Given how many people have said their first taste of Sonic CD was on Windows, I'd say more PC ports (and not just because I want to write about them in my thread :-) )
It did not "introduce many to the internet"; aside from the fact that not many used it, you'd pretty much have to be already familiar with the internet to even get it set up. Across Europe and East Asia, arcades were fairly common (and still are, albeit less so now), and certainly far more accessible than the internet was in the late 90s/early 00s. So yeah, of course they should've replaced the feature that people can't use with the one people can. SEGA have always had their biggest successes in the arcade; Daytona USA alone continues to make more money than half of their new console game releases, and that's 30 years old now. In addition, a lot of SEGA's advertising came from the arcades in the first place. People bought OutRun on the Mega Drive because they played OutRun in the arcades; they bought Virtua Fighter on the Saturn because they played Virtua Fighter in the arcades. So you go to the arcade and play Crazy Taxi, and say "I want to play this at home" so you buy Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast. But now, Crazy Taxi arcade has a VMU port, and you take your save file from the Dreamcast and plug it in and now there are two new characters for you to play as; you get a good score and that gets saved to your VMU to keep on your own personal leaderboard as well. Rather than the arcade and home console units competing with each other, they both instead promote each other and encourage continuing to put money into arcade machines even after purchasing the home game. It wouldn't even have to be the same game. Imagine a Sonic & All-Stars Racing game but instead of a standard character selection screen you rock up with your VMU and choose from the save games you have on it. I could play as Drachma, just as soon as I've gotten far enough in Skies of Arcadia to have him join my party.
Pretty sure most people knew of the internet when the Dreamcast came out. I recall the internet being everywhere in TV ads as early as '98. We were in the middle of the dot-com bubble after all.
SegaNet in the USA was a thing. What do you mean, you'd have to be familiar? You can't set up an internet connection without having used the internet? That sounds contradictory. I find this really hard to believe because where I live arcades were very uncommon, and these days they don't seem to exist anymore. Now you can only find the machines that hobbyists have. If the modem was replaced with VM connectivity, I don't think I'd ever have been able to use it.
Yes! I remember the PS2 hype train was causing more than a few people to be cautious before committing to a Dreamcast. Even though the Dreamcast was clearly amazing with the likes of Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure turning a few heads in department store kiosks, people were waiting to see what the Super Computer "Emotion Engine" was going to deliver before making a choice. When the PS2 rolled out, it was a pretty abysmal launch, with the likes of the The Bouncer not really delivering much in terms of emotion. I remember feeling vindicated when CVG did a head to head battle of Dead or Alive 2 on PS2 and Dreamcast, and the conclusion was that between the two the Dreamcast looked and performed better, but in any case, Soul Calibur was the superior option regardless, so people should be buying the Dreamcast. Now that people could compare the two systems side by side, it seemed like the tide was turning in favour of the Dreamcast, but then a few short months later Sega gives up. They definitely should have held out for at least another 12 months. People talk about the lack of DVD playback being a big problem, but I don't think people were really basing their decisions on which games console to buy based on that. DVDs were still a relatively new and poorly understood thing at the time. If anything the push was from the other direction, sales of the PS2 helped push DVDs into the mainstream, rather than the desire for a DVD player boosting PS2s into the home.
I think Sega fans were blessed for not having the same games rammed down our throats every x years. I've spent a lot of time in Nintendo communities, and there it's very much "when's the next Mario, when's the next Zelda" on a loop. Star Fox and F-Zero are exotic because they've only been used half a dozen times rather than hundreds. Sega were at their best when they were experimenting, producing games for pretty much every genre and not just releasing the same thing over and over. I want to see more of that.
Put a separate Start button on the Master System controller, so that you don't have to reach over to the console itself whenever you want to pause a game.
