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[Alexios]

Random videos, real hardware, not emulation. There's no good footage of Aero Dancing i, it's 60fps but this video is 48fps and most others 30. Other than some old school special effects it's beautiful as the series showed tangible improvements with each new iteration despite how fast they were churning these out. Compared to contemporary PC flight sims like IL-2 Sturmovik from many months later, the planes have great detail, the terrain textures are of good resolution and the pop-in for the 3D structures is quite good (granted some Aero games, i included, also released on PC). That Le Mans video isn't the best in image quality but it shows a full 24 car race with changing tod and weather. I can't find great MSR footage that shows off the insane amounts of fully modeled track detail either. I guess people mostly go back to the arcadey Dreamcast games instead of those that demanded quite some time investment when recording and uploading. Also, anyone who says Dreamcast couldn't do sandbox based on Headhunter forgets the Crazy Taxi games with their great vistas and tons of traffic that could easily be halved and still look dense if it was necessary to accomodate different types of gameplay or increase individual polycount. The pedestrians and what not don't look too bad either and yes, there's pop in, but considering all it throws up every single second (again, 60fps vs GTAIII's ~15-30fps and less traffic for all its fancy lighting) it's great.


So ya, it miraculously holds up and was amazing back then and until AAA productions went all in on PS2. I can't even fit videos of every looker like RE Code: Veronica X, Soulcalibur, MSG: Federation vs. Zeon DX, Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2, HOTD2, MDK 2, Zero Gunner 2, Under Defeat, etc.​

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[ReBurn]

Good system if you were into Sega and Capcom games.

But if you were like me and wanted some EA, Namco and Konami stuff, the system had hardly anything good except Soul Calibur. And for RPG fans, I dont think Square released any JRPGs.

Definitely had to be a Sega fan to get the most from it. Namco also released Ikaruga shortly after Dreamcast was discontinued. Phenomenal port, IMO.

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[Captain Toad]

Loved Dreamcast so so much. Op how old are you. My theory is anyone near my age (35) is insanely nostalgic for Dreamcast.

Seeing how little it sold, I doubt it.

Dreamcast only sold 9 million units worldwide its entire lifespan. For comparison, PS2, that same generation, sold 155 million.

I'm 42. I had a Dreamcast (and PS2, GameCube and Xbox), but I have almost no nostalgia for it. That was the period of my time I was least into gaming as an older teenager/early 20s. What gaming i did do was almost exclusively on PS2 and GameCube.

 

[OmegaSpirit32X]

SEGA Saturn and SEGA Genesis are better.

Genesis? definetely, was SEGA's only real success for a reason. (maybe the Master System in Europe and Japan and the Game Gear? but even then, Nintendo's consoles ended up outshining them),

Saturn? was there anything as impressive on Saturn besides NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, some Fighting games and some Anime games? the Dreamcast had two mainline, big Sonic games for crying out loud, while the Saturn has a racing spinoff and some Genesis ports. not that the Saturn (or those Sonic games really) were bad. it's just that comparing Adventure 1 & 2 to stuff like R or 3D Blast... yeah the dreamcast wins.

 

[Aenima]

Nop, i still have mine. Outside of Shenmue, Phantasy Star Online and Skies of Arcadia was pretty much just an arcade game console, i have good memories with the console, but died too soon. Mega Drive aka Genesis was the best Sega console.

 

[CapnAmaricrunch]

Dreamcast had my favorite games, state of the art graphics and tech, thats all that matters, well, not all... The controller sucked, try playing crazy taxi with the original dreamcast controllers. Try playing a 2D fighter using the dpad, lol so many great 2D fighters. I didnt really like the vmu's the original gimick feature.

 

[Old Retro]

The PS2 was easier to mod and had a better library and ruled my console world at the time. But like the Saturn, it had better 2D fighters including my favorite of the decade Marvel vs Capcom 2.

 

[cireza]

Namco also released Ikaruga shortly after Dreamcast was discontinued. Phenomenal port, IMO.

I don't think that Namco was ever involved with Ikaruga. SEGA was in the arcade (as publisher) then ESP on Dreamcast. Game was developed for Naomi to begin with, so the Dreamcast port was only natural.

 

[cireza]

Outside of Shenmue, Phantasy Star Online and Skies of Arcadia was pretty much just an arcade game console

There are a lot of games that are not arcade ports. Core Veronica, Resident Evil ports, Lodoss, Dragon's Blood, Grandia II, Head Hunter, Maken X etc... Many PC ports as well.

