shenmue II wasn't released in the states was a deal with MS. They wanted to make it an exclusive Xbox game.
Capcom released an arcade-perfect port of Street Fighter Zero (Alpha) 3 in Japan. Back before boot discs, I used swap tricks to play the game for hours on end. I even bought Ascii's Saturn-style controller to play the game with. The Dreamcast was a fighting gamer's dream, with Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, Rival Schools 2, and all of those SNK games. It's a shame that Sega mucked the whole thing up...
Unlike my Saturn, which is still lives in my living room, I can only think of two reasons to drag the DC out of storage:
:)
Power Stone 2 and Chu Chu Rocket
Of course, once it is out, games like Tech Romancer (Kikai-o), Virtua Tennis, and the fishing games get played.
Don't get me wrong, the DC had many more entertaing games... it's just that they've been re-released on other consoles and slightly improved. PSO, Crazy Taxi, MSR, NFL2K, and Skies of Arcadia have all had updates on other (newer) consoles. Even lesser games like the Sonic series or other fighting games have updates.
I remember the DC as the system that introduced the VMU. It's still a great concept, one that Nintendo is trying to reproduce with their GBA-GC link. Try playing NFL2K multiplayer. Being able to pick your plays in private is great. Even Virtua Tennis made use of it.
The number of memorable gaming experiences I've had with the Dreamcast are so numerous they are hard to count. I still remember visiting a friend who had a DC, playing an import copy of Jet Set Radio and deciding pretty much right then that I had to buy one. But in addition to that revolutionary game there were so many others:
Virtual-On OT is giant robots fighting by Sega! How can you go wrong with this... you can't! The RPG selection was pretty thin but with Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II the quality more than made up for the quantity. Party games like Ooga-Booga and Chu Chu Rocket still stand tall alongside newer offerings like Mario Kart DD and Wario Ware.
But the most memorable experience for me has to be Bangai-O. One of the best shooters and indeed games I have ever played. The counter-attack concept Treasure came up with there is so innovative and totally satisfying I can't believe no one else has tried to imitate it... the tension of deliberately getting into a dire situation so you could unleash a 400 missile barrage to clear a screen is exhilirating. Each level design was always zany and clever, while the final boss was so ridiculously difficult that you had to use every single trick you'd picked up along the way to survive for more than a few seconds.
One thing I know is as long as my DC keeps working I'll keep playing it, no matter what flashy new technology is out there.
It's all about the Jet Set Radio and Eternal Arcadia. Two games that take up at least 80% of my Dreamcast-playing time.
Until they can start developing decent games again for other people's hardware, they don't need to be wasting their time with their own.
I mean, really, the Dreamcast games directly from Sega were awesome, everyone loved them. But once they became 3rd party, they realized people would pay for rehashed crap... so they gave people what they'd pay for. Granted, some of the ports from Dreamcast were cool and helped spread the awesome games around, but really... Sega hasn't made a decent unique (non-port) game in a while.
Maybe they're just too afraid to take the risks they did with DreamCast?
There are a lot of people out there who think that the Dreamcast is the best console ever made, and that Sega's inability to market was what killed it off. I'm not one of those people.
All the same, Soul Calibur is easily the best fighting game I've ever played, and Virtua Tennis is one of the best sports games. Rez is an artistic-yet-fun shooter (though I think there's a superior version on the PS2), and Skies of Arcadia probably would've been good if I'd bothered playing it for very long. Too bad the Dreamcast didn't have many other great games, unless they were all buried underneath Sega's ineptitude.
Rob (Shenmue is the most overrated game ever made)
Favorites:
In Japan new games are still released for Dreamcast every month. A lot of them are playable even if you don't speak Japanese. Some of the more recent releases that I'd recommend are: Border Down (2003), Psyvariar 2 (2004), Puyo Puyo Fever (2004), and Shikigami No Shiro 2 (2004). Dreamcast should resurrect in North America so that these great games, and others, can find the fans they deserve.
"I am a fictional character."
But he wrongly corrected the person, telling him it was 64-bit (IIRC), not 32.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Puyo Puyo Fever also showed the trick of changing the DC boot menu background.
You can download an example to your VMU from here if you would like to see.
Soulcalibur for sure.
Powerstone 1 & 2. Great games.
Strangely enough, Gran Turismo 2. I had Bleem that allowed me to play GT2 on my DC. The graphics as compared to the Playstation were night and day. And GT2 on DC actually looked as good if not better than GT3 on PS2 IMHO.
I never found a copy of I for my Dreamcast, but I have II for the X-Box, and it's not bad. Awful voice acting though. Will the franchise be allowed to run to story completion? ( sting music ) I sure hope so.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.