DREAMCAST: Sega's Fall From the Cutting Edge | GEEK CRITIQUE

9,999 date alone is enough to fill the hearts of Sega's old faithful with bittersweet reverence if you were lucky enough to own a Dreamcast back then. I hope this brings back some memories, but as hard as it is for me to believe those memories brought me back. Almost 20 years ago, the Dreamcast is as old now as the Atari 2600 was. There have been many generations of gamers who never played any Sega console, much less the latest one, and even if you played back then, if you skipped the Dreamcast in Instead of anything else, you might look at this little white box and wonder what all the fuss is about.

How is it possible that a console that lived, prospered, fell and died in just 510 days, in what we can now accurately call the turn of the century? stir up an emotion as complicated as a bittersweet reverence, why does the Dreamcast still matter? I was there and at the end of this I hope to be able to answer that question for you, but keep this in mind, a lot of my perspective here is seen from the perspective of who I was at the time, a newly minted teenager living in the US. USA and had just spent his entire childhood as a Sega fan.

I mean, I was never an elitist. I played anything I could get my hands on, but I was always rooting for Sega, they were like my local team, however, like most 13 year olds, I didn't even know the definition of the word hue, with that disclaimer out. Along the way, here's the part of the story you probably know, Sega Genesis vs. Everyone. The odds help Sega not only compete with Nintendo, but also surpass them and become the industry's leading hardware manufacturer for a short time, but as quickly as the rise came it fell when Sega oversaturated the market with too much sophisticated hardware. and then he abandoned it.

Before it could even get off the ground, it was crazy, like seeing how many ridiculous variations of the Genesis we can add at once, making an expensive CD add-on, and then filling it with horrible FMV games. Oh, you've paid. $180 for 32 congratulations, it was practically dead a year later, even Saturn Sega's flagship 32-bit system struggled to survive three years in the US. Every move the company made failed. Every chance he had was wasted by Sega's late 90's reputation among gamers and within the industry he was a laughing stock at best, no really, before Christmas one year my mom called to a store to reserve a Sega Saturn and the guy who answered the phone laughed at her and told her there was no way a kid would be on a Saturn surely he must have been asking for a PlayStation right yeah that's how bad it was , anecdotes aside.

I think the hard facts of Sega's

fall

are widely understood even today and should be. No one wants to make those same mistakes, just look at how long. Nintendo continued to release Wii U games even after it became obvious that it would never take off, but here's the thing: Simply saying that Sega released too much hardware and made some bad moves ignores why that was the company's strategy in the first place. and this is the other side of the story that I think is overlooked these days. Sega's shortsighted practices damaged their reputation, but the same approach was what made them a household name in the first place.

I mean, this was the company that gave them far from what would have been their most lucrative game with every Genesis sold just to build the biggest lead possible on the Super Nintendo. This is the company that surprised by launching Saturn months ahead of schedule at the first E3. This is the company that invested incredible resources in making technological leaps years or even decades before those obstacles could or should have been overcome. Anyone remember the Kinect. Well, Sega had full body motion control. 1993, today we have Xbox Game Pass or Playstation, but in 1994 Sega was a pioneer.

In the games-on-demand service today we have the Nintendo Switch, but in 1995 Sega had a hybrid handheld console of its own, a full-featured portable Genesis that could also connect to a TV. Sometimes these ideas worked most of the time. No, but it didn't seem to matter if it was profitable, what matters is that the company was always at the forefront, relentlessly if blindly, driving the industry forward. A couple of risky bets paid off big time and made Sega the king of gaming. only for a series of bad hands to cause them to

fall

again. Sega's entire approach to the market was to throw everything against the wall and see what stuck.

