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[Fat Frog]

Dreamcast is a nice and powerful machine, but it wouldn't have been able to share multiplats with Xbox and GC the way PS2 did. Even PS2 can barely keep up, massive frame drops in every game. DC was a little to early. Calling it mid generational upgrade is fair since most of it's library is improved N64, PS1 ports.

This is called cross gen games... (Dreamcast only lived 2 years and a few months)

http://game-consoler.com/images/screenshots/nintendo%2064/02671.jpg

Nintendo 64 (1999 game)

http://rq87.flyingomelette.com/RQ/Music/virtuafighter3tb2.jpg

Dreamcast launch title (1998 note that i'm not talking of cross gen games in this comparison. I m showing a 3 years Nintendo 64 game)


The Nintendo 64 is a mid gen, not the Dreamcast.


To be specific, age of full SD assets with bump maps hadn't begun , and games like Shenmue were made with PS1 era tools. DC games would have improved over time as more sophisticated tools like z_brush came online, and as artists learned how to distribute polys, texture dets and higher load effects like aniso and bump mapping.

 

[its_Ditz]

.

 

[RetroAV]

I thought the lack of 3rd Party support was the biggest reason? FIFA, Need for Speed and such were going to Playstation, GameCube and so on.

I believe if Sega could have kept funding new projects they would have, even without 3rd party support. They were in a similar situation with the Mega Drive when Nintendo had third parties locked to exclusivity contracts and Sega just kept trucking, building their library till they eventually hit their stride and could no longer be ignored by third parties. With the Dreamcast, their past mistakes (Sega CD/32X/Saturn), had finally caught up to them and they couldn't afford to do the same. Especially with M$ entering the business as well (which managed to even beat out Nintendo that gen).

 

[Team Andromeda]

I thought the lack of 3rd Party support was the biggest reason? FIFA, Need for Speed and such were going to Playstation, GameCube and so on.

Selling your Hardware at a loss and not being able to recoop the difference from sales of your own Software or from 3rd party royalties , is what killed the dream Never mind the cost of developing a follow up console

 

[D.Final]

Definetly yes

 

[U n i o n 0015]

It just seems weird nobody back then stressed the resolution difference there or that people were even be able to notice the drop in quality in VF if the model 3 really output like, something over half the resolution (tbh the games were 640x480 + overscan on DC, not full 720x480).

IIRC, reviewers and gamers in the console space back then weren't too concerned about resolution since hitting a fixed resolution didn't matter as much with CRTs.

Now that we have fixed panel displays, not hitting native res is a big deal.

EDIT--heh, K1Expwy said basically the same thing above. That's what I get for only glancing over the posts.

 

[.Pennywise]

Dreamcast was way ahead of its time.

 

[Alexios]

Here's some random Dreamcast footage from the interwebs. Real hardware, not emulation. There's next to no good footage of Aero Dancing i, it's a 60fps game but this video is 48 fps and most others are 30. Other than some old school special effects it's beautiful as the series showed tangible improvements with each new iteration despite how fast they were churning these out. Compared to contemporary PC flight sims like IL-2 Sturmovik from many months later, the planes have great detail, the terrain textures are of good resolution and the pop-in for the 3D structures is quite good (granted some Aero games, i included, also released on PC). That Le Mans video isn't the best in image quality but it shows a full 24 car race with changing tod and weather. I can't find great MSR footage that shows off the insane amounts of fully modeled track detail either. I guess people mostly go back to the arcadey Dreamcast games instead of those that demanded quite some time investment when recording and uploading. Also, anyone who says Dreamcast couldn't do sandbox based on Headhunter forgets the Crazy Taxi games with their great vistas and tons of traffic that could easily be halved and still look dense if it was necessary to accomodate different types of gameplay or increase individual polycount. The pedestrians and what not don't look too bad either and yes, there's pop in, but considering all it throws up every second (again 60fps) it's great.


So, ya, of course it was powerful and didn't just have Shenmue to prove it. The polycount of the characters in DOA2L and even the dodgy VF3tb surpassed that of TTT and VF4 on PS2 (which btw halves the arcade's so ya they were still very powerful too even if cheaper than before, Naomi 2 was a beast) and destroy that of SoulCalibur which was a crossgen kind of remaster. As great as it looked due to the great modelers at Namco, it's modest technically for what DC could do, so it could have had more such advanced game ports if it had lived longer. Many lesser DC games push more polys than you'd think but don't look like it due to their very inefficient use from either a lack of talent, budget or time, or simply the era's still evolving know how that meant not all studios were equal in their artistry, hence many early PS2 games not looking better for the most part either.

