Robot

The traditional gift for a twelfth anniversary is silk... but since wrapping a Dreamcast in caterpillar barf is a pretty good way to burn down your house, I thought I'd just make this list of all the ways Sega's last system won my heart. Here's to another twelve fantastic, dreamcastic years!

5. A CHARMINGLY DORKY NAME

Way before Nintendo's Wii or Sony's upcoming Vita, the Dreamcast ushered in a new age of silly console names. It makes sense when you really think about it... the title suggests a fantastic alternate reality beamed directly into your television set. Nevertheless, at first blush it sounds like the MacGuffin everyone's dying to get their hands on in a Japanese action cartoon. That made the name a little hard to swallow at first, but twelve years later I wouldn't have it any other way. Could you imagine if Sega had called their system the Black Belt or Katana instead? I'd rather not.

4. BETTER THAN PERFECT ARCADE PORTS

While the Playstation and Saturn scraped the edges of perfection with their conversions of late 1990s arcade hits, the Dreamcast went far beyond those standards with games that were superior to their coin-op counterparts. Soul Calibur looked like a supercharged Playstation game when it first hit arcades, but the visuals were cranked up to an eye-popping level of realism on its way to Sega's system. The Dreamcast port of Crazy Taxi upped the ante with a new city to explore and a series of challenges that laid the groundwork for the achievements and trophies of today.

3. ONLINE FEATURES STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOX

Sega was always on the forefront of online connectivity, but the Dreamcast was the first system where internet compatibility came standard. Okay, okay... a 33.6k modem isn't going to rattle your teeth and ripple your cheeks with its speed, but it's still better than the nothing that the GameCube and early models of the Playstation 2 offered. Besides, Sega was able to squeeze mo' out of that humble modem than you'd expect, as fans of the early MMORPG Phantasy Star Online can attest. Try playing World of Warcraft on a phone line and see how far you get!

2. LONGEVITY

Sega had a nasty habit of killing its consoles before their time, but the company must have emptied five clips into the Dreamcast before it took its last breath. Thanks to a strong fan following and a price bordering on ludicrously cheap, games were released for the Dreamcast years after Sega abandoned the system. We're not just talking about homebrews and releases from fly-by-night companies, but top-shelf titles like Ikaruga and Under Defeat that would have looked cutting edge on more advanced consoles (and did, when Ikaruga was eventually ported to the GameCube).

1. FRESH IDEAS

Above all else, this is what made the Dreamcast a legend. Where else could you raise a tank of smarmy mutant fish straight from the film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, or shake a pair of maracas along with a plush monkey, or troll the town for sailors, only to prove your manhood fifteen minutes later with a humiliating beatdown? Sure, many of these games found their way to other consoles, but the exodus took years (nearly seven years in the case of Power Stone), and some of their charm was lost in the trip, like so much airport luggage. Why wait for a shoddy port of Crazy Taxi with off voices and all the Pizza Huts replaced with copyright-friendly Italian bistros, when you can have the real thing right now?



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Demon-Mask

But, the Dreamcast wasn't all that impressive. It was, more-or-less, a transition from Playstation/N64 to PS2/Gamecube/Xbox.
Whatever, everyone but me loves the Dreamcast to some absurd level. I liked the Dreamcast, but I can admit it wasn't the greatest thing ever. It wasn't a commercial failure for nothing.

elrod21

There could be many factors in that but I think one of the biggest ones was how easy it was to pirate games for it. Once it was figured out how your could run burned games on it right out of the box.

Did you own a Dreamcast DM?

Demon-Mask

I did own a Dreamcast, actually. Thank you for asking and not assuming I was just trying to contradict popular opinion.

I agree it was good, it was far above average, beat the N64 and Dreamcast in my opinion, probably on-par with the first Playstation. Basically, it was a good console that is blown way out of proportion.
It's the Ocarina of Time of game consoles.

Slime Slayer

I've got 2, and I still use one regularly. For fans of fighting games the thing is literally a dream. Aside from that, it had a lot of great games that were just plain fun.

elrod21

I still have mine and play it all the time. Still love a game of Crazy Taxi of Soul Calibur. Dead of Alive 2 is fun too.

I really don't see how you can put it on par with the PlayStation 1 though, it was most definitely technically superior to it. Playstation 1 would beat it in the size of it's software library though.

Demon-Mask

My placement of the Dreamcast on-par with the Playstation is more nostalgia than anything.
I haven't had a Dreamcast in eight years at the very least so, I can only go with the memories I had of it when I was eight years younger, which puts me around nine or ten years old at the oldest. From a software standpoint, of course the Playstation wins.
I didn't even have most of the games that people view as the height of the Dreamcast, never played Shenmue or Skies of Arcadia or any of that good stuff.
I did have Power Stone though, I loved that game.

Slime Slayer

I rank it above the PS 1 personally. It didn't have a fraction of the games obviously, but i.m.o. the top 10 DC games are better than the top 10 PS 1 games.

Demon-Mask

My thing in terms of software is that the PS1 had some of my favorite games of all time.
And, I didn't play most of those games on just about everone's top-ten list of Dreamcast games.
I played Power Stone, a racing game with remote-controlled cars, some games I don't remember, a lot of games I don't remember all that well.
Basically, it is on-par with the Playstation with me only because of my fond memories of playing Power Stone with my older brother whom I rarely see.

elrod21

Power Stone is definitely good times especially with four people playing. We all have our fond memories of things we had when we were younger. My first game system we bought was one called a Leisure-vision.

Loved playing it, but almost no-one has heard of it. It had a few arcade ports of some less popular games like Turtles, Spiders and Jump Bug. Spent a lot of time playing on that thing.

Demon-Mask

I only had two controllers.

Dudebro

The controllers were lame. It had some good games but nothing spectacular, imo of course. I think it's a pretty overrated console. Remember, overrated doesn't mean bad.

Demon-Mask

I wasn't a fan of the controller, and I agree it was overrated.
To be honest, when I played a port of Power Stone it wasn't as fun as I remembered it being, it was only as fun as it was because I was playing with my older brother. I'm lucky to see him more than twice a year.

Mareeps

I had a cousin that had one, and I don't remember much about it other than he must have had some demo disc, because it had both Sonic and House of the Dead.

Demon-Mask

I think I had a Sonic game, maybe one with Buzz Lightyear (it only worked sometimes), some racing game with motor cycles, a racing game with remote controlled cars and Power Stone.
The racing game with motor cycles might have been a Playstation game.
I also think I played Dead or Alive, my older brother had a ton of games burned on to CDs that he brought over once.