Sega Dreamcast, OMG, this thing is awesome?

[82-T/A]

So... I used to have a TON of game systems, almost everything, but sold it when my daughter was born. I only really kept most of my Atari stuff.

 

I haven't really played games in a while, but I just hooked up my Sega Dreamcast last night. I've had it for something like 4 years now, and just never really bothere to play it.

 

Anyway, I hooked it up, and started playing some of the games. I have some game called Soul Caliber, Test Drive Grand Prix (or something), Quake Arena 3 (ok, but kinda sucks... no missions to go on???), Evil Dead III, and a few other games that I haven't tried yet.

 

I'm VERY impressed with the graphics. My wife bought a Nintendo Wii about 6 months ago (no idea why), but the graphics on this Dreamcast seem to be way better than the one on the Wii!

 

I've played an xBox 360, and a Play Station 2 (never a 3). I'm sure the Dreamcast graphics are kind of lame compared to those two, but I was impressed at (considering how old the system is), that the graphics are as good as they are.

 

So I was just curious, if I was to buy a couple more games, what are some good games for the dreamcast?

 

 

For what it's worth, I was a little bummed that I couldn't play my Sega Saturn games in the Dreamcast. How stupid does Sega have to be? How hard could it possibly have been to just create a built-in emulator?

[BDW]

I suggest House of the Dead 2, the Sonic Adventure series, and Ready to Rumble Boxing 2. That's some great gaming right there.

[jeremysart]

Well Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, as well as Crazy Taxi and House of the Dead 2 are available on the Game Cube / Wii.

But if you want an exclusive title that really takes the system to its limits, check out Shenmue. Make sure you also have a working VMU. Also Sega Bass Fishing is worth checking out if you can get ahold of the controller for it. Oh, and Sea Man.. its different.

[CRTGAMER]

Wait till you get a VGA adaptor. The box has optional S-Video and Composite out for the few games that don't support 640 x 480 screen.

 

 

Wrote a couple reviews here of a couple great obscure exclusive Dreamcast games.

Wild Metal (Country) - Dreamcast and PC Exclusive

Toy Commander - Dreamcast Exclusive

[+wood_jl]

Sega Rally 2 is nice.

Here's Gamespot's Review

 

Of course, you'd need to buy the light gun to play "House of the Dead 2." They are NOT cheap, simply because they're not so plentiful. For some reason (over-sensitivity to the Columbine shootings???) Sega stupidly decided not to sell a light gun in the U.S. So there's only 3rd party. I have a couple; I think they're made by Mad Catz and they seem a lot less clumsy than the Interact (or whatever the brand is). If you decide to get a light gun, there's not a whole lot to play on it (if I remember correctly), but if you do, you may as well get "Sega Smash Pack" which has Virtua Cop 2 on it (along with 11 other Genesis-type games, of which some are cool).

 

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I also like "Typing of the Dead" which requires the keyboard. Some time back, they were going quite cheap on Ebay with the game included.

 

I think "Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense" is an absolutely, positively GEM on the Dreamcast. Of the car-combat games, it TOTALLY takes the take, and is the only way to play it with kick-ass graphics, as it was a PS1-generation release. All those other car combat games are just too much shit raining down from the heavens, blowing you up all the time....so much that they're not fun: "Twisted Metal" and all that. Call me an old man; maybe that's what the kids want these days....There's some of that in this game, but it's playable and gorgeous. Plus, you can totally re-map the controls. I like to put the driving on the D-pad (pushing up to go forward, down to reverse) so it frees up your other fingers for weapons. I've yet to have so much fun with a car combat game. Way under-rated.

Here's Gamespot's Review

 

"Chu Chu Rocket" (this sounds ridiculous too) is a really fun puzzle game, not available on any other system, except it was a Gameboy Advance cart.

Here's Gamespot's Review

 

Test Drive V-Rally is another great dirt-racer.

Here's Gamespot's Review

 

 

One of the "troubles" with the Dreamcast is that most of the great titles aren't exclusive anymore, and can be played on other systems. That's why I limited my list to what I thought were kind of exclusive to DC. Panzer Dragoon on Xbox, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 on Gamecube, Crazy Taxi on PS2, Hydro Thunder on Midway's Classics for PS2, all the "2K" sports games have newer PS2/Xbox versions, Sega GT on Xbox, Soul Calibur 2 on PS2/Xbox/Gamecube, etc. That's one of the reasons my Dreamcast doesn't get much play anymore, but I sure like it. If you don't have any other systems, they're all good on Dreamcast.

Edited September 30, 2010 by wood_jl

[Nesbroslash]

I've been wanting one just to try out Seaman. (I want to verbally abuse the game and see what the AI makes of it.)

[DeusExMachina]

You need this:

[akator]

One of the coolest games is Space Channel 6. Yeah, it's short, and there are critics, but it was and still is awesome. It shows off some of the "quirkiness" and quality that was the Dreamcast.

 

There is literally a ton of great stuff. Space shooters and fighters are generally way above average for the time, even compared to today's offerings. For years, Resident Evil Code Veronica was the hands-down best version in the series. Shenmue was astounding for its time. And so on...