 

[waquzy]

Loved Dreamcast so so much. Op how old are you. My theory is anyone near my age (35) is insanely nostalgic for Dreamcast.

I’m 38 and it was a decent console, but that’s about it. No need to be over dramatic about it… the PS2 was a whole dimension above it!

 

[cireza]

No need to be over dramatic about it…

the PS2 was a whole dimension above it!

Talk about being dramatic lol.

 

[waquzy]

Talk about being dramatic lol.

Fair point

 

[SkylineRKR]

Loved Dreamcast so so much. Op how old are you. My theory is anyone near my age (35) is insanely nostalgic for Dreamcast.

Ofcourse I am 40. So when DC came out I was 18. And thats generally a memorable period in life. At that time you had to drool over screenshots and besides the odd demo you could only imagine how a game would play. It was much better than watching livestreams before a game is even out.

 

[Alexios]

Saturn? was there anything as impressive on Saturn besides NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, some Fighting games and some Anime games? the Dreamcast had two mainline, big Sonic games for crying out loud, while the Saturn has a racing spinoff and some Genesis ports. not that the Saturn (or those Sonic games really) were bad. it's just that comparing Adventure 1 & 2 to stuff like R or 3D Blast... yeah the dreamcast wins.

Saturn has a ton of gems in all kinds of genres. Maybe you can classify many as anime whether they're SRPGs like SFIII and Dragon Force, mech action games like Gundam Side Story and Gungriffon or shmups so they arbitrarily don't count, like fighting games and all time greats like PD, lol?
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[InfiniteCombo]

Do people have any favorites for which the Dreamcast remains either the best or the ONLY port?

I have two:
(1) Justice Gakuen (I forget what the English name for it is... Maybe "Project Justice?") The sequel to Rival Schools, looks and plays great, I still play it occasionally, and to my knowledge hasn't been ported to any other platform.

(2) Capcom vs SNK (1) - Yeah, there's a PlayStation port, but the Dreamcast one is infinitely superior. Although mechanically CvS2 surpassed CvS1 in almost every way, I still prefer some of the aesthetics and combat flow of CvS1, so I still play it from time to time

 

[cireza]

Do people have any favorites for which the Dreamcast remains either the best or the ONLY port?

I have two:
(1) Justice Gakuen (I forget what the English name for it is... Maybe "Project Justice?") The sequel to Rival Schools, looks and plays great, I still play it occasionally, and to my knowledge hasn't been ported to any other platform.

(2) Capcom vs SNK (1) - Yeah, there's a PlayStation port, but the Dreamcast one is infinitely superior. Although mechanically CvS2 surpassed CvS1 in almost every way, I still prefer some of the aesthetics and combat flow of CvS1, so I still play it from time to time

Project Justice and Capom vs SNK 1 are great picks, two of my favorites.

Lodoss :

Amazing hack'n slash. I love this game.

Super Runabout :

Great and super fun game that I replay very often.

Cannon Spike :

Very fun mix of beat'em up and shmup.

Psyvariar 2 and Shikigami no Shiro 2 are worth noting, even though they have great ports on Xbox OG and I often play them there.

 

[Alexios]

A good chunk of its library remains exclusive or best on it, Soulcalibur, Record of Lodoss War, Metropolis Street Racer, Daytona USA 2001, the Aero Dancing games (a couple are also on PC but it's probably easier to source/run the Dreamcast games), Gundam SS 0079 Rise from the Ashes, etc. I guess some like MDK 2 and Grandia II and others like Shenmue have technically better versions nowadays if anyone bothered releasing them (but again this doesn't apply to stuff like Soulcalibur since the later XBLA port lacked much of the content etc.) but at the time they were best on DC too.

Edit: I think there were some problems with the recent re-release of Under Defeat 2 and it's technically a different variant version too, right?

 

[DevilMayFlyForAWhiteGuy]

My friend had one when I was a kid. He didn’t have many games for it and I remember the only game I played on it was Soul Reaver I believe.

 

[InfiniteCombo]

Project Justice and Capom vs SNK 1 are great picks, two of my favorites.

Lodoss :

Amazing hack'n slash. I love this game.

Super Runabout :

Great and super fun game that I replay very often.

Cannon Spike :

Very fun mix of beat'em up and shmup.

Psyvariar 2 and Shikigami no Shiro 2 are worth noting, even though they have great ports on Xbox OG and I often play them there.

