Sega wanted the public to believe the Dreamcast was smart enough to kick your butt and entertain your mind in the process. As with most advertising, those early proclamations of sentient intelligence was more hyperbole than truth, but with the recent release of Seaman , the Dreamcast may actually start to live up to the initial hype. Seaman is a somewhat passive experience best described as part digital pet and part conversational simulator, but 100 percent strangeness.
Seamen are mysterious creatures that basically start off looking like fish with human faces.
Players are charged with the task of being the caretaker of the independent thinking Seaman from birth to maturity and beyond. Graphically, the game is presented in a sparse 3-D environment, and there are no extraneous sounds beyond what nature had intended. While not the most intuitive control system, tapping, tickling, flicking, feeding, grabbing are all the physical possibilities that are manageable. Once the Seamen develop the ability of speech, they will snappishly respond to most of your remarks and will also inquisitively delve into the details of your life. As with most new technology, the two-way voice recognition is far from perfect as Seaman will struggle to recognize a few select words.