Sega Dreamcast

The **Sega Dreamcast** was Sega's final home console, succeeding the Sega Saturn, and was the first console of the sixth generation of gaming, released in 1998 for Japan and 1999 worldwide and was discontinued in 2001, prior to the release of the Xbox and Nintendo GameCube.

## Why It Rocks

1. Many great titles, including *Sonic Adventure, Jet Set Radio, Shenmue* and *Crazy Taxi*.
2. It was the first home console to include a modem to connect to the Internet for online play out of the box. Some online games even work to this day through homebew servers.
3. It was very powerful for the time it was released.
4. Lots of high quality sports games and arcade ports.
5. It supports native VGA video output, which makes hooking up the Dreamcast to modern televisions easier.
6. The memory card for the Dreamcast, the VMU, not only allowed gamers to save data, but also had offered gameplay features and even acted as a handheld gaming device itself. During gameplay, it shows mini-images relevant to the game. Some games even use this feature for actual gameplay purposes. This idea would be used further for the Nintendo Wii U.
7. Four controller ports right away.
8. Also works as a CD player and online browser.
9. More than 700 games for the system, an impressive feat considering it was on the market for less than 3 years.
10. There was even a cable that made it compatible with the equally underrated SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color.

## Bad Qualities

1. Like the Sega Saturn, many of its games were arcade ports, which while still solid games, were lacking in actual content and arcade ports in consoles were declining in popularity at the time.
2. The PlayStation 2 quickly overshadowed the Dreamcast as soon as it was announced for multiple reasons:
	* The PS2 had a DVD player. The combination of console and movie player was a huge draw for the PS2, particularly since it was the cheapest DVD player on the market, and there was no real way for Sega to match it.
	* Sega, already struggling financially from the failure of the Saturn, drew themselves into a price war with Sony, and ended up selling Dreamcast consoles at a completely unsustainable loss.
	* The PS2 was fully backwards compatible, letting PS1 owners play their old games with slightly improved graphics, and giving it a massive existing software library to attract people without a PS1. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, wasn't compatible with the Saturn at all.
3. The online functions were very primitive due to technological limitations at the time.
4. The DreamConn controller lacks a second analog stick and only has one pair of L/R buttons, this made camera control uncomfortable in many games.
	* It should be noted that the Dreamcast is perfectly capable of supporting a controller with two analog sticks (since there was one) and this fault in the DreamConn could probably have been rectified if the console hadn't failed.
	* The controller was also pretty big (something the Japanese market is known for not liking).

## Maintenance

1. The games have warnings about Track 1 actually being game data and to avoid putting in a CD player.
2. The Dreamcast's AC adapter is non-proprietary, so if you break or damage yours, it'll be easy and cheap to get a replacement.
3. The VMU's battery drains very quickly, however it can still keep save files with a dead battery.
4. It is very durable as seen in WIRED's *Console Wars*, where it survived a 15ft drop and being drenched in a whole bottle of Mountain Dew.
5. The Dreamcast has an internal battery for the clock, most of these clocks however, are no longer working. To replace the battery, the controller board has to be lifted out, and the battery stand has to be unsoldered and replaced with a new stand with a new battery. NOTE: Battery MUST be a rechargable cell battery or else it will NOT work and will cause leaking.

## Reception

When first released, the Sega Dreamcast was extremely popular and highly successful, with it breaking several records at the time. However its popularity was very short lived, as it was quickly overshadowed by the PlayStation 2. The system was discontinued less than 2 years after its North American release due to bad sales and lack of funds from Sega.

In the recent years, the Dreamcast became a very popular console. It is now considered a great system despite its short life and commercial failure. It is widely considered the best console Sega ever made, and is well remembered for being the final Sega console.

When James Rolfe in his Angry Video Game Nerd persona reviewed Sonic Shuffle for *AVGN Wishlist Part 1*, he acknowledged that the Sega Dreamcast was a good console to go out on, after many ups and downs from the company.

Ever since the Dreamcast's discontinuation, many Sega fans remained hopeful that Sega would eventually release a new console. Over the years, there have been multiple attempts to convince Sega to return to the console market but all of them have failed, as it unlikely that Sega would have the resources or the money, plus their IPs are all third-party now.

The Dreamcast has built a very dedicated homebrew community that continues to release games to this date.

## Trivia

* As mentioned above, Microsoft helped Sega develop some of the concepts for the Dreamcast including the Internet modem. Some of these concepts would later be used on the Microsoft Xbox.