[core238]

[oregontrail]

Thanks Dreamcast, for the VMU playing calling in 2K football! Thanks for the hundreds of hours (and still counting) of PSO! Thanks for the voice chat (such as it was) in Alien Front Online and the creepy conversations of Seaman. Thank you for Shenmue, where my wife would actually sit and watch me play just to see a sunset and a living city. Thanks for the web surfing which blew everyone away when they saw a console doing it! So many good times.

It was a short ride, but it was full of excitement! I feel sorry for the people who never got to see the DC when it was alive and kicking.

[Foomerang]

Im playing some JET SET RADIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

[tripwire]

Hehe love the DC. Ahead of its time. I remember having the DC in my office and it was a riot playing Crazy Taxi, Soul Calibur, Virtua Tennis and even Power Stones. Those were definitely the days! Heheh I remember one time it was mid-afternoon and the CEO was touring a client around and my office was overflowing (4player tennis + audience) and rambunctious. He was so happy to see excited employees and wanted to show us off - little did he know it was cuz of the DC! Hehe he gave us such a dirty look but thankfully I never got any warnings about it and had my DC there till I left.

[oregontrail]

Foomerang, on 09 September 2009 - 11:32 AM, said:

Im playing some JET SET RADIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh yeah, roaming around and spraying the Dolphin logo all over the city! Such a cool idea. Another thing I doubt we ever see in a game again.

[Team Andromeda]

I remember getting my DC on Import in December of 98 , and just being jaw dropped at the graphics seen in VT3 Tb , and just loving the overlooked and underrated classic that is Pen Pen
Then in March 09 it was just a crazy month, with HOTD II, Blue Stinger , Marvel all coming out more or less in the same week .

For me though , the best moments was seeing and playing NFL 2K for the 1st time , truly unbelievable . Still today the animation and motion capture holds up , but even better than that , was playing JSR and PSO for the 1st time .
JSR is just one of the best games, Ive played, so happy , so colourful, so wonderful and so so SEGA. And PSO was just unlike any game I ever played before, and a true magical gaming moment, and gaming experience , the like of which I'll never see again .
The sense of friendship, and the feeling of taking part in something magical was quite unlike any other game made before or since (even the bloody music had a magical feeling about it ) .
I used to stay on weekends to play this game , and I never been able to say that about any other game .


Saturn was better though

[Jellex]

trying to decide what to play right now...

 dreamcast-box.jpg (245.79K)
Number of downloads: 5

a lot of my games are still boxed up from the last time I moved.

I did what I could to support the Dreamcast. There's another layer of games underneath those in the photo, mostly Japanese titles. And I have the required 10 or so VMUs around here somewhere too.

Hard to believe it's been more than 10 years since the Japanese launch ... wow.


Next time I get snowed in, I'm gonna play through D2 all over again.

[thengodisseven]

This 'Saturn is better' campaign is all over the intrawebs. I don't remember people making a point to say it before, but now, it's like in every Dreamcast rememberance thread. Damn you, TA.

[Saturnman]

Dreamcast was better designed hardware than Saturn. There was also a better effort from Sega to bring original software to the platform.

I probably played with my Saturn more though. I was a sucker for key arcade ports.

This post has been edited by Saturnman: 09 September 2009 - 03:50 PM

[Los Grak]

Happy anniversary, Dreamcast. I wore my Dreamcast shirt today in remembrance.

[Red Ronin]

Criminy! Wish I had thought to take the day... or the WEEK off... Unfortunately I have jury duty next week, so that's ultimately out of the question. Oh well, maybe next year.

Happy Birthday, Dreamcast!


Red Ronin

[tripwire]

Hmmm, I honestly don't feel that the Saturn was better. DC was so much better well thought out and put together - as I and many have said, it was ahead of it's time in many ways. What the Saturn did have over the DC was a longer life span and thus a larger game library to compare with - also, near perfect ports of 2D arcade games plus some fairly gorgeous 2D games made it shine. But by mid-life I think the Saturn was already showing it's technical limits and really couldn't complete in the 3D arena.

[ZP..]

The DC was definitely a better thought-out design, ahead of it's time, and had a better, more well-rounded software catalogue despite production ending so soon.

But the Saturn was the last bastion of old-school gaming (2D, isometric/force perspective, arcade), and that counts for a lot. Many of the DC's best games have been ported or superseded by other titles on later consoles, which says a lot for its influence but sadly means that continuing to own one isn't such a necessity for gamers that enjoy variety. But the only 2D-specialising machines are the GBA and DS, and neither of those have produced games as gorgeous as Astal, Magic Knight Rayearth or the Saturn's 2D shooters. Plus small-screen gaming with tiny buttons isn't really the same.

