Note: this article originally appeared on the site on May 25th and is being re-posted to commemorate the Dreamcast’s 17th Anniversary today.
Talking about the Sega Dreamcast gets me mad.
Even the most ardent fan of Sega has to admit that the way the company handled their consoles was nearly criminal. Their third generation console, the Master System, was more powerful than its main competitor, the mighty Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but was marketed so poorly that many consumers never knew it even existed. The fourth-generation Sega Genesis was a much better console in every way – the most successful console the company ever released – and even knocked Big N off its perch in the US for a short time. But Sega’s insistence on attaching devices to the console to extend its life – the ambitious Sega CD and the miserable 32X – killed off any love for the 16-bit powerhouse. I enjoy my Model 1 Genesis to this day, but all the add-ons make it look more like a dollar store erector set than a video game console.
Sega of Japan then made the puzzling decision to announce the Saturn, its fifth-generation CD-based console, right around the time Sega of America had announced the 32X add-on for the Genesis. That move upset the buying public, which thought Sega was undercutting itself and trying to fracture the user base. More puzzling still was their decision to release the Saturn for sale in the US on May 11, 2015, four months earlier than their planned “Saturnday” of September 2, 1995, which pissed off retailers and confused consumers. Their reasoning was that they wanted to get a head start on the Sony Playstation, which was launching in the US on September 9, 1995.
True story: I vividly remember walking into an Electronics Boutique, seeing the console for sale ahead of time, then feeling as if the hard drive in my head crashed. I stared agape for two minutes, wondering if I was seeing things or if the store was actually selling Japanese consoles, with a look that I bet resembled a Blue Screen of Death.
All those missteps cost Sega dearly. Confidence in the company waned as consumers felt Sega wasn’t supporting their hardware properly. Retailers, still upset with the early Saturn release, began to turn on them, with KB Toys outright discontinuing the company’s wares from its stores. While the Saturn was a hit in Japan, the console was a flop in the US and Europe.
Despite this, and despite the turmoil the company was experiencing, plans were made to create a sixth generation console, the Dreamcast. The console, a cult classic and a powerful technical marvel for its time, was saddled with all the baggage that Sega carried at the time and suffered for every mistake Sega committed both before and during its development. Released on 9/9/99 in the US for $199, a genius marketing move, it was seen by everyone as Sega’s last chance to recapture the magic of the Genesis. The Dreamcast seemed very promising at launch and blew many away with its capabilities. Unfortunately, Sega mismanaged the console, Sony’s release of the Playstation 2 a year later combined with apathetic software support for the Dreamcast absolutely annihilated interest in it, and Sega’s console business died with its discontinuation on January 31, 2001.
That last part is the part where I start getting a little mad. It didn’t have to die; Sega killed it anyway.
Of all the Sega consoles, the Dreamcast is my hands-down favorite. The only two consoles I love more than the little white box are the 16-bit Super Nintendo (SNES) and NEC’s quirky 8-bit/16-bit hybrid, the Turbografx -16. The NES is a very, VERY close fourth.
The mere thought of the Dreamcast over the NES sounds sacrilegious. I have a couple of good reasons for saying it, though. One of them is wholly paternal. Some of my most cherished gaming memories were formed when my son and I played the Dreamcast. It was “his” Christmas present in 1999, and I still remember both he and I spending about 83 nonstop hours playing Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure on it. This was the first console where he and I played together from the moment I bought the console, and we clocked tons of hours on the machine over the years. The sheer amount of games that we consumed was staggering; Crazy Taxi, Power Stone, Power Stone 2, Jet Grind Radio, Bangai-O, Cannon Spike, Gauntlet Legends, Ikaruga, and Shenmue were just some of the titles. The Dreamcast may have had a short run, but its library included some absolute gems.
The other reason the Dreamcast is my third favorite console is the fact that the console itself was pretty revolutionary. It was definitely ahead of its time, sporting a list of features and capabilities that boggled the mind back then. Yes, the PS2 was vastly superior technically, but the Dreamcast’s specs were nothing to sneeze at and contained some genuine innovations.
