Doji Grovesai

Dreamcast Mega Spotlight

A long, long time ago, Sega thought it could make a great system. But it didn't really have money, since Nintendo had been beating the Genesis into the ground for ages, and 32x, CD and Saturn were disasters. But boy could Sega make a game. Even though the systems didn't do well, the games had an incredible following and many had astounding quality. With the advent of the PSX, Sega brought out the Dreamcast. The parts weren't that great. The hardware was comparable to the PSX, if only marginally better, but games was the department Sega held (and, arguably, still holds) over Sony. Alas, Sony's corporate power advertised Dreamcast into a dark abyss of forgotten gaming lore. But if you can find one (you can get some systems on ebay for as low as $10.), you're in for a treat.

The Dreamcast isn't without it's flaws. If you thought the XBox controller was bulky, hold onto the DC pad, and you'll pine for the unwieldy mess of the XBox. The positioning is awkward, and the fact that the cord comes out the end closest to you cuts precious inches from your cord-length. I thought initially that this wouldn't be a big deal, but I was wrong. Also, the analog pad is in an awkward position. With the Playstation's DualShock (or XBox and Gamecube controllers for that matter) the analog controls are all within a convenient reach. Not so with the Dreamcast. Lastly, the d-pad has an overly-sensitive pivot, so if you are pressing left or right, and you happen to bear ever so slightly in the up or down direction while holding that direction, you are now effectively pressing a diagonal. This wreaks havoc on your fighting games. On top of that, the four main controller buttons are spaced just far enough apart that any simultaneous button-pressing is very difficult at best. The remedy is a neat little adapter that lets you use the DualShock controllers with the Dreamcast. I must have these.

Flaw number two is the little VMU that plugs into the controller. While the idea was good to begin with, it was poorly implemented. All you can really do is play mini-games on it (downloaded from a normal game, natch) and the results can be uploaded to the original game's save file, opening bonuses and the like. It should've also been able to manage your save games in general. But alas, that's only possible via the Dreamcast. Also, many of the games for the DC are memory hogs. Shenmue devours entire VMUs whole, with its voracious appetite for space. The VMUs do not have a lot of capacity, and it's the norm to only have 2 or 3 games per VMU.

The Dreamcast also lacks a reset button. But it comes with modem/network access built in.

And last (but certainly not least), the games. I'll just give a little blurb about each game. The great thing is that now that the Dreamcast is dead, you can grab games out of the used bin for mere pennies (ok, 2 or 3 dollars), so building your collection is a snap. On top of that, you can actually hack the Dreamcast games and change the music (or graphics or anything else for that matter). You can also put linux on the DC, or make other programs/games to work with the console. In no particular order...

NesterDC/DreamSNES

You're right, this isn't a Normal Dreamcast game. It takes the NesterDC NES emulator for your PC (or the SNES9.x SNES emulator) and successfully ports them to your Dreamcast. What a beautiful invention! All you need to do is bust out your old NES and SNES games, and create the ROMS. Then save them on the PC, put them in a directory with the emulators, create the DC-compatible image, and then burn. 8-bit (or 16-bit) goodness coming your way! You can find DC emulators for most any system, but with the exception of the NES or Sega Master System, there are numerous speed issues (and sound issues with systems like Sega Genesis).

Megaman: War of the Past

This isn't a real Dreamcast game, either. Somebody took the side-scrolling beat-em-up code from games like Streets of Rage, X-Men (remember that four-player arcade game?), and the like. Then, with the magic that is technology, changed the sprites and animations, creating a new game. This is one of those games. It isn't that great, even by beat-em-up standards. I just included it because I tried it, was impressed that it could be done, and thought I should mention it.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 - DJ Kunio's Remix

Yes, another hacked game. I'm sure everybody played this in the arcades, and again, the game can be acquired for pennies, and it can be hacked. In this case, the lame pseudo-dance/trance tunes from MvC2 have been tweaked to contain some mainstream tracks. I don't really like the arrangement (never have been a fan of Busta Rhymes or Master P), but he also sent a tutorial on how to do it yourself. Needless to say, there will be a rockin' mix soon enough from yours truly.

Street Fighter 3: Third Strike

The latest iteration (hopefully the last) in the Street Fighter Series. A good, solid game, and very enjoyable to play. A few gaming magazines labeled this as one of the top five fighting games of all time. I don't really trust them entirely, because they thought that Samurai Showdown was better than Guilty Gear X (which didn't even make the list - bah!). Anyhoo, I actually enjoy the game. I haven't liked Street Fighter in ages, but this was pretty good. They also made a decent attempt at putting a Capoeirista in a 2D fighter. Kudos to that, but she should have been from Brazil, not Kenya.

