Going online for the first time was amazing. A revolution for me. Before that, I hadnt played a game online. NFL2k1 was the first game I got online and it was also my first football game. I just got it because I knew it was online and the graphics were good, but man, it showed me what sports games could do. I picked up NBA2k1 after and that was it, I was hooked on the 2k sports games. Much better experience than madden. Playing crazy taxi at home, man, we look at that game now and see its problems, but back then, they just didnt come into my head, it was too much fun.
Christmas with Shenmue. Both in the game and just playing the game at Christmas time. And Soul Cali battles. And DoA 2 tag team tourneys (two was the best version). And the wonderfully God awful House of the Dead 2 voice acting. Ah....my friends and I used to have a saying in those days: "Sega loves you."
I love the Dreamcast, it was really fun. Me and my brother would play it all the time when we were young. That is untill the Playstation 2 and the GameCube came out…
I played like 100 hours of PSO offline because my parents hated me (j/k). Also, Soul Caliber was the main reason I bought one because I was a huge fan of Soul Edge for some reason (I wonder if the Boulder Station Casino still has that arcade with a Soul Edge cabinet in it).
Also, Dreamcast was the first (and I guess only) system I found out how to pirate games on; mostly because all my Middle School friends were doin it, and the was the cool thing to do. Dreamcast is basically the reason I know what IRC and alt.binaries.* is.
greatest dreamcast memory was discovering SOAP sneakers in Sonic and then going to South Street to find a crazy sneaker store that sold them. i was grinding every railing i could find.
My only experience with a Dreamcast: "What the hell is this tiny screen on the controller for? Oh it says shit like "rad" or "stoked" or w/e when I play Matt Hoffman's BMX"
because of watching these quick looks all day long, i realized how much i missed my dreamcast, so i decided to pick one up from ebay today................thanks a lot
At the time all I was reading was the official Plasystation magazine so I had no clue what the Dreamcast was, but when I heard the PS2 would be so expensive that even though I had saved my allowance for over a year I could not afford it I went and bought a Dreamcast instead. It was around May 2000 so a bit after the launch, I got a copy of Dead or Alive 2 and went home to play. However my system was broken, but I went back and got another after showing them that it didn't work on their TV either and then my mind was blown away. It was around the same time as FF9 came out on the PSone I think, maybe that is the reason why FF9 never impressed me very much. I was already spoiled by the power of the Dreamcast.
For some reason the Dreamcast clicked with me unlike any system I previously owned or owned since. From Tokyo Bus Driver to Shenmue I have many fond memories. It will always have a place on my tv stand.
I found a working Dreamcast at a Goodwill a couple weeks ago. It didnt come with controllers but did have the power and av cables crudely wrapped around it. The fact that it turned on at all was enough of a windfall for me. Now it stands next to my 360, seemingly confused as a system out of its own time but still majestic all the same.
i think one of the best dreamcast memories is playing Blue Stinger for the first time, but more importantly, farming the shopping center level...the music!!! i never forget it, reminds me of Christmas that year.
I remember my buddy got it with Crazy Taxi. We played the shit out of it. Spent way too much time playing House of The Dead 2 with a gameshark (fuck that last boss without it). Then Resident Evil Code Veronica came along. That's all I really remember, I got a PS2 and just moved on... poor Dreamcast. I'll always remember it's "way fucking louder than 360" idle noise and awesomely weird commercials.
Thanks to Segas glorious international fuckup, i had to actually import mine from japano-land . Totally worth it.
Best memory? Daily 4-player Chu Chu Rocket with my roommates. That game is utterly amazing, and should be on XBLA/PSN. Actually it needs to be. Second best? Importing Ikaruga and spending every morning playing it before work for months. Third best? Marvel vs Capcom 2. Fourth best? Mars Matrix.
I could go on. It was a wonderful, wonderful system.
I loved the Sonic Adventure and Get Ready to Rumble 2 (or whatever it was called). The Dreamcast was awesome, I also had a friend who had Worms World Party for the DC which was pretty cool. :) Some good times with the Dreamcast!
The Dreamcast was my first console and I have many many fond memories. Chu Chu Rocket was my first ever online gaming experience, Shenmue is my favourite game of all time, Jet Set (or Grind for you Americans) Radio filled up a whole bunch of my time, and spinning around in circles on Soul Calibur was always intense.
My brother has mine now, and my kid loves to play Sega Swirl (pack-in game) when she's down there. I still have fond memories of the system, despite how short-lived it was.
