Support NeoGAF

[Romulus]

Not to say it didn't have some good looking games or it was weak, but I feel like the Dreamcast's technical specs were mostly a product of the timing of its launch and more developer friendly design. It came out during strange combo: a time when 3D processors were moving by leaps and bounds and the only close competition or reference anyone had was the aging N64, which was a memory starved piece of hardware. Not to mention, the N64 was ultra-difficult to develop games and the Dreamcast wasn't. So, the N64 offered nothing in terms of competition at all.

Add to that, the PS2 was the next console after the Dreamcast, and was considered one of the most difficult consoles to develop for of all time.

In summary, I felt like the Dreamcast was in a great spot to show off its hardware mostly because it had no competition and it was easy to develop for. They sprang a "next gen" console early. It didn't work out for them, but it seems people think it was some anomaly powerhouse system, which imo it wasn't and that's more a product of its launch timing. But the Dreamcast wasn't weak either, and it also had some interesting ideas and forward-thinking.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

I think it was, that's why I bought one. I played Ferrari 355 Challenge in HMV and just knew......I HAD to have one.

 

[-Arcadia-]

In any case, those two years of beautiful visuals and fantastic games, were glorious.

It might have been a half step to the experiences the PS2, GC, and Xbox would eventually provide, but it was a wonderful one, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

 

[Romulus]

In any case, those two years of beautiful visuals and fantastic games, were glorious.

It might have been a half step to the experiences the PS2, GC, and Xbox would eventually provide, but it was a wonderful one, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

I really enjoy the vibrance too of Dreamcast games.

 

[RetroAV]

It was stronger than Model 3...at home...for $199! That was enough for me.

 

[Tesseract]

yeah, it was the real deal

would remind people that quake 3 came out december 2, 1999 (what a glorious day)

powerstone, soul calibur, sonic adventure, expendable, blue stinger (if you could run the flubbed release code), soul reaver, hydro thunder, house of the dead 2, nfl2k

these games looked fucking nuts at release

 

[Max_Po]

For a home console to complete with and stay active as many years as PS1 (yes 1) it was NOT.

its a beautiful console. I make Custom Dreamcast Consoles as a hobby with HDMI mod. maybe I will post my collection some time in future.

 

[RetroAV]

For a home console to complete with and stay active as many years as PS1 (yes 1) it was NOT.

Power had nothing to do with the Dreamcast's lifespan. They ran out of money, period.

 

[Hawk269]

Personally speaking, I think it was the BIGGEST jump from a previous generation. The textures alone were night and day between prior generation and the Dreamcast. To this day, it is still one of the best consoles with an incredible lineup of games

 

[Whitesnake]

It was absolutely an in-between console.

It was leaps and bounds ahead of the N64 and the PSX. I particularly think of the many arcade fighting games that had ports to both Playstation and Dreamcast, where the Dreamcast version always came out on top and was usually much more accurate to the arcade original.

But then the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox all outperformed it. Still, I don’t think it was so far behind that it couldn’t have been a worthy competitor in the 6th generation. If everything else has gone smoothly with the Dreamcast, I think it would’ve put up a decent fight.

Of course, everything did not go smoothly.

 

[Tesseract]

it was def behind the cube and xbox, not terribly behind the ps2

either way, i regret nothing

 

[Vawn]

Dreamcast never stood a chance. With how quickly Sega moved from Genesis to Sega CD to 32X to Saturn to Dreamcast, customers had very little faith in the investment.

 

[nkarafo]

It was a very powerful machine but in 1999 a Voodoo 3 card would still smoke it.

However, back in the day, Japanese developers were still producing more graceful looking games VS the janky stuff you would get from the west. So maybe PC had a better looking Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 that also run faster but the Dreamcast had an amazing looking Sould Calibur that looked and moved as gracefully as silk.

 

[nkarafo]

It was stronger than Model 3...at home...for $199! That was enough for me.

Eh, not really. The Model 3 was better, especially it's later revisions that would power something like Daytona 2. That game reaches almost XBOX/Chihiro levels of polygon pushing.

