That is such bullshit and you know it. If you honestly think that the last generation didn't bring anything to the table then good sir you're a liar. If anything, this generation is where it begins as all we're getting is prettier versions of last years games aside from a few hidden gems.
Wii brought experiments (and the term shovelware) to a whole new level. 199.99$ Playstation looks pretty. 250$ Xbox/PC brought us dozens of footage videos in which grown men actually ARGUE with 9-year old kids. Priceless.
Pretty much this. The Wii is full of unrealized potential and is terribly underpowered and misused, the PS3 has this "amazing" Cell processor and yet always seems to have trouble playing games that are also on 360 without some sort of issue, and the 360 mainly serves as a home for a bunch of tards who'll be satisfied so long as they keep getting online shooters that allow them to spew homophobic insults at others. So I'll rephrase what I said before. This generation sucks despite its premises, the last generation was much better and the Dreamcast was the best of its generation. There.
Yes, because by last generation, I meant this generation. The Dreamcast was not the best the last generation had to offer. Anything it did have eventually jumped over to another hardware aside from a few games here and there. A majority of its memorable library were first party games. To say that the Dreamcast was the best is to ignore all the great games that came out for the PS2, the Gamecube and original X-Box.
So I have a question. I want a Dreamcast, but from what every one is saying they have way too many things wrong with them. Is it worth getting one? Because I've been wanting one for some time now...
I dunno, I'd say the watered down bullshit started around last generation. FPS's rose in popularity a huge load (and thus came the age of 9 year olds spewing racial slurs and homophobic "insults" over microphones), and general originality started to fade. Fighting games were pretty much the same old same old, platformers (although a few hidden gems) were usually underdone and strayed from what made them good, racing games just become more about being prettier, etc. I could go on. Yes, of course there were some new concepts being brought to the table- but the amount was fairly low in comparison to previous generations of gaming consoles. It might not have been quite as apparent, but I'd say that the decline in decent games STARTED around last generation, and slowly devolved from there. It just got much more apparent in this generation when developers could make a game composed almost entirely of high res textures, ridiculously high poly models, and then post a few screenshots and people would buy it without giving two shits about its gameplay. On topic: There really wasn't a specific reason why it died. There were numerous reasons, but personally they didn't have much of a choice but to release it when they did. If they waited longer, there would have BEEN no Dreamcast- and as far as I know, they couldn't release it around the age of the N64 and PS1.
First console to have USB/Mayple system in the controllers as a HUB (cough, xbox controllers after?) First console to have screens/mini games inside the controllers to keep score. First console to have microphone addition for online play (thanks to the mayple system) (cough, xbox controllers after?) First console to be online, browsers, games, MMOs - (cough, xbox controllers after?) - Not to mention the keyboard support was good for this. First console with true VGA output. Yeah, people wern't ready for it.
It's Maple, actually, just like maple trees, leaves and syrup. But yeah, the Xbox was essentially a Dreamcast with a hard drive in concept, except shittier.
Indeed. It was also the first to have: Motion sensitive controllers. (Samba Maracas and SEGA Bass Fishing controller.) Cel-shaded graphics. Realtime reflections. VGA output. Online Voice Chat. A Console MMORPG. Online RTSs. Online FPSs. Ethernet Support. A Memory Card that you can play with without needing a console. Support for media sizes above 1 GB. A lasting and active Homebrew community. Console Homebrew. The ABXY buttons in a diamond form. A CPU clock above 100MHZ. A game in the F.R.E.E. Genre. (So far, the only two are in the same series..) A 3D ragdoll physics engine. A camera with a resolution above 160 X 144. A color camera. DirectX Support. And more.
Button layout? It looks the same as the PS1, and Snes in the sense of right-side buttons being in a "diamond shape". Also Sony had the Pocket Station memory cards before the dreamcast came out. And motion sensitive controllers? How about the power glove?
I don't know where all of you are getting MMORPG from, but PSO is no way an MMORPG. It's a 4 player online RPG with a hub. Unless there's some Dreamcast RPG I haven't heard of. Ethernet support? The Dreamcast had built in Dialup, unless you're talking about the overpriced BBA, which was released at the end of the Dreamcast's life. I was also going to mention the Pocket Station, but Commadoo beat me to that.
Guys, the Dreamcast was great and all, but don't overdo the praise. A lot of the things the Dreamcast did -were- done before - just not standardized, mainstream, or localized. The online gaming stuff was considered more "revolutionary" because nearly every game supported it, for example.
The Dreamcast was a year old when the Pocketstation came out. And I meant the The Wiimote - style "Waggle" kind of motion controls.
