Top 15 Things Forgotten About the Dreamcast, Part Two
Thanks for joining me in part two of the Top 15 Things You May Have Forgotten About the Dreamcast countdown. Just a reminder, this list is made up of things that may have been glanced over and not paid all that much attention to why the Dreamcast was as awesome as it is remembered. Additionally, some of these items are just some of my own personal favorite memories of the Dreamcast that I presume will be greeted with a few raised eyebrows. If you got a favorite oddball Dreamcast game and feel it needs a shoutout, don’t be shy and comment away at the bottom of this article!
9) Bleem!
Remember Bleem? The company that was advertising that through emulation they were going to be making every PSone game playable on the Dreamcast, with improved graphics and loading times? Bleem boasted they were going to do this by inserting a boot disc into the Dreamcast followed by your desired PSone game of choice. Seemed like an interesting proposition, considering the soon to launch PS2 was going to feature backwards compatibility with the PSone catalog. Unfortunately everything was not meant to be. Besides the obvious legal issues of a third party bringing PSone emulation to the Dreamcast, Bleem ran into many development problems (just how would they get dual shock games to work on the Dreamcast’s one-thumbstick controller?). The end result of what Bleem released was a fraction of what they promised. Three separate Bleem packs were released, with each one operating as a boot disc for one of three PSone games: Tekken 3, Metal Gear Solid, and Gran Turismo 2.
8: Tim Kitzrow Goes Crazy
Ever try to throw your Dreamcast games into a CD player? Sometimes pieces of a game’s soundtrack would play, but usually there was only some form of “Please insert this disc in a Dreamcast” message that would greet your CD player. Midway got a little creative with NFL Blitz 2000, where the track features a two to three minute clip of random commentary from in game announcer Tim Kitzrow. Nothing out of the ordinary until the final moments of the track where Kitzrow starts cursing like a sailor for no apparent reason; the expletives are bleeped out, but one could only imagine the harassment Midway would get from the NFL if the sudden foul-mouthed Kitzrow managed to work these mysterious play calls into the in-game commentary.
7) VMU Beep
You cannot call yourself a Dreamcast fan if you have no idea what I mean by the VMU beep. It is almost like a right of passage to any Dreamcast owner. The VMUs Sega introduced were unique contraptions, which were a hybrid of a memory card and a mini GameBoy of sorts so you could play mini-games on the go. Too bad not that many games took advantage of the VMU, mostly in part because of the VMUs horrible battery life. Within a couple of months of purchasing a new VMU, the battery would die. Not that it would matter (drained batteries did not delete save files thank goodness!) because I have no recollection of playing any of the few VMU games that came out. Unfortunately, this had a unique side effect when booting up the Dreamcast every time with a drained out VMU battery resulted in a short, excruciating loud beep. After awhile, just like crazy noisy Dreamcast processor, I got use to it, and if I did not hear that ear popping beep, it would be cause for concern to search all over my room to see where I misplaced the damn thing.
6) Big Car Hunter
Recall on the previous installment of this list where I mentioned one game took advantage of the Dreamcast light gun with only with a throwaway mini-game? That game was Demolition Racer: No Exit from Infogrames (now known as Atari). It seems a lot of the Robot Panic community has the shmup as their favorite niche genre, well mine is the demo-derby racer. Usually a handful of these manage to release each console lifecycle, and Demolition Racer: No Exit was one of the best of the bunch. A lot of the development team came from the popular Destruction Derby games on PSone, and it shows as this is a fully featured demo-derby racer.
There were several leagues of career mode to complete, with each one unlocking some bizarre style of mini-game like demo-derby soccer, pong and even a demo-derby light gun game titled “Big Car Hunter.” You were placed in an arena, with demo-derby cars lunging at you like mindless zombies in The House of the Dead. It was as crazy as it sounded, but any game that made use of a light gun is a winner in my book, and it just happened to be one of my favorite demo-derby racing games to boot.
5) Capcom’s Hard-On for the Dreamcast
It is hard to ignore all the great, innovative and unique games Sega released for the Dreamcast in its all-too-short lifespan. We would be remiss however if we forgot there was one company that at least equaled, if not surpassed Sega in terms of quantity and quality, and that was Capcom. I remember going to look at Dreamcast games on numerous occasions and counting more Capcom games for sale than Sega. Plus lots of them were so damn good, that it was only too easy to overlook the others. There were the favorites like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Capcom vs. SNK, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, and Power Stone 2, but Capcom released many other games that went right under the radar such as Mars Matrix, Project Justice, GigaWing 1&2 and many more! Capcom also did not want the aforementioned Bleem cashing in on their success so they went out of their way to re-release Street Fighter Alpha III, Resident Evil 2+3 and Dino Crisis on the Dreamcast too. If only more companies supported the Dreamcast like Capcom, the Dreamcast would have easily been around much longer than it was.