That attitude wasn't smart, safe or sustainable, but it's what led the dance now to be. It's clear that corporate culture changed a lot in the mid-'90s. Sega of America, in particular, lost a lot of autonomy before the Saturn years, but watching the company emerge from all that is still alive, still kicking, and more. Hungry more than ever to claim her crown. to the point where they would bet everything on one last dream, it was electrifying. Sega bet everything on the Dreamcast. Sega released Charro died for the Dreamcast and what emerged from the ashes was a more mature and intelligent company to finally get its head straight from a business perspective, but with that old attitude still intact, the Dreamcast was a powerhouse with all the details and less, it was the

cutting

edge

and make no mistake, this was the dance if you want an example of how crazy and brave Sega was at the time.

It doesn't get much better than the Dreamcast bestseller, Sonic Adventure. I know this probably sounds ridiculous to many of you. I can take off the nostalgia glasses and see how certain aspects of it, especially these scenes, appear today. That's the new thing, by the way, the way people thought about it. It was outdated just a few years after its release, but on the nights of September 9, 1999, we care that it wasn't the most polished game in the world. I didn't even realize because there had never been anything like this before and it's weird. I mean, but I don't think there couldn't have been any real Sonic game on the Saturn, and in retrospect, there was a good reason for that 3D platformer from High speed like this demanded expansive settings that simply wouldn't have been possible on previous-generation hardware so it was the perfect franchise to showcase the Dreamcast, and Sonic Venture's visual design is tremendously faithful to the series' strengths.

Each area has its own style and atmosphere enhanced by a custom lighting engine designed for the Dreamcast hardware and I helped throughout what I still consider to be the best, most limitless collection of music and a franchise known for it, and you know, that's a Appropriate word, unlimited, because that's exactly what Sonic Adventure felt like at the time. I could spend hours lost in this exchange of games. among the six playable characters, all with their own unique play styles, roaming the open-world adventure fields, jumping from zones to cow gardens to mini-games to zones, completely mesmerized by the scope of it all, the fact that certain elements hurt so much. wrong and so fast is the price of your ambition Sonic Adventure was a game worthy of its title and among its contemporaries it was extraordinary, but hey, I did a whole episode on it a few years ago, so let's talk about something I couldn't show.

Back then, this was the only feature that Sega really bet the farm on: the Dreamcast was the first console to come standard with a built-in modem for online gaming, so Sonic Adventure was not only the long-awaited rejuvenation of a character he presented. For me in gaming, he was also a pioneer that gave me an idea of ​​what the industry would be like. Online leaderboards. Community events. Just page after page of additional content. The game even had DLC. Console gaming had always been static before this, so being able to download an archive and see something new at Station Square blew my mind and it's hard to imagine how mind-blowing it was because things like this are a big new word as part of the games now, but Sega was doing these things long before anyone else.

Eight years before I was tweeting Pokémon online, I was trading Shou in Sonic Adventure, but something was glaringly missing from this game, and in fact, none of the launch games had it. We had a modem, so where was the online multiplayer for that? I have to wait a little longer, in 2000 what may be the cult of Sonic teams called classics was released, a historic moment in the industry and the first online game I played. I know it seemed crazy even then with all the power of the Dreamcast packed. I spent the entire summer of 2000 playing this simple little 2D puzzle game.

I also had a lot of fun in the single player mode, but competing against people online was the hope that kept me coming back. The Chuchu rocket on the surface might look like this. It's an easy little game, but just place arrows to direct the mice towards your rocket and direct the cats towards the others, but here's the catch: each player can only place three arrows at a time, so each round is Spend it frantically countering your opponent's moves, constantly undoing moves. that you just did and all this together with the torrent of roulette events means that there is never a dull moment, but okay, okay, as much fun as it was, let's get to the Dreamcast exclusive online game.