The biggest innovation was the built-in 56k modem. Future Sega CEO Brad Huang is credited with adding the device at the time, which made it on despite furious opposition from many in Sega of Japan, including then-CEO Isao Okawa. A built-in modem in a video game console was unheard of in 1999; online gaming was primarily a PC concept back then. Further, the modem’s modular design was a case of excellent foresight. Sega introduced a broadband adapter a year later that replaced the 56k modem and allowed the few households with broadband internet service (we had MediaOne in my house back then) to experience awesome console online gaming. The Japanese release of Phantasy Star Online on December 21, 2000, the first true console online multiplayer game, showed everyone just how awesome online console gaming could truly be. Painfully, the US release was on January 31, 2001, the same day Sega announced they were killing the Dreamcast.
That last part is the part where my anger grows. The first online role-playing game (RPG) for a console, part of a celebrated series for Sega that I absolutely loved, and they released it stateside the same day they killed the console it was going to be played on.
Another first was the Dreamcast’s VGA adapter, a dongle that connected to the back of the console and allowed the use of VGA PC monitors with it. I bought one along with the console and I can attest that there was no console back then that could display images as beautiful as the ones this setup produced. Playing Soul Calibur with it nearly brought me to tears. The original Soul Calibur arcade game was a cabinet running Namco’s System 11 board, which was basically a Sony PlayStation with extra video RAM. I was playing a home console port of an arcade game that actually EMBARASSED the arcade version! I mean, those visuals SIZZLED!
The Dreamcast’s graphical fidelity with the VGA adapter was no trickery on the adapter side, either. The Dreamcast shared much of its technology with Sega’s New Arcade Operation Machine Idea (NAOMI) arcade board. The NAOMI board had more memory but a smaller, 160 Mb flash ROM board in place of the Dreamcast’s GD-ROM. The close similarities between NAOMI and the Dreamcast allowed NAOMI games to be ported effortlessly to the home console. This resulted in near-perfect versions of games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Dead or Alive 2, F355 Challenge, and Crazy Taxi. The Dreamcast was capable of true 480p graphics; the VGA adapter merely made it possible to see.
The Dreamcast controller has been derided for its bulk and odd configuration. The controller cord sprouted from the bottom of the controller, going against all logic. But the reason for the odd cord placement was that the top of the Dreamcast sported slots for two memory cards. The top slot, the one closest to the controller face, was designed to house Sega’s most ingenious piece of tech, the Visual Memory Unit (VMU). The VMU was a memory card with a tiny d-pad, two tiny buttons, two teeny-tiny buttons, and a display. When plugged into the Dreamcast controller, the display lined up perfectly with the controller face window, allowing the player the ability to see it. Some games were programmed to show ancillary information on that tiny screen. Resident Evil: Code Veronica showed a health monitor, while sports titles like NFL 2K would smartly allow you to see the plays you select on it, preventing your opponent from seeing it during co-op play. Most awesome and addicting were the mini games. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 featured Chao Adventure, a mini game where you raised Chao Tamagotchi-style. Zombie Revenge did the same, but with your zombie hunter. The best was my favorite title for the console, Marvel vs. Capcom 2. You could connect two VMUs together and actually TRADE unlocked fighters!
The final innovation was the Dreamcast’s disc format, GD-ROM. Created as a joint venture between Sega and Yamaha, the GD-ROM used a little trickery to pack in some information more densely into a standard CD-ROM. The result was that the GD-ROM was able to hold 1GB of data, more than a standard CD-ROM’s 650 MB, while having similar manufacturing costs to a CD-ROM. They were not the revolution that they seemed to be at the time, however, as the GD-ROM’s second perceived benefit – increased copy protection due to the inability to directly copy the games – was rendered moot almost immediately. The Dreamcast Software Development Kit (SDK) made it into the wild, where a piracy group named Utopia reverse-engineered a boot disk that allowed Dreamcast games burned onto standard CD-ROMs to play.
