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[loktaiextatus]

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).
[/QUOTE]

Very interesting anecdote. I think it shows that EA would not waste their time with the Sega system unless they had guaranteed sales based on not having competition...
because I doubt they saddled Sony with ANY such requirement.

I agree I dont think EA would have saved Dreamcast... it would not have hurt but I wonder if that would have had any say over Sega releasing games like Virtua Tennis?
Man, I loved that game. Not even a tennis fan I just loved it.

 

[nkarafo]

I'd say the most impressive visual feat on Dreamcast is Le Mans 24 Hours.

 

[01011001]

Yes. It actually did several things better than PS2, such as [...] higher output resolution (thanks to VGA support)

wait... didn't the PS2 have an official component cable and had like a 4 or 5 sports games that ran at 720p or 1080i? not necessarily native but scaled.

 

[loktaiextatus]

I'd say the most impressive visual feat on Dreamcast is Le Mans 24 Hours.

People always said that, and pointed it out. I played it at the time and while it may have a lot of cool little effects overall it felt kind of ..raw.. unpolished? It didnt feel NICE to me .

For instance Metropolis Street Racer felt and looked better to me, overall. Sega GT played awesome, I loved that game too. I still remember flying through the tracks in an AE101
and being able to come up on 2 WHEELS which was amazing in a "sim" game and I remember thinking "Hm, Ive never seen THAT happen in Gran Turismo"

 

[diffusionx]

wait... didn't the PS2 have an official component cable and had like a 4 or 5 sports games that ran at 720p or 1080i?

It did, but, for example, GT4 was around 640x540 internally. It wasn't outputting true native 1080i.

And PS2 480p support was really hit and miss, DC/Cube/Xbox were all better for it.

 

[loktaiextatus]

It did, but, for example, GT4 was around 640x540 internally. It wasn't outputting true native 1080i.

And PS2 480p support was really hit and miss, DC/Cube/Xbox were all better for it.

Part of that too was a lot of the way the PS2 was designed for video output relied on the interlacing. Thats why often on a CRT TV you get an overall more visually appealing picture than youd think you would.. or the overall effect is nicer than for instance emulating the game on a crisp monitor... it was sort of assumed youd be playing on a CRT. PS2 looked pretty miserable on an HD set, even not that great if Im honest on a lot of the digital CRT HD sets if you put the TV in progressive scan mode.

 

[Punished Miku]

Soul Calibur killed arcades, so I'd say yeah.

 

[01011001]

It did, but, for example, GT4 was around 640x540 internally. It wasn't outputting true native 1080i.

And PS2 480p support was really hit and miss, DC/Cube/Xbox were all better for it.

yeah I didn't expect it to hit anything close to a native HD resolution.

and yeah, in terms of HDTV and EDTV support the DC, GC and Xbox all beat it easily. I mean native 720p60 THPS4 (or Underground/Underground 2) on Xbox... can't beat that

 

[loktaiextatus]

Soul Calibur killed arcades, so I'd say yeah.

Of course it did, when Soul Calibur came to Dreamcast it had been out in the arcade for a year and a half, and it ran on the arcade version of the Playstation. (1996 arcade board)
It had BETTER look better than that.

 

[Tesseract]

Soul Calibur killed arcades, so I'd say yeah.

don't forget marvel 2

my arcade became a ghost town

 

[Punished Miku]

Of course it did, when Soul Calibur came to Dreamcast it had been out in the arcade for a year and a half, and it ran on the arcade version of the Playstation. (1996 arcade board)
It had BETTER look better than that.

No home console had ever even come close to arcades before, let alone surpassed it. There is no "of course it did."

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

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.

It's an interesting situation regarding NAOMI, because yes it wasn't necessarily the most powerful arcade system at the time, but what were they supposed to do when the Model 3 turned out so expensive it costed them money? If anything the problems you feel were attributable to NAOMI probably started with Model 3; despite it being very powerful, operators just couldn't afford enough of the machines.

So they kind of were forced to go with NAOMI imho; it may not've been a massive leap from Model 3, but it was actually affordable for most arcade operators, too. And it did go on to be their most prolific arcade platform (between it and NAOMI 2), so I think it did at least some arcades well enough in revenue to keep supporting it. I honestly doubt the same would've happened if there was a Model 4 which yeah, maybe could've beaten the pants off of even OG Xbox for its time, but at what cost to operators?

I think another reason they decided against a Model 4 was because SEGA knew firsthand how having a marquee arcade board way more powerful than their home console would've made ports extremely difficult and probably generate bad perception for the home console. That's what happened with the Saturn port of Daytona USA, for instance. Even when they got a good port in CCE, it just visually came nowhere close to the Model 2 game. OTOH, PS1's port of Ridge Racer was virtually 1:1 with the arcade visually, and that didn't hurt its arcade performance nor the home version, so I don't know if NAOMI being only "comparable" to home consoles of the time was really what hurt arcades going forward.