I will never forget the first time. I once loaded up a game and saw other real people who had created their own avatar just like me, chatting with each other telling jokes and sharing tips and just moving in real time, it was one of those few defining moments where I knew that the La The way I watched games would never be the same. This was the first MMO developed for a console. It was Phantasy Star Online. The MMOs that would eventually take over Donna had this weird kryptonite approach to combat, but Benasi Star. Online was straight forward, press a button, save time, that's right, make a combo just the sound effects, a hitting animation to a monster or getting hit, it's like you feel those things, so it's an online hack and fire for rbp with something simple but crisp. combat and while there was plenty of depth if you wanted to go there, the strength of PSO wasn't just how easy it was to pick up and play to this day my friends and I still get into it every couple of years, God I miss the El old Sonic Team hi dizzy and PS o are a showcase for why they used to be one of the top tier developers in the world.

Each of its four stages was completely different in terms of enemies, settings, and visual design. Each state had its own dynamic soundtrack. and each stage was capped with a boss battle that does justice to the word ethic, now it's true that leveling up enough to get through all of this takes so much effort that it would be an unsustainable tour if you did it all alone, so... What did? It was worth it was the community and that made it completely different from anything else I've played. I remember how overwhelming it was when I first got to the final boss and saw this idyllic countryside transform into a hellish landscape, so all the chaos around us, but I wasn't alone.

I had found a regular team, people who had taught me how to play, helped me all the way and got me here and through all that, through dozens of hours of standing in lobbies, through hundreds of steps fighting against this. drag it over and over again I had a time to feel friends in a video game I remember a Ramar about a name a spy diem man but you're still there thanks for everything these are just a few of the games that defined the Dreamcast for me, but this video could go on like that for hours and hours because they just didn't give up, they didn't play it safe with the Dreamcast, they didn't release a bunch of semi-sequels to establish franchises, no. most of Sega's output was based on new IP attached to some really imaginative ideas.

Crazy Taxi. I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like, a game about getting people from point A to point B as quickly as possible by any means necessary. It is a classic. video game, a real-world concept taken to the extreme where silly concerns like traffic safety and realism are thrown out the window in the service of fun Crazy Taxi and its sequel executes that concept to perfection and I still play them all the time. is like an M-rated madman's tanegashi, its commitment to meticulously depicting a natural life cycle coupled with its surreal aesthetic making it the most baffling virtual pet I've ever seen.

I thought I had a bunch of weird little babies and then they started. drinking from each other, yeah right, like oh yeah, and it comes with a microphone so I can talk to you. All that uncanny valley stuff becomes strangely endearing and even philosophical as the man from the sea gets to know you, but you do like your deaths with a few more emotions. How about we take down the undead, not with a boring weapon like an ax or a gun,Let's do it with the most dangerous weapon of all? A keyboard for typing about the dead is absurd and cheesy and wonderful, and I mean, just look at this thing they have.

Dreamcast strapped to his back and stands straight like, of course, yeah, how else would we handle this? I could go on and on, the Dreamcast library was packed with inventive titles that were unlike anything else on the market, a retro jive eccentric rhythm game from the future. a pioneering 3D fighting game with simple but super powerful combat, a fluid platformer where you played as this strange robot kid with magnets in his head, oh and who could forget the creative art of no, that's just football, Yes, I don't know what it was. but Sega always seems to take donnas I didn't normally enjoy and make games that are just old to me.

I never played sports sims before our after, but I'm a Dreamcast. I could play NFL 2k one online and cream for idiots. I never even met Brooke, a game of tennis, yes I would be skeptical, and everyone I have shown it to started out skeptical and yet I have played this game with friends late into the night so many times. and you know I don't really play RPGs focused on mini stories, you know? I care more about immersion and world-building than slick gameplay, and despite that, do I ever love Shenmue more than any other thing on Dreamcast?

It's hard to understand what an achievement Shenmue was in his time. In the '90s, in a generational leap, the way games depicted realistic humans went from blocky polygons that shook their heads to something that looked recognizably like people. For the first time, polygamists can show emotions, but that's okay, I can't really show them pictures like this. the best part, leave me alone and clear, that Shenmue wasn't at least a little strange, even when it was new it seemed strange and sinister, the game was directed by a native Japanese speaker directing English voice actors and the script had an excessive literal translation, yes that sounds familiar, but I don't know with Shenmue, I can't imagine it being any other way, it's like one of those poorly dubbed monster movies and this eNOS field is so fundamental to the appeal much more than that I really have done it.