 

[waltyftmus Prime]

It was a fucking beast, Arcade games in your home imo.

 

[EverythingsOverrated]

It was definitely a beefy machine for its time. Games like Jet Set Radio and Shenmue 2 started to really tap into the systems power. It's too bad they didn't get a few more years to crank out games for it.

Still one of my favorite consoles of all time

 

[Explosive Zombie]

I got it around launch, it was pretty impressive.

 

[polybius80]

was a very good system at the time, it suffered from old thinking about how to make games not supper importatn but affected presentation in lot of games at least in my opinion, but had good ideas too and the texture compression was very good had very good games during its lifetime, I still have one(noisy as hell)

the biggest problem in my opinion was that the controllers only had one analog stick, the PSX/Psone was the most popular console at that time and had 2 analog sticks, if dreamcast was intended to take its place, having 2 sticks was a must to facilitate the ports and new ideas in games, dreamcast was big with arcade ports it didn't required 2 sticks for them but consoles were changing their games and took lot of market share from arcades during that generation(after dreamcast)

 

[loktaiextatus]

It was very strong- in texturing etc especially.

Matrox was originally going to make the GPU for this system. It was going to be the G400- NO idea about clock to know if it would have been
more like the vanilla g400 or the Max that required a fan but Matrox announced the deal without permission and sega cancelled.

The Matrox chip would have supported more memory than the PVR and would have had more power as well. It likely would have also cost
a bit more so maybe more like a 250 dollar Dreamcast with about 50 percent more power and Hardware shaders.

Some games that would have come to the Dreamcast with the G400 enabled shaders did come to PC and enabled those shaders.

That said AS it launched it was not a bad system, it was rushed out to fill the gap left by the Saturn as no longer being a very viable platform in most of the world but
in spite of that they did OK. The system could not compete with the PS2 due to not being able to count on the DVD drive, weaker geometry, and some other little shortcomings.

 

[diffusionx]

It was a true generational leap over the PS1/N64. Compared to PS1 it had 5x more RAM, the processor was 7x faster, could process 10x the number of polygons per second, 640x480, built-in online, etc. It was able to handle serviceable ports of advanced arcade games and high-end PC titles.... what else did it need?

 

[Hendrick's]

Dreamcast was a great console. I remember using free dial up internet to play PSO and Unreal. So many good memories on that thing.

 

[Tesseract]

 

[Arkam]

The DC was the bees knees when it released. As some have already said it was a perfect arcade experience at home. House of the Dead with them light guns, MvC that ran smooth.
Seriously, the DC was a beast the day it launched. Still remember the first time I saw Sonic Adventure in motion and had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

 

[EverythingsOverrated]

The DC was the bees knees when it released. As some have already said it was a perfect arcade experience at home. House of the Dead with them light guns, MvC that ran smooth.
Seriously, the DC was a beast the day it launched. Still remember the first time I saw Sonic Adventure in motion and had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

The killer whale sequence in the first level almost made me shit my pants when I was a kid.

 

[SportsFan581]

I really enjoy the vibrance too of Dreamcast games.

Sega were true masters of the craft at that point. If they had only realized that they would need to move on from the Genesis, rather than desperately trying to extend its life, things could have been a lot different. By the time Dreamcast came along they just didn't have the money left to support hardware.

 

[Tarkus98]

Wonderfully engineered console.
First game I booted up was Soul Caliber and wow.

 

[12Goblins]

Yes soul calibur is easily one of the best looking launch games of all time

 

[Azelover]

The Dreamcast had twice the VRAM compared to the PS2. And it had 5:1 texture compression by hardware, which the PS2 didn't have.

So, in terms of visual clarity and textures, it was definitely superior when compared to the PS2. There are some Dreamcast games that couldn't run on PS2. They would need some extensive tweaking..

 

[Tesseract]

i grew up poor, owning a dc made me feel like a king

especially with all the wonderful online games, jacking into various dial-up services was damn fun

 

[RetroAV]

Eh, not really. The Model 3 was better, especially it's later revisions that would power something like Daytona 2. That game reaches almost XBOX/Chihiro levels of polygon pushing.