Just a theory I've had for a while, but honestly I think it came down to super-expensive cabinets and lack of enough variety in gaming experiences that couldn't be had at the home. When you look at stuff like the DDR games, they EXPLODED in popularity and arcades had boon periods with them; those were helped by being games you couldn't really get the same experience of at home. Arcades needed more of that IMHO; looking at the FEC market now I actually see some really cool games conceptually you can't do at home, but a lot of them aren't tied to strong enough game design or IPs that will attract most console gamers to take a serious look. Whoever manages to put those two pieces together, honestly, they could bring arcade gaming back in a big way but that's just my optimism talking

With the EA stuff, you're 100% right. EA knew Sony was in no position to be bartered with that way. Funnily enough EA actually did this to SEGA with the MegaDrive, and that time it was over being able to manufacture their own cartridges. Both times they tried making super-favorable deals (for them) with SEGA when they were vulnerable, the only difference is SEGA actually made the MegaDrive a massive hit, which didn't come with the Dreamcast.

Maybe EA thought that would be the case once again and that's why they tried making that deal? We'll probably never know. But if people want to trace back EA's modern-day crooked business practices, well they always had some small tinges of it even back in the late '80s. But hey, that's the nature of business.

wait... didn't the PS2 have an official component cable and had like a 4 or 5 sports games that ran at 720p or 1080i? not necessarily native but scaled.

First time hearing about it. Hmm...I'll check into it, but I saw an Adam Korilik video going over PS2 and remember he might've tested image output with that cable but still being disappointed.

Or maybe it wasn't that cable, but an equivalent, more modern 3rd-party cable?

 

[loktaiextatus]

No home console had ever even come close to arcades before, let alone surpassed it. There is no "of course it did."

Tons of home consoles surpassed arcade hardware that was like 4 years old.
The Saturn and Playstation EASILY beat the NeoGeo MVS or other hardware from 1990.
How many generations are you counting before that?

 

[Romulus]

No home console had ever even come close to arcades before, let alone surpassed it. There is no "of course it did."

I'm asking this because I don't know, not telling you. But, weren't arcade visuals slowing taking a back seat in terms of pushing the boundaries by the time Dreamcast came out? It was my understanding that PC GPUs were on the rise in terms of taking the lead and the 90s super arcade hardware weren't as prominent. Arcade technology seemed to be transitioning more than taking the lead like previous years.

 

[polybius80]

wait... didn't the PS2 have an official component cable and had like a 4 or 5 sports games that ran at 720p or 1080i? not necessarily native but scaled.

the xploder HD allowed to give progressive scan support to most games and also HD to lot of games that officially doesnt support it

 

[nkarafo]

No home console had ever even come close to arcades before, let alone surpassed it. There is no "of course it did."

Dreamcast had nothing to do with the death of arcades. It was a natural evolution for consoles. What you were expecting from next-gen.

It was the Naomi (and it's equivalents) that killed the arcades. Like i said previously, Sega decided to make their next main arcade board a cheap Dreamcast based one instead of using custom hardware like they did with Model 1/2/3. The others followed them too. After the Model 3 there was no arcade hardware better than a powerful mainstream PC. That was what killed the arcades because most people expected the state of the art from them. That's why people spend money on them for a few minutes of play, that's why people would leave the comfort of their home for them. But the Naomi generation brought an end to the arcade hardware superiority that was the norm from the very beginning of Video Games.

 

[Physiognomonics]

Yes Dreamcast was a beast at launch and it had great games. Compared to PS1 it was true next gen.

For me PS2 was graphically the same gen as Dreamcast. Dreamcast was a very well designed console and it had even some advantages against PS2: Vram size and hardware texture compression.

Many PS2 games like MGS2 were impressive graphically (and at 60fps), but you could see the limitation of textures in many PS2 games (like in Jak & Daxter, tons of particle effects and polygons running at 60fps, but repeated low res textures).

Obviously PS2 was a generally more powerful console with more main ram, more polygons and a ridiculously high fillrate but that wasn't seen in games the first year. We had to wait Jak & Daxter and MGS2 (but that game was really an exception, because Kojima) to really see the potential of PS2.

And the image quality of Dreamcast using even a Scart cable ? Perfection. I never seen a better image quality on a CRT TV than the Dreamcast. But that was a trait of all Sega consoles.

