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[Esppiral]

He also said" the PS2 version has more polygons, better lights...but the game still look better on Dreamcast".

The downplayed power of a great IQ...

Great IQ is the very definition of entering a new gen. In that regard, Dreamcast was one the most impressive generational gap in history.(from PS1/N64 era.)

The models with higher polygons were latter added to the Japanese Dreamcast special edition.

Top vanilla DC version bottom Japanese limited DC edition.

Edit looking at this screenshot, all of you that have voted it wasn't a technical leap are blind going from PSX or N64 to this was huge

 

[Fat Frog]

The models with higher polygons were latter added to the Japanese Dreamcast special edition.

Top vanilla DC version bottom Japanese limited DC edition.

Edit looking at this screenshot, all of you that have voted it wasn't a technical leap are blind going from PSX or N64 to this was huge

Yeah, they can add as many extra stages, extra polygons, if the IQ and textures are mediocre, sometimes:

DOA2 Harcore alliasing


Even VS the Xbox version, the DC isn't ridiculous due to vibrant coloration,crisp IQ.(inferior of course, but not ridiculous)

 

[GrayDock]

I never had one, but seeing Soul Calibur at launch on it was mind blowing at the time, Sonic Adventure not so much.
For a while I consedered buying one, but then it came the MGS2 E3 video and all my savings went towards the, hard to find al launch, PS2.

 

[Alexios]

The models with higher polygons were latter added to the Japanese Dreamcast special edition.

Top vanilla DC version bottom Japanese limited DC edition.

Edit looking at this screenshot, all of you that have voted it wasn't a technical leap are blind going from PSX or N64 to this was huge

It still had more polygons on PS2, things like individual 3D tiles on arena floors instead of just textures and stuff like that and definitely superior lighting/effects. Dunno about the character models but I wouldn't be surprised if those were further enhanced too. When was that interview, before/after the Japanese release, before/after Hardcore (the Japanese release of which was also itself further improved according to some folks, though I don't see how as they released close together, before Pal even, the only concrete thing I can find is they added Turbo mode and some more cut scenes and costumes) since he has said before how they basically tricked him into releasing it unfinished previously? Just to know which versions he'd be comparing, it doesn't change much, the game looks fine in the US and Pal versions too really. She had a braid (that she still has in other costumes) instead of loose ponytail mind, not just removed hair altogether as it seems in that screenshot. But yes, it's cool they increased polycounts and improved the game as they were doing for the arcade version, not so cool the west never saw that stuff but oh well, they couldn't patch games then. Not all characters got (or needed as much) as visible upgrades as Kasumi's default costume sleeves, if any.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

To the question "was the dreamcast actually powerful at launch" the answer is a very obvious yes. Back in late 1998 there was nothing in the PC (let alone console) front that could keep up with the Dreamcast.
It was a standalone console released for $200 with the PowerVR2 GPU that was often as fast as 2x Voodoo2 in SLI (which would go for ~$500 at the time). In first person shooters and other games with high geometry output that took advantage of its tiled based rendering, it would sometimes beat even the TNT2 Ultra and Voodoo 3 3500, as long as the resolution was kept at 800*600p or lower (otherwise its pixel fillrate would falter, and it was also the console's maximum output IIRC).

The PC graphics card Neon 250 uses the same architecture as the Dreamcast's but its chip was significantly cut in capabilities, so the Dreamcast would probably run quite a bit faster than this:

It also supported 32bit color which the Voodoo3 couldn't.
It was a superior architecture for many types of games, which is why Imagination / PowerVR won the console's design over 3dfx.
Unfortunately, their GPU choice was also a big part of the reason why the console failed. EA had apparently been developing games for the 3dfx version and all that work went down the toilet so they refused to further develop launch any games for the final hardware. At the time this pretty much killed SEGA And when they lost the design to Imagination, 3dfx took SEGA to court for reparations which made them lose a bunch of money.
The management was ultimately to blame, since they apparently kept Sega of Japan's hardware development a secret from Sega of America's, so they had these two teams competing against each other and making deals with suppliers without one knowing they were going to lose it all.

Funny how their choice on processing hardware was both what made the console so powerful for its price and what made the business fail from politics.

