Top 15 Things Forgotten About the Dreamcast, Part One
I know I am nearly a month late on this one, but with good reason! It was awesome to see so much love and reminiscing of the Dreamcast’s short, yet mighty run on its 10 year anniversary last month. I too am a mammoth Dreamcast fan when it first launched; I had my first job for a few months when the Dreamcast came out and rushed to the stores to blow my expendable income to make the Dreamcast the first of many platforms I bought on launch.
However, I have seen a lot of identical praise recycled across the many nostalgic Dreamcast anniversary articles I have consumed across the Internet, so let’s try something a little different. Let’s make a list about the Dreamcast, not just any top games or reasons to own a Dreamcast list, this baby’s going to stick out so without further ado I present….
Top 15 Things You May Have Forgotten About the Dreamcast (Part 1)
Why 15 and not the customary 10? That is because I am too damn picky and would clobber myself with a Dreamcast Mouse if I left the extra five off the list. Most of these may not be the immediate reasons that came to mind why you cherished your Dreamcast as much as me, but they were the icing on an already delicious cake that made the Dreamcast the best little system that couldn’t.
15) The Fishing Controller
When the Dreamcast launched the only game I bought was The House of the Dead 2. I ravaged across all the stores in town disappointed not to find a light gun for sale on launch (and none would be for another two to three months), but you know what accessory was for sale right off the bat? The Sega Fishing Controller! That’s right, this is the only console to come out with a controller designed for the ultimate gamesmen sport, fishing! It does not matter there were only four fishing games on the Dreamcast, Sega had you covered! Or if you had a lot of times on your had, you could come up with other fascinating ways of using the Fishing Controller, such as Wii-esque motion controlled fighting for Soul Calibur like this fellow demonstrates.
14) Sega Sports Commentary
After owning The House of the Dead 2 for a few weeks and refusing to play it without a light gun, I made another journey out to Software Etc. to chance a new game. Pissed that EA refused to release Madden (or any of its other games for that matter) on Dreamcast and craving a football fix, I picked up NFL 2K. I was preparing for disappointment on this new football franchise, but instead was met with the best videogame football experience at that time. Besides being an absolute thrill to play, NFL 2K had the best sports commentary of any game out there!
Instead of overpaying broadcast announcers to phone in a miniscule amount of robotic commentary like every other sports game before it, Sega hired voice actors that gave a damn about the sport and spoke with unheard of amounts of feeling with every play call. This resulted in hundreds, if not thousands of lines of unique commentary that made every touchdown and first down that more meaningful. The announcers I have come to known as Dan Stevens and Peter ‘O Keefe, are the best videogame announce team bar none! I don’t care how many times Keefe shouts “You Can’t Coach That” in a game, that shit never got old! It is worth noting Sega did an equally admirable job with their commentary in the NBA 2K line, which continues to outshine NBA Live every year to this day
13) WWF Royal Rumble
Now this is the only item on this list that will have the dubious honor of being the only thing I really want to wipe out of my memory from the Dreamcast and best remain forgotten. What, Gruel hates a wrestling game, how is that possible? WWF Royal Rumble seemed like the ultimate wrestling game at the time because it was a collaborative development effort from two acclaimed wrestling game developers from Japan (Yukes and Sega). Unfortunately, these guys decided that a very bare bones wrestling game with only two modes of play and an extremely limited roster would be the best game to unleash on the American audience. I should have ignored EGM’s disastrous review as this remains the only game I have attempted to return to the store out of hatred for the game itself.
12) The Typing of the Dead
The reputation for this game has grown over the years, and I am still surprised to see an M-rated game playable with only the Dreamcast Keyboard made it out for release in the Dreamcast’s final year. I was surprised to find an arcade cabinet of The Typing of the Dead one day, and after playing….err typing out my zombie kills I immediately fell for this The House of the Dead 2 turned typing instructor kill fest. Even though it had a limited release, it can still be found for reasonable prices online, so if you own a Dreamcast Keyboard go out and pick up this game and slaughter up some zombies while improving your home row skills at the same time.
11) All Those 2001/2002 Cancelled Dreamcast Games
Within months of Sega making official the press release from hell on January 31, 2001 that it would be halting Dreamcast production, many developers announced the cancellation of their Dreamcast games and/or started porting them over to the PS2/Xbox/GCN. Here is a sampling of some games that were originally slated for the Dreamcast (and most came out for Dreamcast in foreign markets), but instead wound up canned all together or on other platforms – Headhunter, Rez, Shenmue II, Ikaruga, Half-Life, Rent-a-Hero & Propeller Arena. That last game was slated to come out toward the end of 2001, but then 9/11 happened, and all of a sudden a game about airplanes blowing each other up did not seem like so hot of an idea.
10) Last Hurrah for Light Gun Games
To be fair, the Light Gun genre is experiencing a renaissance of sorts thanks to the Wii. However, as much as I liked Namco’s Time Crisis line, that GunCon of Namco’s is a bit different than the old-school point-and-shoot light gun. Until Wii’s latest blitz of Gun games, the Dreamcast was the last place to go to get your kicks for Light Gun games. There were only five games that supported the peripheral, and Sega did not even release their official model in America because of the media hooplah surrounding the then-recent Columbine shootings. I owned all five of them, and most were a pretty good swan song for the genre. Ok, one of the games only had light gun support for a throwaway minigame, and Death Crimson OX was admittedly and inferior experience, but the other three more than made up for it. The House of the Dead 2 still remains my favorite light gun of all time. Confidential Mission is by Sega also and is just as fun as it is essentially House of the Dead with a James Bond theme. Finally there is the remake of the excellent Virtua Cop 2 off the Sega Smash Pack, complete with a brand new graphical upgrade!
That wraps up part one of The Top 15 Things You May Have Forgotten About the Dreamcast. Come back soon for the next five!
That should have read...
Personally I always preferred the Mario Super Show voice to Charles...
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Sega Bass fishing with that controller was amazingly fun. I haven’t played a fishing game since that could touch it!
October 4th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I have that gun controller – I bought it in Japan.
It’s a pain in the ass to use because you can’t just point and shoot. You actually have to *use the D-pad* on the back of the gun and shoot.
Horrendous.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
The Mad Catz controller was way better, surprisingly.