Nice picks! I like Lodoss and of course as a long time Capcom fan I'm well acquainted with Cannon Spike, although I've surprisingly never played it. I keep meaning to get the Japanese import and never get around to it. I should though, the longer I wait the more expensive it will get of course.

Never heard of Super Runabout, I'm gonna have to YouTube some gameplay to check it out!

 

[InfiniteCombo]

A good chunk of its library remains exclusive or best on it, Soulcalibur, Record of Lodoss War, Metropolis Street Racer, Daytona USA 2001, the Aero Dancing games (a couple are also on PC but it's probably easier to source/run the Dreamcast games), Gundam SS 0079 Rise from the Ashes, etc. I guess some like MDK 2 and Grandia II and others like Shenmue have technically better versions nowadays if anyone bothered releasing them (but again this doesn't apply to stuff like Soulcalibur since the later XBLA port lacked much of the content etc.) but at the time they were best on DC too.

Edit: I think there were some problems with the recent re-release of Under Defeat 2 and it's technically a different variant version too, right?

This is a quality post, so I have nothing to add other than I appreciate the correct spelling of "Soulcalibur"... Not even I spell it correctly -- I often capitalize the C because if I don't then everyone will think I'm crazy

 

[Brigandier]

I have DCHDMI and GDEMU and many other mods in my DC and I love it.

I played through skies of arcadia completed it a few days ago absolute top tier game.

Playing Grandia 2 at the moment, The DC is a great machine.

 

[Sojiro]

Great console, although when it was in its prime I looked down on it and talked shit about it (of course without even have played it), because I was huge Sony fanboy coming off of the PS1 and was eagerly awaiting the PS2. It wasn't until a good time after it was discontinued that I picked one up off ebay (around mid 2000's) and actually played on it. Man was I wrong about it. Jet Grind Radio and Shenmue were the standout games for me that I just adored and still do today. Its a tragedy Sega had to pull the plug on something truly special, but all the other botched consoles and addons (Sega CD, 32X, the Saturn retailer distrust) just weighed down what the Dreamcast could accomplish.

 

[darkangel-212559]

Loved Dreamcast so so much. Op how old are you. My theory is anyone near my age (35) is insanely nostalgic for Dreamcast.

Yup your bang on. I'm 36.

 

[Orta]

Do people have any favorites for which the Dreamcast remains either the best or the ONLY port?

Why Sega has never ported it is criminal. Fantastic maniacal fun....

 

[darkangel-212559]

Do people have any favorites for which the Dreamcast remains either the best or the ONLY port?

I have two:
(1) Justice Gakuen (I forget what the English name for it is... Maybe "Project Justice?") The sequel to Rival Schools, looks and plays great, I still play it occasionally, and to my knowledge hasn't been ported to any other platform.

(2) Capcom vs SNK (1) - Yeah, there's a PlayStation port, but the Dreamcast one is infinitely superior. Although mechanically CvS2 surpassed CvS1 in almost every way, I still prefer some of the aesthetics and combat flow of CvS1, so I still play it from time to time

Yup.

These 2 beauties.

 

[Naked Lunch]

Great console, although when it was in its prime I looked down on it and talked shit about it (of course without even have played it), because I was huge Sony fanboy coming off of the PS1 and was eagerly awaiting the PS2. It wasn't until a good time after it was discontinued that I picked one up off ebay (around mid 2000's) and actually played on it. Man was I wrong about it. Jet Grind Radio and Shenmue were the standout games for me that I just adored and still do today. Its a tragedy Sega had to pull the plug on something truly special, but all the other botched consoles and addons (Sega CD, 32X, the Saturn retailer distrust) just weighed down what the Dreamcast could accomplish.

Yeah I blame alot of Dreamcast's commercial failure on your first sentence.
I worked in a gamestore at the time of the DC + PS2 launches, and for shits and giggles - we placed playable hubs of Dreamcast's NFL2k right next to PS2's Madden 2001. NFL2k destroyed PS2's Madden in all areas, 100% no contest plain as day. But most people just came in there and huddled around the PS2 hub playing Madden and ignored NFL2K.
Pretty fascinating to witness.

I remember the PS2 doubling as a DVD player being a huge feature back then too.

