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Today's Best Dreamcast Games
Retrogaming with racketboy has up an interesting feature, a piece intended to discuss the best and most relevant Dreamcast games available today. Not intended as a 'top ten list', his goal is to suggest titles that will resonate with gamers of today who are likely to own other consoles. By suggesting titles that haven't been topped by further works, or that may have been the basis for other popular games, he's hoping that today's gamers will still stop and play the classics once in a while. From the article: "Not only is the gameplay in Jet Grind Radio compelling and unique, but the audio and visual qualities stand up extremely well to today's standards. First of all, the graphical style hits you like a brick in the face (in a good way) with its well-executed cel-shaded models and landscapes. Jet Grind Radio was one of the pioneering games in the cel-shading movement before mainstream games like Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker made it popular for cartoon/anime-style games. The Jet Grind Radio soundtrack is also one of the most popular gaming lineups of all time featuring an array of eclectic songs combining the musical genres of J-pop, Trip-hop, Hip-hop and Electronica. This is one game that is not done justice on TV speakers -- you should definitely try to hook up some decent speakers in order to experience it at its best."
...and it wants its radically innovative, visually outstanding, amazingly fun videogames back. ;-)
Circumcision is child abuse.
Haven't we already had a topic like this once or twice in the past?
the Political Inquirer
F355 Challenge is one of the better racing games out there. It's a must-have if you have a DC and are into racing games. Pretty good port of the arcade version. I also recommend Silent Scope. Another unique game that ported fairly well from the arcade. Man, all this thinking about the Dreamcast makes me want to go home and fire it up tonight.
not a buttonmasher. can be played as such, but not well.
i'd consider it somewhat revolutionary, because dreamcast made the game look AWESOME, the controls were intuitive, the load times were very short in comparison with the other consoles. it was vastly superior to the efforts on the other consoles and, imho, showed why the dreamcast was relavent.
I had many hours of enjoyment with Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast.
firestream.net
One is Phantasy Star Online. .. etc ..
The very first online console RPG, with its servers around the world, compulsive gameplay, instanced dungeons, large chatting lobbies, multi language traduction system, etc
Omitting PSO for the DreamCast is simply not understandable.
Even more when it is making the news these day with its newest incarnation PSU, launching on PS2/PC and Xbox 360.
Another is Guilty Gear X,
which wipes the floor of any fighting game Capcom ever made.
That's an important game, sure. But the list is about relevant games today, i.e. there has to be a reason to play them today. There's no reason to play PSO-DC today when you could play PSO-Xbox, AFAIK. I'm not even sure if you could play the Dreamcast version online today.
hands down, Capcom vs. SNK is the tops hyper-uppercut, -Twitchings
The amount of innovation that came from sega seems to only be rivaled by Nintendo. Come to think of it like half of all games sega made for the DC seemed to be totally new things. Shenmue, jet grind, etc.
DC had me much more excited in the past then either the ps3 or the xbox360. I've never been a fan of the nintendo style of games, although i've been entertained by quite a few.
Hmmm... Pie...
Why, you ask? Haven't played 3 yet, but I heard it was lacking in several areas. Even Penny Arcade made a point of it. And Grandia Xtreme for PS2 was more of a Gaiden title
-American-pedigreed voice actors (the guy who played Leonardo the ninja turtle and that Ariel chick from the Little Mermaid).
-Quick, fun battle system.
-Sky Dragon Slash
For proving that a good game, RPG even, can be founded entirely on graphics alone. Despite the dungeon crawl yawn-a-thons, the way too high encounter rate on the overworld, the insanely long airship battles, and a battle system where it is not possible to die once you can buy Riselem crystals or have Lunar Light, the gorgeous world somehow makes you forget about all the shortcomings and make the game good.
Powerstone 2 is a fun, frenetic game. Seriously, if you like Smash Brothers, you'll love this game.
Just ignore the Island of Penises they used for the title screen.
[o]_O
I inherited a DreamCast from a friend who never played her console, and I must say its one of the best I own. Whereas I don't like Sonic Adventure (gave me massive headaches), the other games it offers are supurb (I especially like the DC's sports games.. the controls just seem intuitive.. much more so than a PS2). Sigh, if only there were enough time to build up a substantial library, what with the next gen upon us...
Sony whipped the console market into such a frenzy over the PS2 that by the time it was released, the Dreamcast was pretty much dead in the water. Even though the PS2 was arguably an inferior unit (and most early games sure demonstrate this), EVERYONE wanted Sony.
:)
Rampant piracy also had something to do with it, although not as much as people think. It was still mostly us "geeks" doing it - you couldn't just burn any old Dreamcast game with your $59.99 CD burner, you needed special software (or a boot CD) which wasn't free, etc. Sega lost our dollars for sure, but the common person (who is still 95%+ of the market) just abandoned ship and went with the latest Sony offering.
The Dreamcast was an amazing machine with an incredible lineup, that lost out to such gaming gems as a crappy Snowboarding game. Once Sony took all the "good" sports franchises, that was it - although again, the Dreamcast was pretty much toast long before this, it still played into it. No EA == dead console these days.
