The Dreamcast's Final Death

Croakyvoice writes "The Dreamcast games Last, Hope Karous and Trigger Heart Exelica will the last officially licensed Sega games for the Dreamcast because from February Sega Japan plans to stop production of GDRoms. The death of the GDRom format will mean no more Dreamcast or Naomi Arcade games. The Dreamcast Community has sent emails to Sega Japan to ask for a rethink on this issue. From the article: 'This doesn't need to happen, as developers are fond of the NAOMI for its relative low cost, ease of production and accessibility, and straightforward ports to the Dreamcast home console. Warashi returned to the scroll shooting genre with Trigger Heart Exelica on NAOMI, and Milestone would likely gladly continue to produce further games following Karous on the system as well. Sega themselves have recently presented Dynamite Deka EX running on NAOMI. If GD-ROM production continues, there is a much greater chance that we'll see a home console port of this game on DC within a year.'"

Comments

Dreamcast?

[Physician]

Raise your hand if you're surprised they still make games for the Dreamcast. However, I'm in favor of anything that keeps an old console alive. I wish Nintendo would still produce SNES carts.

Or...

[casualsax3]

... they could just start using CD's, since those work too.

Re:Or...

[nbehary]

The thing is, recent DC games have been shooters that really don't nearly use all of the capacity of the GDROMs. Now, that may not be univerally true of all potential NAOMI ports, but it has been for the last 2 years or so.

Not the end

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dreamcast can read standard CD-Roms. They don't hold quite as much as a GD-Rom... if memory serves, a GD-Rom holds close to one gig. But, GD-Roms also seem much more error-prone, and have to be more expense to press.

Re:Not the end

[the_nightwulf]

(Most) Dreamcasts can read standard CD-ROMs. The easiest way to tell if yours will is by the manufacturing date at the bottom. If memory serves, the cutoff was February 2001. It was February of something ...

GD-ROMs do hold close to one gig, and they are indeed much more error prone. The extra storage space is gained by removing much of the redundant data used for error correction. This is why a Dreamcast GD-R with a speck of dust may not play, but a PSX game that's been run through a blender will.

Not dead yet...

[The Good Reverend]

That's sad that it's the end of the Sega-produced game era, but one reason the Dreamcast is so popular is that it's quite hackable, plays CDs also, and has a lot of user support. I use mine mainly to emulate older console systems like the NES, and it works great for that with CDs I burned myself. I don't see the hobby market for the Dreamcast going away any time soon.

Re:What is a DreamCast?

[Penguinshit]

Australia released the DreamTime.

The Wii *IS* my new Dreamcast

[Cybrex]

So far the only thing that looks like it has a chance of displacing it is the Wii.

Funny you should mention this. I'm a big Dreamcast fan and recently the very happy owner of a Wii, and for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on the two systems remind me of each other.

The white case and Japanese UI aesthetic are obvious factors, but I think it goes beyond that. Neither system has the most powerful processor, but both are overflowing with creative engineering that goes beyond mere novelty, both are ideally suited to party play (IIRC the DC was the only system of its generation that easily supported 4 controllers, and for virtual console games the Wii could in theory support up to 8), both are IMHO the most fun consoles of their generation.

I fondly remember having absurd amounts of fun playing Bomberman with 4 players on the DC. It naturally follows that the first Virtual Console game I pulled down for the Wii was Bomberman '93.

I've never understood why the Dreamcast wasn't a runaway success, and the whole sad saga was like living in Bizzaro world where the better system is forgotten by the world. At the risk of sounding 'woo-woo', the Wii feels like the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast, and seeing the more innovative system finally getting the popularity it deserves this time around takes a lot of the bitterness off of the DC's ignominious end.

If they ever come out with Chu Chu Rocket for the Wii then all will truly be right with the world. :-)

Re:Atari 2600?

[Xenolith]

Cripes, there are still games being made for the Atari 2600. http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?main_page= index&cPath=21_85