 

[SpokkX]

Compared to psx and n64 it was night and day (it could emulate psx via Bleem! In high res - play several late psx games on Dreamcast).

It was, however, quickly behind new pc:s and ps2/gc/xbox was almost one gen ahead. It could never have handled MGS2 or Halo for example. So it basically had a couple of years where it was quite top end

 

[//DEVIL//]

I really enjoy the vibrance too of Dreamcast games.

This. All their games were colourful and fun . PSO with a dail up connection. Power stone 1 and 2 . SNK vs cap 1 and 2. Arcadia. Shenmue 1/2 .

I really loved the hardware for all its games

It’s really the only Mini console I would actually buy

 

[Fat Frog]

Everyone voting “no” is clueless.

Going from PS1 and N64 to crisp clean Dreamcast running Naomi ports was incredible. All for $199.

$199 was a great price.
Was NFL a launch title in the US ?

Problem with euro launch, it was like 250€ and...Soulcalibur was delayed a bit !!! Meaning early adopted were forced to take VF3, blue stinger or touch their penis for a few weeks.

 

[SmokedMeat]

$199 was a great price.
Was NFL a launch title in the US ?

Problem with euro launch, it was like 250€ and...Soulcalibur was delayed a bit !!! Meaning early adopted were forced to take VF3, blue stinger or touch their penis for a few weeks.

Yep, NFL 2K was included. The only thing I couldn’t get at launch was a Lightgun to play House of the Dead 2. Had to wait a little for that, but it wasn’t long.

 

[egocrata]

Of the four consoles of that generation, the Dreamcast and GameCube are the ones that have aged best visually. There are plenty of games from both that just an upscale and some polish is enough to make them feel at home on a modern console.

The Xbox is a bit different because most of the games that aged well are Sega games, of course. The rest it feels more like a PC.

 

[nbkicker]

I preordered one as soon as i could, the wait didnt help when my local hmv had a demo unit set up, playing ready 2 rumble boxing was like god games cant get any better, come launch i think i ended up getting the console , ready 2 rumble boxing, soul calibre , power stone, trickstyle and one other , but over the yr my dreamcast collection was one of biggest i kept, but due to other commitments and wanting a ps2 for tekken and ssx sold all my dreamcast and games

 

[Fat Frog]

It was, however, quickly behind new pc:s and ps2/gc/xbox was almost one gen ahead. It could never have handled MGS2

Ah...MGS2 the beginning of one color games .
Impressive rain effect, indeed and nice green, glad you like it .(at least it's not the piss filter of 50% of PS3 games yet )

Playstation gamers at the museeum:

Textures ? Colors ? What for ?

 

[Panajev2001a]

The models with higher polygons were latter added to the Japanese Dreamcast special edition.

Top vanilla DC version bottom Japanese limited DC edition.

Edit looking at this screenshot, all of you that have voted it wasn't a technical leap are blind going from PSX or N64 to this was huge

It was a massive leap and with a few more years on the market and a few bigger budget projects on it you would have seen it sing, very loudly so .

I think the Dreamcast was a well designed fun system, really liked the VMU too, the controller would have benefitted from built in rumble and having a second analog stick… it would have been worth a slightly higher console price as it would have made it possible to add more games more easily and develop more engaging games. Another unfortunate choice though :/.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Ah...MGS2 the beginning of one color games .
Impressive rain effect, indeed and nice green, glad you like it .(at least it's not the piss filter of 50% of PS3 games yet )

Playstation gamers at the museeum:

Textures ? Colors ? What for ?

How salty are you still? Fine take one of the worst screenshots you could find of MGS2 and take a visual style that was unfortunately non PS3, Xbox 360, and PC titles at the time and call it a PS3 piss filter sure…

How could you get saltier? Not sure… does the following help?

Is that the level of the discussion we wanted? Alright if trying to take down PS2 massive library is your game well… fill your boots.

 

[Panajev2001a]

$199 was a great price.
Was NFL a launch title in the US ?

Problem with euro launch, it was like 250€ and...Soulcalibur was delayed a bit !!! Meaning early adopted were forced to take VF3, blue stinger or touch their penis for a few weeks.

