Refurb Weekend: The Sega Dreamcast
oldvcr.blogspot.com
oldvcr.blogspot.com
My VA0 revision console, with a date code of July 1999, had the largest battery with a Sanyo ML2430. My other two were VA1 revisions made in March 2000, and one had a Maxwell ML2032 and the other had a Panasonic ML2020. (With coin cells, the first two digits is the battery's diameter in millimeters, and the last two is the thickness in 10ths of a millimeter. So a 2032 is 20 millimeters wide, and 3.2 millimeters thick.)
Apparently, Sega of Japan planned for a US$299 price point, but Sega of America wanted to sell it at $199, so SOJ ended up doing redesigns on the internals to bring down the manufacturing cost. I guess using cheaper batteries (whatever they could get a hold of, screw consistency) was one way they did that.
What seems craziest to me of that era is that Microsoft didn't just buy Sega to enter the market and instead made a huge bet on Halo. Seamus Blackley should be better known for what they pulled off in Redmond.
However, rather than an on-system OS, the Windows CE had to be bundled on disk for each game that used it.
The Playstation Classic can run fanmade Dreamcast emulators. I'd call that effectively trivial especially when it's a team with access to Sega's source code and intellectual property doing it.
Games were also relatively big so then you have the added cost of storage for those 40 or so games you would not include.
C'mon dude. A 64GB eMMC in bulk quantities costs less than three dollars a piece.
I don't know who would want a subpar experience on a mini console when they can just run an emulator a decent 4 years old computer/laptop and have a much better experience...or just buy the console if it matters that much to them.
Why would I buy a NES Mini, or a SNES Mini when I could use this perfectly good PC?
However, they sold like hotcakes. Many people just want the thing to work, and enjoy the novelty factor.
Speaking of novelty controllers, SEGA nearly beat Wii to the motion control fad by several years. There was a fishing rod controller and a pair of maraccas that both used motion controls. they also had a prototype of a more general-purpose motion controller which strongly resembles the wii remote but unfortunately this was never released (source: https://segaretro.org/Air_NiGHTS )
If they had just made that their core control method instead of an optional gimmick that only a few games used, history could have been very different.
Instead of a single bar with two LEDs like on the Wii, there's a row of five LEDs above and below the screen. You can make them out in this video:
But the performance was outstanding in Dreamcast.
Ultimately, it was almost everything else going against the console. [2]
I think the more conventional marketing discussions are much more relevant. In an alternate universe where Sega hadn't burned the entire market with the Saturn, but simply released the Dreamcast at the same time otherwise, it may well have done much better. I'm not sure there is any way it could have "won", while I have my quibbles with some decisions in the PS2 hardware it is generally superior enough that it probably would have won anyhow, it might have been a more grinding war. (Bear in mind that part of this alternate universe is better support from the gaming companies because they weren't burned and they still had some residual good feelings about Sega remaining, so the DC would have been going in with more high-quality games in this version of reality.)
The simple truth is that six months into the Dreamcast's run in the US, before any of the next-gen competition had emerged, I could just tell it wasn't in for the long haul. The library was just too lopsided and the support from the big names, while not entirely absent, just was never there in the necessary quantity. The competition actually coming to market merely buried an already-dying console. But it's the only console I've ever purchased on release day and I didn't ever regret it. There was a lot of good and interesting stuff... there just wasn't enough.
It would have been crucial, but not enough. Sony's hype was strong. Remember the supercomputer status? The only reason the XBox stood a chance was because it had strong specs. People were even more into specs then than they are now. So in answer to the "waiting a year" question: it hurt it a lot. They really needed that year to build momentum and they didn't get it.
> Would launching with dual-stick controllers have saved it and jumpstarted the era of the console FPS early?
No, but I do think the controller needed help. The analog sticks were slippery, the triggers were positioned awkwardly, and the VMU was overengineered. Maybe the VMU costs were negligible but they seemed like a waste.
Not likely. Goldeneye showed that console gamers were perfectly happy to play with one stick, if the game was good. Halo brought in the console FPS era because it was such a good game. After all, everyone hates the original xbox controller.
Would the increased sales from using DVD have made up for the increased manufacturing cost?
Consoles are usually a loss leader. Making them more expensive to produce (by licensing DVD tech from Sony) means you're just losing more money on each sale. At least Sega makes some money on games sales. They would get nothing from DVD sales. People would have probably bought more games if more Dreamcasts were sold, but Sega's problems were way more than install base. They burned a lot of goodwill with both developers and retailers with the Saturn and 32x and had infighting between Sega Japan and Sega of America. All these were contributing to the poor library and poor sales.
How much did waiting a year to launch it outside Japan hurt it?
Hard to say how much this mattered. Great exclusive titles were being released for PSX through Christmas 2001, even past the release of the PS2. Because Sega had a tough time getting devs on board, they had a tough time getting the killer app. If you already had a PSX, and you probably did, and you weren't flush with cash, why would you buy a Dreamcast when great games like Final Fantasy VIII, let alone the PS2 were around the corner?
It was a surprisingly powerful system at the time and it took developers years to understand it well enough to take full advantage of the hardware. But the ability to have 2 CPUs run simultaneously and interact with each other allowed for A LOT of crazy optimizations that I haven't seen since.
- Radiant Silvergun the best scrolling shootem up at least I ever played (far superior to its sequel Ikaruga)
- Guardian Heroes a scrolling beatemup with dozens (houndreds?) of glorious characters to choose from.
- Nights into Dreams. You fly like a rocket, you dance, you liberate weird little tamagochi which you take on your VMU. By Sonic Team.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga. RPG on a dragon. Beautiful.
- Grandia. Ok this I never played as it wasn't translated, but its reputation preceeds it.
- Fighters Megamix. Graphics werent great but it brought together all of Sega's signature characters (including Sonic) into a Virtua Fighter ring. Madness.
- Burning Rangers. Meca Firefighting, by Sonic Team.
After the Saturn, the Dreamcast was a disappointment, even though it was great. And after the Dreamcast, I stopped playing games. Nothing like those old days.
What a shame for videogames that Sonic Team was, I assume, disbanded along with the Dreamcast?
I'm not
He’s recently ended up in legal trouble after the shitshow that was Balan Wonderworld. Oh; how the mighty have fallen. :(
We also wrote a demo with scroller and star field on the VMU and called us VirtuaMunstaz.
It’s amazing that most of the old Dreamcast online services are still available by hacks and enthusiasts
There’s also servers for the GameCube and Xbox versions of PSO too.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasy_Star_Online#Concept
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1353230/Bomb_Rush_Cyberfu...
But lets not forget Quake III Arena, which is "considered one of the best PC-to-console ports of its time thanks to its smooth frame rate and online play".
Anyone know what was happening under the hood? Why did the machine screech? I assume it was async loading a transition to the battle map, but why the screech?