411 Retro Review: The Sega Dreamcast
Posted by Steve McHugh on 08.24.2006
The once mighty Sega's last stand.
Welcome back once again to Retro Review, this week's is going to be a little different as I'm going to be going through the Dreamcast and explaining its life and why it died. This is mostly because the last few weeks have been crappy (it's a very long story) and I haven't had the time I normally devote to this column so instead of missing a week I've decided to do this.
The reason why I'm going to start doing Dreamcast games as well as Saturn ones is simple. For my birthday a month ago I brought myself a present (I advise everyone to do this) and got a dreamcast and 30 games for about $50, which was a bargain. I will be mixing these games with the Saturn ones and doing reviews for both machines. Firstly it means there are a lot more games I can review and secondly it takes any pressure of finding specific games to review. Oh and lastly it's because I want to.
It's not going to be a case of reviewing a Saturn game one week and Dreamcast the next I'm just going to do a mix of both. Now that I've gotten the reasons and explanations are out of the way on with the column.
The Dreamcast is a Sixth era games console. That's right the Dreamcast is in the same era as Playstation 2, Gamecube and Xbox. So why don't you see it around anymore? Well that's what I hope this week's column is going to show.
The Dreamcast had a few features not seen before. Firstly you could go online easily and play various games or download content. Phantasy Star Online could do the first and Skies of Arcadia the second part. The memory carts could be removed to play mini games, once again used by Skies of Arcadia. You could plug up to 4 controllers into the console without the need of a multi-tap, which was also seen in the N64.
Its still a good looking machine now. As far as machines go anyway.
The Release
Firstly anyone with the idea in their head that the console was a failure from the beginning is wrong. The Dreamcast was anything but a failure for the year or so it was released before the PS2. It was released in the USA on 9/9/99 and on 14th October in Europe (the Japanese release was in Nov '98 in case you're wondering) to a lot of fanfare. In the US alone there were roughly 300,000 pre-orders and it ended up selling 500,000 in two weeks, which at the time was massively impressive not the least of which was because 250,000 of those machines were shipped in 24 hours after release.
Indeed you read that right, the Dreamcast sold 250,000 machines in 24 hours and set the best selling console of all time record (although that didn't last long). And that was just in the US. I used those figures to show that the machine was, at least in the beginning, a huge success for Sega. It had seemed that they could put the failure of the Saturn behind them and look forward to a profitable future.
It helped that the machine was launched with some very special and highly anticipated titles like Sonic Adventure, Sega Rally 2, Marvel vs. Capcom, Virtua Fighter 3tb and Soul Calibur made it one of the best launches in terms of games available ever. With no immediate competition it certainly looked like Sega would have long enough to establish itself once again.
Shame life kicked in really.
The Beginning of the End
April 1999. The PS2 was announced. It has two distinct advantages over the Dreamcast; a DVD player and backwards compatibility. The actual release of the machine was not until late October 2000 in the US but the buzz surrounding the machine was enough to make people choose to wait for a PS2 rather then pick up Sega's machine. Once the PS2 was released it got worse. It broke the all time best selling console record that was set by the Dreamcast and even with the PS2 costing about twice as much as a Dreamcast and without online play it was still the more sought after machine.
Despite the fact that the quality of Dreamcast games was vastly superior to early PS2 games the Dreamcast languished. The lack of a DVD player hurt sales as people looked towards the PS2 instead of buying both a games machines and DVD player separately. In fact people would regularly pay two or three times as much to get a PS2, the future was now looking very bleak indeed.
The Death of an Era
The very last straw for the Dreamcast came in 2000 with the announcement of both the Gamecube and Xbox. Sega couldn't compete, money wise and on 31st Jan 2001 announced the end of production of the Dreamcast. By the end of 2001 they had also announced that they would cease being involved with making Hardware. Despite this games were still produced for it until 2002, with Ikaruga being the official last swansong for the machine and even that was only released in Japan. The fact that only 10million machines were sold worldwide was not a good achievement. Compare that to the 32 million N64 machines sold or 100ish million PS1 and you get a sense of its lack of sales.
So what exactly went wrong? It all started so well and seemed to everyone that maybe Sega could do it. Well there are plenty of reasons so I'll go through them.
The Past Catches Up
Back when the megadrive was around Sega were the kings of the home console and sold vast amounts of games for their machine. They were outselling Nintendo's SNES in Europe, and doing pretty well in the US and Japan. Then they released the 32X. It was meant to increase the Megadrive's capabilities. It didn't. It was meant to provide a means with which to make epic games. Well it did a pretty good Doom conversion and that's about it. The 32X flopped badly but at the same time Sega released the Mega CD (Sega CD) this was meant to show the true power of what a CD machine could do. It actually produced some fantastic games like Sonic CD and Shining Force CD but no one cared. Primarily because it was hugely expensive and mostly produced games such as Night Trap and Road Avenger, which were all pretty much crap. It didn't so much flop badly as jump from a pier try to do a graceful dive but hit the water like a block of concrete.
Then they released the Saturn. Far from learning from past mistakes and moving on they just made new ones. They didn't release games people wanted to play for a start. Shining Force parts 2 and 3 were Japanese only, as was Radient Silvergun. Sega Europe and USA made not only bad decisions for the gaming public's enjoyment but they made decisions that would doom Sega in the long run.
