There’s a very good chance that on September 8, 1999, I was on IGN thinking to myself, “Man, I wish I had $199 to buy a Dreamcast tomorrow.” In truth, I only had $40, and that went toward a copy of Final Fantasy VIII, a game I had desperately wanted to play. I don’t know, I was 13 years old and weird; today I’m merely crazy, so three cheers for emotional development. It goes without saying that I missed out on Sega’s big launch day extravaganza on 9/9/99.
I had to wait an entire year before I got a Dreamcast, which, when you’re 14, might as well be 20 years. We (my younger brother and I) got the limited edition sports bundle Dreamcast. It was black, and came with NBA 2K and NFL 2K. This, despite the fact that I didn’t, and still don’t, know the difference between a touchdown and tornado DDT. (I prefer the other football, thank you very much.) We first played through games like Soulcalibur, Tony Hawk (still popular in 2000), and Grandia 2, but it really wasn’t until the launch of Phantasy Star Online and, yes, Unreal Tournament that we truly appreciated the system.
See, we never really had the kind of money required to keep up-to-date with a gaming-worthy PC, so we stuck to the consoles. Not that we were destitute, of course, but there’s a bit of a difference between buying a $200 Dreamcast and shelling out $4,000 on a PC with a 3DFX card or whatever.
Back to the games, then. Man was Phantasy Star Online good! I even bought the Dreamcast keyboard, so I could more effectively talk to my teammates. My first character was merely a HUmar, which is equivalent to a Warrior in World of Warcraft: sort of an introductory class, well-rounded with no particular strengths or weaknesses. His name was Olympic Hero, a reference to WWE (well, WWF at the time) wrestler Kurt Angle. Oh, it’s true. It’s damn true.
The only problem with PSO was that, at the time, we didn’t have any sort of broadband to speak of. It simply wasn’t available in our area. (How times have changed!) So, I had to snake an extraordinarily long telephone wire from my bedroom to the kitchen telephone. Of course, when we would play the game we wouldn’t be able to receive any phone calls, so it wasn’t uncommon to stop playing, hook the telephone back up, then find out that we had a number of messages from my father: “Jesus, Nicholas, get off the Dreamcast, I need to speak to your mother.” You punk kids need to understand that this (2001-ish) was still before everyone and their dog had a cellphone.
Unreal Tournament was similarly great, even though, looking back on it, it probably wasn’t the best port. Still, I had never played an online shooter before, so it was very much a new and exciting experience for me. (I got much more mileage out of Unreal Championship for the Xbox1. Yes, I bought Xbox Live on Day One, thank you very much.)
I’m trying to remember how I felt when Sega announced the cessation of Dreamcast production in 2001, which I first read about on Daily Radar. Remember that site? I don’t think I was oh my God, how could they?!, but more like, “well that stinks. Now what?”
Let me see… what did I do with my Dreamcast?
•Figured out how to burn and play emulators. This was on a Mac, so the toolsets for putting together such discs were all primitive at best. Not a GUI in sight.
• Played Half-Life the day it was leaked onto the Internet. Man, I remember that day like it was, well, not yesterday, but recent. I read on Daily Radar or IGN that the gold version of the recently cancelled Half-Life had been leaked onto the Internet. So, I hopped onto Usenet using Thoth for OS X—can you believe I knew how to use Usenet for my own ends at age 15?—downloaded the ISO, then burned it on the family PC. For whatever dumb reason it was released as a Nero image, and not the standard Disc Juggler image, which could be burned in Toast on OS X after some Terminal-assisted magic.
• Used some DIVX player to watch old episodes of The Adventures of Pete and Pete that I had downloaded from eDonkey. Thanks, mlDonkey (wasn’t it mlnet back then?)!
• Used the Web browser to visit the same dumb sites that I’d visit on the computer, including, and well likely limited to, IGN and WrestleZone.com.
• Ran Linux! Yes, I downloaded and ran Linux for Dreamcast. Not that it did much, but I ran it, all right!
• Used Bleem to play Gran Turismo 2. That’s right: I bought, with American dollars, Bleem for the Dreamcast.
Of course, any and all comments related to the Dreamcast are welcome.
Dreamcast may be the best system I’ve ever owned. Man, I had a ton of great games for that thing.
I had a Bleemcast disc as well. Mine was for Metal Gear Solid. Awesome stuff.
Dreamcast IS the best system that I ever owned. The times I had playing Phantasy Star Online are some of the greatest gaming memories I have. I think I’ll go home and play some Dreamcast!
It’s great to see the Dreamcast get such love on it’s 10th anniversary! We just announced a brand new game called Irides for the Dreamcast which will be coming out within the next few months, so even in death the Dreamcast lives on! It’s a great little console, and I love being able to keep supporting it and the small developers who are still making games for it — this will be our fifth Dreamcast release!
Dreamcast, quite possibly the best system I’ve ever had :) Sitting on my desk right next to me, gotta hook it up!
I miss: PSO, Unreal, Chu Chu Rocket, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi.
Good times.
While I still treasure my Saturn, and still spend time with my toasterNESs, I really think the DC was a superb console. It was tiny (about the size of a Wii nowadays… but bigger than a PCE back then) yet still had 4-controller ports, an interactive VMU/mini-screen (PSP rearview mirror my foot), and even half-decent online web-browsing. Heck, it even had commercially sold software (a boot disk) that supported VCDs and MP3 playback.
I’d also have asked for DVD playback. but in hindsight only SONY’s deep pockets could afford that. Even if the DC had that (at great cost to themselves), SONY’s deeper pocketbooks and PS1 library would have eventually chipped away.
If only more people bought those great DC exclusives. I also include things that were ported after the system was discontinued (Power Stone, Skies of Arcadia, Marvel vs Capcom 2) and games that were simply less buggy on the DC (Grandia 2).
Oh yes. And one more thing.
Natural VGA output.
Suck on that… pretty much everyone else.
Holy crap you played half-life on dreamcast?!?!
I literally, and I mean this- I had DREAMS of playing half-life on dreamcast. I stalled buying it on PC just so I could play it on DC. I cant even begin to explain the heartbreak once it… never came? (though there was an ign review wasn’t there?)
Yes the days of dreamcast were great- I purchased it when it hit $99 and had a love affair. The fact that all the good games were $20 also made it a true bond. The VMU was truly ahead of its time- I still wish the VMU concept was replicated with one of the new consoles.
I had to be one of the most die-hard DC fans possible. My life was in the AOL Sega chatroom chatting with fellow gamers about the great things we had played and the games that awaited our attention in the future.
Jet Grind Radio was so fresh and new, its still hard to describe the feeling of running from cops after spray-painting a wall with funky music motivating your escape.
Obviously ive written too much- I just get carried away. I miss it- and made the mistake of lending it to a lancenter< to never see it again (it failed).
I still have my awesome Dreamcast sitting in an entertainment cabinet next to my Wii. Skies of Arcadia was the BEST GAME EVER.
The dreamcast was a sweet system. I can’t believe people went so nuts for the PS2 that it completely knocked the DC off its perch, and so quickly. The DC was way ahead of its time though.