A Voodoo 3 may beat, but not smoke, the DC despite coming out the following year as the top GPU. When did consoles trash PC 3D to single Dreamcast out for not doing the same? All the PC greats had to be cut down to fit, from Quake 3 DC and UT on that and PS2 to the later Championship titles based on Unreal 2 tech. It was just an era PC didn't get much love from Japanese developers which still dominated in technology and artistry and the ports were shoddy if at all, contemporary-ish PCs were superior to all the consoles of the era. Consoles didn't get true love from PC devs either.


Here's an even better PC with a Pentium III. Grand Prix 3 beats the best of DC in ways (I would say it took 2002's Grand Prix 4, whenever that could perform well with high settings, to beat DC games in every way - the crowd seats etc. are pretty bad in 3 but improved in 4 and similar to how consoles devs did it) with crazy effects like puddle reflections, too bad it's a slideshow even with reduced settings when the best on DC are 60 fps and still look slick, with the same res. Quake III commonly drops to ~20fps with reduced settings.


Who would play Ferrari 355 Challenge in 480p 60fps instead of that, huh?! And ya, as said earlier the Voodoo 3 launched cheap, like up to $50 less than a Dreamcast if you were lucky, or roughly the same as! Huh, you need a CPU too?! Here's Intel's Pentium III launch announcement!​

The Pentium III processor core, with 9.5 million transistors, is based on Intel's advanced P6 microarchitecture and is manufactured on 0.25 micron process technology. The 450 and 500 MHz speeds, with 512 KB L2 cache, are available now. Pricing in 1,000 unit quantities is $696 and $496 respectively.

The 450MHz variant is in the last video, it only cost $496, in bulk! A nice cheap ~$715 CPU adjusted for inflation! Stupid DC, why couldn't you smoke a ~$1000 PC (before adjustment, not counting monitor etc.) for your ridiculously expensive $199?! Here are two GPUs you should compare PS2 to if you're gonna compare a Voodoo 3 to Dreamcast (not the GeForce 4, that's an even later but lower end release). I'd say DC compares more favorably to Voodoo 3 than PS2 does to these that also released the following year from its launch.
https://youtu.be/VCCiCn3y3SI
https://youtu.be/lGLSZAhtZ04
The same goes for the previous line of cards actually with almost the same results: https://youtu.be/Mv5T34ToU24​

 

[Nickolaidas]

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.

Yeah, I remember watching RE Veronica and SoulCalibur and my jaw hit the floor. It was amazing. I mean, going to RE Veronica after Nemesis? SoulCalibur after Soul Blade? Holy shit, there wasn't even a contest.

That said, I agree with people that when your rival is a PS One and a catridge-wielding N64 ... it's not like you can do worse in the technical department.

And I also remember going back to Dreamcast for a few weeks after playing on PS2/Gamecube/Xbox and was amazed at how less powerful than I remembered it the console was.

 

[Team Andromeda]

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.

That is not fair or even accurate. The Sega CD was an Add-On and no different from how NEC made an CD add-on for the PC Engine and the transition from the Mega Drive to the 32/Saturn was one of the longest in console history.
People forget the Mega Drive came out in 88. Marketshare is what killed the DC

 

[eastcoastkody]

soul calibur at launch was better looking than anything on PS2 for a long time

 

[Dolomite]

Wild that Sega released thier last console 20 yrs ago and folks still talk about it like Dreamcast fucked thier ex

 

[xellos2099alpha]

There is no question ps2 is vastly superior to dreamcast but the software for first year ps2 is extremely poor. Some of the drwam cast gme look better than most of the ps2 launch title.

 

[Physiognomonics]

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.

This. For about 2 years Dreamcast had the best games and best looking games. It was worth it. And the consoles and games were actually cheap here compared to the most overrated console in history: the PS2, which was mostly a glorified (Sony logo) DVD player for the first 2 years.

I continued to play my Dreamcast and its launch games for years anyway cause those games were so good.

