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."

Comments

1999 called....

[Stormwatch]

...and it wants its radically innovative, visually outstanding, amazingly fun videogames back. ;-)

Re:1999 called....

[MBGMorden]

Excellent point. I really fail to see why the Dreamcast wasn't more sucessful. Even before the crazy clearance prices (didn't they eventually make it down to $19.95?), the system was very reasonably priced ($199 at launch) and had some incredibly fun games (Grandia II, Soul Calibur, and RE: Code Veronica being standouts). When I went to college in (1999) I left the N64 at home for my younger brother to play, and bought a Dreamcast on release day to have something to play. It served me very well as my only console for 3 years or so until I broke down and bought a PS2 and Gamecube (my X-box I won for free in a drawing at a Microsoft presentation on Visual Studio - even swearing that I'd never buy one I *STILL* ended up with one of things :/ ).

Re:1999 called....

[Saffaya]

"my X-box I won for free in a drawing at a Microsoft presentation on Visual Studio - even swearing that I'd never buy one I *STILL* ended up with one of things :/ "

Climb down from your high horse and look at the reality.
Did you like Jet Set Radio on the DreamCast ?

The studio behind JSR, Smilebit, subsequently did Jet Set Radio Future, Gunvalkyrie, and Panzer Dragoon Orta on the Xbox.

Just play the games, not the brand/system politics.

Re:1999 called....

[jzoom555]

As an American woman, perhaps I'm the exception but I could care less whether a man is circumcied or not. It's sooooo beside the point. :D

Re:1999 called....

[Wizard Drongo]

Dude, I hate to break it to you, but outside of freakworldUSA (and Israel, one would assume), most men are not circumcised. Where circumcision does exist it is almost always done for religious reasons or totally valid medical reasons (ie sometimes complications can occur that mean if the child is not circumcised, their penis will get gangrene). As far as I can discover, the USA is virtually the only nation on earth that routinely circumcises baby boys with the false and totally bogus claim that it is somehow healthier that way. Balls it is. Unlike the appendix, the foreskin is NOT a relic of a bygone era of evolution. It is a totally functional and required piece of our anatomy. Those poor individuals that were abused at a young age by their parents (were circumcised) have a large amount of scar tissue on their glans that those of us whose genitalia has not been mutilated do not have. Quite aside from the fact that the pro-circumcision medical lobby in the USA was totally driven by Jewish doctors in the 19th century, who, fearing an outright ban on circumcision tried to spread the myth that it's 'healthier' or 'cleaner', there is also a personal rights issue; it is NOT a necessary medical procedure in the least (except in the aforementioned individuals at risk of gangrene et al), and performing a non-necessary medical procedure on someone who is unable to give their consent is abhorrent. It is on a level with female-circumcision (illegal in most nations) and feet-binding (illegal in most nations). If you've got some weirdo religious belief that requires you to mutilate your genitalia, feel free, by all means to go and do it; hell, I'd even support it being done in hospitals so you don't end up bleeding to death or something. But to do it to a child who isn't even old enough to know they've got one, that's just plain wrong. Apart from anything else, you're causing them a world of unnecessary pain, and the prospect of a loss of sensation when they have sex, having to masturbate with lube instead of just their hand, and numerous other oddities. And for the record, I've gotten plenty of head (referring to a poster down the way). And of all the girls I've been with, not one of them has ever known a guy with an uncut cock (it's one of these things I ask from time to time, out of interest). And some of those girls were fairly promiscous, and have 'put it about a bit'. Stop mutilating babies. You wouldn't circumcise a baby girl, stop doing it to baby boy's.

F355 Challenge / Silent Scope

[st6787]

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.

Two important omissions

[Saffaya]

One is Phantasy Star Online.
The very first online console RPG, with its servers around the world, compulsive gameplay, instanced dungeons, large chatting lobbies, multi language traduction system, etc .. 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.

Skies of Arcadia

[Astarica]

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.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

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.

Marketing, marketing, marketing

[freeweed]

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.