Himuro said:
I didn't know DC came out that early in Japan..wtf
Yeah, November 1998 was the release of the DC in Japan. I can still remember the import prices going over $1,000 at launch, too. The store I used to work at got one unit in just for display; my boss paid $1,200 for it.
The only game worth getting at launch was Virtua Fighter 3tb, a game that was almost two years old at that point, so while the hardware was so impressive, the game still seemed so old at the time. The first real impressive game on the system was Sonic Adventure, which came out in December 1998. The early DC adaptors we had would buy everything, even garbage like Pen Pen Tricelon and July (text-based game with 2D still pictures. There were guys buying the game anyway despite not knowing a lick of Japanese). There was even this one guy that would come in and constantly bug me about the VMU (that he had purchased elsewhere) because he didn't have a DC and wanted to download games to it.
The system's releases seemed few and far between up until around the end of 1999, when the DC launched in the States. Before that, I remember the first "big" game being Powerstone (Feb '99 IIRC), which most people (note- I am talking about all the customers I had) grew bored of after a few weeks. Marvel Vs. Capcom came out in April 1999 IIRC, and that was the first game to really start selling import systems.
But it was Soul Calibur, released in summer 1999, that had people in awe of the Dreamcast. I don't remember anything else being on display in our store DC until the U.S. launch in September. After that, Street Fighter III W Impact was the next hot import game, released at the end of '99. The game was a little hard to get that year, leading to a lot of disappointed customers. I remember not caring about the U.S. game selection until Dead Or Alive 2 came out; I bought an American system just to play that...couldn't believe the U.S. got it first, although the Japanese version had extra stages, outfits, Bayman, and story segments added when it released several months later.
I worked at the same game store from summer 1996 to the summer of this year. Out of all the system releases, I'd say the Dreamcast was the biggest import seller, although the N64 was definitely far more popular and had people more excited.
I loved the DC and would love to see some of my favorite titles like Outtrigger and Jet Set Radio ported to newer systems. I'd love to see Sega start making Sega Ages games for the PS2 featuring DC titles, as well as PSP ports.