 

[Kokoloko85]

One of my favourite consoles ever.
1st Party lineup was pretty incredible.
And played mty first online game with friends PSO. Was game changing

So many great games from Jet Set Radio, Shen Mue, PSO, Powerstone, Samba De Amigo…. Good times

 

[InfiniteCombo]

I might be crazy, and maybe even incorrect. But looking very carefully at some 2D (mostly fighting) games that came out on both the Dreamcast and the PS2 -- almost every single time the Dreamcast version looked better. I remember doing comparisons for CvS2, King of Fighters 2000, and a couple of other games, with the Dreamcast using the VGA output and the PS2 using the component output.

I'll have to dig out my PS2 and do some comparisons again.

 

[Brigandier]

Yup your bang on. I'm 36.

37 here, Nostalgia is for real when firing up the DC.

 

[InfiniteCombo]

Why Sega has never ported it is criminal. Fantastic maniacal fun....

I know, right!?

*Hugs copy of Crazy Taxi 2*

 

[Tuff McNutt]

Nice picks! I like Lodoss and of course as a long time Capcom fan I'm well acquainted with Cannon Spike, although I've surprisingly never played it. I keep meaning to get the Japanese import and never get around to it. I should though, the longer I wait the more expensive it will get of course.

Never heard of Super Runabout, I'm gonna have to YouTube some gameplay to check it out!

Super Runabout is fantastic. Kind of GTA meets a racing game. The original games on PS1 (the first one was renamed to Felony 11-79 in the US) are some of my favorites for the system and the same team made Wreckless on the OG Xbox which is also quite good.

I loved the DC - I put in probably hundreds of hours into PSO. But it would probably rank below the Genesis and PS2 for my favorite all time consoles mostly because of the somewhat limited library.

 

[Mossybrew]

Listen Gaf. I don't need to write a long post about why the DC is the best console ever, but lets take a short sweet trip down memory lane.

1. Online gaming before anyone else

This was huge. Had so much fun playing Dreamcast online. I don't usually dabble in nostalgia, but yeah I do have a lot of warm fuzzies about the Dreamcast days.

 

[Come On Tars]

Soul Calibur, NFL 2k, Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic Adventure, Powerstone. It was magic

 

[Old_and_Slow]

Seeing this thread made me fire up my Dreamcast yesterday. Yes, still have mine hooked to a tv and ready to go, mainly for some Crazy Taxi every now and then.

Decided on some Soul Caliber instead- game still looks awesome and plays great.

 

[MacReady13]

My favourite ever console & software library.

I pretty much gave up on consoles after Sega pulled the plug.

I agree. Gaming was never the same after Sega went. I loved the dreamcast so much. It was the 1st console I purchased working a job with my own money. I had a massive collection of games and loved them all. It was actually a really sad day when I read the news Sega were leaving the console business and focusing only on game making. In my humble opinion, gaming died when Sega left the console business. Nintendo had no real fierce competitor after that and they too haven't been the same since Sega went.

 

[Sosokrates]

I loved my Dreamcast. That noise it made when connecting to the Internet I played Quake with a co troller and got smashed by KB/M players.

VMU kept me occupied whilst waiting for wife to fart our firstborn out too. Fond memories.

If only this was not so close to the truth.
For the uninitiated child birth can be a shock lol.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Love my Dreamcast. Wish the game cases didn’t break just by fucking looking at them mind.

 

[DGrayson]

SNES is the greatest console ever but Saturn and Dreamcast are both personal favorites of mine.

 

[Alphagear]

The Dreamcast was a god-tier console. Forgetting everything else and focusing on the games it was literally hit after hit. It was PS2 hype that killed the console. You have to hand it to Sega though. They sure as hell went down swinging.

Went down swinging?

They threw in the towel in the first round.

Don't let nostalgia cloud our judgements. It was a good console with an average controller and mostly arcade ports.

Dreamcast Library pales in comparison to the other consoles of that gen and the previous gen.

Snes, PS1 and the PS2 are the Top 3 consoles ever in whatever order. Personally it's the PS1 but won't argue with people saying Snes or PS2 either.

 

[RetroAV]

Not my favorite Sega console, but has there ever been another console with as good of a line-up of games in its first 2 years as the Dreamcast?!... I can't think of any.

 

[PsyEd]

For no cartridge consoles...DC is my fav console after PSX. I was in the dreaded slow people region known as "PAL" and 3d fighting games just sucked. Lucky that SEGA knew about it and most DC games had the ability to choose 60HZ option....not to mention many games supported 480p and the awesome VMU. DC was way ahead of it's time IMHO.