4) Official Dreamcast Magazine
For whatever console, there seems to be a certain general trait that is relative to the graphics on most of said console’s game library. The N64 fuzziness is a prime example, or the weird wall warping on PSone games. The thing about most Dreamcast games was that they exploded with a variety of bright and vibrant colors. Think of games like Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio and Space Channel 5 to name a few. The Official Dreamcast Magazine ran with that as their overall art theme too. Its all but too short 12 issue run featured bright, colorful artwork that jumped out at me and was a perfect replication of the general art style of most Dreamcast games. It was also one of the first video game magazines that started the oversized format craze, which yielded bigger screenshots and more content on each page. I still recall some of my favorite articles from the magazine like tricking out your own death skull maracas for Samba De Amigo and ranking the entire catalog of released Dreamcast games top to bottom in its very last issue.
3) Dreamcast Web Browser
Some of you may be thinking the Wii and PS3 were some of the first game platforms to let you surf the web, if that is the case then you missed out on surfing the web with a Dreamcast and its 56k modem of glory!!! If you thought browsing the Internet was a bit too clunky on the Wii or PS3, the Dreamcast brought it to an all new low. Pages took forever to load, but Sega still introduced frequent web browser updates for the browser during the entire Dreamcast lifespan, with the last update introducing some much need broadband adaptor support. The only good thing that came out of the Dreamcast Web Browser was the capability to download Dreamcast saves directly to the VMU! For games that did not have codes (remember those?), it made unlocking all the characters for fighting games or courses and cars for racers far more convenient.
2) Import Friendly!
For people that wanted their import fix, the Dreamcast had a very easy solution. Forget risking the condition of your console with pricy mod chips and soldering kits, all the Dreamcast needed was an extremely affordable boot disc, and you were off to the races! Boot discs were also responsible for making it incredibly easy to run pirated games on the Dreamcast, and were part of the blame for its rapid decline in sales, but let’s just focus on how awesome it made running import games for the time being. The Dreamcast was the first and only system I have ever imported a game for, two games as a matter of fact! The first game was one of the best 2D wrestling games of all time in FirePro Wrestling D, and the other well, let’s just go to my #1 pick…
1) Forklift Races!
Love it or hate it (there does not appear to be a middle ground), Shenmue was one of the biggest things to happen to the Dreamcast. I was a huge Ryo Hazuki fanboy, and somehow was captivated by the part real life simulator/part Virtua Fighter/part avenge father’s death masterpiece! Shenmue had it all from a record amount of voice acting and storytelling, to kicking back and partaking in classic Sega arcade games and most importantly landing a job as a forklift operator. And what better way to start every work day with a forklift race!
Shenmue was responsible for popularizing another love ‘em or hate ‘em game mechanic, the Quick Time Event (QTE), or as some gaming press outlets refer to them now as “Contextual” button presses. I was a fan of the QTE controls as it was a fresh gameplay mechanic at the time, and it was forgiving enough to let a few slip-ups go by before making you restart the entire sequence all over again. I do find it a little alarming that I started noticing a few recent articles omitting Shenmue and crediting God of War as the godfather of the QTE.
As I alluded to in my #2 pick, Shenmue led to me importing my first ever game. I still have the painful shock of remembering Sega canceling the North American version of Shenmue II just shy of a month before its release date so it could delay it a year and port it over to Xbox! I was livid, but I was not to be denied of part two of Ryo Hazuki’s journey! I turned to importing the European Dreamcast release, and was still able to pick up on Ryo’s quest right where it left off. Of course, I still bought the Xbox release anyways in support of the franchise, only to see Sega abandon the Shenmue series after the sequel’s lackluster sales.
It is worth noting that Sega just recently announced Ryo Hazuki will be returning, but not in a traditional Shenmue game. Istead Ryo will be a playable character in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, complete with his trademark motorcycle and #5 forklift…better than nothing I guess.
That concludes the Top 15 Things You May Have Forgotten About the Dreamcast list. Got your own favorite little tidbit about the Dreamcast you want to share? Was KISS Psycho Circus really a good game? Then please enlighten us and comment away below!
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Tags: bleem, blitz, capcom, Dreamcast, midway, sega, shenmue, vmu
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Great list.
I want to play Cannon Spike
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
The Official Dreamcast Magazine was incredible; my favorite “official” mag ever. I loved the paper it was printed on and the style of the magazine matched the Dreamcast and its games perfectly. I wish I hadn’t chucked those issues out as I’d love to go back and page through them.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I miss my Dreamcast.