 

[sinnergy]

I loved playing Quake Arena (I think ) with the 56k modem a peek into the future . With the cheapest provider

 

[nkarafo]

And no, a Voodoo3 didn't smoke it or anything close to that despite coming out the following year as the top of the line for the PC.​

My first PC in 1999 was a PIII 450mhz with 64GB RAM and a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP.

One of my friends had a Dreamcast.

Just about every single multiplatform game on my system would trash the DC version. Quake 3, UT, Episode 1 Racing, Shadowman, Soldier of Fortune, etc. I could play all of them at higher resolutions and frame rates compared to the DC versions. I specifically remember how much better Q3 was on PC... To the point my friend didn't want to ever play it again on his DC. Not only the resolution/fps was lower, the DC version was also the equivalent of "medium" geometry detail, where the rocket launcher looked like a bunch of triangles. Voodoo 3 had no issues using the higher poly count on top of better frame rate and resolution (800 X 600 was my default for all games).

The DC had some amazing looking exclusives made by Japanese developers though. But i'm pretty sure, if the DC had the same raw power as an early PIII + voodoo 3, they would do even better.

Now, obviously, the voodoo 3 isn't the only part in the equation. I'm sure, if you paired it with a Pentium 1 or something, it would perform like shit. But it's potential is higher than the DC if you pair it with a CPU that doesn't pull it back.

 

[ReBurn]

Dreamcast was powerful enough to bring everything I liked about Sega arcade games home. That's all I cared about.

 

[West Texas CEO]

My first PC in 1999 was a PIII 450mhz with 64GB RAM and a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP.

Damn, my PC in 2021 isn't even that powerful..

 

[nkarafo]

Dreamcast was powerful enough to bring everything I liked about Sega arcade games home. That's all I cared about.

That's another issue. It's not that the DC was as powerful as the arcades. It's that arcades stopped evolving at that time.

Think about it. The Model 3 was released in 1996 and completely destroyed anything any home system could do. Even the Model 2 was way more powerful than the consoles at the time. But instead of making a "Model 4" as their next major arcade system, Sega decided to make Naomi. Which is hardly as powerful as the earliest Model 3 revisions. Later Model 3 revs destroy it (see Daytona USA 2). Basically, Naomi was a Dreamcast, in arcade PCB form.

It was then when all developers decided that custom arcade boards are too expensive. And having console-level hardware is cheaper and "better" because ports would be easier. But they didn't realize that, if your console is as powerful as the arcades then why would you ever want to go to the arcades in the first place? Why carry your ass over there and waste quarters? And this was one of the reasons arcades died in the west. There was no more "awe", no more state of the art graphics you couldn't see anywhere else.

But again, this wasn't because consoles were more powerful, the DC was the expected, natural evolution of graphics at home after 5th gen. It was that there wasn't a natural evolution for the arcades after the powerful boards of the mid-90s.

 

[Ozzie666]

Owned a pretty good PC with a good graphics card back then and the usual consoles. I had never seen anything like Soul Calibur 2 before, especially at home. It was mind blowing. I bought a dream cast imported from japan well ahead of the North American Launch. Seem to recall House of the Dead 2 and soul Calibur as my two games.

 

[Alexios]

I never said Dreamcast beat the best PC of the era, you just choose to call Dreamcast losing to the best PC of the following year (again, DC first launched in 98) like every console ever since the establishing of 3D acceleration as "smoking" it and somehow different to other consoles and proof it wasn't powerful.

Also, I posted the receipts with actual footage (of a very solid system even if not the absolute top of the line) rather than nostalgic memories. And equal comparisons to other consoles. And how the f is the rocket launcher "a bunch of triangles" when it's almost the same model in 480p and lesser texture filtering?

And lol @ the selected multiplatform games, never mind exclusives on DC smoked them (on DC) visually and in performance alike. Like anyone back then thought the best consoles had were from id and Epic or something (or that vice versa Japanese developers made generally awesome PC ports themselves).

 

[Team Andromeda]

soul calibur at launch was better looking than anything on PS2 for a long time

To be

That's another issue. It's not that the DC was as powerful as the arcades. It's that arcades stopped evolving at that time.

Think about it. The Model 3 was released in 1996 and completely destroyed anything any home system could do. Even the Model 2 was way more powerful than the consoles at the time. But instead of making a "Model 4" as their next major arcade system, Sega decided to make Naomi. Which is hardly as powerful as the earliest Model 3 revisions. Later Model 3 revs destroy it (see Daytona USA 2). Basically, Naomi was a Dreamcast, in arcade PCB form.