 

[HarryKS]

Go home Goofy, you're drunk.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

it was pretty good.
made the n64 look ancient. (had a japanese import back in the day... use the flip-disc trick to go region-free)

good port of hydro thunder.
sports games were surprisingly fun (and i think sports games suck).
blue stinger was cool in a weird way.
power stone was legit.
so on.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Genesis/Mega Drive will always be GOAT

 

[lostinblue]

Regarding the GD-ROM, while the format was proprietary, the drives used CD diodes and the media were essentially just CD's.

It was just a clever use of the technology taking it to the limit. If you drop spinning speed you can read more data with a regular CD drive, as the diode keeps functioning at the speed/rate it did before. Boom, GD-ROM.

It's technically a CD with more tightly condensed 0's and 1's.


I don't think it was that detrimental that they used it, and in 1998, it was either that or 650 MB CD's.

 

[Trimesh]

I might be crazy, and maybe even incorrect. But looking very carefully at some 2D (mostly fighting) games that came out on both the Dreamcast and the PS2 -- almost every single time the Dreamcast version looked better. I remember doing comparisons for CvS2, King of Fighters 2000, and a couple of other games, with the Dreamcast using the VGA output and the PS2 using the component output.

I'll have to dig out my PS2 and do some comparisons again.

No, you're not crazy - it was simply much easier to do 2D games on the DC because it had twice as much VRAM and texture compression. So for something like a 2D fighter you had enough space for the front and back buffers, the stage graphics and the currently active fighters to be loaded into VRAM at the start of the fight and stay there the whole time. On the PS2, you had to constantly stream data over one of the DMA paths to the GS in order to render it - and since 2D sprite data is much less likely to be reused in the same frame than texture data is you lose a lot of the advantage you would normally get from the very fast eDRAM because you become effectively bottlenecked by the delays in DMAing stuff and the rather high latency of the Rambus main memory.

Of course, there are a number of things the PS2 did a lot better - the main memory was twice the size, the EE was much faster and you could offload the geometry calculations to the vector units (on the DC, geometry was handled on the main SH4 CPU) - but in a 2D fighter this really didn't win you anything. The net result was that you had to resort to some pretty fancy tricks to get the same level of 2D performance out of the PS2 that was obtainable on the DC without any tricks at all.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Yeah I blame alot of Dreamcast's commercial failure on your first sentence.
I worked in a gamestore at the time of the DC + PS2 launches, and for shits and giggles - we placed playable hubs of Dreamcast's NFL2k right next to PS2's Madden 2001. NFL2k destroyed PS2's Madden in all areas, 100% no contest plain as day. But most people just came in there and huddled around the PS2 hub playing Madden and ignored NFL2K.
Pretty fascinating to witness.

I remember the PS2 doubling as a DVD player being a huge feature back then too.

Yup. That's branding for ya. It'll always artificially prop up sales and attention.

It's like going to the store and buying bread. You can spend $2 and buy a shitty bag of Wonder Bread or spend the same amount on the store's in-house bread baked fresh in batches every few days and shoved into a brown bag. We all know which one is better. But Wonder Bread probably sells more than all in-store baked loaves of bread combined.

I never had a DC, but rented it along with a handful of games. NFL2k was awesome. 60 fps gameplay and the best sports commentators ever (even to this day) and those guys werent even real life sports commentators.

 

[Rykan]

Went down swinging?

They threw in the towel in the first round.

Don't let nostalgia cloud our judgements. It was a good console with an average controller and mostly arcade ports.

Dreamcast Library pales in comparison to the other consoles of that gen and the previous gen.

Snes, PS1 and the PS2 are the Top 3 consoles ever in whatever order. Personally it's the PS1 but won't argue with people saying Snes or PS2 either.

An average controller? That thing was abysmal.

Only one stick, only two shoulder buttons. No select button and that thing was so awkward to hold. Otherwise fantastic console but how the heck did that controller make it all the way through design phase? Legit one of the worst controllers any major console shipped with.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

An average controller? That thing was abysmal.

Only one stick, only two shoulder buttons. No select button and that thing was so awkward to hold. Otherwise fantastic console but how the heck did that controller make it all the way through design phase? Legit one of the worst controllers any major console shipped with.

Thats mini screen save cartridge was a disaster too. What a waste. I remember seeing hype and it would be the next step in gaming where you call plays in NFL2k on the that thing.

Skip all the features and make it a standard memory card with more storage.

 

[Sosokrates]

I do wonder what if the sega of America engineers won and there 3dFx GPU (black belt) was used in the Dreamcast.