It’s Dreamcast’s Tenth Birthday

Why we still love Sega’s final console

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast’s US launch. The internet is chock-full of tributes to Sega’s last gasp in the home console market, and deservedly so. The Dreamcast was a true gem of a console, and its library includes some all-time classic games –Shenmue, Crazy Taxi, Soulcalibur – as well as some fantastically strange oddities that saw players talking to man-faced fish or using their keyboard skills to kill zombies.

Sega also pushed more than a few hardware boundaries with the DC. As well as being the first console that you could take online, the DC’s Visual Memory Unit (VMU) was a memory card with its own screen, allowing it to function as a handheld console for minigames or as a means for games to provide an additional method of visual feedback to the player. And we should never forget that the Dreamcast was the first console ever to have its own fishing rod and maraca controllers.

But innovation and quirkiness don’t guarantee sales, and within two years of launching it was obvious that the Dreamcast was a commercial flop. Poorly advertised and with a lack of third-party support that led to few blockbuster franchises ever appearing on the system, Sega pulled the plug on its console in early 2001 – just two years after its launch. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast’s brand of offbeat games just couldn’t compete with the PS2, launched in 2000 with full support from EA and strong branding built on the back of the ubiquitous PlayStation.

While the DC was to be Sega’s last console, the company has since had huge success in its new guise of a developer and publisher. Meanwhile, the Dreamcast has built a solid following of coders and fans who are supporting the defunct console with homebrew games, ports, and emulators. It’s pretty easy to pick up a second hand Dreamcast for under £50, and if you dig a bit it’s perfectly possible to find surplus stock consoles that shouldn’t cost much more.

You’ll be wanting some games too, obviously. Here are some of the best.

Jet Set Radio

Thanks to its innovative use of cel-shaded graphics, Jet Set Radio is assured a place in gaming history. What’s sometimes forgotten is that the super-stylised game was also a blast to play. Set in a future version of Tokyo, JSR’s gameplay took the Tony Hawk formula and added a slew of Japanese craziness to the mix. With skate-based tricks aplenty, comedy cops and rival gangs, editable graffiti tags and a soundtrack of Japanese hip-hop, JSR was a great bubblegum game that would have undoubtedly have been a bigger hit had it been released on the PS2. While there have been rumours of the series that Americans call Jet Grind Radio coming to Wii, Sega hasn’t confirmed anything yet.

Shenmue

One of the most expensive games ever developed, Shenmue was Virtua Fighter creator Yu Suzuki’s magnum opus. Part fighting game, part adventure, part life simulator, Shenmue was ultra-ambitious and played like nothing else when it was released in 2000. The main event was teenager Ryo Hazuki’s quest to find his father, but the details were what really made Shenmue stand out. A dynamic weather system that used actual meteorological records; the ability to forget about the quest and spend as long as you wanted exploring the streets and shops of Yokosuka and chatting to the locals; fully-featured arcade machines to play; we could go on. Suffice to say that Shenmue remains a milestone in the history of gaming. A sequel was released a year later, but Suzuki’s story still awaits its third and final instalment.

Fighting Games – Soulcalibur, Rival Schools 2, Powerstone, Virtua Fighter

Unfortunately, the DC’s controller wasn’t perfectly designed for beat-em-ups, with extended plays often leading to painful hand cramps. Unfortunately, because the DC was home to some great fighting games. Soulcalibur is the best known, and rightly so – its eight-way running system was a huge innovation, and the weapon-based scrappage was fast and furious while still leaving room for tactical play. Sometimes touted as the DC’s killer app, Soulcalibur was unarguably one of the best-looking games on any system when it came out in 1999. Dreamcast fight fans could also indulge in surreal playground ruckuses in Project Justice: Rival Schools 2, partake in the arena-based carnage of Capcom’s Power Stone series, or relive the arcade experience with Virtua Fighter.

Space Channel 5

If you can play Space Channel 5 without breaking out into a huge grin, then we truly feel sorry for you. Much like Jet Set Radio, SC5 hides great mechanics beneath an exterior that’s pure bubblegum. Playing as space reporter Ulala, you must repel an invasion of aliens who are forcing people to dance. How? By beating them at dance-offs, of course. Played entirely on the DC controller, SC5 is essentially a series of Simple Simon-style memory exercises played to J-Pop rhythms. In addition to a lead character who was sexier than Lara Croft, Space Channel 5 gets bonus points for a great cameo from the late Michael Jackson.

Metropolis Street Racer

Or the game that became Project Gotham Racing. Bizarre Creation’s racing game was notable mainly for two things: the introduction of the Kudos system, which awarded drivers points not just for speed but also for style, and the pixel-perfect maps of Tokyo, London, and San Francisco which formed the basis for the game’s 262 tracks. MSR wasn’t the perfect racing game – there were a number of bugs in the UK version, and the Kudos system could have benefited from some tweaking – but the thrill of racing around streets that you recognised, even if just from films, was a huge talking point when the game was released in 2000.

Skies of Arcadia

One thing the Dreamcast didn’t do well was traditional RPGs. Infogrames’ Silver was a decent port of the PC title, and Grandia II was a fine – if uninspired – JRPG. But the best of the bunch by far was Skies of Arcadia, a steampunk-styled romp with airships, pirates, and dastardly villains. It also made great use of the VMU as a treasure-hunting radar of sorts, and one of your party members was based on Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab. With the Phantasy Star Online servers permanently shut down, Skies of Arcadia is easily the RPG of choice for Dreamcast owners.

Sega Arcade Ports – Sega Rally, House of the Dead 2, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis 2

The DC’s failure can be partially blamed on Sega’s unwillingness to accept that gamers were moving away from arcade ports to longer adventures such as Tomb Raider. But you can hardly blame Sega for converting its massive arcade properties onto its home console. And while they might not offer the deepest gaming experiences, the likes of Sega Rally, Virtua Tennis 2, and House of the Dead 2 were bold, brash, and above all fun. Best of them all was Crazy Taxi, which gave Dreamcast owners the chance to drive hell-for-leather around the streets of a cartoon city picking up and depositing fares for cash.

Typing of the Dead / Seaman

Two of the oddest of all DC oddities round out our list. Typing of the Dead was a remix of House of the Dead 2, but played with keyboards. Presented as an educational title, there’s no doubt that Sega wasn’t entirely serious about this title when later levels would ask you to type phrases including “I have a sore trout” and “Out of toilet paper”. The unfortunately-monikered Seaman, meanwhile, wasn’t a tribute to the England goalkeeper but a virtual pet game in which players would use a headset to communicate with a fish bearing a disturbingly human face. The game was narrated by Leonard Nimoy, and is regularly trotted out for ‘weirdest game’ lists.