A research paper on the Dreamcast I did.

For the last essay thing for English this year was to do a research paper. The subject came to me damn-near immediately - the Dreamcast. I got a 198 out of 200 on this thing, so I made a good call :P. If you want to read it, it'll be further down, and the works cited page is included just for completion's sake.

DREAMCAST RESEARCH PAPER

The Dreamcast is a wonderful system, and the final attempt by Sega to gain power on the console market. I think if you search hard enough, you could learn something about this wonder, or you could just continue to read. If you keep reading, you can see the interesting history behind Sega, the specs of the system, the history of the system itself, ,the reasons it failed, it’s wide library of games, and what’s going on with it TODAY!

First, let’s start off with the history of the gaming company that developed the Dreamcast – Sega. If you were a gamer in the mid – eighties, early – nineties, you would have known about the competition between Nintendo and Sega. Nintendo brought back the popularity of Video Games with the invention of the Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the NES. Sega wanted in on the action, so they created the Sega Master System. Sega did this whenever Nintendo made a new system, for example – when Nintendo made the Super Nintendo – or the SNES – that’s when Sega released the Genesis. Sega was at the top of their game with 2 systems with a ton of great games for gamers of all styles. However, when they released the failed add-ons for the Genesis – the Sega CD and the Sega 32X – that’s when Sega started to lose their credibility. Nobody really liked the Sega CD because it was mostly terrible FMV games and people didn’t like the Sega 32X simply because it was released mere months before the Sega Saturn was released and only had about 42 games. Speaking of the Saturn, it DID have a nice little library of excellent games, but it wasn’t very well known, and was overshadowed by the Sony Playstation and the Nintendo 64. However, this is around the time when the Sega Dreamcast came out.

Now, the Sega Dreamcast was a powerful little system. It was the first video game console with 128 bit graphics – twice as powerful as the other 64 bit systems.(1) It was also the very first console to actually be able to go online and play games with other people across the globe. Earlier consoles have tried this, but they never went through with it.(2) The controller was able to hold the memory cards for the system. Speaking of which, the VMU (Virtual Memory Unit) memory cards are a very unique idea and is implemented very well. It’s one part memory card and one part portable game system. See, with games such as Power stone, you can unlock special mini-games that you can put onto your VMU and you can play it on the subway or on a long car ride or something, and if you get a certain score you can unlock special features in the main game. The VMU comes in several colors, and even special edition colors, same with the Dreamcast itself. The console also had four control ports for party games such as Power Stone 2 or Gauntlet Legends.

Let’s get into the history of this wonderful console. It started off rather poorly in Japan when it was first released in November 1998.(3) It only had three games, with Virtua Fighter 3TB being the only good one. Sega acted smart and waited another year, releasing it November in 1999. It was also a rather successful release with an incredible starting line up of games – Sonic Adventure, The House Of The Dead 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Blue Stinger, Power Stone, and – one of the greatest games ever – Soul Caliber. It started with an awesome line up and it came out just around Christmas season, so it was the perfect time. However, sadly, the Dreamcast was discontinued in the year 2001, with the GD-ROM technology that the games use being discontinued in the year 2005. The Dreamcast may be gone, but not forgotten!

Well, the Dreamcast had a good run, but it eventually died out, as do all consoles eventually. One of the major reasons for its death was the Sony Playstation 2. It came out only a year later, and the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube a year after, means that the system came out either too late or too early. Another reason was the fact that the PS2 could also play DVD’s, while the Dreamcast could not. Another reason would be the non existent copy protection – anybody could go online, download a dreamcast game they wanted, and burn it on a blank CD – AND IT WOULD WORK PERFECTLY! Finally, it didn’t rack up in sales like it should have, due to Sega’s last three failed consoles. I swear, if it wasn’t for the PS2, Sega would be ruling the world right now like the PS2 did.

