A Tribute To The Sega Dreamcast – Best. Console. Ever.
Author: Rees | Date: September 11, 2008
My posts about MAME and the old Atari ST have made me come over all nostalgic. They, and the fact that it would’ve been the ill-fated Dreamcast’s 9th birthday this week, got me thinking about the glorious machine that was to mark Sega’s last foray into the home console hardware market. What this little white box couldn’t do wasn’t worth doing, in my opinion – unless you were one of the millions of people who had a broken one, in which case, what it didn’t do definitely was worth doing, and you should have got it exchanged.
Three or four times.
But let’s not speak ill of the dead, especially seeing as when it did work, the Dreamcast was one bad-ass mother. For a start, the Dreamcast had four -count ‘em, four controller ports (since I wrote this, it has been pointed out to me that the N64 also had four controller ports…). Thanks to Sega, gamers went from being sad, lonely, troll-like creatures (original arcade cabs – single player), or maybe even a bit gay (two player games), to being social animals. I mean, you could have up to three friends!
I don’t know about you, but that’s more than enough for me.
Not only that, but you got your VMU, the little memory thingy with the screen on which plugged into the controller. So you could (kind of) play with your Dreamcast even when you weren’t at home! And you could keep those little pet things from Sonic Adventure on there! And you could see how many CR2302 batteries you could get through in a month!
The other revolutionary thing the Dreamcast did was internet access. You could get a keyboard and a mouse and plug it in and go on the net, email people, that kind of thing. You could even play people online! (For about 3 months, before they cancelled the service everywhere else but Japan). Anyway, the point is, the Dreamcast had an online service years ago. They even had a broadband adapter before anyone actually had broadband! And the 56k modem came built in, like they actually expected people to use it!
Another cool feature of the Dreamcast, that most people don’t even know about, is the VGA cable. Yup, the Dreamcast had native VGA output, and you could buy a cable and plug it into a monitor for extra crispy graphical goodness – in fact, you can plug it into an HDTV today and it still looks gorgeous. The Xbox was the next console to have that! Were these Sega guys a bunch of geniuses or what?
Got Rod?
And still, still, they came up with another revolution in the form of the fishing controller. I can imagine the meeting now: “Steering wheels, pedals, light guns… pah! Anyone can do these. What we need is… A controller in the shape of a fishing rod! Yeah! Awesome… Get in touch with R&D immediately.” What the hell were those guys smoking? And can I have some?
Unfortunately even a bunch of fishing obsessive, stoner Sega execs couldn’t foresee what was about to happen. Which was?
Well, everyone went out and bought a Playstation instead. That huge-ass, ugly, fan heater of a console, which was far, far inferior in terms of capability and processing power. A product made by a home entertainment company, who knew nothing about games, rather than a proper games company. Yes, it was cheaper, but that’s because it wasn’t as good. Unfortunately, though, Sony had the exclusivity deals and the marketing to kill Sega’s little white box for good.
So, what were Sega thinking when they pulled the plug on the Dreamcast? Did someone in charge receive a sharp blow to the head? Did they get a visit in the night from a load of Sony guys with baseball bats? We’ll never know. But I do know one thing: To me, the Sega Dreamcast was the best console ever made. It may not be around anymore, but it’s innovations live on in the current crop of consoles, taken for granted in this hi-tech, globally connected world that we live in today.
In fact, the current gen have all the things I mentioned above, and more…
Except that fishing controller.
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And how that fishing controller rocks… I still have mine! Not the one you pictured though, as that’s the ‘Sega Marine Fishing’ rod that only came out in the US.
Indeed, I seemed to remember the UK one having an orange handle but assumed that maybe I was just going mad.
The UK one does indeed have an orange handle, but it was not an official Sega product, it was 3rd party.
Very good tribute, I agree the Dreamcast is the best console ever.
sorry, when I got to this part of the post:
“Thanks to Sega, gamers went from being sad, lonely, troll-like creatures (original arcade cabs – single player), or maybe even a bit gay (two player games), to being social animals. I mean, you could have up to three friends!”
..implying that being gay is a step up from trolls, and a step down from being social; I stopped reading.
You are a homophobic person.
I was actually thinking of the mental image of two guys sitting in a darkened bedroom together waggling their joysticks. I didn’t really intend that list as some kind of ‘heirarchy’, just an off-the-cuff lighthearted kinda comment.
Actually, if you want to be pedantic, there’s no “stepping up” involved. They just go from being one thing to being another. Still, at least if you stopped reading there you didn’t get to the point where I insulted stoners and Japanese people.
Like my old pa always said, “I’m not homophobic / racist / sexist. I pick on everyone equally.”
Homophobic… hmm… Does that mean afraid of gay people, or simply looking down one’s nose at the act of two people of the same sex defying millions of years of biology and mixing up the reproductive and digestive systems?
Why is it that an activity which causes (at minimum) major hemmorhoids and (very commonly) AIDS is somehow sacrosanct? Why does the government feel free to inform me that smoking kills, and if even a private citizen uses the word “gay” in a negative context, he’s somehow a throwback?
We need to be able to have an honest dialogue about these issues, logically and absent the emotional biases we all carry around. Sadly, you can’t be logical about the health and propriety of such activity in the twenty-first century; ad-hominem is about the highest level of discourse anyone wishes to engage in.
…and stepping away from the unrelated argument of sexual preference, and back to the fishing controller. -Many people are unaware of another way SEGA was so ahead of everybody: that their fishing controller was a motion controller, long before the crap Nintendo Wii. That you were able to swing it around to games like Virtua Tennis, or Soul Calibur and many others. So maybe these SEGA stoners were enlightened to something so great and advanced in SEGA’s future, but with short foresight of (the Man) Sony’s evil underhanded tactics of applying its deep pockets in buying out big programmers exclusivity rights. What may be seen as SEGA’s loss, is only their loss. Competition advances better product. And the standard SEGA set, was stratopheric.