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    The Dreamcast is the fifth and final console developed by Sega and the first of the sixth-generation of consoles to release. As the first 128-bit system, it was the first to offer truly arcade-quality 3D graphics. It is famous for being the first console to include worldwide online capability, its game library, and its unexpectedly short life span.

    The SEGA DREAMCAST was ahead of its time

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    yourgoodfriendCharles

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    Edited By yourgoodfriendCharles

    This comes from my blog, thought I would share it:  http://expeditedemotions.blogspot.com/2010/12/sega-dreamcast-was-ahead-of-its-time.html 
     

    The SEGA DREAMCAST was ahead of its time


    This post is very nerdy. Not in a Big Bang Theory "Aspergers are so cute" kind of way. But a "who the f cares about some stupid videogame system Charlie? It's posts like this that remind me why you are 27 years old and still living in your mother's basement. Another unrelated perception is that you seem to prowl for women at church events which makes me uncomfortable. I'm going to ignore you from now on and focus my attention on escapist entertainment like awful sitcoms where nerds ignore basic human functions for seasons at a time just to keep the forced star wars and physics jokes coming."-kind of way. Feel free to not read, this blog post will not be on the test.

    Many believe that theSega Dreamcast was the final hardware failure from Sega before they came to their senses and became a software publisher for all game platforms. I think that is more accurate to say that the video game industry failed Sega and now they get this mutated half-beast joke of a video game publisher as a resort. Almost anything you enjoy about modern video game consoles and software was pioneered by Sega and mostly ignored by you. Since only 1 person is going to read beyond the title of this blog post I will get onto my reasons why
    we as a human race failed the good people at Sega and are doomed to see everything we once loved be destroyed, Sega produced or otherwise.

    1. We were too attached to the Electronic Arts of 1999.
    I am completely with you that in 1999 Electronic Arts ran this industry on the strength of Madden alone. And the fact that they decided not to make their games for the Dreamcast was probably the killing strike towards
    the system in terms of mainstream audiences. I am not a sports guy, but the SPORTS! 2K series was produced to fill the void and it did so fantastically. Most sports people rated them at least comparably to EA's stuff and many said they were a hell of a lot better. I'm sure telling a sports person to change games is like trying to get a junkie to service some other part of the body for drug money, but the switch was worth it. Especially worth it in the first year of the Dreamcast where the other options were on PS1/N64 and looked like  ColecoVision by comparison.

    If you are still reading, Mom, please take a moment to find your Playstation 1 and play a game... any game in it. How's that 320x240 resolution look? Unwatchable. Now come to my room and play the Dreamcast for a moment. Still looks pretty good right? Bringing me to my next point.

    2. We had learned to love the terrible graphics on PS1/N64 games
    I don't know if we were still thrilled to be playing 3D games, but the frame rate, resolution and blurriness of 99% of PS1/N64 games was inexcusable. If I were a game designer I would think that if I couldn't do something on a specific piece of hardware I wouldn't try... but that is sadly not the case. So when the Dreamcast came out and had the same types of games, only this time pretty to look at with decent frame rates, Joe America would say that he already had a pixelly version of that game and dismiss the system entirely.

    I will concede that a lot of Dreamcast games were merely uprezed ports of PS1 games, but they were always the absolute best versions. Today every game that sells more than a dozen units has an ULTIMATE COLLECTORS EDITION. Well I consider every Dreamcast game to be the ONLY PLAYABLE VERSION, because it is actually a better version of the game most of my friends were playing.

    3. Playstation 2 might come out sometime in the near future
    I watch TV, and if you were to turn it on from the years of 1998 to pre9/11 the news would probably be talking about how awesome the PS2 is going to be/is. On top of that you had the DVD factor which I didn't even think would be as much of a thing as it was. But its annoying how every single conversation about the Dreamcast had to begin and end with PS2.