I played the game I joked about Hey Lord, you want to fight because of the way the focus is a worker or the way the voice actors can't understand if they should call this guy Rio or not and the quirks of the sweet dialogue They're even more pronounced when almost the entire first record has just been wandering around these unknown areas talking to people and that's another exciting thing like when you get there, it takes how long for the tendons to get going. I mean the most infamous thing about it is one of the first things you do.

I'm looking for a place where sailors hang out. Do you know any place where sailors hang out? Do you know any place where sailors like to hang out around here? Do you know any? The places where sailors are likely to hang out are those people's sailors, why don't you ask them yourself? Yes, I love it, it's stupid but very funny, but this is what memes miss. Every person you talk to has something unique to tell you. That's what's really mind-blowing about Shenmue and what's still unprecedented all these years later: the depth of detail, just layer upon layer of incidental attributes so subtle the average player wouldn't even know there were NPCs in it.

Shenmue doesn't sit still in one place, every character in this game operates on a schedule with a home they come from, places they will go, jobs they will appear in, even the people who never make a dent in the plot have names The weather would change in real time and yes, that was graphically impressive, but I mean literally in real time. The story takes place in Japan in the mid-80s and there is a way that the weather will match what you were actually doing there day to day. that doesn't matter, it won't affect the game, but it's there and that's the point where you can collect

sega

capsule toys, choose whatever drink you want, veena kitty, open every cabinet, go into every room, look behind the frames of individual photos or do what I did and waste time playing classic Sega arcade games.

None of this makes a difference. None of that advances the story, but it's there because Shenmue was trying to be the most complete simulation of the real world the industry had ever seen. It's not perfect by any means, but everything was done to achieve it. Admittedly, all of these accessories are more technically impressive than conducive to gameplay. The titles that followed in Shenmue's footsteps would define the genre by giving the player agency, not giving them a curveball and perhaps that explains why in my opinion Shenmue is the definitive Dreamcast title, it was the most expensive game ever developed at the time and for To even make a profit you would have had to sell more copies than the Dreamcast, but since Sega was always more interested in making an innovative game than making one that was profitable. 510 days were some of the best I've had in 24 years as a player.

I played so many games that could have sold for millions on another console. Led by characters that could have been icons, I experienced instant classics that pushed the boundaries of what games could be and redefined what the term meant to me. Dreamcast deserves to succeed. Sagan needed a win, they got a win, but none of that mattered because outside. From that small group of hardcore Sega fans, gamers generally saw the Dreamcast as a risk not worth taking. A monolith was constantly growing on the horizon and eclipsed Sega during each of those 510 days. It seemed that no one wanted a Dreamcast because everyone was Counting the days until October 26, 2000, everyone was waiting for the PlayStation 2, just three months later, Sega announced the end of Dreamcast production and, no matter how much the price dropped, price while they were trying to liquidate their stock, Sega was barely able to give away the system.

The Dreamcast was the worst selling console Sega had ever made, the PS2 in turn would become the best selling gaming system of all time, let me temper what I'm going to say with this, the PlayStation 2 became a great console with such a stellar library that in 2005 even I had to get one, but five years earlier, when I was in high school and almost everyone I talked to was writing off the Dreamcast because apparently the graphics sucked and I had to listen to it over and over again. again this was going to be the real beginning of the next generation, well I couldn't stand this overpriced and overrated ugly little black box.

I mean, look at her with her two dashboards, now you know what's appropriate because two was about how many exclusives there are ahead, so we're actually first. playing, you know all the reasons why people have the Saturn also applied to the ps2, it was a nightmare to develop because it was twice as expensive as Sony had to ship to the guys and they couldn't even keep them in stock and the few that They were in the market kept failing, but no, it doesn't matter because it only sucks that Santa doesn't bow down to the powerful engine of emotions. ps2 didn't even look like a gaming console like sony thought you'd be ashamed of.

