Another year, another birthday for the now defunct Dreamcast, Sega's last great console. The console that if I were to take a poll right now, everybody would say it is in their top three of the greatest game console ever made. Why if I were to even mention the word Dreamcast, most would begin the tried and true ritual of masturbating to it. Love for the system would drip from their lips and the amount of praise you would hear would cascade and drench you like a giant tidal wave. They may even have one, collecting dust in their closet under a heap of old worn shoes and hidden midget porn. You really couldn't be a hardcore gamer without some professed love affair with it and to be honest, that is an easy a tryst as anyone can have. The Dreamcast was, nay is, a beautiful console with a crazy amount of amazing games. But I have one question for you lover.

Where were you when the Dreamcast needed you? Where were you when Sega needed you to buy its console? You sure as hell wasn't there then, because if you were, we might be playing its successor right now.

I remember buying my Dreamcast day one. I remember being blown away by NFL 2k. I couldn't believe that a 3-D football game could look that good. I couldn't believe that I could play it online. Sure it was lag infested but those pockets of lag free play not only dazzled me then but paved the way for what Microsoft and Sony are doing now with online. But what I remember the most was not the system itself but the games...the damn games. Soul Calibur, Ready to Rumble, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi ( I couldn't stop playing Crazy Taxi ), Virtua Fighter tb, Hydro fuckin' Thunder, Maken X, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Power Stone, House of the Dead, Virtual On with the twin sticks, Samba De Amigo, Chu chu Rocket ( hell even Swirl ), or Get Bass with its fishing controller, and a shit ton of other games. I bought just about every game, every peripheral.

All my friends laughed at me. Said the PS2 with its DVD was better. Sega was old, Sony was the new. And even though they had great first party support from Sega, I mean Sega was on the one back then with fantastic arcade ports, unfortunately third party developers were enamored with Sony's PS2. It was inevitable that the Dreamcast was crushed by the PS2. Even after a great start in the states once PS2 came out, that's all she wrote. Nobody was buying the Dreamcast. There's something painful when you know you're backing a console on it's last legs.

I remember the dwindling Dreamcast section shrink smaller and smaller until it was non-existent. I remember the price of them plummeting to giving them away prices and still they didn't move. The trade in offer deals: Trade in your Dreamcast for a shiny PS2! The stacks of used saran-wrapped Dreamcasts on sale looked like gutted old fish. Few gaming periodicals backed the Dreamcast then...only GameFan with its awesome features and combo guides for the Capcom fighting games residing on the console. I remember everyone just telling me to give up the ghost and get the PS2. Eventually through the heartache, after everything dried up for the love of my life then, I moved on to Sony and the PS2. I eventually grew to enjoy the PS2 but much much later in its life. There were tons of games for the PS2 but a lot were garbage early on.

Moving even further forward every console after that I just bought. No more being exclusive with a brand anymore. My days of being in a monogamist relationship with just one console were over. But a funny thing happened. After the Dreamcast was six feet under, out of the blue, people started professing their love for the system. How it was awesome. How it was one of the best. How the games for it were great and they just couldn't understand why it flunked so badly. How they loved or love the system. Really? Again, why didn't you buy one back then. Why didn't you support it? Was it too expensive? Were you just waiting on Sony's new machine? What was it that made you not get it in its prime? Now way after the fact you may have gotten one on the cheap with your pirated copied games. Telling me with a smug grin how amazing it is.

You really love the Dreamcast, huh? Stop lying please.