I wonder if they could have not launched at $249-299, avoided to piss EA off, and maybe pack in a few more features (like built in rumble in the controller, second analog stick, etc…), maybe bumped the RAM some more too or maybe wait a bit longer and also ship a DVD player (difficult though).

I think they left quite a lot of money on the table, but it is a game of what if’s at this point.

 

[Physiognomonics]

Compared to psx and n64 it was night and day (it could emulate psx via Bleem! In high res - play several late psx games on Dreamcast).

It was, however, quickly behind new pc:s and ps2/gc/xbox was almost one gen ahead. It could never have handled MGS2 or Halo for example. So it basically had a couple of years where it was quite top end

Sure but MGS2 textures were very limited, a lot of tricks were used in this game. Dreamcast textures were much better (due to 8MB vram + much better texture compression). I never saw a game like Shenmue (with detailed high resolution textures) on PS2 for instance. But obviously in the end PS2 was the better hardware as seen in games like MGS2, and the GTA games.

 

[schaft0620]

The Dreamcast was like a reverse Nintendo. It released between gens and the power was in its favor. While the Switch and Wii U release between gens and they are less powerful than current gen.

The Gamecube came out two years after Shenmue released in Japan. Games like Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, Soul Reaver had their definitive editions released on Dreamcast.

In 1999 you had Dreamcast vs N64 vs PS1

 

[Fat Frog]

How salty are you still? Fine take one of the worst screenshots you could find of MGS2 and take a visual style that was unfortunately non PS3, Xbox 360, and PC titles at the time and call it a PS3 piss filter sure…

How could you get saltier? Not sure… does the following help?

Is that the level of the discussion we wanted? Alright if trying to take down PS2 massive library is your game well… fill your boots.

Don't cry. I was responding to someone who said MGS2... And only MGS2 on PS2

Salty ?

 

[Panajev2001a]

Don't cry. I was responding to someone who said MGS2... And only MGS2 on PS2

Salty ?

I was not the one making particularly weird claims so… no, still you .

 

[Mobilemofo]

The Dreamcast found itself in a bit of a No man's land. I remember when it launched. My mate bought one, and we played powerstone/crazytaxi etc, and went on t'internet with the disc. It was ok, just too early. Games never materialised for it either. Dead on arrival pretty much.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

It was a major upgrade over PSX and N64. NFL2K was a major next generational leap not just visually but audio, gameplay, ai and logic, etc. Dreamcast also had a number of PSX ports like Legacy of Kain, RE2 and RE3c etc. All of them looked vastly superior on the Dreamcast. It was a lot of fun, glad I got one at launch.

 

[Redneckerz]

Why are we still comparing, when we have excellent scholar-grade analysis of these things?

• Dreamcast System Architecture | A Practical Analysis
• PlayStation 2 System Architecture | A Practical Analysis

 

[Panajev2001a]

Why are we still comparing, when we have excellent scholar-grade analysis of these things?

• Dreamcast System Architecture | A Practical Analysis
• PlayStation 2 System Architecture | A Practical Analysis

If you had linked Beyond 3D I think there would be a lot more interesting data from actual devs that pushed both platforms quite a bit (and some of the PVR2DC GPU designers hehe). There is lots of very nice data, but misses quite a bit of things too.

 

[Redneckerz]

If you had linked Beyond 3D I think there would be a lot more interesting data from actual devs that pushed both platforms quite a bit (and some of the PVR2DC GPU designers hehe). There is lots of very nice data, but misses quite a bit of things too.

Ideally they would have pushed that to Github as commentary as Copetti does take notes from Beyond3D.

They were perfectly fine machines for the era. My opinion on it is that the DC never was exploited to its fullest potential, whereas PS2 definitely has been (2004's Transformers comes to mind, or SWAT, with its pre-baked lighting).

 

[Fat Frog]

I was not the one making particularly weird claims so… no, still you .

Weird claim ? We just love colorful games .MGS2 isn't... That's all. You'll survive

 

[Panajev2001a]

Ideally they would have pushed that to Github as commentary as Copetti does take notes from Beyond3D.