Oh, you know what would happen if people? Look at it and think you play video games and yet this hype Pvt Blair's Dreamcast was worth ignoring, but the truth is I never would have admitted it when I was 13, but the failure of the Dreamcast was Sega's fault. Sega's terrible reputation preceded any move. They could have made the developers distrust the consumers who did not trust the brand and that is why the fate of the system was decided even before its launch. I mean, everyone knew it was going to happen, common sense said it, one of you was worth spending your hard earned money on a console. that was going to be abandoned a year or two later, so it was figure and that was it and really everything was about to change and I was changing: on May 25, 2001, the last thing I did before turning 13 was something I did a lot of things when I was a kid, I beat Sonic 1 and did it on the Dreamcast.

The other was this compilation of classic games called Sega smash pack. The emulator they used left a lot to be desired, but it was fine, it just seemed like it. The right way to put them out there and mention it is because it had a surprisingly candid introduction in the manual and that was probably the first time I felt bittersweet irreverence. Reading this reminded me of everything I loved about this wonderful hobby I had. I spent a lot of my childhood at night and that's when I realized that the Dreamcast had really failed and that the cause of that failure, because the market had rejected it so strongly, all of this was going to fade into a memory of what what were you. lose Sega and things would never be the same again of course Sega didn't die they still exist today as a third party developer and a lot of things have changed but they are doing well but the Sega that I grew up loving the Sega that fought tooth and nail to define his name in the industry only to blindly sink that name into the ground, the Sega that made me a gamer that introduced me to this hobby that became my obsession that has become my career that Sega faded away and in the wake of so many changes in such a short time through the success of the PS2, gaming finally became legitimized in the mainstream, for the first time being a gamer didn't necessarily make you an enthusiast, the whole perception of intense games were redefined and that's good, it was necessary.

It will happen and I'm glad we are where we are, but maybe part of the reason the Dreamcast is so revered is because it was this glorious, wonderful last gasp of an era where gamers were guaranteed to be

geek

s, but you know , that's not so bad. way to be remembered, nothing could have saved the Dreamcast, but it did matter and his reputation as an underrated pioneer has become his legacy, the proof of which was a father who can at the beginning of the episode, could take it for granted that even if You never played a Dreamcast, you still know it was something special and the reason for this is because people like me have never shut up about it, we have never let it die.

Homemade Kings are still being developed for it, there are all kinds of fan-developed hardware mods. video converters that can help bring it closer to modern standards and, most notably, that dedicated fan base is the reason I've been able to show you the system's online features. The official servers closed 15 years ago, but Sega Net is alive again thanks to a fan. created project called Dream Pipe, there's finally an easy way to connect that old dial-up modem to Wi-Fi and the community is spitting out gears now to get a large portion of the system's library back online and playable again on its own. a few hundred of us now. but I'd love to see those numbers go up and I'll be happy to play with any of you anytime, it'll be easy.

Dreamcast has had a permanent place in every TV I've owned for almost 20 years and I don't think that can change after all that time. I can easily say that this is my favorite gaming console. The Dreamcast burned out quickly but shines so brightly that its fans never gave up on the dream. I'm still thinking, but hey, isn't it there? one more game that you'd really think I, of all people, would have said anything about - after all, it was the last time Sega's mascot appeared on Sega hardware - but King would become the introduction to the series for a whole new generation being one. of the best-selling games on a Nintendo console was the end of an era and the beginning of a new one next season in the

geek

review I will see Sonic Adventure 2 and the games that follow it.

I chart the course the leader of Sega's most famous franchise to the bottom, thanks to Benjamin, I would call for sponsoring this episode and I hope it was worth the long wait, thank you all for watching and until next time stay geeky , I'll take Keith's

critique

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