Dreamcast

When it came to the game play, many users had positive things to say about the graphics — Nathan called the system «next level for its time,» and said that even today the visuals hold up. Brett found «the action to be always smooth, and the physics seemed better on this console than in games on the PS2.» And CLIFFosakaJAPAN was «awed with the graphics and performance of the Dreamcast upon playing my first batch of games.» He adds that he «thinks it was the first time that I felt I would never have to plunk down quarters (or 100 yen coins) at the game arcade ever again.»

The 25 best Dreamcast games of all-time

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(Image credit: Future)

The best Dreamcast games are as fantastic as they are diverse. While the Sega Dreamcast didn’t have the longest shelf life, it did leave one hell of an impression. That’s because of the work Sega put into ensuring this revolutionary console was packed with incredible releases. Be it legendary arcade ports of games like Crazy Taxi and Virtua Tennis, influential single-player experiences like Shenmue and Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, truly experimental games such as Seaman and Jet Set Radio, and so much more. If you can get your hands on a console now, this list of the best Sega Dreamcast games is a good guide to help you get started with a collection.

Of course, some of the best Sega Dreamcast games aren’t cheap these days. That might be because of how quickly the system faded from view – released in 1998, the Dreamcast was ultimately discontinued just two years later. So while the Dreamcast is often remembered as the console killed by the PlayStation 2, we prefer to remember it for what it was: a machine that was ahead of its time, something you’ll see reflected in our pick of the best Dreamcast games.

For more definitive rankings of SEGA games throughout the years:

Sega Dreamcast at 25 – and 6 of the best Dreamcast games

1998 – specifically 27 November. Prince is likely preparing to party like it’s next year. Lots of clever folks are getting worried all the computers will soon misbehave. And Sega launches its latest console, the super soaraway Sega Dreamcast. Woo!

Shouldn’t we call it the Sega Swansong now, as it was a falling giant’s last bid for glory?

Now hang on – Stuff won’t hear a word said against Sega’s last console. Despite having a footprint little bigger than the shiny discs its games came on, the Dreamcast was a beast at the time – more or less a NAOMI arcade machine for your home. You didn’t get a rubbish Crazy Taxi port; you got the original. The catalogue was packed full of other greats too: Jet Set Radio, Shenmue, Ikaruga and, um, Seaman. There was even a modem, so you could play online and party like it wasn’t 1999.

So why aren’t we now battling it out on the Dreamcast 4, if it was hardware perfection?

We never said anything about perfection. As former Sega Dreamcast owners will attest, the console was seemingly crafted by engineers who thought the concept of longevity was an amusing joke. It eventually became prone to resetting if you so much as sneezed nearby: even the one at the National Videogame Museum kept keeling over while Stuff was trying to beat gaming legend Ian Livingstone in a do-or-die battle of balls in Virtua Tennis some years back. But it really was a fantastic machine, with superb games. When it worked.

I’m unconvinced… and yet intrigued by Seaman. So what now?

Dreamcast emulation is today a commonplace thing, albeit an illegal thing. It used to need a PC, but now even a cheap Android blower is capable of running the classics. Or you could try the Dreamcast lottery on eBay, where you may even end up with a fully working console. But we’re hoping Sega made millions with the Mega Drive Mini and will soon rummage in its drawers for another console to shrink down. If a Sega Dreamcast Mini ever rocks up at Stuff HQ with Rez inside, we’ll dim the lights, pump up the volume and never work again.

Visual Memory Unit (VMU)

One of the Dreamcast features fans mentioned the most was the Visual Memory Unit (VMU) which, as Tatsumaki explains, «gave Dreamcast owners the ability to view game data on their controllers as well as carry mini-games along with them that tied into the console parent game.» Nathan said the VMU’s «ability to be played once removed from the controller was very interesting, though very few games actually took full advantage of this feature.» A different user named Nathan pointed out that they «made a huge [difference] for a game like NFL2K as the memory cards allowed you the ability to view and pick your play on them.» Jeremy said the «cool features like the VMU save carts, complete with built-in screen minigames» was one of the things that distinguished the Dreamcast as a gaming system. Brett was more skeptical, saying he found the memory card system «a little bit odd and the cards were kind of chunky.»

