THE GOOD: - Excellent graphics
- Very small
- Internal power supply
- Large library of games
- Great controllers
- Lots of accessories
- Cheap to buy today
- Plentiful amounts on places like eBay
THE BAD:
- Games can be hard to find, other than online
- Cables can be very expensive from people who know what they are selling
SUMMARY:
The Sega Dreamcast. For some people, this name doesn't really mean anything. A worthless ivory box with no appeal. I have an Xbox 360 or a PS3. I don't care.
But for retro gamers, arcade lovers, collectors and people who played it back in the day, this console is one of the many bright glowing souls of Sega.
The console is very small, and while the PC-Engine is the smallest console ever, the console is much smaller than a PS2 and is around the same size as a MegaDrive mark 2. And whilst a lot of Dreamcasts may have yellowed, it doesn't affect gameplay, and you'll probably be lucky enough just to find one on sale that is a nice white color. You can also buy a Japanese import, like the rare Hello Kitty version, or you can pick up the US/UK black Sega Sports version.
While the USA got their Dreamcasts in stores on the 9th September, 1999, Europe got the Dreamcast on October 14th on the same year.
If you're an old school arcade fan, then you would really be better off buying a Sega Saturn, but if you're a collector as well, then the Dreamcast had some awesome arcade ports and Dreamcast or NAOMI exclusives on it.
Games such as Sega Rally 2 are great arcade driving games. Scrolling arcade games like GigaWing and Mars Matrix were great fun, and looked like arcade games.
It has some great shooters, such as Charge N Blast.
Some awesome fighters were ported to the Dreamcast, such as Soul Calibur and Blue Stinger.
And the grand finale of the games - Shenmue and Shenmue two. In a completely different league to any other graphics and gameplay, Shenmue took PlayStation on every way, lit it on fire, then threw it out of the window. Though the Dreamcast was never as popular as the PS2.
Sonic Adventure was bundled with some Dreamcasts, and is great fun also. See my review on that game also (and if it's not there, it'll be coming hopefully, I'm sorry!)
The Dreamcast controller is really something of a revolution. It had analog triggers, used for driving games, something the PS2 and PSX never had, they had digital buttons.
The analog thumbstick is a very good one, and people may complain it's slippery, but it's not if you don't jerk it around. The controller works very well for any sort of game you want to play with it, it's very good. The design of the controller is very nice, and I quote Mark of Classic Game Room "it looks like a speedboat". Good or bad? Well, I think the controller is excellent. They even put a little curve i the back so you could place the wire in it so it would come out of the top of the controller, rather than the bottom.
And I think the controller is one of the comfiest of controllers out there, it really fits hands very well.
Now, for us collectors. A Dreamcast is relatively cheap to buy today, especially at a car boot sale/yard sale. I actually found one with 8 games and two controllers for £5 (around $6). There are also a lot of rare designs, and if you own some of these, especially in mint condition and with a box, inlays and other good stuff, you're sure to be up there.
So if you're a classic gamer, pick up a Dreamcast today. The games are excellent, cheap and relatively easy to find today. You'll be able to get them from eBay and Amazon really cheap, and also at yard sales/car boot sales, and even game shops are extremely inexpensive.
My top ten Dreamcast games are:
10: Sonic Adventure
9: Sega Rally 2
8: Charge N Blast
7: Worms World Party
6: Mars Matrix
5: Seaman
4: Bangai-O
3: Shenmue 2
2: Soul Calibur
1: GigaWing
There are a few third party accessories for the console, including clear blue controllers.
The first party accessories were the best. You could, and still can, buy a Dreamcast broadband adapter (there is a dial up modem built in to the Dreamcast, the first to ever do this, which means you could go on online gaming before it was mainstream), an excellent arcade stick, a great steering wheel and pedals combination, an extremely good looking lightgun, a Visual Memory Card, or VMU (this slotted in to one of the ports on top of the Dreamcast controller, and acted as a memory card and put little pictures and animations on the VMU screen whilst playing a game. The VMU can also work out of the controller, providing you have working batteries. Although, every time you turned off the console, the VMU would stay on and you'd have to press sleep, or it will run out of batteries. This is annoying because if it's out of batteries, it makes a loud, horrible beep when you turn on your Dreamcast. The VMU's data can be accessed on the console's dashboard or out of the unit. You could also play minigames on the VMU).
You can also buy the rumble pack, which sat behind the VMU. This provided vibration feedback, although the DualShock controllers for the PlayStations had vibration built in.
All in all, the Dreamcast is one excellent little consoles. If you're a collector especially, or one of the other categories I listed earlier on, you have to buy a Dreamcast.
They're cheap to buy, but the games are awesome. Seriously, buy one of these. I did, and I never looked back.
Thanks for reading.
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