In Memoriam of Sega Dreamcast

During that brief period of my life after I had become bored with my Nintendo 64 and before I received the Nintendo Gamecube for Christmas in 2001, I spent most of my time playing with the Sega Dreamcast. I found the Dreamcast offered a good array of entertaining video games and I was very disappointed to hear that they were going to stop selling the system in America in March of 2001, though production would continue in Japan until 2006.

Sega introduced the Dreamcast in 1998 and it was widely heralded as being ahead of its time. It superceded the Playstation 2 by a year and a half and the Gamecube by 3 years, pioneering into previously unexplored gaming enterprises, such as being the first to include internet capabilities directly into the console itself.

The good people at Sega desparately needed to release a new console that would help the public forget about the disgrace that was the Sega Saturn. Prior to the Dreamcast's release in the US, Sega spent tons of money campaigning for the new system, using the tagline, "it's thinking." This was meant to convince the consumers that the system would be so advanced it would nearly have a mind of its own.

The buzz surrounding the system's announcement was so strong that upon its release Sega was unable to meet the demands of all the advanced orders. On the day of its launch, the Dreamcast brought in a whopping $98.4 million. Four days later, that total would reach $132 million, with 372,000 units being sold. Sega realized one of its biggest mistakes from the Sega Saturn was not having good enough games available at the system's release, leaving gamers with a new system but no games to play on it. As a solution to this problem they took extra care to market their top games prior to the Dreamcast's release. Games such as Sonic Adventure, Power Stone, and Soul Caliber were all previewed in stores long before the Dreamcast launched, giving consumers more reason to look forward to its release.

The system faced some challenges right from the get-go, such as the loss of its partnership with EA games. EA is a company that creates the most popular sports games, such as the cash cow Madden Football games. EA had brought its genius to Sega in the past, producing games for the original Sega console and the Sega Saturn. However, the Saturn did so poorly that EA decided not to work with Sega in the future because it just wasn't profitable enough for the company. Sega was left with no choice but to go its own way in the sports game market and created 2K sports, releasing games such as MLB 2K and NFL 2K. Boasting a better graphics engine than its competition at the time, Dreamcast's NFL 2K1 actually outsold Madden 2K1 during the fall of 2000, selling a total of 410,000 units.


Some features that I loved about the Dreamcast were the pressure-sensitive right and left triggers, which came in handy during racing games, and the memory card that had a little screen on it so it could either act as an extension of the controller or could work independently of the system, sort of like a Tamagochi. The memory card was used in games such as NFL 2K1 to pick your plays so your opponent could not watch your screen and see what play you were choosing. Little things like this were what made the Dreamcast so great.




It's a two-way tie for my favorite game on Dreamcast. It's really a toss-up between Sonic Adventure 2 and Shenmue.

The one I spent the most time playing was easily Sonic Adventure 2. Sonic was always my favorite character as a kid (he and Mario were always neck and neck, of course) and the ability to play as him in an expansive 3D world, running at the speed of sound through beautiful landscapes, while also being able to play as his buddies Tails and Knuckles and even his enemies Shadow, Rouge the Bat, and Dr. Eggman, was all it would have taken to make me crazy about the game. The game didn't stop there, however, as it introduced mini games to keep you occupied even when you weren't sitting in front of the television. You could upload your pet Chao from the game onto the memory card and carry it around with you, feeding it, playing with it, and watching it grow (this is the Tamagochi reference I was talking about up there). You did this because once you plugged the memory card back into the controller and downloaded your Chao back into the game, it would be bigger, faster, and stronger, which meant it was easier to win the mini games and earn yourself some prizes.

Shenmue is a game that I don't think too many people know about, but I have learned that it has picked up something of a cult following. Shenmue is a FREE adventure game, meaning you walk around at your leisure and the game doesn't progress until you choose to make it. You play as Yu Suzuki and after watching your father get killed by a rival gang leader, you make it your duty to track down the killer and get revenge. The game is reality-based, which means your character eats and sleeps, the sun rises and sets as the day progress, and interaction between characters is very instrumental in the game's progression. It's funny that a game like this could be so entertaining, especially when you consider you spend most of your time simply walking around exploring, and you even have to get a part-time job working at a shipping yard. That's right, a game that spends a good portion of the playing time making you work a 9-5 shift carrying crates at a shipping yard is loads of fun.


I remember how upset I was to find out that they were going to stop producing games for the Dreamcast (although, to be honest, I got over the loss very quickly when the Gamecube came out and I discovered Super Smash Bros. Melee). For whatever reason, the Dreamcast could not keep its head above water once the Playstation 2 was announced. With sales waning, Sega decided to lower the prices of the Dreamcast in hopes of drumming up interest, but the shiny new Playstation 2's advanced graphics and DVD compatibilities seemed to be too much for Sega to handle. To add insult to injury, the announcements of Microsoft's forthcoming X Box and Nintendo's rumored Gamecube put clouds of doubt into the minds of people in the gaming industry whether or not Sega could possibly keep up with all this new competition. By early 2001, game produced had jumped ship from the USS Dreamcast and made for the inviting waters of Playstation. Projects for the Dreamcast that had been started were now being scrapped and Dreamcast was left with little in terms of game production.

On January 31st of 2001, Sega announced that once its 50 games currently in production were completed the Dreamcast hardware would be discontinued. With no plans of producing a next-generation successor to the Dreamcast, Sega made its last attempt at competing in the home console market.



I kept my Dreamcast for the next few years, occasionally dusting it off to hang out with Sonic and his friends whenever I was feeling nostalgic. It started having trouble reading disks sometime in 2004 and broke down completely just as I was about to graduate high school. I would like to find one on eBay one of these days and pick it up if the price is right, but I doubt I will ever get around to it. Nostaligia aside, my Nintendo Wii keeps me plenty entertained.