No he's right - the internet was associated almost exclusively with computers in 1998/1999 as a tool for work. The Dreamcast's internet support was more of a novelty - you were unlikely to sign contracts with ISPs just to have a look at Dreamarena. Japan seems to have marketed the Dreamcast as "my first internet device" but you don't see that in Western advertising. Just like Sega Fax Club wouldn't inspire you to buy a fax machine, it was just "something you could do". I don't think Sega were alone in overestimating internet take-up, they just invested more in networking infrastructure, so it's more noticeable. But again, this would have been a key selling point over the PS2 during 2001 had they not axed things too early - Sega's online services were really starting to mature by then, but the feature was dropped like a stone when hardware plans were shelved. And then we had x years of the other platform holders trying and failing to reach the same level of network support as the Dreamcast managed years prior. I've never seen a GameCube connected to the internet, and when I read about it, it's usually for Phantasy Star Online.
Yeah, I didn't really get online for anything beyond schoolwork until late 2001, by which time the Dreamcast was long dead. Not every country had the advantage the US did with free local phone calls.
I was just thinking that what's even more baffling in light of this is that Sega's arcade division seemed to be stuck with finding creative ways to use up an oversupply of SH-4 CPUs and PowerVR GPUs. They doubled them up in the NAOMI 2, used multiple NAOMI boards in games like F-355, offloaded some to Sammy for the Atomiswave, and were still even using them in early versions of the Aurora/System SP as late as 2007. I don't know whether this was the result of halting Dreamcast production prematurely, or they had some sort of deal with Hitachi that they had to commit to using the CPU for a certain time period before Hitachi offloaded/lost the Super H series to Renesas.
Oh they absolutely used the NAOMI architecture everywhere during that time - I accidentally came back across a big feature about this from the early days of Arcadia the other week, which neatly lays out all the many uses for it in the "SEGA & NAOMI'S Amusement World": So alongside the arcade games, there's things like all those fish simulators. But also the failed Entertainment STAGE net@ scheme, a bunch of undocumented fire and earthquake disaster experiences for places (?), and some sort of mystery software distribution satellite experiment that apparently appeared at Club Sega in Akihabara for a bit. Hooray for confusing business diversification.
On the "should have used more VMUs with the NAOMI platform" thing. Terrifyingly the internet can't supply me with a complete list of VMU-compatible NAOMI games. I've made ours a bit better, but I can't verify some of the Capcom titles (e.g. Capcom vs SNK (2) and Gunspike), and most sources just say "some games support it". You know what else some arcade games support? Dreamcast controllers. As in, there are physical ports. That's news to me, and again, not fully documented (this is mostly a Capcom thing because they had special cabinets... again, near as makes no difference undocumented) What I do know is that VMU support was rare and kinda-sorta late. The first game to utilise the feature was Giant Gram: Zen Nihon Pro Wres 2 in Nihon Budoukan in May 1999, which given the first VMUs were on sale in July 1998 (yes pre-dating the Dreamcast), suggests this probably wasn't something Sega thought about. It's a feature often consciously turned off when running in non-Japanese modes. Apparently there are even versions of games that support PlayStation memory cards too. Sega hardware running Capcom game in a Namco cabinet. Mass hysteria. My experience in the UK up north is that yes, arcades exist, but you have to travel. They're not a fixture of your average high street, and certainly not hardcore, let's get the latest stuff "for the gamers". Though I'm basing my experience off, idk.. 15 years ago when I last noticed this sort of thing. So idk, internet probably was the better choice, but it would have been nice to have both. And more Neo Geo Pocket Color support since they plugged that for a bit too.
They briefly experimented with GameCube memory card functions as well on F Zero AX, of course. The one public location with it in the UK during recent years had a broken slot though - this is the main issue with stuff like it. If not designed precisely well enough, children here will inevitably mess the tech up and jam god knows what into every available orifice on these. There's some footage of F355 Challenge 2 also with VMU functions in action near the start and at the very end of this: They do note that only one out of four slots was working, and in the comments it's made clear the cabinets disappeared soon after. RE: internet arcade things, I guess one could make the case Sega made the mistake of not having any of their own locations in Europe whilst they were setting up networks such as ALL.Net. Unofficial imports of the likes of Maimai have done okay, etc. But then with the exception of a few games it's never really been expanded much in the US either, where they did still have GameWorks and chains like Round1 now exist, so perhaps a bit of a moot point. Without a chain across the continent... can't expect any uptake at all.