When it comes to those distinct, spaceship-shaped controllers the majority of readers were surprisingly in favor of them. Pashpaw said the gamepads «were innovative for the time with the two slots in the controller for expansion,» Kasper called them epic and Kenshin11 said they were «something else.» Joe thought the «controllers were dope, especially certain games that utilized the touchscreen type thing you could attach to the controller,» and Nathan found them «unique and surprisingly nice in the hand.» Kenvan19 called themselves «one of the insane people who absolutely loved the Dreamcast controller enough that when the Xbox Duke came out, it was my favorite due to its similarity.»

There was one dissenter: fourfour44. They felt it «continues Sega’s tradition of horrendous design and the Dreamcast controller is the worst of the worst, the parallel grips on the back immediately strain your wrists and the face buttons have their letters etched into them, making them rough and awkward to press.»

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The Dreamcast also pioneered the concept of downloadable content on consoles. Although later systems would make much more extensive use of DLC than the Dreamcast did, the system still introduced console gamers and developers to the idea that games could get bigger and better after they came out. As Stolar confidently proclaimed in his keynote address at the 1999 Game Developers Conference, “Dreamcast is as alive as the games you develop.” Dreamcast software’s capabilities could be expanded via files downloaded to the Dreamcast’s Visual Memory Unit (VMU), a quirky, Tamagotchi-style device that could play standalone minigames or display stats during regular gameplay. The VMU helped demonstrate the potential of second-screen gaming, which lived on via apps and Nintendo systems such as the DS and Wii U.

During the Dreamcast’s brief heyday, Moore recalls, online, mano-a-mano multiplayer modes in sports games—specifically the football, basketball, baseball, and hockey titles developed by Visual Concepts, which Sega acquired in 1999—were the easiest way to wow committed console gamers. “Nobody needed to explain it, it wasn’t an MMORPG, it was very clearly competition, and the competition had moved from the couch to the internet,” he says. Moore, who later headed the sports division at EA, continues, “You can maybe draw a straight line from all of the stuff that FIFA now enjoys as a billion-dollar-plus annual franchise back to what we did with NFL 2K1.”

The Dreamcast paved that path, but it didn’t last long enough to reap the rewards. “I coined the phrase during that period, ‘We’re taking gamers where gaming is going,’” Moore says. “And I knew damn well gaming was going there. Whether Sega would be there to take them is a whole different story.”

The Dreamcast was done in, Stolar says, by “bigger players with bigger bank accounts entering the arena.” Sony’s PlayStation 2, which would exceed the Dreamcast’s power and duplicate its internet connectivity, was due to debut in Japan in March 2000 and North America in October 2000. Sega, which had been willing to take potshots at Nintendo during the 16-bit era, did the same with Sony several years later, hiring a plane to tow a banner advertising the Dreamcast (and unleash a Sonic mascot on a golf cart) at a Sony-sponsored golf tournament in August ’99 and buying a billboard to offer mock condolences for Sony’s hardware shortages in November 2000. But Sony had more money and the power of the PlayStation brand. “They embarked upon a FUD campaign of fear, uncertainty, and doubt and wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t get the traction, we wouldn’t be able to leverage the head start we had,” Moore says, recounting that “their basic premise was that you might want to buy a Dreamcast, but if you do, recognize it’s a transitional platform. You’ll want the real thing when the PlayStation 2 ships.”

Moore says Sony’s messaging worked, slowing Sega’s momentum. The PlayStation 2’s first-day sales smashed the Dreamcast’s record, and the brand-new system, along with the popular, repackaged PSone, combined to crowd out the reduced-price Dreamcast during the 2000 holiday season. That defeat, coupled with the impending launches of Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s GameCube, sealed the least deep-pocketed company’s fate. On January 31, 2001, Sega announced that it would abandon the Dreamcast and slash the system’s price to $99 in hopes of liquidating the existing inventory. The news caused the beleaguered company’s stock price to climb. “In the end you go, ‘Look, we can’t continue,’” Moore says. “You make the hard decision … and then you move on. Then your next goal is all of the people you’ve been battling with, I’m calling up and asking for dev kits. Those were humbling times.”

