It pretty much felt like Christmas when I finally got my Sega Dreamcast some years ago, right at the start of the millenium.So what if I wasn't the first kid on the block to get the little white box that could? And so the frigging what if I got my DC a good 2 years after it was launched in Japan, a year after it made its US debut and a year before Sega announced its eventual demise?
I've had other consoles before and after it but let me just say for the record that the DC remains as the best gaming rig I ever laid in my eyes and hands on.To quote that acid-tounged film producer in The Godfather."And I've had them all!"
Well,maybe not all.What made The DC so special was not so much that it can do many things that even the current next-gen consoles can do like play mini-games or call plays on it's unique and still unequaled Visual Memory Unit (VMU) or surf the Net with its built-in 56K modem.What really made the DC stand out was not any of its extras.In the end, it was still the games that mattered. And from 1998 to 2002, the DC produced what is arguably the best ratio of good to bad games in its wonderful library of more than 200 titles.
Even though certain developers (i.e EA) shield away from it, the console offered something for everyone. Fighters (i.e the original Soul Calibur), racers (Daytona USA), first person shooters(Unreal Tournament), light gun titles (Unreal Tournament), platformers (Sonic Adventures), sports (NBA 2K), RPGs (Phantasy Star Online) and many more name it,the DC had it. Most of them looked great,too. Thanks to the hardware's anti-aliasing capability, many DC games still stack up well compared to the PS2 releases.
Of course, most of us knew why the DC party had to end and how the floundering Sega went the way of Atari and eventually ended up as software publisher of games for other platforms. The DC continued to have a life of its own, though.For a limited time, Sega continued to manufacture a new DC units due to strong clamor and some new games were even made for it for the japanese market. An unauthorized portable DC called the Treamcast was also available on the net for a while.
I've had other consoles before and after it but let me just say for the record that the DC remains as the best gaming rig I ever laid in my eyes and hands on.To quote that acid-tounged film producer in The Godfather."And I've had them all!"
Well,maybe not all.What made The DC so special was not so much that it can do many things that even the current next-gen consoles can do like play mini-games or call plays on it's unique and still unequaled Visual Memory Unit (VMU) or surf the Net with its built-in 56K modem.What really made the DC stand out was not any of its extras.In the end, it was still the games that mattered. And from 1998 to 2002, the DC produced what is arguably the best ratio of good to bad games in its wonderful library of more than 200 titles.
Even though certain developers (i.e EA) shield away from it, the console offered something for everyone. Fighters (i.e the original Soul Calibur), racers (Daytona USA), first person shooters(Unreal Tournament), light gun titles (Unreal Tournament), platformers (Sonic Adventures), sports (NBA 2K), RPGs (Phantasy Star Online) and many more name it,the DC had it. Most of them looked great,too. Thanks to the hardware's anti-aliasing capability, many DC games still stack up well compared to the PS2 releases.
Of course, most of us knew why the DC party had to end and how the floundering Sega went the way of Atari and eventually ended up as software publisher of games for other platforms. The DC continued to have a life of its own, though.For a limited time, Sega continued to manufacture a new DC units due to strong clamor and some new games were even made for it for the japanese market. An unauthorized portable DC called the Treamcast was also available on the net for a while.
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