    "Well it won't be out for a year or one store shelves for 2 years but the PS2 is going to totally blow the Dreamcast out of the water. Anyway I heard Crazy Taxi was pretty fun. PS2 is definitely going to be the thing that gets me a girlfriend, good grades and a free ride through life. Alright man see you on the bus, how many people have called you gay today? Only 7? That's an improvement."
    -Paraphrasing every conversation my friends and I would have in high school

    4. No one cares about arcade games
    Ok here is one where Sega legitimately was on the wrong. They are an arcade company, so they have a lot of product that is based on people putting quarters in a machine. About this time arcades became irrelevant and the software for them didn't sell the Dreamcast like it sold the Genesis and that dozen Saturn systems that sold from the Grand Rapids KB Toys. Crazy Taxi is awesome but it was a tough value proposition of that game being 15 minutes of fun at a time compared with the 70 hours of depressing Final Fantasy for the same price.

    That being said, if Sega gets their head out of their butt, they could use the casual game trend to make every dollar but making their arcade stuff easily available on iPhones and the like.

    5. The Internet was a mythical beast in 1999
    In 1999 no one knew what the Internet was. AOL was a legitimate thing to pay 21.99 a month for dial up access and people would sign multiple year commitments to an ISP for a cheap computer... actually that trend has just moved on to cellphones. The Sega Dreamcast could browse the Internet and a year in, play games over the included 56K modem. Yes 56K sucks but it was playable, Sega actually had decent networking in the games I tried and I didn't encounter too much lag despite using WebTV for dialup access. By the time online play/SegaNet kicked off the PS2 was out and the Dreamcast pretty much admitted defeat, but it is rarely acknowledged as the thing that really kicked off the whole console online gaming thing.

    But back in 1999 I assume the general public were mainly using the Internet to keep their GeoCities updated while looking for nude codes for Tomb Raider (another game that looked much better on Dreamcast [although the ones that came out for it were terrible]).

    So those are the 5 reasons I believe that we as a people failed the Dreamcast. I think in a couple years from now this will be clearly stated as humanity's greatest mistake. The destruction of the environment and various genocides that have taken place over the years will pale into comparison to the fact that we did not throw enough money at a mismanaged company's video game device.

    Our grandchildren will be paying the cost of our video game purchasing transgressions.
    Avatar image for yourgoodfriendcharles
    yourgoodfriendCharles

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    #1  Edited By yourgoodfriendCharles

    This comes from my blog, thought I would share it:  http://expeditedemotions.blogspot.com/2010/12/sega-dreamcast-was-ahead-of-its-time.html 
     

    The SEGA DREAMCAST was ahead of its time


    This post is very nerdy. Not in a Big Bang Theory "Aspergers are so cute" kind of way. But a "who the f cares about some stupid videogame system Charlie? It's posts like this that remind me why you are 27 years old and still living in your mother's basement. Another unrelated perception is that you seem to prowl for women at church events which makes me uncomfortable. I'm going to ignore you from now on and focus my attention on escapist entertainment like awful sitcoms where nerds ignore basic human functions for seasons at a time just to keep the forced star wars and physics jokes coming."-kind of way. Feel free to not read, this blog post will not be on the test.

    Many believe that theSega Dreamcast was the final hardware failure from Sega before they came to their senses and became a software publisher for all game platforms. I think that is more accurate to say that the video game industry failed Sega and now they get this mutated half-beast joke of a video game publisher as a resort. Almost anything you enjoy about modern video game consoles and software was pioneered by Sega and mostly ignored by you. Since only 1 person is going to read beyond the title of this blog post I will get onto my reasons why
    we as a human race failed the good people at Sega and are doomed to see everything we once loved be destroyed, Sega produced or otherwise.

    1. We were too attached to the Electronic Arts of 1999.
    I am completely with you that in 1999 Electronic Arts ran this industry on the strength of Madden alone. And the fact that they decided not to make their games for the Dreamcast was probably the killing strike towards
    the system in terms of mainstream audiences. I am not a sports guy, but the SPORTS! 2K series was produced to fill the void and it did so fantastically. Most sports people rated them at least comparably to EA's stuff and many said they were a hell of a lot better. I'm sure telling a sports person to change games is like trying to get a junkie to service some other part of the body for drug money, but the switch was worth it. Especially worth it in the first year of the Dreamcast where the other options were on PS1/N64 and looked like  ColecoVision by comparison.

    If you are still reading, Mom, please take a moment to find your Playstation 1 and play a game... any game in it. How's that 320x240 resolution look? Unwatchable. Now come to my room and play the Dreamcast for a moment. Still looks pretty good right? Bringing me to my next point.

