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.
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