That's odd. Eventually my Dreamcast would only read Sonic Adventure. I lent my original GD copies of SA and SA2 to people and they fucking destroyed each. So I resorted to burnt copies. Eventually, the only thing that worked was SA2 (when all homebrew and game discs would barely load).
When were the first VMUs released? The PocketStation only came out in Jan. 1999 if Wikipedia is to be believed; Dreamcast came out in 1998.
These are all terrible reasons. You're basically listing trivial shit, unrelated shit, and false information. It did something first. Ooh boy...was it any good? Your memory card had pixels on it...did all games utilize this in a way that actually affected the main game directly and not some side game bullshit? MMORPG...I didn't know 4 people groups counted as Massively Multiplayer Online games now. It's like the only thing you can use to defend is what it did first.
Meh, Dreamcast had a lot of firsts and a great game library on the side. That doesn't sound too bad. :P Is it the best console EVAR? Nope. Is it awesome? Yep!
Chimpo is actually quite right, most of that information is of little to no consequence. The fact that the Dreamcast had a slot for things in the controller is hardly worth mentioning as a plus point - it's just a different location for peripheral connection. And of course, the N64 did that anyway. Convince your audience that the Dreamcast's innovations were worthwhile! Of course, the topic also asks if the Dreamcast was somehow "too good" for the video game consumer of 1999, so we'll try to address that too. The VMU was a pretty neat idea in general, but massively under-utilised. I'm pretty sure everyone is aware of the various Tamagotchi-esque things out there for the system, including Chao Adventure. I also used to download and play games like Pac-Man and Tetris, which were a neat distraction during breaks at school, but nothing more. The stand-alone gaming aspect of the system was pretty much explored to the limit, and taken alone is hardly a ringing endorsement. The problem with the VMU is that developers failed to use the VMU in tandem with Dreamcast games. Most developers ignored the device or just shoved pretty pictures on it, but the VMU could prove to be a useful addition as a secondary display unit. The best example of this is in NFL 2K and follow-up games, where players could call plays via the VMU instead of on the main screen. While worthless in single player, in multiplayer the addition of secret decision making added that extra bit of realism to the game and increased the excitement of matches. Other "secret" play calling systems which don't utilise a secondary display are clunky by comparison. Of course, that's one example of good VMU usage in a sea of failure. The VMU was a novel idea with untapped potential, but the limited screen resolution limited practical uses. Though I've cited one good use of the device, it really didn't add a great deal to the vast majority of Dreamcast games, and the idea never caught on. It could hardly be said that the idea was "too good for its time". Now, the online aspect of the system was a different thing altogether. Sega had exactly the right idea here. The internet was intended to be a core part of the Dreamcast experience, in the same way as it has become for the current generation of consoles. Much like Microsoft with Xbox Live, Sega created a centralised system which had game servers in-house (this was known as Dreamarena in Europe). Japanese web browsers were also capable of running Mega Drive and PC Engine games, which were downloadable on a rental basis - a service pre-dating even the earliest iteration of Xbox Live Arcade by a fair few years. All this would have been worthless without the software to support it, but a large number of people loved the online multiplayer of Quake III, NFL 2K1/2K2, Phantasy Star Online and other games. The fact that they got voice chat going for Alien Front Online was somewhat astounding, given the 56k connections most gamers were running. Of course, Sega got things wrong too. For one thing, Sega's planned online venture was some way ahead of the technology available. The meagre storage capacity of the memory cards meant that any substantial "DLC" had to be planned and included on the discs, and games had to be rented for use on the emulators on browser discs because they couldn't really be bought. A lot of promises were broken regarding online play in Europe, too. Many prominent games went unreleased or had their online functions stripped, including Alien Front Online, Bomberman Online, Daytona USA 2001, Outtrigger and Unreal Tournament. Sega also put too much marketing emphasis on the web browsing capabilities of the Dreamcast, which weren't even all that hot at the time. Sega's online service closely represented the destination in which console gaming was headed, so in that respect it was definitely ahead of the game. However, it may have been one of the most detrimental decisions Sega made - not because consumers weren't ready, but because the company couldn't afford it. Sega did not charge a subscription fee in Europe, and so far as I understand didn't do so in the US until later on (I know for sure that the original Phantasy Star Online didn't require a subscription). The value of sales added by the presence of online gaming can't have covered the cost of the servers and maintenance, and it would have been better financial practice to operate a subscription model. Worse still, the online future of console gaming was some way off, and Sega poured a lot of money into making the mistakes that others would learn from. The "cheap internet box" marketing failed to pay off. A far better short-term investment would have been ditching the online stuff and shoving a DVD drive in instead. Lower maintenance costs, more storage space for developers to utilise, and of course the lure of a cheap DVD player seemed to work for Sony. That's the beauty of hindsight, though.