I think that's how some people feel. Personally I really wouldn't want to choose between them because JSR/JGR and Shenmue 1 are still both unique and amazing, and even though Radiant Silvergun remains a Saturn exclusive, the PS2 has received a fair amount of 2D goodness.

[Foomerang]

PSO... oh man. Forest 1 music just brought back a flood of memories. Mariner, SegaDX, Pinkest Floyd, SegaDC, Mikey, Biofan, great times.

[core238]

After spending the better part of a full day playing nothing by Dreamcast games on my HDTV, I think probably the single most remarkable feature on the Dreamcast is the native VGA support.

I'm playing these games on 46" of 1080p HDTV set via the VGA port, and I swear they almost looks just as good today as they did a decade ago. Sure, the aliasing artifacts are a lot more evident now than they were back in the day, and sure the poly counts as well as the texture resolution are low compared to modern standards, but still these games look simply amazing on the new television displays, which remarkably is something that cannot be stated about the other consoles from the era.

I was doing a blow-by-blow comparison of Soul Calibur on Dreamcast vs. Soul Calibur on XBLA, and while the XBLA version was indeed sharper image quality overall, the Dreamcast version took full advantage of the 16:9 widescreen display, and looked just a hair less sharp than the XBLA version. Overall, after a bit of play, the Dreamcast version became the preferred version to play. And if back in the day you ever debated over which game looked better, Soul Calibur or Dead or Alive 2, thanks to the magic of modern, HD displays, I can now say without question that DOA2 is the better looking game. Graphically it has held up much better over the years than Soul Calibur. And to think, I have gone all these years thinking that SC was the better looking game. Not that it matters, just making an observation.

And mentioning observations, running on the VGA port, many DC games look almost as good as XBLA and PSN titles. Which begs the question, why have more DC games not made the jump to XBLA and PSN?

Native VGA support was true "future proofing" long before Kuturagi coined the phrase. This is certainly something that would have born out had the DC had not died a premature death, and had gotten the benefit of a full five year life cycle like most consoles. It just makes me wonder why no one else last gen supported VGA natively? By comparison plugging my Xbox up to the same television whether via component cables or via VDigi's (expensive as hell) Xbox VGA box, yields a predominantly fuzzy image on a 1080p set . . . well, at least fuzzy when compared to the Dreamcast image over VGA. Meanwhile Dreamcast comes through crystal clear. I'm not exactly sure why the superior Xbox comes through blurry (in comparison), maybe someone with a better understanding of how the electronics works can explain that. However, I assume that it has something to do with the fact that DC supports VGA natively, and Xbox does not. But I do not know for sure. What I do know, is having not hooked up my DC in a good while, and now seeing DC games displaying crystal clear on my HDTV, has really breathed new life onto most of these old games. After yesterday, I do not believe that I will be unhooking my DC anytime soon.

Now if only I could find a way to mod some wireless RF controllers for the DC . . .

[Red Ronin]

[ASIDE] This just in: Dead or Alive 2 always looked (and played) better than Soul Calibur. Soul Calibur was the best weapons based polygonal fighter of its time (though I personally prefer Last Bronx for purely visceral beat-downs). But considering its competition was crud such as Mace: The Dark Ages and Battle Arena Tohshinden, that ain't really saying much. [/ASIDE]

A Dreamcast with 512MB RAM, 20GB HD and built-in broadband would get more playtime than any console known to man.


Red Ronin

[Tyrant Ahriman]

Happy belated birthday.

[oregontrail]

Red Ronin, on 11 September 2009 - 01:24 AM, said:

A Dreamcast with 512MB RAM, 20GB HD and built-in broadband would get more playtime than any console known to man.



Red Ronin

That would be awesome, if this was 2005. At this point Sega needs 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HD, and a DC-like controller with two sticks, two bumpers and a built-in VMU-like screen. I'd pay $399 at launch, even knowing it would last only as long as the DC, if it had games like Shenmue 3, Crazy Taxi Online, Alien Front Online: Second Wave, Phantasy Star Omega, and All Pro Football 2K11.

Dreaming aside, I second what Core said about how good the DC looks on an HDTV.

[Team Andromeda]

oregontrail, on 12 September 2009 - 12:31 AM, said:

Dreaming aside, I second what Core said about how good the DC looks on an HDTV.

Looking over what MS or SONY or IP rights holders will allow to go up . The trouble is with the DC , is that its been difficult to emulate , the way Power VR draws and handles polygons ECT .
I think its only know SEGA been able to get a decent Emu . So with the AM Team in desperate need of more revenue , I can seen more DC/Arcade ports coming

[Saturnman]

Pretty telling this topic is more popular than the Genesis anniversary thread.