Collection essentials #449: Sega Dreamcast

Buckle up, today I’m talking about a very interesting console with a very interesting history. There is so much that can be said about the Dreamcast, and for brevity’s sake I’ll not be going into full detail on everything and will leave out some stuff…and even then this post will probably end up too long!

Sega was in a rough spot in the late ‘90s, to say the least. Their arcade games did very well, and the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive had been quite a success in America and Europe, but not so much in Japan. The Sega CD add-on wasn’t as big as they hoped, and the 32X add-on was a horrible flop. And the Sega Saturn, despite actually doing well in Japan, was a flop everywhere else, and both the company’s reputation in the West as well as their finances were in a total rut. In fact, Sega’s situation in America was so bad that fewer than 10 Sega Saturn games were released there in 1998, and they released nothing for any system in the first eight months of 1999, so in terms of console and handheld gaming they were almost completely dead in the water.

The Sega Saturn and its competitors were among the first generation of consoles to primarily feature 3D graphics. These graphics were very jagged and blocky-looking, and it was clear that large improvements were going to be made as video game technology continued to improve. The Dreamcast represented a glimmer of hope for Sega as they tried to right the ship, because it was the first console of the next “generation” and was able to hit the market well before anything else. In every territory, the Dreamcast would be the only “next-generation” console on the market for over a year, a very big head-start, a time period in which it would boast significantly better graphics and power than anything else consumers could buy.

The Dreamcast hit store shelves in Japan near the end of 1998. But perhaps surprisingly, the Dreamcast didn’t do especially well in its home country, and didn’t match up to the sales of the Saturn there. I’m honestly still not totally clear as to why the Dreamcast didn’t do better in Japan. I’ve heard it said that Japanese people didn’t like the controller, which was larger than what they preferred. I’ve also read that Sega had trouble manufacturing enough units early on to meet demand in the system’s critical early days. And of course, Japanese gamers were absolutely loving their PlayStations around that time, which had caught fire after the release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997, so that probably didn’t help. 

It would take a while before the Dreamcast would see a release overseas. But the good news for Sega is that a lot of American gamers really loved cutting-edge graphics back then. Whatever console had the newest and best graphics was sure to turn some heads. And Sega successfully managed to build up hype for their new machine there, and the eye-catching advertising release date of “9/9/99” firmly stuck itself into the heads of many Americans. And Sega was smart enough not to rely on graphics alone, as this time they would make sure to have an excellent launch lineup of games to pick from, and you could make the argument that it was the best set of launch titles in any region a console has ever had. The Dreamcast would release in America with over 15 titles available immediately, including arguably the best American football game ever up to that point, arguably the best 3D fighting game ever up to that point, a brand new 3D adventure featuring their #1 mascot Sonic (something the Saturn was sorely lacking), and plenty more. On 9/9/99, the Dreamcast would break first-day sales records. Sega had risen from the ashes and seemingly caught lightning in a bottle! They were back!

However, this lightning in a bottle turned out to be a flash in the pan. Although there was no shortage of new games to play as the months went by, Dreamcast sales slowed and disappointed as the year 2000 went on. There are various reasons that people will cite to explain this, such as the fact that Dreamcast games were notoriously easy to pirate. But the one that I believe is the biggest cause is, simply, that the next big PlayStation console was on the horizon, and would hit shelves near the end of that year. The original PlayStation had an absolutely massive userbase which was still very strong after the Dreamcast came out, and fans had plenty of good reasons to hold out for the next PlayStation, especially since it was going to be even more powerful than the Dreamcast. Sega got a lot of momentum from their early launch, but the impressive power of their system wasn’t going to hold up very long.