He does, but I think he misses quite a lot of things if you want to compare: comparisons between pros and cons of the extended SIMD unit of the SH-4 vs the VU0/VU1 in PS2’s EE, on the SH-4 side is left as “As a result, it includes a 128-bit SIMD unit that can accelerate vector operations [2].”

When talking about the TBDR approach it could have explained how that affected memory and bandwidth: TBDR’s need the entire scene so all the transformed geometry had to be stored in VRAM for the ISP to sort it and then read data by tile (which reduces how much memory you could leave to textures, as well as other buffers you would store in VRAM). Texture wise streaming from main RAM was also more of a challenge compared to PS2 (which was rendering one triangle at a time, point of IMR’s, you do not have to capture the scene) that had a lot higher bandwidth and an on-chip image decompressor on the CPU (IPU or done in software on the GS) but then again DC had lots of RAM and quite efficient compression.

While it did highlight the HW based translucency sorting (which unfortunately died with the DC :/), the article misses much of the built in DOT3 support for the combined unit and especially of the modifier volumes feature (very nice thread here: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/powervr-2dc.14297/ for much cheaper shadows than the standard stencil based technique).

They were perfectly fine machines for the era. My opinion on it is that the DC never was exploited to its fullest potential, whereas PS2 definitely has been (2004's Transformers comes to mind, or SWAT, with its pre-baked lighting).

Indeed .

 

[Panajev2001a]

Weird claim ? We just love colorful games .MGS2 isn't... That's all. You'll survive

“We”? Who is we ?

MGS has more color than you give it credit for, considering what they do with it I think it was more of a stylistic choice… see MGS3 for a LOT more color .

 

[RoboFu]

Dreamcast had less system ram than ps2 but had double the vram and a gpu that had more capabilities than the ps2.


If sega wasn’t already in the hole I firmly believe the Dreamcast could have easily carried them that gen in terms of hardware. They would have had to put out a dual analog controller though.

 

[Sleepwalker]

Ah...MGS2 the beginning of one color games .
Impressive rain effect, indeed and nice green, glad you like it .(at least it's not the piss filter of 50% of PS3 games yet )

Playstation gamers at the museeum:

Textures ? Colors ? What for ?

And yet it didn't need colors to shit all over the full dreamcast library. Stay salty lolol

 

[cireza]

“We”? Who is we ?

MGS has more color than you give it credit for, considering what they do with it I think it was more of a stylistic choice… see MGS3 for a LOT more color .

Many PS2 games do have a lot of colors, but in the end, it is still limited by the fact it has two times less VRAM than Dreamcast, which is a limit that simply can't be overcome.

Texture work is vastly superior on Dreamcast even on games released much earlier. There are instances that are absolutely incredible (Skies of Arcadia, for example, has many super high detailed textures), and if PS2 could overcome Dreamcast in a lot of ways, in the end everything related to textures, and by extension, vibrant colors, ends up being inferior. You never get anything as clean than the cleanest Dreamcast games.

Random example from Skies :

 

[Redneckerz]

He does, but I think he misses quite a lot of things if you want to compare: comparisons between pros and cons of the extended SIMD unit of the SH-4 vs the VU0/VU1 in PS2’s EE, on the SH-4 side is left as “As a result, it includes a 128-bit SIMD unit that can accelerate vector operations [2].”

When talking about the TBDR approach it could have explained how that affected memory and bandwidth: TBDR’s need the entire scene so all the transformed geometry had to be stored in VRAM for the ISP to sort it and then read data by tile (which reduces how much memory you could leave to textures, as well as other buffers you would store in VRAM). Texture wise streaming from main RAM was also more of a challenge compared to PS2 (which was rendering one triangle at a time, point of IMR’s, you do not have to capture the scene) that had a lot higher bandwidth and an on-chip image decompressor on the CPU (IPU or done in software on the GS) but then again DC had lots of RAM and quite efficient compression.

While it did highlight the HW based translucency sorting (which unfortunately died with the DC :/), the article misses much of the built in DOT3 support for the combined unit and especially of the modifier volumes feature (very nice thread here: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/powervr-2dc.14297/ for much cheaper shadows than the standard stencil based technique).