For Stolar, Sega’s surrender wasn’t a surprise. He had moved on due to differences of opinion with the late Sega chairman Isao Okawa, who had forced out president and CEO Hayao Nakayama not long before Stolar’s departure. Nakayama and Stolar were devoted to the Dreamcast, but Okawa, Stolar says, “really wanted Sega to just be a software company.” That shift in mission enabled Sega to survive, but it also ensured that the Dreamcast would represent both the beginning and the end of an era. It was fitting that Sega began selling a Dreamcast Broadband Adapter the same month it disclosed that its hardware was a dead Dreamcast walking; the internet’s infrastructure had caught up to Stolar and Moore’s vision, but too late to save the ambitious system.

As developers prioritized the PlayStation 2, third-party support for Sega’s final console had slowed, depriving the Dreamcast of what could have been an even more legendary library. Stolar says Sega was in talks about bringing blockbusters World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto III, and Max Payne to Dreamcast, as well as Peter Molyneux’s Black & White and Fable and PC ports like Half-Life and System Shock 2. None of those possibilities panned out.

Even so, the Dreamcast crammed a wealth of great games into its fleeting lifespan, which contributed to its current cult-classic status. “There will never be a launch lineup like the Sega Dreamcast launch lineup of titles, both first party and third party,” Moore says. Even in decline, the Dreamcast continued to attract eccentric, sui generis, genre-spanning games like Jet Set Radio, Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, Seaman, Samba de Amigo, Space Channel 5, Ikaruga, Rez, and Power Stone (and its sequel), all of which were originally exclusive to that console or developed with Dreamcast in mind. And because the Dreamcast’s architecture was developed in tandem with Sega’s NAOMI arcade system, which also arrived in 1998, arcade hits like Crazy Taxi and House of the Dead 2 could easily be ported and played at home. The system’s library, Moore says, embodies “diversity, uniqueness, wackiness, irreverence, [and] pure unadulterated fun. And I don’t think many consoles since have captured that since the Dreamcast.”

For a system that disappeared so quickly, the Dreamcast has enjoyed an unusually long afterlife. In some ways, its restless spirit survived via the Xbox and Gamecube, but long after those consoles passed into obsolescence, its legacy is still strong. #Dreamcast trended for much of Monday, the anniversary of the North American launch. A book about the Dreamcast is due out later this year, as is Shenmue 3. Developers still reminisce about the best games on the system, and some indie designers still make new, crowdfunded Dreamcast games available via digital download.

Stolar says he’s not surprised by the continued affection for the Dreamcast, whose reputation has been bolstered not only by nostalgia, but by appreciation for its prescience and its into-the-breach, trailblazing boldness. “Great units like that do not just fade away,” Stolar says. “It was a superior hardware system, ahead of its time, that drove great content.”

Stolar is still in the video game industry, serving as executive chairman of Zoom Platform Media. Moore has made his second major career change, leaving EA in 2017 to become CEO of the Premier League’s Liverpool Football Club. “I’m a great believer in, you have a crank of the reinvention wheel every 20-odd years,” he says. Maybe gaming is also due for another disruption; Google Stadia is set to start streaming games this November, and Microsoft and Sony (which surprisingly partnered in May to develop streaming solutions) are rumored to be considering cloud-based platforms of their own. But even if the internet upends the industry again, the evanescent Dreamcast’s dignity will endure. After all, Sega saw the cloud coming.

Источники:

https://www.gamesradar.com/best-dreamcast-games-all-time/&rut=ece62d4f8c44c035f36230ad60d4fe0c6303f9f96ab155523fa3fc56071557a6
https://www.stuff.tv/features/sega-dreamcast-at-25-best-dreamcast-games/&rut=8b128a43d3b6e8582a79432ed9569e44efd7905632741285483fb3c1fd819164
https://www.engadget.com/2019-09-09-dreamcast-20th-anniversary-reader-reviews.html&rut=cc9b0ddedba754a50bc31a1f4919cbb200a7da7938fdff27d47ccf50006c7905
https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/11/20860353/sega-dreamcast-20th-anniversary&rut=e884c6ed1f2f2eb57eff71121c0f7d1a6fe6449ffe4904838f338f3421f0fd1e