Nifty - AM2 were strangely quiet about VMU support for F355 Challenge 2, so I wasn't sure if people were mixing it up with the first game.
people always go on how things could have gone during the 1st party era, but the 3rd party era also is fun to muse about imo 1. supporting the og xbox was a total mistake. jsrf, panzer, gunvalkyrie, crazy taxi iii, shenmue ii...all of it total bombs and killed their respective franchises. outrun 2 and hotd3 worked out okay, cause they were arcades originally. ps2 and gamecube saw sega having success 2. the arcade teams should have continued to continued to do console projects. they have gone to their deep end with several arcade only and/or japan only games which while succesful in Japan shut them off the public spotlight forever. it started with the key of avalon in 2003, which was a new IP that was board game + tcg. only became appreciated by the japanese. this continued all the way to today 3. sega europe turned out fine with all their studios that they have bought but sega of america has been a total shit show before they became atlus usa in 2017. marvel license games, alien: colonial marines, sonic boom: rise of lyric. we could have been spared of all of these shitshows 4. actually, i am ok with how sonic team screwed around with sonic. i don't even care about 06...but sonic 4? sonic 4 should have stayed as sonic the portable or be called sonic the hedgehog dl or something lol
I would have liked to have seen a Genesis with 128kb VRAM support, as it appears was intended at one point.
Of course, you couldn't actually sign a contract to have a look at Dreamarena, because Sega had already done that for you by signing exclusive deals with various ISPs across Europe. I understand the intent behind that decision. While the internet may have been more widespread elsewhere, only 19% of UK households had internet access in 1999-2000, and 19% of adults had internet access across Europe. Even though the latter source notes that half of Europe's adult internet users were under 35, which skewed towards the console-buying demographic, it's still fair to say that Dreamcast buyers were very likely to be first-time internet users. By pre-selecting an ISP, Sega could remove an element of complexity from the process of getting online. The problem was that if you became a heavy internet user, you couldn't shop around for a better deal. In the UK you were stuck with whatever BT charged for local calls, with no option to pay a subscription for unlimited use or anything like that. It was only with the introduction of DreamKey 3.0 in 2002 that European Dreamcast users could finally choose their own ISP. That's the small thing that I wish Sega would have done differently - maybe sign up to make a particular ISP the default option for newcomers, but allow more competent users a free choice. Incidentally, claims elsewhere in this thread that Sega overestimated demand for internet access have mixed merit. The Dreamcast launched during the most rapid expansion of household internet access, and it was a big draw for new console buyers - BT's servers were overwhelmed during the console's European launch, and the BBC show Watchdog ended up covering the fiasco. In its annual report for FY2000, Sega announced cumulative sales of 5.55 million Dreamcast consoles and said that it had 1.12 million network subscribers - about one in five owners. For comparison, Xbox Live was only ever used by one in ten original Xbox owners, when Microsoft was considered the market leader in online console gaming. Of course, whether Sega's figures represented active users was another matter. By the summer of 2000, Sega had 300,000 Dreamarena users in Europe, but only 100,000 had claimed a completely free copy of Chu Chu Rocket after one month. Given that it was the first game with online play available in Europe, and getting it only required completing a simple form, it might be fair to say that internet access was something that intrigued Dreamcast buyers but didn't necessarily hook them.
