It was a different time, a lost time, when console gaming was just stretching its wings. High off the success of the NES, the Genesis, the Super Nintendo, the gaming industry was ready to try new things. It a storied time, fabled, hallowed in legend and mystery. It was a time when Sega did something right.
The Dreamcast was unveiled this day ten year ago, a small thing, a white box with a controller designed under alien influence, as if a Martian would return at any moment to reclaim his high score. The Dreamcast played discs, it had a web browser, it ran online multiplayer.
Ten years ago, Sega held the future in its hand.
Then the Playstation 2 ate Sega alive and the Dreamcast was cast down from Sony’s bloodstained teeth as little more than the picked bones of a failed promise.
Still, for a short time, there was no better console.
I didn’t own a Dreamcast, my world at the time was mostly beaming out from a computer monitor, so I’ll just let a few other people have their words. The Dreamcast left an impression, and its parting, a void. These are the voices of gaming.
Dan Ackerman at CNet
David Hansen at City Pages
Mike Snider and Brett Molina at USA Today
The Penny Arcade Forum
The Something Awful Game Forum
Ten years today. Happy birthday, Dreamcast.
Ah the dreamcast, such a wonderful console in its youth. I spent many, many summers in Germany staying indoors trying to beat Illbleed and Phantasy Star online! Reguardless if it gets called by scoffish gamers, it was a good console!
I had Puzzle Fighters, and some sort of bubble popping game called SpinJam, and .. and.. and!
I love my Dreamcast. Note the lack of past tense there. :D
Now, if only my son would grow out of breaking my controllers, or grow out of living at home.
True, the dreamcast still is to this day, very popular in my household. Cant quite help myself coming back to it, and wanting more. Perhaps I loved it even more for porting Unreal Tournament on there, I remember having some game parties with my friends and we all gathered around that And played it, along with Quake III and Zombies Revenge. It has some good titles, werent they supposed to relase more even after the console Itself kinda jsut.. died? or was that another rumor?