It was then when all developers decided that custom arcade boards are too expensive. And having console-level hardware is cheaper and "better" because ports would be easier. But they didn't realize that, if your console is as powerful as the arcades then why would you ever want to go to the arcades in the first place? Why carry your ass over there and waste quarters? And this was one of the reasons arcades died in the west. There was no more "awe", no more state of the art graphics you couldn't see anywhere else.

But again, this wasn't because consoles were more powerful, the DC was the expected, natural evolution of graphics at home after 5th gen. It was that there wasn't a natural evolution for the arcades after the powerful boards of the mid-90s.

That's not quite right imo. Overlooking Model 3 Step 2 hardly destroyed the DC graphically. NA@MI was widely popular in the West and Japanese Arcades.
Model 3 while great was simply too expensive for a lot of Arcade operators. I don't think it was just about graphics that Arcades started to die out the West. I think a lot of it was people expected more for their money and Arcade games were getting expensive to play £1 or £3 per credit in the late 90's was a lot of money. Also, 3D sadly killed a lot of the smaller Arcade developers too that was also a factor

 

[nkarafo]

I never said Dreamcast beat the best PC of the era, you just choose to call Dreamcast losing to the best PC of the following year like every console ever since the establishing of 3D acceleration as "smoking" it and somehow different to other consoles and proof it wasn't powerful.

Also, I posted the receipts with footage rather than nostalgic memories like you. And equal comparisons to other consoles. And how the f is the rocket launcher "a bunch of triangles" on DC when it's basically the same model in 480p and lesser texture filtering?

And lol @ the selected multiplatform games, never mind exclusives on DC smoked them (on DC). Like anyone back then thought the best consoles had were from id and Epic or something (or that vice versa Japanese developers made generally great PC ports).

I was wrong about the rocket launcher model, must have seen it somewhere else.

But the frame rate/resolution was a huge deal for me. At 800 x 600, the game still performed better than the DC port, on my system, including all other multiplatforms.

I think it's also a CPU thing. My CPU definitely helped.

Also, i see Soul Calibur being the poster child game for comparisons. But was there even a good looking 3D fighting game for PCs back then?

 

[Alexios]

Yes you were wrong so like I said take a look at the receipts I posted even if your system was a bit better rather than go off nostalgia and an apparently failing memory (edit: added a video of a PC with a Pentium III and that's not really "smoking" Dreamcast either). I got my first PC around then myself with a GeForce2 MX and did have to force myself to turn on my DC (but glad I did until I finished Shenmue II) but not because of graphics, rather because of all new types of games I had never played before (or not with the mouse and keyboard, though DC supported that too for some).

Also, i see Soul Calibur being the poster child game for comparisons.

It really isn't, it's just the very first glimpse of what the system could do since it's a launch window title that impressed everyone by being unexpectedly almost a remake of the original arcade version so everyone has great memories of it from that era for how jaw dropping it seemed compared to everything else. SoulCalibur is actually a very modest game that Namco's great artists managed to make visually great despite rushing to launch or only using 3-4000 polys per character. DOA2L on DC surpasses it technically with some characters going over 9000 polygons and thanks to tag attacks/throws viewing up to 3 at once in 60fps (and the awesome 3D arenas, though only a small one was used for tag matches). TTT PS2's characters are in the 6000 range (you never see more than 2 at once despite the tagging) so that's an even more advanced conversion compared to the SC-like arcade game and VF4 PS2's are in the 7000 range cut down from the beastly Naomi 2's 14000. It seems the DC could have had a similar VF4 port going by DOA2L, maybe with cutting some more advanced things like the snow and sand deformation in some stages on top of paring back all the characters. I sure wouldn't mind that to have it at home back then. It just didn't live that long. VF3tb was a terrible port but still had some characters in the 7000 range so it's clear that the problem was the artists not making good changes to the models (good lord at some joint design) that were badly done to begin with, with tons of wasted polygons, just because Model 3 was strong enough to brute force through it back in 1996 (!). Technique was evolving. VF3tb is aesthetically worse than SoulCalibur despite having higher polycounts and 3D arenas in the foreground as well as the background. Not to mention how barebones and glitchy it is with the characters dropping in the floor during transitions etc. I guess it was rushed too (and outsourced to Genki, but Genki also did some good). So, that and SEGA Rally 2 are some pretty bad Model 3 ports, but Virtua Striker 2 is a much more successful port that you have to look hard for any downgrades and the same goes for Virtual On 2, perhaps they had enough time or also emphasised these more as they also ported them to Naomi for the arcades.