I'm no expert. I'm just going off how close Virtua Fighter 3 was on Dreamcast and it wasn't even handled in-house! I'm confident Yu Suzuki and his team would have done substantially better (also see Soul Calibur). Even if Model 3 was stronger, relative to price (Model 3 costing in the thousands), I would call it a win for the Dreamcast and consumers of that time.

 

[SportsFan581]

The Dreamcast had twice the VRAM compared to the PS2. And it had 5:1 texture compression by hardware, which the PS2 didn't have.

So, in terms of visual clarity and textures, it was definitely superior when compared to the PS2. There are some Dreamcast games that couldn't run on PS2. They would need some extensive tweaking..

Dreamcast could output a nice clean image, where the PS2 was always so soft. DC really lacked in the poly department, so it couldn't really compete with the character models on PS2, but the textures were some of the best.

 

[Xdrive05]

I can tell you that I was completely blown away by the Sonic Adventure demo I played at my local TRU. I had thousands of hours on PS1 and N64 games for years by that point, and DC running in real time looked leaps and bounds ahead of anything I had seen before. Granted, I was not a PC gamer at that time, and the PS2 hype and media had not hit the internet just yet. I also had no idea that the Dreamcast was a thing. I just went to the store and there one was. So it was like the perfect unspoiled experience.

I’ll never get to experience that again, because I’m tuned into the industry enough to know what’s coming and roughly how to expect things to look and play, long before I’ll get my hands on them. Kind if a shame, in a way.

 

[nkarafo]

I'm no expert. I'm just going off how close Virtua Fighter 3 was on Dreamcast and it wasn't even handled in-house! I'm confident Yu Suzuki and his team would have done substantially better (also see Soul Calibur). Even if Model 3 was stronger, relative to price (Model 3 costing in the thousands), I would call it a win for the Dreamcast and consumers of that time.

I'd say the Model 3 had more brute force/raw power. Later revisions were better polygon pushers too. Let's not forget it was a highly expensive custom board.

The Dreamcast/Naomi was cheaper but more modern, so it would support more modern techniques and the games were made with more modern tools i suppose. Because it was cheaper it had more developers making games for it, had more time in the market thus they squeezed more from the hardware. The Naomi has 4 or 5 times as many games as the Model 3, maybe more. But there is nothing on Naomi that comes close to Daytona 2 or even Scud Race. and The Dreamcast was the same board as the Naomi with less VRAM even.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

So maybe PC had a better looking Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 that also run faster but the Dreamcast had an amazing looking Sould Calibur that looked and moved as gracefully as silk.

Quake 3 and unreal tournament are blocky as f. something like dead or alive had completely rounded polygonal faces instead of texture faces.

 

[ValiantTraveler]

I can't say what the launch titles were from memory, but the eventual game lineup was good enough for my brother to sell the PS1 and buy the DC. We all know what happened afterwards...

 

[nkarafo]

Quake 3 and unreal tournament are blocky as f. something like dead or alive had completely rounded polygonal faces instead of texture faces.

Fighting games use the majority of polygon budget for the characters. You have 2 highly detailed characters and one small arena. Quake 3 had to draw many more characters and bigger, free roaming levels. If Quake 3 was easier to render than Soul Calibur, then the Dreamcast port wouldn't look like the PC version at low settings and 30fps.

 

[Lucumo]

Yes, and it could never even reach its potential due to being discontinued too soon.

 

[JordanN]

But then the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox all outperformed it. Still, I don’t think it was so far behind that it couldn’t have been a worthy competitor in the 6th generation. If everything else has gone smoothly with the Dreamcast, I think it would’ve put up a decent fight.

Of course, everything did not go smoothly.

Lol, no. Dreamcast was dead.

It could never do this.

Dreamcast games had nice artstyle though. But SEGA would have been forced to release a successor in 2003 if they even wanted to survive at that point.

