My shooping skills fail.

As I write this (09/09/09), ten years ago launched one of the greatest (and riskiest) consoles ever made. For most, Sega's Dreamcast is considered the epitome of hardcore gaming and is synonymous with quality. Unfortunately, as history has proven time and time again, the vast majority of consumers favour easily digestible products that they can feel safe investing in, instead of new and groundbreaking innovation in the genre. The fact that Sega might as well have skipped the fifth generation (the Saturn was a great console, but Sega woefully undermarketed it and it had very few truly breathtaking games to speak of) thus letting Sony steal their rightful place as Nintendo's rival was what led to the death of the Dreamcast, as gamers became familiar with the PSX and its vast library of distinctly interesting but ultimately average games.

The '90s were a strange era for gaming. Sega and Nintendo seemed far more willing to experiment than ever before; on one hand, you had the Sega CD, the 32X, the Sega Channel and "blast processing" (a claim by Sega's marketing campaign that never actually existed), while on the other hand, there was the Virtual Boy, Mode 7 graphics, the Satellaview and the 64DD. Most were commercial and critical failures and I think were it not for Sega being completely and utterly dominated in the console wars, the Dreamcast would've never seen the light of day.

So, as disheartening as it sounds, I'm glad they got screwed over. So you all should be too, as the first 128-bit machine was arguably the greatest. To me at least, it definitely had the strongest lineup of games, including some completely bonkers stuff like Seaman.


Yes, that actually happened.

It catered to all types of gamers; the fighter crowd (Rival Schools 2, Marvel vs Capcom 1/2, Capcom vs SNK, Garou, Power Stone 1/2, Last Blade, Dead or Alive 2, Guilty Gear X, Soulcalibur, Street Fighter III), the shooter/shmup enthusiasts (Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, Ikaruga, Triggerheart Exelica, Gigawing, Bangai-O, Rez, Radilgy, Mars Matrix, Castle Shikigami 2, Last Hope and countless numbers of obscure Japanese shmups), the RPG nuts (Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2, EGG, Phantasy Star Online, etc) and the list goes on. Basically, anyone could enjoy it. That was the beauty of it.

Personally, I feel that if Sega had kept supporting the console after its demise, not putting it in direct competition with the others on the market, we could've seen more classics. But I'm not really interested in what ifs. I'm thrilled they knew when to quit. I'd have really hated to see Sega go bankrupt and fade into obscurity, just like Midway is right now (when's the last time you've heard anything positive about them, by the way? Exactly).

Speaking of which, there weren't a lot of highly successful games and the ones that were barely broke a million. Sonic Adventure was one of 'em. Now I don't know how the hardcore Sonic fanboys feel, but I absolutely adored SA1. I feel it's easily the best 3D Sonic ever, and in the top 3-5 Sonic games of all time, period. Not only did it manage to keep the breakneck speed of the originals but also the meticulous platforming. Granted, the speed sections never really amounted to more than holding forward for a length of time, but it just looked so damn good, you know? The only fault I had with it was Big the goddamn Cat, a shoehorned-in giant cat with mental problems and a fishing rod. SA2 wasn't nearly as good; they removed the hub world, added some new, shall-we-say less worthwhile characters, somehow managed to make the voice overs even worse and relegated Knuckles to nothing more than a sidekick... Unbadical, man. From there, Sonic (as developed by Sonic Team; the Dimps GBA games are actually quite decent) only got worse, as we all know.

Let's take a minute to discuss Phantasy Star Online...

Androgynous elf things and overcompensating armour FTW!

All of these new-school XBL/PSN gamers don't realise how lucky they are. These days, absolutely everyone has internet access (broadband, mind you!) and online gaming is as simple as a few clicks away. Back at the turn of the millennium however... 'Twas a very different story. And let's not forget the mind-numbing drudgery of dial-up... Anyway, PSO was, at its core, an extremely simple hack and slasher with some RPG elements. Overall, it technically wasn't that great, but there was something about it. It had heart and character, something very few games possess nowadays. Its storyline was practically non-existent, but amazing graphics, beautiful music and easy-to-pick-up, hard-to-master gameplay endeared itself to all who experienced it.

But then, you took it online and a whole different ball game ensued...
Having never really been a PC gamer, I had no idea what to expect when I first connected. Would I be coldly received? Or would it be an enjoyable ride? As it turns out, most people didn't mind noobs, as long as they were respectful or at the very least had a keyboard to ease communication. In fact, they were more than willing to help out newcomers just for the fun of it. A far cry from today's griefers and 11-year-old XBL racists. It truly was the perfect community, up 'til the glitches started being discovered. Even then, it wasn't that bad. All you had to do was stick with your friends and you could get some great games going without a hitch (guild cards FTW; precursor to gamertags, perhaps?). Pretty soon I was taking down Dark Falz like he was nothing, bringing animal parts to Montague to forge weapons and piping for rare Rappies. Fond memories, man... But when Version 2 came out, they started charging so everything went to hell. I still played it a lot, just offline, and it was still surprisingly fun. For many people just like myself, this was their first true communal gaming experience and very few moments match up to that.

The Dreamcast sold just over ten and a half million units, making it the most commercially unsuccessful games console of the big name brands ever. Despite this, the community is still going strong to this day, even going so far as to release new games every once in a while (my personal recommendation would be the fantastic shmup, Last Hope). As for Sega themselves, they moved on to publishing, bringing more of their own franchises to everything under the Sun. Hell, they're even starting to revive some Dreamcast games on current gen systems; the sublime Marvel vs Capcom 2 was recently released on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network with updated sprites and backgrounds, and the psychedelic aural shooter REZ was all HDed up and released a while back, to rapturous acclaim.

All things considered, if Sega were to attempt a Dreamcast Part Deux, there would be a few things they'd absolutely need to succeed: Innovative ideas (not lazily incorporated or completely irrelevant motion controls *coughprojectnatalcough*), a well integrated online gaming framework (not friend codes, goddammit) and Shenmue fucking 3. That'd be my dream... and I hope I see it before I die.