Crazy Taxi and Shenmue were definitely where most of my time got spent. Metro street racer was the introduction of the Project Gotham series and that was pretty great back in its day. That and getting my butt kicked by 2D Japanese shooters. I have mine in a closet somewhere at work. I'll have to pull it out this weekend.
My time with the Dreamcast was brief in retrospect. I wasn't interested in it when it came out, because I had my Playstation occupying me at the time and I knew that in a year we would have the PS2. I got interested in it for some reason when it was really on the out. Maybe it was the bargain prices I dunno, but I grabbed one on clearance and then about 5 games a week after that because they were also on clearance and dirt cheap. I played the thing for about 8 months and every game for it was very, very, very different. Even today the games on the DC are extremely different from everything else you find out there. It was a very unusual and avante garde system. Looking back, I think that's what I like most about it, because nearly 20 years of gaming has made me quite cynical and super tired of the average same old same old that we keep getting in mass. Everything on and about the DC was different and it's the only system I can recall playing that every title for it kicked huge volumes of ass while being very different and original at the same time. That system made you think either about the different view point being presented, or about what the fuck the developers of this thing were smoking at the time. Seaman still haunts me to this day, but it's all good, because it was fresh and different and still is different. It's a shame they don't make games like that anymore and it's a shame the Dreamcast ended the way it did, but I guess that's what happens when you launch a year ahead of the PS2 and are unleased onto the world on the second unlukiest Japanese calendar date. 9/9/99. The Dreamcast is not dead. LONG LIVE THE DREAMCAST!!!
I remember waliking into an EB games with my older brother and being in awe after seeing a demo Dreamcast displaying Ready 2 Rumble. We hoped and hoped we would get the system and come christmas, sure enough santa hooked it up. I remeber Artic Thunder being one of the first games I played on it, however the fact that the game was playing laggy as hell irked me. I checked out the disc to see if there were any scratches (rented game) and there were a few small ones. I remember my dad saying.
"Well thats going to be the problem with these new systems and cd's, one scratch and the game is no good anymore".
My bigger brother was the smart one and decided it was the system itself, so we took it back to Toys R' US for another and it still works till this day. Ahh so many memories of Crazy Taxi, NBA and NFL 2k games, Ready 2 Rumble, Power Stone I could go on and on, not to mention all the great 2-d fighters. Here's to you Dreamcast, a system that was ahead of it's time.
Phantasy Star Online claimed most of my education, up til 4am watching Monkey Magic while grinding through Ruins with 3 other insane online friends (who I'm still in regular contact with). Good times.
Toy Commander deserves a mention! fear Huggy Bear.
I still have Chu Chu Rocket and play it with a friend of mine on occasion. Lots of fun with the right group. Unfortunately it seems to move to quick for most of my friends.
god i miss the dreamcast so much my nuts hurt. That chu chu rocket video has inspired me to dig out my dreamcast and play a marathon of Shenmue, PSO and chu chu.
The Dreamcast was easily the best system I ever owned. I recieved one from my brother Xmas '99, which was an awesome gift, I think he felt bad about totalling my car earlier that year, but in all honesty, the Dreamcast was worth more than the car. At any rate, that system just blew me and all my friends away. The first year of the Dreamcast we saw more triple AAA landmark games released on that system than the Playstation and N64 saw in their entire lifetime. The Dreamcast had this "everything you need as a gamer all in one box" thing going on with it's 56K modem and VMU memery card unit, which was almost like a portable system itself. By the time Sega announced that they were throwing in the towel sometime in 2000, we had already seen a slew of quality games. No other system has released the much quantity of quality in so little time. It was amazing. Nothing, no game, no system will ever capture the magic of playing Phantasy Star Online in 2000 for the first few weeks of it's release. No hackers. Everyone was friendly. Everyone was stoked to be playing. It doesn't seem like ten years ago. Why? Because Dreamcast games are still totally playable, and stack up to modern games in terms of gameplay. It had the shortest lifespan of any console in recent history, but it made one of the biggest impacts.
@ArbitraryWater: Excellent :) I did not know that little video before .... it's great although the sound glitch is unfortunate. That Japanese TV ad is insane. How do you even write a song that's getting right into your brain even if you don't understand a fucking word that is being spoken?!?
PSO was one of the best games I ever got. Even years later I still buy iterations of the game - PSOE1&2 for the GameCube, PSU for X360 (which was awful), and I'll be getting Phantasy Star Zero when it comes out for the DS.
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