    2. We had learned to love the terrible graphics on PS1/N64 games
    I don't know if we were still thrilled to be playing 3D games, but the frame rate, resolution and blurriness of 99% of PS1/N64 games was inexcusable. If I were a game designer I would think that if I couldn't do something on a specific piece of hardware I wouldn't try... but that is sadly not the case. So when the Dreamcast came out and had the same types of games, only this time pretty to look at with decent frame rates, Joe America would say that he already had a pixelly version of that game and dismiss the system entirely.

    I will concede that a lot of Dreamcast games were merely uprezed ports of PS1 games, but they were always the absolute best versions. Today every game that sells more than a dozen units has an ULTIMATE COLLECTORS EDITION. Well I consider every Dreamcast game to be the ONLY PLAYABLE VERSION, because it is actually a better version of the game most of my friends were playing.

    3. Playstation 2 might come out sometime in the near future
    I watch TV, and if you were to turn it on from the years of 1998 to pre9/11 the news would probably be talking about how awesome the PS2 is going to be/is. On top of that you had the DVD factor which I didn't even think would be as much of a thing as it was. But its annoying how every single conversation about the Dreamcast had to begin and end with PS2.

    "Well it won't be out for a year or one store shelves for 2 years but the PS2 is going to totally blow the Dreamcast out of the water. Anyway I heard Crazy Taxi was pretty fun. PS2 is definitely going to be the thing that gets me a girlfriend, good grades and a free ride through life. Alright man see you on the bus, how many people have called you gay today? Only 7? That's an improvement."
    -Paraphrasing every conversation my friends and I would have in high school

    4. No one cares about arcade games
    Ok here is one where Sega legitimately was on the wrong. They are an arcade company, so they have a lot of product that is based on people putting quarters in a machine. About this time arcades became irrelevant and the software for them didn't sell the Dreamcast like it sold the Genesis and that dozen Saturn systems that sold from the Grand Rapids KB Toys. Crazy Taxi is awesome but it was a tough value proposition of that game being 15 minutes of fun at a time compared with the 70 hours of depressing Final Fantasy for the same price.

    That being said, if Sega gets their head out of their butt, they could use the casual game trend to make every dollar but making their arcade stuff easily available on iPhones and the like.

    5. The Internet was a mythical beast in 1999
    In 1999 no one knew what the Internet was. AOL was a legitimate thing to pay 21.99 a month for dial up access and people would sign multiple year commitments to an ISP for a cheap computer... actually that trend has just moved on to cellphones. The Sega Dreamcast could browse the Internet and a year in, play games over the included 56K modem. Yes 56K sucks but it was playable, Sega actually had decent networking in the games I tried and I didn't encounter too much lag despite using WebTV for dialup access. By the time online play/SegaNet kicked off the PS2 was out and the Dreamcast pretty much admitted defeat, but it is rarely acknowledged as the thing that really kicked off the whole console online gaming thing.

    But back in 1999 I assume the general public were mainly using the Internet to keep their GeoCities updated while looking for nude codes for Tomb Raider (another game that looked much better on Dreamcast [although the ones that came out for it were terrible]).

    So those are the 5 reasons I believe that we as a people failed the Dreamcast. I think in a couple years from now this will be clearly stated as humanity's greatest mistake. The destruction of the environment and various genocides that have taken place over the years will pale into comparison to the fact that we did not throw enough money at a mismanaged company's video game device.

    Our grandchildren will be paying the cost of our video game purchasing transgressions.
    Avatar image for mariokart64fan
    mariokart64fan

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    #2  Edited By mariokart64fan

    first off i think ps1 was way over rated same for the 2 ,

    2ndly sega was never a front runner

    to begin with that has more to do with the failure then anything else,

    because they kept forcing add-ons down our throats,

    the genesis was their last decent console that lasted a good while , dc may have good games but most of them have been ported to gamecube xbox making dc mostly worthless,

    the one i do feel is being ignored/or be rated to much is nintendo

    , because once the ps came everyone was like cool cds - i never liked cds my self, those things break easy