I liked the video, but I'm kind of amazed that people are still complaining about the cable on the Dreamcast controller twenty-five years later. You just pop the cord into the notch in front. That's it. I like to leave some slack so it forms a little loop rather than pulling it super tight like everybody on the internet seems to. Yeah, it's a bit peculiar and the controllers won't lay perfectly flat because of it, but you don't notice it at all when you're playing it, and if you wanted something conventional, you would've just waited for a PS2 or bought something with Pokemon on it. I also think it's fairly obvious why they changed to a four-button cross layout where the buttons are equidistant from one other. The three-button layout for the Genesis was probably chosen because it was the JAMMA arcade standard (arcade games being games where you use your fingers and not your thumb to press the buttons). It works fine for games like Shinobi where you mostly use two buttons and only use the third occasionally for special moves, but games where you use all three buttons regularly are often quite challenging because of the button layout. Jumping while running on World of Illusion is impossible to do with only your thumb and requires mastering the Vulcan death pinch (and changing the button layout would just rearrange the problem since the attack button also needs to be easily accessible). I think the Saturn controller is the best gamepad ever, but have you ever tried playing Mega Man X4 on a Saturn controller? It's like playing the banjo. That said, it would've made sense to match the PlayStation and include a second analogue stick and a pair of shoulder buttons in addition to the analogue triggers, the D-pad is unfortunate, and beeping loudly whenever the battery in the VMU is dead (which is always) is annoying. And ironically, the D-pad and button layout are terrible for Capcom's fighting games (which are what popularized the six-button layout in the first place), and Capcom was by far Sega's most important third-party for the Dreamcast. I still like the Dreamcast controller overall, though, and find the pontoon shape comfortable. If anything, the drastic change from the Saturn controller showed their willingness to break away from their past decisions in order to make the Dreamcast a success. I think Sega's best bet if they still had portable ambitions in the late 90s would've been a shrunken down Game Gear to compete against the Game Boy Color (which was more powerful but not obviously so), with a better screen and better battery life. But realistically, I don't think that would've done that well either because there was no point in competing against Nintendo in this market at this point. The Nomad strikes me as a big waste of money for Sega of America. It was just too friggin big (even compared to the Game Gear) to be anything but a bizarre curiosity. It looks like you need steel-toed boots to play one in case you drop it.
Some things I would have liked to see SEGA have done differently would have been and all this is honestly without the benefit of hindsight but what I've always felt and said To have ported Super Hang-on, Outrun, AB 2, GF 2 to the Mega CD making full use of the ASIC chip. Soul Star, Batman Returns showed what could have been done and just getting an Arcade perfect music score of Out Run and Super Hang-on in 1991/2/.3 would have been a massive deal on its own. Also, speaking of the Mega-CD Sonic CD should have made better use of the ASIC chip and Phantasy Star IV should have stayed on the system. SEGA should have also gone back to Strider and Ghost N Ghouls and made enhanced Mega CD versions of the games with better music and full Arcade speech and introductions Ect, Final Fight really showed what could have been done. All software support for the Mega Drive dropped in 1994 and moved to Saturn production I would have also liked to see the Saturn to have kept its original Silver champagne finish. Clockwork Knight should have been delayed until it had the planned 8 levels put in, Victory Goal needed to have been delayed to put in far better sprite animation and collision detection in the game (Pro Striker had better animation for crying out loud) . Daytona USA should have been delayed and the on car screen count cut to 16. Shinobi should have dropped the digitized sprites, Sonic CD should have been reworked in a USA/UK launch Saturn game Sonic Team made to work on the Sonic 32-Bit game. SEGA should have bought CORE Design in 1994 when they were looking for funding, and not let US Gold buy them. Yoji Ishii should have been made boss of the Sonic Team. To have gone with the original Saturn and Jupiter plan and not the 32X. SEGA should have ported both Golden Axe: Revenge Of Death Adder and Arabian Fight to the Saturn on the launch of the MultiTap and should have made a SOR IV with massive sprites and full support for 3 players on the Saturn using the Multitap. SEGA should have also really looked to use the 1 and 4 MEG carts more and of course, looked to have brought them to the WEST. It would have been very nice to see games like Duke, Quake, and House of the Dead make use of the carts to help with more data. I love Bug 1 and Too but they needed more checkpoints and allowed the user to save at every checkpoints LOL.