 

The DC is a very fun system. I love the cross between arcade and long-form-console titles. It has enough "old school" and "modern" action to still keep me interested. I never thought it would hold my attention in 2010

[+wood_jl]

You need this:

 

 

That's a very interesting device I never heard about!

 

I can't believe the idiot who made that video: What's with the damn hand gesturing? I wanted to bitch slap him and give him a good cussing so bad, it was hard to stop wishing I could and watch the video.....which wasn't that easy because his hands are in the way all the time. I think he needs some kind of medicine.

 

I especially like when he sets the camera down (hiding behind it) so he can get both hands in the frame, gesturing.

Edited September 30, 2010 by wood_jl

[nathanallan]

Don't forget about all the homebrews that are out there, there are some really great ones to play-- Primitive Nightmare is a great arcade shooter with awesome music.

 

Also, Last Hope Pink Bullets is good, a commercial release, and someone has made a Linux based SD card reader for it-- it's on youtube if you are into hardware modding. It's about the easiest mod that there is that includes soldering. Then you don't have to worry about burning through a pack of CDs and hoping you did it right (Alochol 120%).

[Jess Ragan]

Damn, an SD card reader for the Dreamcast? If you could disable the GD-ROM completely, you could make a portable Dreamcast that wouldn't slice your fingers off!

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Damn, an SD card reader for the Dreamcast? If you could disable the GD-ROM completely, you could make a portable Dreamcast that wouldn't slice your fingers off!

 

Sadly it is not working perfect with many actual games just homebrew...................

[nathanallan]

Well, it's pretty technical, and the DC refers to an internal rom first, then to the GD-rom that's how it loads the SD card. To get it to use just an SD card you would have to tell it to refer to the serial port first, and it isn't programmed that way. Did you see the video?

 

I intend to do it myself, but I want to have a spare Dreamcast first, just in case I botch it. They're a bit rare around here (plus there's this one jerk locally hoarding almost everything he can find).

 

@Rob, I can't say much, I haven't done the actual mod yet. I know there has to be a WAY!!!

Edited September 30, 2010 by nathanallan

[TheGameCollector]

I would also recommend playing Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on the Dreamcast if having much smoother graphics over the Playstation 1 is a preference of yours. I prefer the way Soul Reaver 2 for Playstation 2 plays over the original, but it is still good to play through the first one to see what was going on in the story. Soul Reaver 2 literally continues abruptly right after a battle in the first game.

[StoneAgeGamer]

Ecco is a good game, but very hard

[horseboy]

Dreamcast is awesome. Chu Chu Rocket is one of the best console multiplayer games ever. Mr Driller is sweet. I must have played 3000 hours of Crazy Taxi with the official Dreamcast wheel in college. Many other great games too.

[the-topdog]

Space Channel 5 with Ulala!

[Kripto]

Hydro Thunder is my DC favorite.

[roland p]

headhunter!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tubW2KzJMRs&feature=related

[Kiddo]

Power Stone hasn't been mentioned yet? I'd really recommend that. It's a nice game concept that didn't get explored very often by later devvers. Rather a bummer, considering how fun it is.

 

I also love Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram - of course, this is partly because I got the Twin Stick accessory for it. Other games that are good specifically for specialty controllers are Samba de Amigo w/ Maracas, and Sega Bass Fishing w/ Fishing rod.

[kool kitty89]

Anyway, I hooked it up, and started playing some of the games. I have some game called Soul Caliber, Test Drive Grand Prix (or something), Quake Arena 3 (ok, but kinda sucks... no missions to go on???), Evil Dead III, and a few other games that I haven't tried yet.

Would that be Test Drive Le Mans? (it's one of the top rated games on the system and not to be confused with Accolade/Infogrames' Test Drive series)

 

I'm VERY impressed with the graphics. My wife bought a Nintendo Wii about 6 months ago (no idea why), but the graphics on this Dreamcast seem to be way better than the one on the Wii!

 

I've played an xBox 360, and a Play Station 2 (never a 3). I'm sure the Dreamcast graphics are kind of lame compared to those two, but I was impressed at (considering how old the system is), that the graphics are as good as they are.

The Wii is certainly more capable than last gen consoles, but not by a big margin (more than the DC and PS2 and a fair bit more than the GC, but closer to the Xbox from what I understand). All it is is an overclocked Game Cube (50% faster) with more RAM and I think a couple other modifications, plus the added controllers. (but those could have been done on the game cube as an add-on)

 

The Dreamcast was very advanced for the time so much so that it had considerable advantages of the later PS2 (better texture and antialiasing capabilities, but especially in terms of programming with an excellent set of efficient high-level tools to match the clean hardware vs the PS2 which is possibly the most developer unfriendly hardware ever made -but pushed in spite of that by dedicated 3rd parties due to the hype and Sony's market position). The Game Cube and Xbox took that a step further, both being reasonable in the programming side of things and having considerable technical advantages over the PS2 and older Dreamcast.