Not to dissuade your or anything, but if you do have Git, make so here: https://github.com/flipacholas/Architecture-of-consoles/commits/master

I do want to point that Copetti does tend to rewrite parts of their work to make them better, so i'd say these things are as good as anything.

Indeed .

And thus so concludes the thread. How easy it is not to go to the battlefield but just to agree with eachother

 

[Nickolaidas]

I was floored by its capabilities at the time. Code Veronica, Soul Calibur, House of the Dead II, Skies of Arcadia, Zombie Revenge ... it seemed unrivalled compared to the visual mediocrities of the PSX and the Saturn.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Many PS2 games do have a lot of colors, but in the end, it is still limited by the fact it has two times less VRAM than Dreamcast, which is a limit that simply can't be overcome.

Then again DC VRAM had to contend with geometry and the more detailed the game the more space you would be losing, PS2 games also did break rendering off of a frame off in multiple passes (PS2 was a fill rate and video ram bandwidth monster) and streamed a lot of data per frame from the main RAM (which they had far more of) including decompressing some data on the fly with the IPU if you were so inclined… fair point that we did not see the DC maxed with more years and bigger budgets on it.
It did have very good 16 bits framebuffer support (very good quality) and a perhaps easier time getting 32 colors.

Texture work is vastly superior on Dreamcast even on games released much earlier. There are instances that are absolutely incredible (Skies of Arcadia, for example, has many super high detailed textures), and if PS2 could overcome Dreamcast in a lot of ways, in the end everything related to textures, and by extension, vibrant colors, ends up being inferior. You never get anything as clean than the cleanest Dreamcast games.

Not to take away from the Dreamcast titles, but it is debatable. Dreamcast certainly was more of a Cerny like HW than PS2 was: designed to make development easier so one could make a point saying that it was able to hit closer to its peak earlier while PS2’s architecture needed more time as a puzzle to be worked out.

 

[Fat Frog]

MGS3... color...MGS3...color...MGS3...color

Ok.

 

[Fat Frog]

And yet it didn't need colors to shit all over the full dreamcast library.

Like i said in another thread i like how Sony boys love to touch their penis for green corridors on ps2 and the 60000 vertices snake's mustache in MGS4.
Good for you

 

[xellos2099alpha]

I would say early gen ps2 games was mostly inferior to Dreamcast game. I mean there is no doubt ps2 is stronger than dreamcast but not that THAT much. DVD was what made ps2 won the war.

 

[bender]

“We”? Who is we ?

 

[cireza]

Not to take away from the Dreamcast titles, but it is debatable. Dreamcast certainly was more of a Cerny like HW than PS2 was: designed to make development easier so one could make a point saying that it was able to hit closer to its peak earlier while PS2’s architecture needed more time as a puzzle to be worked out.

I agree with the fact that PS2 took longer to master, it was over-engineered just like PS3, but they could do this coming out from the success of PS1, third parties had no other choice but to deal with it.

That being said, I don't find that even super late PS2 games get close to the level of texture detail and picture quality Dreamcast offered. These games certainly offer other things, like particles, lighting, better models etc... But texture work is always quite poor. Dreamcast also supports VGA 480p, which makes it super easy to use in great condition on modern TVs. I believe that PS2 was Component/RGB and that's it.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I agree with the fact that PS2 took longer to master, it was over-engineered just like PS3, but they could do this coming out from the success of PS1, third parties had no other choice but to deal with it.

That being said, I don't find that even super late PS2 games get close to the level of texture detail and picture quality Dreamcast offered. These games certainly offer other things, like particles, lighting, better models etc... But texture work is always quite poor. Dreamcast also supports VGA 480p, which makes it super easy to use in great condition on modern TVs. I believe that PS2 was Component/RGB and that's it.

I don't know. Dreamcast did look cleaner, yes. But complex stuff like FFXII, God of War 2, GT4, MGS3 I didn't see happening on DC. Most DC games had good AA, were colorful but had low polycounts. If you take a look at MGS3, with its details on swamps, moving foliage, mud, fire and all kinds of small things.. it was a step ahead of Dreamcast.

