Sega Dreamcast Discussion

[Bulletproofboy]

Anyone remember the Sega Dreamcast?

These are the release dates:

JAPAN November 27, 1998

North America September 9, 1999

Europe October 14, 1999

Australia October 14, 1999

UK December 3, 1999

It was Sega's(creator of Sonic the hedgehog and other brilliant games) last video game system. It was short-lived, in 2001 Sega announced that they would stop production of the dreamcast.

NBA 2K2 was the last game released for the Dreamcast.

With the company announcing no plans to develop a next-generation successor to Dreamcast, this was Sega's last foray into the home console business.

According to Bernie Stolar, former President and CEO of Sega of America, the Dreamcast was canceled because the new chairman of Sega wanted the company to focus on software.[4]

Despite its short lifespan, the Dreamcast was widely hailed as ahead of its time, and is still held in high regard for pioneering online console gaming—it was the first console to include a built-in modem and Internet support for online play.[5][6] As of 2009, the console is still supported through various homebrew video game releases.

Here are couple of pictures

It came shipped with a DreamKey, you could use it with seganet to go online with a web browser.

The Dreamcast also had a black 56k modem.

In PAL/EU/Australia Regions the Dreamcast logo was blue and booting up logo was also blue.

In all other regions(NA etc) the Dreamcast logo was orange and booting up logo was also orange.

The Dreamcast can also read data from a Visual Memory Unit ("VMU") removable storage device and 4x memory cards that hold four times as much data. Input devices such as game controllers are connected to four USB-like "Maple Bus" ports. The VMU's would go in the controller, it also had a dpad and you could have a VMU for each controller.

The online servers were run by SegaNet, Dreamarena, and GameSpy networks.

There were 688 games for the Sega Dreamcast in total.

Some favourites of mine: Sonic Adventure(the best sonic ever), Quake III arena(awesome, my bro beat me though at it, i was like 2 when i first had it, 5 when last played). Shenmue I and Shenmue II,(excellent game) and Chu Chu Rocket.

I have yet to play sonic adventure 2 even though it is one of the dreamcast's best games.

[Mpilk901]

All that information from wikipedia that you copied makes what I was going to say pretty pointless..

Well anyway, I knew it was the first gaming console to introduce online gameplay which was a plus on Sega's side, but that's about all I know.

Question, why did it have a little display screen on the controller? What was it used for?

[Bulletproofboy]

most of it i wrote it in my own words

the title screen was the VMU(visual memory unit) you plugged it in the controller and that controller would have your saved games on it. the screen was the sign on the memory unit telling you whats happening etc

it also had a dpad and two or four small circle buttons(<(?)) not sure how many

[Ivan]

I recently borrowed it from my sister's boyfriend so I could play Shemmue and Omikron: The Nomad Soul.

[YellowJacket]

I am still a proud owner. I never throw my consoles away, ever.

Shenmue 1 and 2 are so fucking amazing.

[The Bossman]

I never played it, but I like the look of the Shenmue games. They paved the way for most of the adventure games around these days, especially Yakuza. My friend at secondary school used to have 1, every time he put a disc in it wouldn't read, or would say disc read error. Makes me laugh because he got angry quickly at things like that.

[Bulletproofboy]

The eye can get fucked up(dont know its like a eye the thing that reads the disc)

i touched it once or twice when i was 5 i was like this is the coolest button evar and i pressed it and when it loaded sonic adventure it would go back to the beginning or crash