Remembering The Dreamcast - Page 1 of 1

Remembering The Dreamcast

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We take a small glimpse back to one of gaming's most coveted consoles.

It was only a few days ago that handfuls of retro gaming geeks huddled around the orange spiral logoed systems playing whatever games gave them their enjoyment. Yes, it was only a few days ago that we celebrated the system that was unveiled to the North American masses on 9/9/99, a time when society feared they were on the brink of collapse thanks to a small computing error that would take down the world as we knew it, gaming consumers were lined up more concerned about store stock supplies. This was the unleashing of the Sega Dreamcast.

Behold, Sega's last console.

Commercials filled television airwaves all throughout the fall/winter season with the infamously creepy tagline “its thinking”. What the Sega marketing team meant by that is anyone’s guess, but it sounded cool enough and as mentioned, creeped us the hell out. Maybe that’s why the system didn’t do as well as projected hopes from Sega were or more likely it was the fact that consumers gave up buying Sega products after the Sega Saturn collapsed underneath them and sent any owners who weren’t willing to import games to go into a massive distrust spiral with the company.

Then there was the piracy. Even though the Dreamcast used special disks called GD-ROMs, pirates easily found ways to burn the games to regular old CD-ROMs and after the Dreamcast was official declared deceased, pirates scrambled to find and copy as many games as possible. It was the digital equivalent of grave robbing.

Still, there were good hearted people that believed in the Dreamcast well past the end and with good reason too. The Sega Saturn hit its peak popularity well after it was canned from production and the Dreamcast would follow the same path. With games like Soul Calibur, Samba Di Amigo, Seaman, Power Stone, Chu Chu Rocket and the mega popular online game, Phantasy Star Online, the system became hard to let go. Hell, Phantasy Star Online only recently had its servers turned off and game makers in the East have recently ceased production of Dreamcast games.

Speaking of the East, the Dreamcast scene, like the Saturn, became an importers heaven. Ikaruga, Radirgy (Radio Allergy), Capcom vs. SNK 2, and Super Street Fighter 2 X For matching service (I believe that’s it), are just a small handful of great import games that are still heavily sought after today (with two arguable exceptions in CvS 2 and Ikaruga). All it took was a Gameshark or a small modification and you had an importing beast.

Ikaruga became a cult hit!

Ah Dreamcast, you are still loved by so many and that’s why each year we celebrate your launch day as though it were some kind of world holiday. That’s why in the next few weeks, we plan to detail the cream of the crop in the two genres you were best known for catering to: fighters and shooters. We’ll also detail those lovable peripherals including the one that should be a standard today, the VMU. What about you readers? Have any Dreamcast stories you’d like to tell? Than place those in the comment section below as we would love to read them. Till next time: “its thinking”.

Article by Kris Rosado.

Sep 15, 2008

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