Games That Defined The Dreamcast

Retrogaming with Racketboy has a piece looking at some of the console-defining titles we miss from that little white box. From the article: "Phantasy Star Online - Sega was one of the main pioneers in online console gaming. While they had modest online offering with both the Genesis and Saturn, the Dreamcast was the first of their consoles to have online capabilities built into the stock machine. The Dreamcast came standard with a 56k modem and also had a (expensive) LAN/Broadband adapter available as an upgrade. Phantasy Star Online paved the way for Sega's groundbreaking online network and for later networks like XBox Live."

Comments

The broadband adapter was barely worth noting.

[Cutriss]

The broadband adapter only worked with one game, and that game was sufficiently broken that the matchmaking host IP was hardcoded in the game, meaning that when Sega NET changed stuff around, Alien Front Online stopped working.

The networking stack was not abstracted at all from the games, which was silly. Sure, you didn't *need* broadband to play Chu-Chu Rocket online, but if you didn't have a phone line, it helps. It's crazy that Phantasy Star Online didn't support it.

The Dreamcast may have pioneered online gaming from the standpoint that the hardware was included for every console, but they just got a base hit - the Xbox was the console that hit it out of the park.