The PS2's main strong point is sheer polygon count, so good shading/filtering/texture effects and even then only the later really high-end games managed to push it. That's why a lot of early and more mid-range PS2 games (and most multi-platform PS2 games) look much worse than the competition and many early games are even likened to PS1 quality graphics. (granted you had a few sloppy early Dreamcast games that were crappy in that sense too, like Test Drive 6 -but most of those games were bad on other platforms too)

 

The really advanced PS2 games that ha inordinate amounts of work and resources put into them really show it off best, but even then they don't really stand out compared to the best looking Game Cube or especially Xbox games. (the Dreamcast is tougher to compare due to the short life) And to this day with current gen cross-platform Wii/PS2 games (like Ghostbusters, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, and Sonic Unleashed) they look significantly worse on the PS2 than the Wii. (not surprisingly)

 

Regardless, the Dreamcast should have held its own in the graphics department for late gen game, though it obviously had its limitations. (but was good enough to pull off reasonable versions of most Xbox, PS2, and GC and better than many PS2 games) Even for the top tier PS2 games, the DC had the advantages with added effects to compensate for the lower polygon count to some extent. (granted many such PS2 games were stylized for the PS2's limitations -especially that desaturated/dark look, so the DC's advantages would be downplayed)

 

So I was just curious, if I was to buy a couple more games, what are some good games for the dreamcast?

Yes, lots of good games to look for as others have suggested, though there is a huge chunk of games that ended up on other systems later on. (Sonic Adventure getting a somewhat upgraded GC port as well as a PC release and Sonic Adventure 2 on the GC with upgraded graphics and some other modifications, Crazy Taxy, Jetset Radio on the Xbox, etc)

You could browse IGN's Dreamcast list for top rated games or take a look over at Sega-16 too: I think there's already quite a few "suggested games" threads there for the DC.

 

 

For what it's worth, I was a little bummed that I couldn't play my Sega Saturn games in the Dreamcast. How stupid does Sega have to be? How hard could it possibly have been to just create a built-in emulator?

Yeah, the Saturn hardware was too complex to really build onto in the way they wanted, let alone emulating in software... (same problem with the PS2 to PS3) The Dreamcast can actually emulate PS1 games though, and Bleem was pushing that until their demise. (that works for the same reason late 90s PCs could emulate the PS1, because the hardware acceleration was similar enough to handle much of the work and the general architecture of the PS1 being fairly streamlined -the Saturn and Jaguar are MUCH harder to emulate for that reason with very different architectures and general complexity including bugs; earlier 2D consoles are "harder" to emulate in a sense too, but they're simple enough to manage with a decent amount of CPU grunt alone -Sonic & Knuckles collection on the PC actually is an emulated game iirc with just the sound re-done as midi)

 

But besides that, it wouldn't have made sense to make it compatible given the failure of the Saturn (another issue entirely), and backwards compatibility rarely made or broke any leading mass market console: it's always a nice feature, but isn't usually critical. (the PS2 certainly benefited from it, but certainly would have still dominated the market without it due to Sony's hype, 3rd party development support, and DVD capabilities; the Genesis's backwards compatibility with the SMS was pretty much a non-issue except maybe in Europe, it wasn't a big factor for the Wii -though it would have been stupid for Nintendo not to have GC compatibility as the Wii is only a slightly upgraded GC, probably more significant for the Game Boy line more than most others given the nature of the handheld market) The SNES wasn't compatible with the NES, the N64 wasn't compatible (and it's problems were unrelated to that), the PS3's problems are also generally unrelated to compatibility. (the main issue being the initial price point, but also Sony yet again pushing out unfriendly hardware -albeit nowhere near as bad as the PS2- but this time they don't have the other market advantages of the PS2 with the 360 cutting in early, Blue Ray not having the impact of DVD, and the price point being high -even compared to the $300 1995 PS1 price with inflation $500 is high)

 

For computers it's another matter though given the uses, generational software and such. (albeit there were many cases of that not happening even with big sellers)

Even with the 5200 there were far bigger issues surrounding that than lack of integrated compatibility... and even that was only as significant as it was due to Coleco getting away with cloning TIA. (but really Atari -and the market as a whole- had way bigger problems than the 5200 not playing 2600 games out of the box -namely the mounting management issues inside Atari including the distribution network... a real shaem James Morgan hadn't come in a year earlier than he did)

Edited September 30, 2010 by kool kitty89

[SRGilbert]

Yep, Dreamcast rocks, although I didn't have one myself until about 3 years ago when I picked one up for $5 at a yard sale!

 

Love the arcade type games, so for me it's Hydro Thunder, Demolition Racer: No Exit and House of the Dead 2.

[Atari2600Lives]

Dreamcast is one of my all time favorite systems. Incredibly under rated IMHO.

[+remowilliams]

Sega Dreamcast, OMG, this thing is awesome?

 

Yes, yes it very much is.

[nathanallan]

A friend of my stepson came over and I showed off the DC a bit for him and he was AMAZED that he had never played any of those games. And he was loving them, despite the odd controller (compared to what he is used to from his 360).