On a much lighter subject, the Dreamcast had quite a nice variety of games. Liked RPG’s? Well, there wasn’t much, but there was the Evolution series and one of my personal favorites – when it got ported to Gamecube, though – is Skies of Arcadia. Who doesn’t like the idea of being captain of a pirate crew on a ship that could fly? For fighting game fans, we had a huge selection – from 2-D games such as Capcom VS. SNK 2 and Marvel VS. Capcom 2 to 3-D incredibleness such as Virtua Fighter 3TB and Soul Caliber – which many people say is their favorite game ever. Sega also has a small, but interesting set of peripherals for certain games. If you managed to get your hands on a Light Gun, you could have a better time with the arcade Light Gun shooters… all two of them released in America – Confidential Mission and The House of the Dead 2. Love bass fishing? Then pick up Sega’s fishing rod controller! It not only makes the whole fishing experience cooler and more realistic, it also works for some other games if you’re willing to try. The only other three peripherals I can think of are the Maracas for Samba De Amigo, the Microphone you put in the controller’s second VMU slot used only for the game Seaman, and the Dreamcast keyboard used in games such as Phantasy Star Online, Quake 3 Arena, and Unreal Tournament. All together, there were about two hundred and fifty games released on the Dreamcast in America.(1) Impressive, isn’t it?

Now, you may not know this, but the Dreamcast is, in reality, still alive and kicking! As a matter of fact, the good folks over at the Dreamcast Junkyard on blogspot call it the “undead console”, and I agree! First, there were still official games for Dreamcast being released once a year in Japan… until Sega discontinued the GD-ROM technology. However, due to the copy protection the console has tons of homebrew out there – to ports of games like Doom and Quake to original games to Beats Of Rage mods*. I myself have downloaded QUITE a bit of homebrew in the past month or two and burned them to a disc and I’m impressed by what the community could do. Speaking of which, while the GD-ROM technology has been cancelled, there is a company called Red Spot Games who are still making independent games for the system burned on regular blank CD’s. Two years ago, they made a shoot-em-up called Last Hope, and last they year, they released Wind And Water: Puzzle Battles, which is obviously a puzzle game. (3) There is also a company name Hucast that have been making another shoot-em-up for about two years now called DUX. (4) Now you can see why the term “Undead Console” is so fitting for the system.

Now, I hope you have learned a lot about Sega’s final trek into consoles – this was their last one and now they’re just game developers. However, the community is keeping this system alive! You have learned everything I have learned about this wonderful system. Now, if you go to your neighborhood game store – not Gamestop or anything like that, something small – chances are you could find a Dreamcast there for about $20 like my friend did, or you could go on Ebay. Either way, I suggest you do something and pick up this piece of gaming history today! Thank you for reading and have a great day or night.

* = Beats of Rage is a homebrew re-creation of the first Streets Of Rage game. The creator also released the source code so that anybody could make take it and make an entirely new game with the same engine. There are tons of them online, and a lot of them are modified in order to be burned to a disc and played on the Dreamcast. Games include – Ed, Edd, N’ Eddy: Nightmare On Ed Street, Beats Of Rage Delux, and Splatterhouse Trilogy.

Works Cited - Had to dumb down some of the links, so i made them school-friendly :P

(1)= http://www.cyberiapc.com/vgg/sega_dreamcast.htm This is where I got the Specs for the system and where I learned that “250 games were released in the US, 150 in Japan and 26 were exclusively released in Europe.”

(2)= I found this fact out about a year ago in an old issue of Game Informer.

(3)= http://the-dreamcast-junkyard.blogspot.com/2008/11/happy-10th-birthday-dreamcast.html They DO curse there, so I’ll just put it here censored.

“Admittedly they probably should have released it a bit later as the games available on day one weren't exactly all too exciting: they got Virtua Fighter 3tb (early versions of this game had some nasty bugs), Godzilla Generations (bad), July (bad), an d PenPen (not bad, but not a system seller). That's it.”

He DOES say the S word instead of bad, and I mean the BAD S word… but you can read it if you want. It’s actually a really interesting site involving the Dreamcast. They also don’t curse much, if I remember.

For the second time (3) comes up, here’s the passage.

“Still, while the Dreamcast wasn't quite so hot in Japan as it was for a short while over here, there has been a small hardcore gamers market for it for many years after its supposed shelf-death. Last year we saw two final retail releases in the form of Trigger Heart Exelica and Karous, and we also saw the debut for German-based indie publisher Redspotgames, who released Last Hope last year and has just released Wind and Water Puzzle Battles, just in time for this anniversary.”

Keep in mind, this post was on Wednesday, November 26, 2008

(4) = http://the-dreamcast-junkyard.blogspot.com/2008/12/lame-dux.html Um, the last paragraph and the two lines after that have a lot of curses, but here’s a blog post about Dux.