When the Dreamcast was released no one wanted to go near Sega again because everyone had been burnt before. People remembered the disasters that Sega heaped on the public in the past and stayed away in droves.
The Cost of War
Also the failure of past hardware cost Sega millions of dollars. It was hoped that the dreamcast would help rescue the company but they couldn't compete with the marketing campaigns of Sony and later Nintendo and Microsoft. And at the end of the day Sega just didn't have the resources of those other companies to continue.
The EA Screw Over
When a lot of people tell you how much they hate EA this is one of the reasons they give. You see EA invested a lot of money into the Sega Saturn and they never really received as much back as they would have liked. So initially they said they would not support the Dreamcast, unless it sold 1 million units.
Well that's fair enough you might say, and indeed it is. But then the Dreamcast did the unexpected. It sold 1 million units in 90 days, which was yet another record. People thought, Well EA have to keep to their word now.' Eh no. EA decided they wouldn't bother making games for the Dreamcast after all and instead they would focus on the forthcoming PS2. Now I'm aware that EA are in the business to make money but they could have just said no in the first place, besides without Sega's support with the Megadrive (Genesis) EA probably wouldn't have made a fraction of the money they did. But I digress.
This actually ended up not being a huge problem as Sega's own sports games were actually the better games and they sold pretty well but it was still a blow to a new system. This in turn led to other developers deciding to have a wait and see philosophy such as Konami so many big name companies didn't programme for the machine.
Playstation Takes Over the World
With the enournmous success of the PS1 the similar success of its successor was almost guaranteed. And indeed the Dreamcast took a back seat once the Sony hype machine started up and once the PS2 was launched many opted to buy the more expensive but just as powerful machine. PS2 sales couldn't keep up demand but still people just decided to wait instead of buying a Dreamcast. Not even the PS2's bland launch line up deterred people.
Lack of Names
Sega have some of the most well known game series ever. Although they brought Virtua Fighter 3 and a few Sonic games to the console they never brought many of the big names that Sega are known for. There were no Shinobi or Shining Force games for a start. The latter of which was a huge blow. Shining Force games shift consoles. They are some of the most beloved games ever and many thought that after Sega's awful decision to not bring parts 2 and 3 of Shining Force 3 outside of Japan that they would do it for the Dreamcast. No such luck. It was another blow to their loyal fanbase, which was already getting smaller.
Games in Development
When the console was cancelled there were still plenty of games in production, of those about 50 or so were cancelled. Lets have a look at a few and see if they could have helped shift a few consoles for Sega. This is an abbreviated list from Wikipedia.
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings Didn't help the PS2 wasn't gonna help the DC
Baldur's Gate If the PC version then yes as it would have been like nothing on the system. If not, then maybe. Both were good games but the PC version is a classic
Black & White Maybe. There was nothing like it on the console at the time so it would have sold a few.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer It didn't sell many Xbox's so no. Good game though.
Castlevania: Resurrection Well this is an oddity as it might have done because a new Castlevania game was a big deal back then.
Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH oh sorry that's too funny.
Final Fight Revenge It was an awful game so no but 7 years ago this could have been a big deal. Until people played it anyway.
Galleon . If this had come out back then it would have been huge. Shame then that it took until 2005/6 for it to appear. Shame no one brought it too.
GunValkyrie Didn't help the Xbox sales so no but its still a great game. Evil but great.
Half-Life This would have sold consoles. Would have been awesome too. And unofficially you can get it on the console if you know where to look.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 Great game but wouldn't have sold consoles.
Max Payne Probably would have sold a few consoles. Very different to what was going on before on the console.
SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle Yes I should think so, SWAT games always sell well.
System Shock 2 Sold systems? Probably not no. Been completely fantastic. Good Lord yes.
Unreal I would say it would have helped yes as it was a big hit on the PC.
Virtua Fighter 4 Would have sold bucket loads in Japan. Done ok outside.
So that's probably only a couple of those games that would have helped sell consoles but many of those games would have sold a ton to people who already had the console. It's a shame that we'll never get to play them on a Dreamcast.
Overall
Well despite having a year head start Sega was always hampered by a past which people didn't have trust in. And despite the fantastic start to the machines life, once Sony got involved it was never going to be a fight Sega could win. And the announcement of Nintendo and Microsoft involving them in the 6th generation sealed the doom for Sega's little box that could.
It was a sad day when the Dreamcast died as not only is it a fantastic machine but it had, and still has, some of the best games of this generation. It's a machine that everyone should own as it's so cheap and it's probably in my top 3 machines ever. It's a shame that due in part to Sega's own incompetence and dreadful decision making from previous hardware that people no longer trusted the company. And that's the real reason why the Dreamcast failed. Sega failed so much in the past that it couldn't keep up.
Although officially the Dreamcast is long since been forgotten about its still selling units and Sega themselves started to sell them on their website in Japan and good second hand machines are getting harder to get as more people decide they can't part with it. So whilst its time may be over the console is still thought of fondly by many the world over.
Well there we have it. My opinion as to why the Dreamcast is no longer with us. If you have any questions or comments that please send me an e-mail.
Next week I'll be reviewing my first Dreamcast game Blue Stinger.
In the mean time go see some of the others who write for the Site.