 

[nkarafo]

I still believe the Naomi isn't as powerful as a Model 3, or at least later revisions of it.

The Naomi benefits a lot just by being a newer platform. It benefits by more modern standards and techniques, more modern development tools and higher developer experience. 3D modelling of humans was still evolving so maybe that's why the earlier 3D fighting games don't look as good on Model 3. But like you said, it's mostly an aesthetic/experience issue, not a raw power one. The Model 3 didn't seem to have a "dev experience" issue with racing games though, so you still got stuff like Scud Race in freaking 1996 and Daytona USA 2, the later looking more detailed than any racing game on Naomi/DC. I think Daytona USA 2 on Model 3 is closer to something like Outrun 2 on XBOX than anything on DC.

What i'm saying is that the Model 3 had a lot of raw power and could brute-force a lot of detail at 60fps. But the Naomi had the same devs with more experience in their heads who could use it's power in a more optimized way.

 

[Alexios]

No I never said Naomi is more powerful than Model 3, though it did do more modern things (and may still be so, I've not compared raw polycounts of DOA2 Millennium and VF3tb, but I'm guessing VF3tb sits at around 10k per character and the stage so if DOA2M exceeds what was seen on DC's DOA2L it easily matches Model 3-1). Naomi 2 far exceeds it however (no Naomi 2 games were ported to DC and like said VF4's character polycount was reduced to half for PS2 alongside other cuts). Too bad that like the DC it didn't get too many games before getting replaced by, iirc, Lindbergh (which also on paper isn't so great and further goes to the cheap arcade direction but VF5 was jaw dropping anyway and looks good 15 years later). Too bad we didn't get more Naomi ports on DC either. Naomi was a bit more powerful than DC also but if the game didn't make full use of it or the port was clever then it was for all intents and purposes identical on DC. Atomiswave was the arcade board that was essentially a DC (in fact, recently a person/group converted all its games for use on real DC hardware and they all perform just the same after ironing out potential kinks due to the game format differences like the cartridge vs GD Rom drive reading speed). If Naomi already was that, there would have been no need for an even cheaper Atomiswave back then (the 3D Atomiswave games made were all low budget affairs that hardly pushed the system compared to DC's best).

 

[Team Andromeda]

I still believe the Naomi isn't as powerful as a Model 3, or at least later revisions of it.

Na@mi can push more polygons got more effects. I think Model 3 Step 2 has the edge in that it can push out the maximum number of polygons with all its effects enabled, plus is onboard memory was super fast too All that said I can barely see any difference from VO II on the DC to the Model 3 Step 2 and Virtual Striker 2 Ver 2000 looks better than the Model 2 game .

Please don't bring up Sega Rally 2 Or Daytona USA 2001

 

[Esppiral]

There is no question ps2 is vastly superior to dreamcast but the software for first year ps2 is extremely poor. Some of the drwam cast gme look better than most of the ps2 launch title.

The PS2 was, no doubt, more powerful than the Dreamcast, but I wouldn't say vastly superior

 

[Esppiral]

No I never said Naomi is more powerful than Model 3, though it did do more modern things (and may still be so, I've not compared raw polycounts of DOA2 Millennium and VF3tb, but I'm guessing VF3tb sits at around 10k per character and the stage so if DOA2M exceeds what was seen on DC's DOA2L it easily matches Model 3). Naomi 2 far exceeds it however (no Naomi 2 games were ported to DC and like said VF4's character polycount was reduced to half for PS2 alongside other cuts). Too bad that like the DC it didn't get too many games before getting replaced by, iirc, Lindbergh (which also on paper isn't so great and further goes to the cheap arcade direction but VF5 was jaw dropping anyway and looks good 15 years later). Too bad we didn't get more Naomi ports on DC either. Naomi was a bit more powerful than DC also but if the game didn't make full use of it or the port was clever then it was for all intents and purposes identical on DC. Atomiswave was the arcade board that was essentially a DC (in fact, recently a person/group converted all its games for use on real DC hardware and they all perform just the same after ironing out potential kinks due to the game format differences like the cartridge vs GD Rom drive reading speed). If Naomi already was that, there'd be no need for it.

