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The rise and fall of SEGA’s Dreamcast

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Dreamcast

SEGA’s last console before they gave up on the home gaming hardware business was the ill-fated, but much-loved Dreamcast. A little machine that was ahead of its time, it was a machine of firsts.

The first console to have a serious focus on the internet and online multiplayer , the first to utilise cel-shading. It was the first console to use essentially like-for-like hardware when compared to arcade machines resulting in arcade-perfect ports of games like Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxi, Dead or Alive 2, and Power Stone. It was the first console to meld mobile gaming with console gaming thanks to its VMU, and the first to have player-to-player voice chat.

It also died a miserable death, thanks to SEGA’s botched handling of the Saturn and unfathomably easy game piracy. Microsoft’s Xbox was, in many ways, the spiritual successor to SEGA’s very last gaming console, even becoming home to many sequels that would have otherwise been bound for the defunct Dreamcast.

Courtesy of the folks at Did You Know? Gaming, Here’s everything you wanted to know about the Dreamcast, but were too afraid to ask. Seriously though, the thing was amazing – and stands as one of my favourite systems of all time.

Last Updated: January 12, 2015

11 Comments

  1. Admiral Chief

    January 12, 2015 at 20:24

    Of course you love it, you are old 😛

    Reply

    • Quo Vadis?

      January 13, 2015 at 07:18

      you WILL be bliksemed by all the elderly here, including me! LOL

      Reply

  2. Xcalibersa

    January 13, 2015 at 06:54

    What a awesome system

    Reply

  3. Hammersteyn

    January 13, 2015 at 07:28

    So that’s where XBOX got the idea for their controller.

    Reply

    • Adam Meikle

      January 13, 2015 at 15:42

      Microsoft helped develop the network architecture for the console and learnt much about consoles from Sega with their hand in the Dreamcast. Microsoft launched their own console, the Xbox, and the influence is definitely there. The original Xbox also has a slew of sequels from the Dreamcast library including Shenmue II among others.

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        January 13, 2015 at 15:59

        It was also interesting to hear how Sega wanted to release titles on the XBOX.

        Reply

  4. Viking Of Science

    January 13, 2015 at 07:57

    Also, it Managed to play games at 60FPS…. #justsaying

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief

      January 13, 2015 at 09:30

      Oh snap

      Reply

  5. Derrich Schleich

    January 13, 2015 at 07:59

    I never had a dreamcast. but Sega Saturn was awesome 🙂

    Reply

  6. Mark Vincer

    January 13, 2015 at 08:21

    I remember playing demo disks on my friends Dreamcast as those were the only games we could find 😛

    Reply

  7. UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy

    January 13, 2015 at 09:28

    I remember playing a fishing game with a motion controller and it was EPIC!

    Reply

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