 

[RetroAV]

I'd say the Model 3 had more brute force/raw power. Later revisions were better polygon pushers too. Let's not forget it was a highly expensive custom board.

The Dreamcast/Naomi was cheaper but more modern, so it would support more modern techniques and the games were made with more modern tools i suppose. Because it was cheaper it had more developers making games for it, had more time in the market thus they squeezed more from the hardware. The Naomi has 4 or 5 times as many games as the Model 3, maybe more. But there is nothing on Naomi that comes close to Daytona 2 or even Scud Race. and The Dreamcast was the same board as the Naomi with less VRAM even.

I think the reason we didn't see those titles on Dreamcast had more to do with Sega trying to stay relevant in the arcades than the Dreamcast not being able to run them. Again though, considering the price of both hardware at the time, I'd say close enough.

 

[Deleted member 1159]

It wasn’t amazing but it was a definite step up from anything else around at the time. Shenmue came out like a year and a half after Metal Gear Solid. The gap there is insane.

 

[cireza]

It is actually quite impressive how powerful, forward thinking and well thought the console was, considering where Sega was coming from.

 

[nkarafo]

Again though, considering the price of both hardware at the time, I'd say close enough.

That's true. It was powerful enough to have people argue about it being more or less powerful than the Model 3. Which was amazing for a console in 1998.

The Dreamcast was a huge step forward for home systems but the Naomi was a huge step backwards for arcades. They went from custom hardware that would make the most powerful PC look bad, to cheapo hardware based on a console you could have at home. That was the beginning of the end for arcades. The point of arcades was that you could see things you would't in your home so what's the point to leave the house and go to arcades if Crazy Taxi looks exactly the same as in arcades?

But that's another discussion.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

Fighting games use the majority of polygon budget for the characters. You have 2 highly detailed characters and one small arena. Quake 3 had to draw many more characters and bigger, free roaming levels. If Quake 3 was easier to render than Soul Calibur, then the Dreamcast port wouldn't look like the PC version at low settings and 30fps.

Quake III Arena was the most intensive PC game released in 1999, rendering 10,000 to 15,000 triangles per scene (at up to 48 FPS on an nVidia TNT2 AGP). On the Dreamcast, the frame rate is capped at 30 FPS, and it renders up to 500,000 triangles per second (about 16,000 triangles per scene). -segaretro

I've heard of dreamcast being able to push 30k to 40k polygons per scene at 60fps.

Games like shenmue, sonic adventure look far rounder and more detailed than quake 3.

 

[loktaiextatus]

It as actually quite impressive how powerful, forward thinking and well thought the console was, considering what Sega was coming from.

It had some issues but they kept the price down - and made it simple to develop for. Fixed both of Saturns problems. Unfortunately the value proposition of
getting the DVD player in the PS2, it playing PSX games, it having the Sony branding behind it, etc... a lot of publishers saw the writing on the wall. Hell... EA never
even BEGAN releasing games for it.

 

[01011001]

the GameCube and especially the Xbox were in a whole different league, but it wasn't that far behind the PS2. it was closer to the PS2 than the PS2 was to the Xbox in raw power.

many early ports from DC to PS2 even ran better on DC, which was mostly due to the PS2 being hard to develop for but still.

 

[Azelover]

Dreamcast could output a nice clean image, where the PS2 was always so soft. DC really lacked in the poly department, so it couldn't really compete with the character models on PS2, but the textures were some of the best.

Yeah totally. Even the Gamecube wasn't completely in the same league as the DC in terms of textures. Just take a close look at Sonic Adventure on both systems. They're both good, but certainly different in that regard. That gen, the Xbox was king of visual clarity and textures, and I think the Dreamcast came in second IMO.

 

[nkarafo]

Games like shenmue, sonic adventure look far rounder and more detailed than quake 3.

All multiplatform games looked/run better on a voodoo 3 PC compared to Dreamcast. But it was always like that with exclusives. Even today people will argue that Uncharted 4 looks better than any PC game but that doesn't mean the PS4 can't even touch a budget PC in terms of power.