    , i sticked to my n64, plus i stil ldont see how ps2 sold very well when gc/xbox was alot more better then it they even had 2 more controller ports, somthing you had to pay extra for on ps2,

    and xbox had xbox live, but dc had online which was free , so it kind of comes down to preference, and obviously last 2 gens graphics did not matter so nintendo played that card

    and what do you know people are crying , and whining, because it isnt powerful i hate to be the first to say this but when wii u comes you all will have 0 reasons to cry , , if you do we all know the scoop,

    cause lets see

    you asked nintendo for your standard control pad- they gave it to ya

    you wanted better visuals, your getting hd visuals , that are slightly better then ps3

    so ya as for sega i gotta say ,they did it to them selfs no body ignored any thing,

    before making claims , lets not forget what sega did in the past before dreamcast

    ------- sega genesis was past its time , , so when it was time for a new console sega in stead rushed 2 failed add-ons called sega cd and sega 32 x the later only had like 40 titles not many worth mentioning the sega saturn was around the corner, -but they rushed that as well , plus pricing it at 400 dollars did not help ,,

    the saturn failed due to being hard to program games for high price,

    sega should have rode the saturn out til it was time for dreamcast , but they decided other wise,

    as a result we did have somthing that was 1 ahead of its time, 2 no one cared about online last gen that much i think halo 2 and pgr2 were one of very few xbox live games with good communtiy to be honest

    and 3 its about the games, as you mentioned sega was always about bringing the arcade home, maybe they should have kept doing what they did in the genesis era, cause arcade games only last so long,

    plus if any thing was ignored durring its run it has to be the nintendo 64, and the gamecube , each of these things did things better then ps

    and ps2

    everyone always had a complaint about nintendo but every complaint was false and proven wrong by the librarys of the system,

    sure n64 lacked third party but it would have had it if consumers bought more n64s and supported it, and same for dreamcast, but again , sega shot them selfs in the foot by rushing products out the door - that dont bold well in consumers eyes

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    71Ranchero

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    #3  Edited By 71Ranchero

    @mariokart64fan said:

    first off i think ps1 was way over rated same for the 2 ,

    2ndly sega was never a front runner

    to begin with that has more to do with the failure then anything else,

    because they kept forcing add-ons down our throats,

    the genesis was their last decent console that lasted a good while , dc may have good games but most of them have been ported to gamecube xbox making dc mostly worthless,

    the one i do feel is being ignored/or be rated to much is nintendo

    , because once the ps came everyone was like cool cds - i never liked cds my self, those things break easy

    , i sticked to my n64, plus i stil ldont see how ps2 sold very well when gc/xbox was alot more better then it they even had 2 more controller ports, somthing you had to pay extra for on ps2,

    and xbox had xbox live, but dc had online which was free , so it kind of comes down to preference, and obviously last 2 gens graphics did not matter so nintendo played that card

    and what do you know people are crying , and whining, because it isnt powerful i hate to be the first to say this but when wii u comes you all will have 0 reasons to cry , , if you do we all know the scoop,

    cause lets see

    you asked nintendo for your standard control pad- they gave it to ya

    you wanted better visuals, your getting hd visuals , that are slightly better then ps3

    so ya as for sega i gotta say ,they did it to them selfs no body ignored any thing,

    before making claims , lets not forget what sega did in the past before dreamcast

    ------- sega genesis was past its time , , so when it was time for a new console sega in stead rushed 2 failed add-ons called sega cd and sega 32 x the later only had like 40 titles not many worth mentioning the sega saturn was around the corner, -but they rushed that as well , plus pricing it at 400 dollars did not help ,,

    the saturn failed due to being hard to program games for high price,

    sega should have rode the saturn out til it was time for dreamcast , but they decided other wise,

    as a result we did have somthing that was 1 ahead of its time, 2 no one cared about online last gen that much i think halo 2 and pgr2 were one of very few xbox live games with good communtiy to be honest

    and 3 its about the games, as you mentioned sega was always about bringing the arcade home, maybe they should have kept doing what they did in the genesis era, cause arcade games only last so long,

    plus if any thing was ignored durring its run it has to be the nintendo 64, and the gamecube , each of these things did things better then ps

    and ps2

    everyone always had a complaint about nintendo but every complaint was false and proven wrong by the librarys of the system,

    sure n64 lacked third party but it would have had it if consumers bought more n64s and supported it, and same for dreamcast, but again , sega shot them selfs in the foot by rushing products out the door - that dont bold well in consumers eyes

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