But Dreamcast launch I will never forget. It did steal the thunder from PS2. Its to this day my number one system launch ever. Every genre was covered, 2d fighting, 3d fighting, racing, beat em up. sports sim and arcade.. For me it was great because all I wanted at the time was playing SC, MvC and Hydro Thunder at home and I finally could. Hell, I even liked Blue Stinger. It was bad, but it was also very charming and unique. Even a fucking lightgun with HOTD2 was present. And a fishing rod with Get Bass came out at launch or very quickly after it. Its absolutely fucking crazy and I dare anyone to come up with a better system launch.

 

[cireza]

Dreamcast did look cleaner, yes. But complex stuff like FFXII, God of War 2, GT4, MGS3 I didn't see happening on DC. Most DC games had good AA, were colorful but had low polycounts. If you take a look at MGS3, with its details on swamps, moving foliage, mud, fire and all kinds of small things.. it was a step ahead of Dreamcast.

None of what I said contradicts this. I am simply talking about texture and picture quality.

 

[VeganElduderino]

it sure was powerful , the closest thing to arcade perfection

 

[SmokedMeat]

I would say early gen ps2 games was mostly inferior to Dreamcast game. I mean there is no doubt ps2 is stronger than dreamcast but not that THAT much. DVD was what made ps2 won the war.

Yeah, who remembers the “jaggies” talk when referring to PS2 games?

I remember renting Tekken Tag when the system released, and I was pretty underwhelmed. Soul Calibur was just too damn amazing.

 

[Kokoloko85]

It was amazing. Going from PS1, Saturn and N64 to Dreamcast. Yum

 

[anothertech]

I always compared it to PS2 and Xbox, so was underpowered.

Should have waited a couple years and made it a powerhouse instead imo

 

[Fat Frog]

I don't know.

Yeah, cireza didn't say the Dreamcast has the polycount, lights of the PS2 but remind us it has the better IQ, textures.

That my pob with the PS2. It has the best library ever, no pob with that, that's facts but...

The great generational leap was the Dreamcast and when big publishers really made the difference with the PS2 in 2001 (DMC, FFX,GT3)well...
The Xbox was here the same year with DOA3.

Very often when the PS2 does something better than the Dreamcast(geometry, lights), on the other hand it removes something (bad IQ, poor textures).

With the Xbox there was no debate, no compromise:

DOA3 had good geometry, good textures, good IQ.

Therefore i was blown away by the Dreamcast and then blown away by the xbox and DOA3 (with PS2 i was seduced by something, pissed off by something else).

What about the gamecube ?
I often laugh at Nintendo hardwares but i found this one pretty smart, efficient, cheap and more sexy than the PS2.

I mean, no horrible alliasing like the PS2 (just a little bit), good textures, great effects, F-Zero GX was impressive and the console $100 cheaper than the PS2 WTF !
This Nintendo console deserved more success than the blur 64

 

[ReBurn]

it sure was powerful , the closest thing to arcade perfection

The Sega arcade ports are why I bought one. I didn't care about which console was more powerful. I wanted those 60 FPS Sega arcade games at home and Dreamcast was powerful enough for that.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Huge jump. DC games had higher res, many of their games ran at 60 fps, better looking 3D shading.

NFL 2k was mind blowing how good it looked. It also even had awesome play by play commentating to boot. To me, still the best sports play by play tandem ever.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Terrific console had a very simple design.

 

[Hitchyhero]

I love this console so much. I had a PS2 first but when I managed to get a Dreamcast a year later, I absolutely fell in love with that console more.

I was blown away by shenmue, sonic adventure and their weird and wonderful arcadey games that you just don't get that much any more.

I really don't care if it was less powerful (although I'd argue that visually many sega games have held up much better than many PS2 games).

 

[diffusionx]

DC was extremely impressive. Soul Calibur when it came out was imo the best looking game, on any platform. Plus you were getting arcade ports that were just not possible on N64 and PSX, with 3D games running at a smooth frame rate. It was a huge leap.

Dreamcast could have hung with the PS2 at least in the first couple years on the strength of its IQ and ease of development. Off the top of my head, the PS2 ports of DC games were all inferior. But the quality of PS2 tech evolved pretty rapidly and the system wouldn’t have been able to hang with the games that were coming out mid and late gen. Also I think it’s pretty clear the Xbox and Cube were a big step up.