Matt’s Rantbox #2: Dreamcast

Oh Sega, what happened to you? Remember the console war glory days? Remember when you used to have great franchises and great games? Where did you go wrong? Oh, wait. But I’ll give you one thing: the Dreamcast is where you got it right.

I have long been an avid supporter of the Sega Dreamcast (even if I don’t actually own one) because it's a console well ahead of its time. The Dreamcast had graphics that still hold up to this day, a great selection of games, and even internet capabilities. So why isn’t Sega in the home console market anymore, you ask? Three letters: DVD.

Yes, the Dreamcast had already been around for a while when word began to surface of the Playstation 2. Of course, the hype was all there was for the year between 1999 and 2000, when the PS2 finally came out. Okay, okay, so maybe the PS2 also had name brand recognition and backward compatibility in addition to its built-in DVD player. The point here, though, is that Sony announced their follow-up to the Playstation a year before its actual release.

So what did people do? Why, they waited of course. Waited and waited, to see which console would, in the long run, be better. Of course, this didn’t help Sega’s sales, and it helped even less once the Playstation 2 came out. After all, if you wait that long for a console to come out, and you might as well buy it. By the time the Xbox and the Gamecube arrived in the marketplace, Sega had called it quits.

Now, I’m not saying that the PS2 isn’t a fine console, I think that some of the best games to ever come out were released for the PS2. But then again, you have to look at the game selection on the Dreamcast. Even in the short amount of time that games were being developed for the console, arguably some of the  greatest games were released for the system.

But that’s not what really gets me excited about the Dreamcast. The reason I love the Dreamcast so much, is the level of commitment that fans have put into this simple system, even nine years after its demise. Even to this day, you can still find people trying to  play online. Not only do you have a great level of dedication, but you have the humble homebrew community. Plenty of people are still doing their damndest to make the Dreamcast relevant, by making their own games for it.

So, what exactly am I getting at here, with all these links and words and whatnot? I’m simply trying to express my gratitude to the Dreamcast as a console. Sure it may not have had the best controller, and the games are starting to look a little outdated (of course, I still play the Nintendo 64 just fine) but really, it's what’s inside that counts. And with the Dreamcast, what’s inside, is tons of  pirated games, but you didn’t hear it from me.