 

[SportsFan581]

I've heard of dreamcast being able to push 30k to 40k polygons per scene at 60fps.

Games like shenmue, sonic adventure look far rounder and more detailed than quake 3.

Dreamcast was more capable than the best of the PC GPUs on launch date (VooDoo 2 and the like). PC games relied a lot on the CPU which didn't translate well to ports on DC.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Yes. It actually did several things better than PS2, such as having deferred rendering (you can think of it as an earlier version of VRS), higher output resolution (thanks to VGA support), a better color palette (imo), more VRAM, crisper texturing (on average) and arguably better mip-mapping support.

However, PS2 beat it in polygon geometry output (as did GC and Xbox), lighting, particle fillrate (where it outdid all other systems that gen, including Xbox), and a better CPU (thanks partly to it being faster). We arguably didn't get a chance to see the Dreamcast maxed out, but I think Shenmue 2 would've been a game that came closest to that.

Since many of the post-DC 6th-gen games other platforms got were planned for DC, it would've been interesting to see how ports of VF4 and Outrun 2 ran on the system. The latter probably would've been saved for a DC successor had one came about. Sadly, that wasn't to be.

...and I mean an actual, official successor, not the OG Xbox which by all means was a spiritual successor (and a very good one at that).

Dreamcast could output a nice clean image, where the PS2 was always so soft. DC really lacked in the poly department, so it couldn't really compete with the character models on PS2, but the textures were some of the best.

Yep. Outside of some very select early-gen PS2 titles I always thought the coloring was sharper and more vibrant with Dreamcast titles, plus the resolution was better. The coloring arguably could've been down to stylistic choices, tho: SEGA's games tended to be influenced by arcades a lot since that was their pedigree, so naturally their games had a vibrant and colorful palette of hues. But this was enhanced a lot by the resolution output.

DC came up short against the other three in polys, obviously, but there wasn't much they could've done about that since it was a '97/'98 design spec. Especially compared to GC and OG Xbox. But it still managed to put out some great-looking games.

It had some issues but they kept the price down - and made it simple to develop for. Fixed both of Saturns problems. Unfortunately the value proposition of
getting the DVD player in the PS2, it playing PSX games, it having the Sony branding behind it, etc... a lot of publishers saw the writing on the wall. Hell... EA never
even BEGAN releasing games for it.

The EA story is actually kinda funny, but also shows SEGA's hubris at the time. EA was 100% on board with DC, but they wanted exclusive rights to produce and publish sports games on it. That meant SEGA would've had to repurpose Visual Concepts for some other style of games, and SEGA probably saw that as a waste of an investment, so they turned EA's proposition down.

In doing so, EA basically told DC to screw itself and waited for the PS2. I don't know if the decision to turn down EA's deal was SOA or SOJ, but SEGA as a whole should've seen the domino effect of not having EA on their platform would've caused. Because of that, I strongly think some other big publishers decided to hold off as well, but that obviously created a Catch-22 situation.

I'm not saying having EA on the platform from Day 1 would've "saved" DC per-se, but it would've gone a long way to boosting its presence in the Western markets, which is where SEGA needed DC to success anyway after the botched Japanese launch (which was way too early; Saturn community was still pretty strong there).

 

[loktaiextatus]

Dreamcast was more capable than the best of the PC GPUs on launch date (VooDoo 2 and the like). PC games relied a lot on the CPU which didn't translate well to ports on DC.

This is not the case.... it was not more powerful. The VooDoo 3 was already out half a year before Dreamcast.... Dreamcast
had a GREAT texturing setup though and I would say for the amount of texture memory it had it did incredible.
However... even the Matrox G400 which was the originally intended GPU for the system was more powerful in many aspects.

The reason PC games often did not look as good as what the Dreamcast had was because it was impossible to create a PC game to ONLY run on the
newest, best hardware and sell many copies. You had to have a BASE target system and every thing after that was increases in resolution, texture filtering
etc... You wouldnt create a game that can only run on the best video card on the market. Thats what always made the console keep up with the PC during
the first part of a generation- and stands today as well.