VF3 character models are around 3k polys, whereas DOA 2 are around 10k polys to put it on perspective Tekken Tag Tournament 2 polycoununts average around 5k per character on PS2.

 

[Shmunter]

It was the first to offer an astronomical next gen leap. Possibly the largest single one to date.

 

[Team Andromeda]

It was the first to offer an astronomical next gen leap. Possibly the largest single one to date.

I think that more for the likes of the 3DO myself

 

[Alexios]

VF3 character models are around 3k polys, whereas DOA 2 are around 10k polys to put it on perspective Tekken Tag Tournament 2 polycoununts average around 5k per character on PS2.

Your numbers seem off, I posted various confirmed numbers earlier (and in the other thread with sources/pics/receipts, some of it by you on beyond3D iirc) for all these games but that was not for arcade vf3 or arcade doa2m so that could be quite a bit higher (like use cut scene models for gameplay maybe), or not, Idk. Your vf3 arcade numbers seem way off, aoi on DC which is cut down is around 7000 (and the highest poly vf3 character on DC) and I've seen the arcade version is said to throw around 32k polys per frame (so like 2 million polys per second) so I guessed it's roughly evenly divided by 3 for 2 characters and the stage, which could be off.

So I won't post for sure before confirming is all but 3000 for arcade vf3 definitely seems off the mark. Anyway the arcade version of vf3 is pretty ugly too and doesn't at all look as good as the amount of polys would imply. But for 1996 it was amazing of course, where would you get better modelers at that level anyway, heh. They really downgraded the joints and other aspects they shouldn't have, or could have tried to reshape better, on the DC. They already weren't perfect but some characters' win poses are so bad. Like Akira. When the arcade made a big deal of showing for its time realistic stuff like flexing muscles and shit (Jeffry got so nerfed, lol).

Dreamcast on the left, obviously. When the characters are in your face in such instances and the only point of focus it's pretty bad. Nowadays super low poly models can deform way better than this by good vertex shaping and fitting skeletons etc. Even SoulCalibur on DC with its modest polycounts doesn't display such bs.

 

[UnNamed]

VF3 character models are around 3k polys, whereas DOA 2 are around 10k polys to put it on perspective Tekken Tag Tournament 2 polycounts average around 5k per character on PS2.

It's pointless, there are many aspect which contribute to the image, it has no sense to compare polycounts on different games after the PS2/Xbox era since is not just about polygons anymore. Also DOA2 on DC have a very flat IQ and environments are relatively low poly. This, of course, doesn't mean Team Ninja didn't have very skilled programmers working on DC.

 

[Shut0wen]

Dreamcast looked better then ps1, ps2 and n64, had great arcade games on there as well

 

[RoboFu]

It still produced the cleanest image out of all those consoles that gen.

 

[Kokoloko85]

It was pretty damn awesome Console either way.

Great 1st party games like Jet Set Radio, Shen Mue 1&2, Crazy Taxi, Skies of Arcadia, MSR, Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online, Ikaruga, Bangai-O etc

Some good 3rd party games like Soul Calibur, Power Stone, Resident Evil Code Veronica, Grandia, Dead or Alive 2.

And it had online gaming. Ill never forget playing my first online game with my friends... PSO was so awesome


It just couldnt compete with the PS2’s Games line up like Final Fantasy X, MGS2, GTA, Gran Turismo, Silent Hill. And the DVD player.


Overall I think the Saturn was better with the JRPG’s, shoot em ups and fighting games. But Dreamcast had better 1st party variety and games.

The Saturn is a top 3 JRPG console, but love the Dreamcasts 1st party variety and innovations like Jet Set Radio, Samba De Amigo, PSO, Crazy Taxi, Dynamite Cop etc

 

[Ceadeus]

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

either way, i regret nothing

Oof... The very best

 

[SirTerry-T]

It still produced the cleanest image out of all those consoles that gen.

Yeah, that is something that is often not given enough credit when comparing consoles of that generation. Dreamcast's IQ/pixel quality was fantastic, I remember reading an article where Dave Perry (back in the Shiny Entertainment days) was raving about the picture quality of the DreamCast's PowerVR chipset.

 

[=GabrielKnight=]

Beautiful graphics at a low price. At the time graphics cards were not so expensive and they were on par with the power vr chip the dreamcast had.
Plus, Japanese studios were the top developers in terms of graphics and they were able to push the hardware better.

