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?

Comments

I loved the dreamcast

[shione]

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

Ikaruga

[OutRigged]

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.

Typing of the Dead

[lambent]

Typing of the Dead ... the greatest game ever! (okay, not really)

truly awesome game ... 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).

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 ... try to force the players to laugh so hard they lose.

PSO

[XellDx]

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.

Prediction

[ronfar]

Sega's final (so far) hardware,

I want to make prediction here, and I hope I'm wrong. I predict that not only will there be no post-Dreamcast SEGA consoles, but that in the future SEGA will be much like Atari, a trendy brand name used by a more successful video game company. Basically, I haven't liked where they are heading, and predictions that they would be in great shape as a third party for soul-destroying behemoth Sony (and not-very-nice-but-still-better-than-Sony Microsoft) haven't materialized. In fact, SEGA's exit from the console industry has simply made the console industry a grayer, more depressing place with no gains for the average gamer.

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!

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you're prediction is wrong, but here are some counter-arguments to go against it, at any rate.

I don't think that Sega is in nearly the same position that Atari was when they went under and subsequentially transitioned to a trendy (and craptacular) brand name publisher.
Unlike Atari, Sega has a lot of very solid franchises. The last few Sonic games have very much missed the bar, sadly, but we still have House of the Dead, Virtua Fighter, Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Eternal Arcadia (which should be receiving a sequel any day now and was one of the finest RPGs in the last 5 or so years), and Shen Mue, just to name a small few.
Segas worst enemy is itself, as is any publisher, so the thing that will kill them outright is not embracing and building on their franchises the way Nintendo is, and altering them in new "hip" ways, (the way they did with the recent Sonic games).

regardless of all that, they do seem to be slowly learning to deal with life as a software developer only, and they are still undergoing their hemorraging of employees because of management and internal organization, but I think they'll eventually turn around.
I've never been a sega fan until the Dreamcast, so I can't say this is a biased review of their situation, but I really hope they can pull a Nintendo and keep on top with "new" classics.

I couldn't resist

[Oriumpor]

The gord speaks the truth about the dreamcast 128bit myth

Brilliant

[jetfuel]

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.

Suchi this!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

That's not even true.

[Ayanami Rei]

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.

Best. Console. Ever.

[wandazulu]

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).