Plus, a gaming market that for 25 years had not cared about backwards compatibility, suddenly wanted to play their 5 year old games again. Whether this was a true shift in the gaming demographic, or just more marketing hype, I leave as an exercise for the reader
Lastly, there was the small thing about getting a free DVD player with the console that definitely swayed a lot of people - although oddly enough, most people still ended up with a stand-alone unit because the PS2 was notoriously awful as a DVD player.
Again, see subject line.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The article only mentions The Typing of the Dead as an honorable mention, but I'd have to say that it's probably my favorite Dreamcast game. It sounds really odd -- using your typing prowess to battle zombies -- but it's surprisingly fun. It's particularly fun if you have two keyboards, so you and a friend can scream at each other as you're frantically typing.
Also, if you're like me and have a bunch of PS/2 keyboards already sitting around, there's a Dreamcast-PS/2 adapter you can get. It doesn't cost much less than a dedicated Dreamcast keyboard, but it results in less clutter.
Maybe now I'll get a straight answer as to what exactly was so great about Rez.
I remember playing that with a friend back when it came out. We were both self-proclaimed fast typers so we would go at it hardcore. I think we were partly motivated by the amount of coin we dropped in House of the Dead units... were we enacting some kind of revenge? The dreamcast keyboards were the clear losers, however.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Really, any of the games that can be played with four players simultaneously are great, but Bomberman and Chu Chu Rocket are a riot with groups. They're both frantic and kinetic, with plenty of "screw your buddy over" factor to keep everyone on their toes.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Samba de Amigo 2000 (never made it to the US just the original Samba de Amigo) and a couple sets of maracca controllers. Best game to play at a party ever. More alcohol = more fun with this game.
I never played F355 Challenge, but did play most of the others. For all the racing games that came out on DC, most actually weren't very good. My favorite racer was Test Drive V-Rally. It got everything right, as opposed to the pitifully done Sega Rally 2, which had the misfortune of being programmed for WinCE rather than directly to the hardware. The strength of consoles lies in not having to go through an OS first. Sega GT could've at least matched Gran Turismo (and custom building your own car was a great idea), but they botched the most important thing: handling. Daytona USA looked good, but the handling was just stupid, horrifically bad even for an arcade racer. Aside from some cheap AI behavior and frustrating difficulty, Vanishing Point was pretty fun. Speed Devils was also good, but much better (sharp) on the PC in its original form, Speed Busters. SF Rush 2049 was generally hailed as great, but I thought it was crap, just like all the other Rush games. Metropolis Street Racer, the predecessor to the XBox Project Gotham games, was alright with it's "kudos" for stylish driving novelty. Demolition Racer: No Exit was one of the ugliest DC games ever created (worse even than the stutterific Sega Rally 2), but it was at least smooth and somewhat fun if you'd played all the other good racing games. Lastly, 4x4 Evo was just too slow and floaty to be a fun racer. Accurately portrayed, but a poor idea to begin with.
When we organize game parties with friends, we usually still play the DC instead of the PS2 or xbox.
We mainly play Chu Chu Rocket and Worms armageddon. And even the girls want to play these games.
Begun deliberating this a while back, and I've since got Halo for the PC so instead of an Xbox me thinks I'll get myself a Dreamcast for christmas, and track down Shenmue, Metropolis Street Racer and probably some of the others on this list
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Also, it's interesting that even though the plot is pretty much on rails and you're led through it, it creates a great illusion of you (player) dictating the plot anyway. This is something they missed in the sequel, actually. Ryo was so clearly dragged through the plot of that one that a sense of interactivity was lost.
Just don't go in expecting an action game. Yes, there's some action at the end, but 90% of the game is spent walking around, talking to people, and solving puzzles. That's my only real complaint with it, really. As huge and customizable as the battle system is, you end up fighting so infrequently that most players will just button-mash past those encounters.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Jet Grind Radio is great, but there are a few others you might want to check out.
1. Toy Commander. Probably the best single player game on the Dreamcast. I've probably put in more playtime on this game than World of Warcraft over the years. It's just that good. Don't let the "kiddie" theme fool you.
2. Super Magnetic Neo. EXTREMELY cheesy art style, mixed with the hardest 3d platformer ever. If you're a real platformer junkie, you need to pick this game up. If you beat this, you've really accomplished something.
3. Record of Lodoss War. As far as RPGs go, the Dreamcast is pretty light on them, and this is one of the best. Diablo-style. I admit to being biased, since I love the anime that the game is based on, but it's still a good game.
4. Shenmue of course was a one of a kind game. The game that got me to buy the dreamcast. You should be able to find it pretty cheaply, since they made a billion copies. Something you definitely should play at least once, even if you don't slog your way through to the end (I still haven't).
5. Skies of Arcadia. If you don't have a GameCube, and you play RPGs at all, you really owe it to yourself to find a copy of this for the Dreamcast. It's still the best console RPG I've ever played. A plot that was actually translated well. Characters that were actually likable. At the time, the graphics were as good as it got for a CRPG. And a well done, complex battle system that requires a bit of thought to master, but isn't so brain bashingly hard you'll put it down.
Honorable mention to a few nifty games: Armada, Cannon Spike (merely because of how hard to find it is), Carrier, Wacky Races.
Rical Schools Project Justice.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.