That last part is the part where some people start to speculate wildly. Piracy was rampant on the Dreamcast once the Utopia boot disk was released onto “warez” sites, illegal web pages and forums that housed cracked programs. Many people like to point to this at the chief reason the Dreamcast failed. With so much piracy, no one was actually buying the games. No game sales, no revenue. No revenue, no reason for Sega to keep trying.
That last part is the part where my anger turns into a bit of rage. Truth is, piracy didn’t kill the Dreamcast; it only provided everyone with a convenient scapegoat. Sega’s ineptitude and indifference killed the Dreamcast.
The mishandling of consoles at Sega hit critical mass during the Dreamcast’s development, launch, and lifespan. Sega was hemorrhaging money prior to the Dreamcast’s development, mainly from the disaster that was the Sega Saturn. A rift opened between Sega of Japan and Sega of America due to the former’s meddling, leading to the departure of Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, seen by many as the man who made the Genesis king in the US. Other executives departed including David Rosen, one of the co-founders of Sega Enterprises. The new Sega brass, facing product sales losses of over 75% in the US, pulled the Saturn from the market without a successor ready, leaving Sega completely out of the US market for a year.
More bad decisions plagued the Dreamcast’s development, with Sega of Japan terminating an agreement with 3dfx that would have placed the latter company’s powerful Voodoo graphics chips in the Dreamcast. The GPU selected to replace the 3dfx part, NEC’s PowerVR2 “Dural”, was not preferred by many developers, primarily EA, who had no experience with the chip. EA was further upset with Sega over some licensing issues, which resulted in the developer refusing to make games for the console.
The US marketing blitz for the Dreamcast was hugely successful, and the 9/9/99 release of the console was a hit. But interest in the console died quickly, as Sega seemed to lose interest in the console itself. Sales fell, and Sony’s announcement of the PS2 seemed to put the final nail on the Dreamcast’s coffin. In truth, Sega didn’t just lose interest in the Dreamcast. On September, 2000, Sega of America CEO Peter Moore (the same Peter Moore who almost ruined the Xbox and currently lords over EA Sports) and Vice-president Charles Bellfield announced that Sega would abandon the hardware business completely and become a third-party developer. Many executive balked at the decision; some even walked out. But the desire to sever Sega from its hardware was actually endorsed by Sega of Japan CEO Isao Okawa and the recently-departed Sega co-founder David Rosen.
And that last part is the part where my rage spills over and I lose it. The bastards at Sega screwed up just about everything leading up to the release of the Dreamcast, got it right just in time to have a successful launch, then just gave up on it!
Could the console have fared better? FUCK YES! Had Sega not totally shit the bed with its poor decisions, the bad blood among consumers, retailers, and developers would never have started. Had Sega of Japan not antagonized Sega of America, Sega of America would not have lost the brilliant Tom Kalinske. Had Tom Kalinske not been replaced with the atrocious Peter Moore (and, trust me, the less I say about THAT fart sniffer, the lower my blood pressure will be), their direction could have been corrected. Most importantly, had Sega not practically abandoned the Dreamcast shortly after its launch, the console could have had a fighting chance.
I still have fond memories of it, though. Hell, I still have the console. The original one, the one that was “my son’s” present, died years ago, its drive unable to spin or read discs. I bought a replacement from a garage sale; it’s still purring (actually, gnashing, because the console’s GD-ROM drive was not very quiet) in my console setup. I’ll occasionally fire it up and play Sega Bass Fishing or Space Channel 5 with my daughter.
That last part is the part where my anger subsides and I gain perspective. Sega may have abandoned it, but I haven’t.
The homebrew community hasn’t either. Since its last title, LJN’s horrendous Spirit of Speed 1937, was released, amateur programmers have cranked out dozens of original titles for the Dreamcast. An active scene still exists for it, with sites like DCS and Dreamcast-Talk dedicated to lovers of the console. There is even a Kickstarter campaign for a game, Xenocider, which is being developed for PC, Mac and Linux, and a Dreamcast port is planned.
That last part is pretty awesome. Just like the console.