 

[Hoya Destroyer]

from memory, Soul Calibur certainly made me believe the Dreamcast was powerful. As did that sonic game where the killer whale chases him. It was very impressive back then.

 

[Drew1440]

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

Sega did give it one last try with the Hikaru board, which was built on top of the Dreamcast/Naomi arch but added custom 3D hardware that was capable of phong shading. And Model 3 did see new releases into 1999.

System 16 - Sega Hikaru Hardware (Sega)

Not sure if their Xbox based boards count since they have twice the memory (128Mb) than retail Xbox units had.

 

[MarkMe2525]

NFL 2k blew me away. I brought my dreamcast over to my grandparents that Christmas morning and my pawpaw thought I was watching a real game.

 

[Valonquar]

DAE remember the Senior Directing Manager of Sega edition of the Dreamcast? Sega's old commercials were so fucking great. My OG Japanese Dreamcast was one with his face on the entire back of the box. So goofy.

 

[Romulus]

It still produced the cleanest image out of all those consoles that gen.

I think it was give and take. But it seemed like many of the more demanding games ended up looking pretty jaggy compared to the other machines. But the Ps2 wasn't really built for clean image quality so that's a pretty easy win.
I thought some GC games looked really clean, especially first party stuff and they were much more demanding than Dreamcast games(as it should be.) Just thinking about something like Rogue Squadron seems laughable on a Dreamcast, and it was extremely clean looking. Gamecube being a newer machine of course.
But if you're comparing image quality against all 6th gen, Xbox is technically a 6th gen machine.
About 40+ Xbox games ran at full 720p(including soul caliber 2) and you can patch a lot of xbox games to run native 720p with zero hardware upgrades. The Xbox hardware can brute force 720p with a little performance hit and no development optimization in many cases. And even if you wanted to do a small RAM-only upgrade, it could run the most demanding games like Riddick, doom 3, halo, morrowind at full 720p. Again, without any developer optimization. I might actually do a thread about that. That was a newer machine too but insanely powerful to pull that off.

 

[Real-HipHopGamer]

Sega Dreamcast til this day still has one of if not the best launch in console history i mean think about it.

NBA 2K , NFL 2K, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, Power Stone, I mean that lineup alone was beyond incredible across the board. I believe Soul Calibur was there day and date to so yes Dreamcast Had An Amazing Launch

 

[Magnific0giganticus]

Yes. The most powerful console ever, with tons of exclusives to show for it.

 

[Trimesh]

But if you're comparing image quality against all 6th gen, Xbox is technically a 6th gen machine.
About 40+ Xbox games ran at full 720p(including soul caliber 2) and you can patch a lot of xbox games to run native 720p with zero hardware upgrades. The Xbox hardware can brute force 720p with a little performance hit and no development optimization in many cases. And even if you wanted to do a small RAM-only upgrade, it could run the most demanding games like Riddick, doom 3, halo, morrowind at full 720p. Again, without any developer optimization. I might actually do a thread about that. That was a newer machine too but insanely powerful to pull that off.

Kind of a bogus comparison though - this thread is talking about "at launch" - and the Xbox came out about 3 years later and also coincidentally consumes about 3 times as much power. MS would have had to try really hard to fuck things up to have it NOT be a lot more capable than the DC.

Maybe it's because I'm an EE, but to this day I'm still impressed with just how much performance the DC got out of a < 30W power budget using late 90's technology.

 

[Romulus]

Kind of a bogus comparison though - this thread is talking about "at launch" - and the Xbox came out about 3 years later and also coincidentally consumes about 3 times as much power. MS would have had to try really hard to fuck things up to have it NOT be a lot more capable than the DC.

Maybe it's because I'm an EE, but to this day I'm still impressed with just how much performance the DC got out of a < 30W power budget using late 90's technology.

Not only was a replying to a comment that was already comparing all 6th gen consoles, I even went further and mentioned it wasn't exactly fair.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

It still produced the cleanest image out of all those consoles that gen.

Is there anywhere to read more about why that was? Just resolution output? I do distinctly remember everything on the Dreamcast looking crisper than the PS2.

 

[ManaByte]

Is there anywhere to read more about why that was? Just resolution output? I do distinctly remember everything on the Dreamcast looking crisper than the PS2.

A lot of it was due to everything running at 640x480 and many games at 60fps.

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