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Ten years ago today; Sega's last stand
Topic Started: Sep 9 2009, 11:28 PM (313 Views)
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Lt. Commander
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I just wanted to note that today is the ten year anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast launch in North America. I remember going to what was then Software ETC. and plunking down around $300 for my pre-ordered Dreamcast, a VMU and a copy of Soul Calibur.

As some of you may recall, Sega was in a desperate situation at the time. Sega had lost the lead in the North American market share to Nintendo in 1993 and they had never been able to recover their position. The Sega CD, 32X and the Saturn had alienated both gamers and developers away from Sega and into upstart Sony's waiting arms. As we now know, Sega lost over a billion dollars over the Saturn.

The Dreamcast was an effort to address the problems of their previous systems. The Saturn was considered to be difficult to program for as not many developers at the time knew how to fully harness the power of two processors. To get the best results from the Saturn you pretty much had to code in Assembly language. By contrast, the Dreamcast was a much simpler machine to develop for and the inclusion of Microsoft Windows CE provided an alternative programming environment that many game developers were already familiar with.

Dreamcast was the first concole to come with a modem right out of the box (albeit a dial-up modem). While Sega's online network was never fully utilized, it did force the industry to take this step forward. While it was possible to go online with the Super Nintendo and the Genesis, the Dreamcast made web browsing available to everyone without any extra equipment purchases.

The VMUs were not particularly successful but Nintendo and Sony carried the concept forward by enabling connectivity with their home and handheld consoles.

Unfortunately, the lack of an integrated DVD player and Sega's limited resources meant that the Dreamcast simply could not compete with the Playstation 2, arguably the most successful home console ever made. While the PS2 did not have as much RAM as the Dreamcast, the Emotion Engine processor could spit out 16 million polygons per second versus the relatively measly 3 million offered by the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast quietly folded less than two years after its release despite having a fine selection of great games under its belt.

Some of my favorite titles:

Sonic Adventure

Crazy Taxi

NFL 2k

Space Channel 5

Toy Commander

Armada

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

Resident Evil: Code Veronica

Interesting facts:

Former rival NEC Electronics (TurboGrafx-16; TurboDuo) created the chipset for the Dreamcast.

Sega's decision to use the NEC/Videologic PowerVR2 for the Dreamcast's graphic processor prompted 3Dfx to sue Sega for breach-f-contract. Settling the suit cost Sega $10.5 million; money that might have gone towards adding DVD capabilities to the Dreamcast.

The Dreamcast's controllers bear a distinct resemblance to the original Xbox controllers.

In an effort to combat piracy and to offer a form of media that offered more capacity than CD-ROMS, Sega developed the GD-ROM. These discs had a capacity of 1GB and Sega claimed that this format was impervious to piracy.

Unfortunately, Sega left some hidden code in the Dreamcast's BIOS that enabled the system to run games burnt on to standard CD-ROM discs. At first one needed a special boot-up disc and a CD-ROM with the game that you wanted to play. Software pirates eventually developed a way to include the boot-up sequence on the same disc that the games came on.
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LtPondwater9
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That came out in 1999?!? I never played games that much that year. Wow, I was thinking that Dreamcast was older than the PS1. I never really paid attention to Sega after the Genesis. Some Genesis consoles came with the CD, I have played Dreamcast once in the store but it was much like the CD addition to the Genesis. Playstation was far far better that and even then my loyalties lie solely with Nintendo.
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