Street Fighter Alpha 3

Ok, I lied. I've always liked the Street Fighter Alpha series. SFA3 has all the characters from Street Fighter Alpha 1 and 2, as well as every character in Street Fighter 2 (all iterations). That means Fei Long! Woo-hoo! This game alternates between insanely easy and insanely cheap every match. Probably more fun with human opponents than CPU opponents. And the Dreamcast controller doesn't help the issue one bit.

Jet Grind Radio

Cel-shaded graffitti tagging madness. You are a gang of roller-blading taggers that have been attacked on their turf. You have to tag over your rival tags and avoid a psychotic police chief and his legion of tear-gas throwing, motorcycle riding officers. All while busting out cool tricks and "phat tags" all over. The game is more fun than I thought it would be. You don't have to bother with all of the trick stuff, as the tricks are automatic. But the actual play control is not very solid, which results in a multitude of suicidal drops and failed tags.

Evolution

An RPG. I think this came out on the PSX as well. You play a little kid, the last member of his family, who is a spelunker/adventurer excavating ancient ruins to harvest the technology from them and pay off his family's debt. The adventurers have things called "cyframes." Some kind of robotic gear like a backpack or something with a big fist, blade or other kind of attachment as a weapon and tool. The system is pure dungeon-crawl. Get a mission in town from "The Society" and go recruit a person to go with you. Beat the dungeon, get paid, do it over again. It doesn't pretend to be anything else, and I think that's why I'm still playing it. It's not very captivating, but still kind of fun.

Rival Schools 2 - Project Justice

I loved the first Rival Schools (came out on Dreamcast and PSX). It was a fighter accessible to Masters and Button-Mashers alike. The sequel made it to Europe, but the demise of the Dreamcast prevented its move to the States. It's more of the same, with some extras: your players are three member teams instead of two person teams, you get a full party attack ("Party-Up Attack") in addition to the two-member "Team-Up Attack", and you can call in your third member to break up your opponent's team-up attack. New story, some new characters, and lots of Rival Schools goodness.

Powerstone 1 & 2

Powerstone is not your standard 3D fighter. As opposed to lots of moves and sidesteps, Powerstone is free-rolling. Up moves you into the screen, down moves you out, and if you jump, you jump. The only combos are hitting punch a couple times, or hitting kick a couple times. Each of you starts with a gem. Beat the tar out of your opponent to get his gem. Collect three gems (one appears during the fight) to transform into a more powerful form for a while. Beat the tar out of your opponent more. Pretty straight-forward. Lots of mayhem, as you can also pick up guns, flamethrowers, swords, axes, hammers, as well as the boxes, flower-pots, benches and signs within the level. Powerstone 2 is more of the same, but with 4 player capacity and "evolving" levels (they change while you're fighting). Kind of like Super Smash Bros. Melee for the gamecube, but with better control and more chaos.

Headhunter

I think this was released on the PS2 as well. In the not-too-distant future law enforcement has been privatized, and all it takes is a license to become a bounty-hunting expert. The firearms (and near every other weapon for that matter) do nothing more than stop nerve function. Why? It's against the law to destroy organs. BioTech is the big corporation that lobbied that law (and tons of others like it) so that everybody is an organ donor. You are the best operative for the best law-enforcement company until you are kidnapped, operated on, escape, and have no memory of your past. Starting from scratch, you take your first job and try to find out your past simultaneously. The play control is decent, but really needs some help with the viewpoints. Trying to turn around is the biggest chore ever. That's the biggest problem. The atmosphere is pretty deep. You ride through the LA of the future on a motorcycle, and traffic drives like you aren't there (just like LA if I remember correctly). All the loading transitions have some ad for BioTech ("A car accident took my legs. BioTech gave them back!") or X-Must: the sports-drink/coke product of the future. So far the game is pretty straight-forward, and I you can see the plot devices coming from a mile away. I'm expecting at least one twist though.

Yeah, that's about it. I'm having all kinds of fun with the Dreamcast. It's a real shame that it didn't survive, because it had a lot of potential. On the plus side, the fact that it died an ignominious death at the hands of Sony has allowed me to procure all of this stuff at next to nothing in cost to me.