At the end of January 31, Sega made a rather shocking announcement that they would be discontinuing the Dreamcast in only a couple of months. There would still be games released for it during the remainder of that year, but effectively immediately they were going to start transitioning into becoming a third-party developer to make games for other consoles. Sega would never make their own home console ever again. Obviously, many fans were upset by this, but the move did make sense. Sega just didn’t have much money to keep the Dreamcast after several years of financial losses, and it was pretty clear that it just wasn’t going to be able to compete effectively in the new console generation. Not only was it less powerful than its competitors, but something I think people don’t talk about enough is that the controller just doesn’t have enough buttons. It has two fewer buttons than its predecessor, the Saturn, which is a real oddity. The other consoles of the generation had more buttons plus a second analog stick, so many multi-platform games designed for those consoles simply wouldn’t work on the Dreamcast unless Sega had decided to release some new controller model which consumers would then have to buy.

The time period between the Dreamcast’s record-breaking American launch and its discontinuation was shockingly short, barely a year and a half. It would continue to receive games (especially in Japan despite not selling well over there) for a while afterward, and of course the original Japanese launch was quite a bit earlier, so its lifespan is not quite as sure as that makes it sound. But nevertheless, the Dreamcast received a surprisingly impressive library of games during its time in the sun. Sega developed many games for it of course, but there were other companies (Capcom especially) who gave it plenty of support as well. The console has many dedicated fans and it has a very positive reputation among gamers. 

One quirk of the Dreamcast is its memory card, called a “VMU”. You see how the controller in the photo seems to have a little screen in the center of it? That screen is a part of the memory card, which inserts into the controller, and the controller has a little window for displaying the screen. While playing, the VMU often simply displays a simple image of the game’s logo or something. But sometimes it has practical use; for example, when playing an American football game against a friend, you can choose which play to run on your VMU, so that way your friend won’t know what’s coming! The VMU even has a d-pad and buttons, because there are some games that can be transferred onto it and played independently!

Playing console games online was not technically new when the Dreamcast came out, but before it had only been a niche thing. Dreamcast was the first console to really try and push it, offering a dial-up subscription service called SegaNet. The console was home to the first major online RPG for a console. As you can probably guess, online capabilities weren’t enough to attract sufficient long-term interest from the public. But it was a very forward-thinking feature by Sega, as it wouldn’t be much longer before online console gaming would become much more prominent.

The Dreamcast is also significant because it truly marks the point where home consoles finally caught up with arcade games. For years, the best cutting-edge graphics were found in arcade games. This was in part because arcade games were not tied to a home console. As technology was getting better and better, companies were able to produce flashy new arcade games every single year, while home consoles had to be on the market for several years and therefore were pretty much never able to match the capabilities of the latest arcade games for any extended period of time. When you bought a console version of a popular arcade game, it was almost always understood and accepted that there would be compromises, and that the arcade version was always going to be at least a little better. This was no longer the case with the Dreamcast, which used much of the same technology Sega was using in their new arcade cabinets. The system earned a reputation for being a dream console for arcade lovers. But this also (perhaps not coincidentally) marked the point where the popularity of arcade games was beginning to decline permanently, so that also wasn’t able to win enough long-term interest for the Dreamcast.

In terms of my own experience, I remember the Dreamcast being a big deal when it came out. I had both friends and family who owned it, and I thought it was very cool. As a nine-year-old kid, I actually didn’t even know the Sega Saturn existed at that point, so I didn’t really know the story of Sega’s struggles leading up to it. All I knew was that it was a cool and hot new game console. However, at this time I was much more interested in getting my hands on a Nintendo 64, which my dad finally got for us soon after the Dreamcast came out, so obviously we weren’t going to be getting two consoles in such a short time. I eventually got my first Dreamcast for cheap in 2003, and managed to get some choice titles that I had been interested in. I’ve had some trouble with Dreamcast consoles failing to read discs in the past, though my current Dreamcast has functioned flawlessly for years.

Is it worth owning and playing the Dreamcast in modern times? Well, one thing that hurts its case is the fact that a lot of its good games have been ported or remade on other consoles. Sometimes the original Dreamcast versions have their advantages, but often the ports and remakes are roughly the same or even better. But there certainly are some games that make it worth a look. Stay tuned in the next couple weeks as I highlight some of my favorite games on the system.