 

[Tesseract]

i was playing fighting games every weekend and saw the losses in real time

not just fighters, but shooters, racers, all those machines dried up

 

[loktaiextatus]

Yes Dreamcast was a beast at launch and it had great games. Compared to PS1 it was true next gen.

For me PS2 was graphically the same gen as Dreamcast. Dreamcast was a very well designed console and it had even some advantages against PS2: Vram size and hardware texture compression.

Many PS2 games like MGS2 were impressive graphically (and at 60fps), but you could see the limitation of textures in many PS2 games (like in Jak & Daxter, tons of particle effects and polygons running at 60fps, but repeated low res textures).

Obviously PS2 was a generally more powerful console with more main ram, more polygons and a ridiculously high fillrate but that wasn't seen in games the first year. We had to wait Jak & Daxter and MGS2 (but that game was really an exception, because Kojima) to really see the potential of PS2.

And the image quality of Dreamcast using even a Scart cable ? Perfection. I never seen better image quality on a CRT TV than the Dreamcast. But that was a trait of all Sega consoles.

Later PS2 games were well out of the reach of Dreamcast... You could probably DO the games but they would not be identical. In texture quality maybe, Dreamcast had no issues
at all with clarity, and texturing. Just comparing a game like Final Fantasy 12, Rogue Galaxy, Gran Turismo 4 (even 3 really...), We could go down the list but I just dont think there
is any Question the Dreamcast would have been a graphical underdog, by a big margin, even though I think the gameplay quality on the system was fantastic. I must have played
1000 hours of SF3 Third strike with my friends.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

I would say no, but only because it wasn't a significant jump in graphics vs the PS1 at the time (at least to me), but it certainly had features that were ahead of the other consoles such as built in Online and Memory Cards you could interact with.

 

[RetroAV]

Tons of home consoles surpassed arcade hardware that was like 4 years old.
The Saturn and Playstation EASILY beat the NeoGeo MVS or other hardware from 1990.
How many generations are you counting before that?

Never to the degree of Soul Calibur though.

 

[nkarafo]

PS1's port of Ridge Racer was virtually 1:1 with the arcade visually, and that didn't hurt its arcade performance nor the home version, so I don't know if NAOMI being only "comparable" to home consoles of the time was really what hurt arcades going forward.

Just a correction, Ridge Racer is far from arcade perfect on PS1. The arcade runs at higher resolution and 60fps. it's a good port for the hardware and not as bad as Daytona but let's keep it real.

 

[loktaiextatus]

Never to the degree of Soul Calibur though.

I think this is a strange statement... I'll explain why.

The arcade hardware that Soul Calibur ran on, was a Playstation 1. it was a PS1 in arcade form the way the Naomi is a Dreamcast.
This was commonly done because devs were using it as a lead platform often and understood the system.

The Dreamcast surpassed the Half decade old Playstation.

You cant compare the System 12 to something like the NeoGeo or the Model 3 which were higher cost purpose build arcade hardware.
The Dreamcast BARELY edged out the Model 3. It was better at a few things though- than the model 3. But it was not a giant leap.
Many model 3 games ported to DC suffered because the Model 3 used a different kind of polygon (square) and the Dreamcast used triangles(more common)
it ran into some weird issues with ports.

 

[Craig of War]

For it time it was and the Xbox took alot of idea from the Dreamcast that why many people said original Xbox was the Dreamcast 2

 

[phil_t98]

Later PS2 games were well out of the reach of Dreamcast... You could probably DO the games but they would not be identical. In texture quality maybe, Dreamcast had no issues
at all with clarity, and texturing. Just comparing a game like Final Fantasy 12, Rogue Galaxy, Gran Turismo 4 (even 3 really...), We could go down the list but I just dont think there
is any Question the Dreamcast would have been a graphical underdog, by a big margin, even though I think the gameplay quality on the system was fantastic. I must have played
1000 hours of SF3 Third strike with my friends.

I would say if they continued the dreamcast as long as the PS2 then your would of seen massive leaps in graphics at that point to

 

[nkarafo]

The Dreamcast BARELY edged out the Model 3. It was better at a few things though- than the model 3. But it was not a giant leap.
Many model 3 games ported to DC suffered because the Model 3 used a different kind of polygon (square) and the Dreamcast used triangles(more common)
it ran into some weird issues with ports.

Remember though, there wasn't a single Model 3 board. There were several revisions or "steps" that would improve on the hardware.

So when we ask the question "is the Dreamcast better than the Model 3?" what step of the hardware we mean? Because it surely isn't nearly as good as the later steps of Model 3 hardware.

 

[01011001]

I would say no, but only because it wasn't a significant jump in graphics vs the PS1 at the time, but it certainly had features that were ahead of the other consoles such as built in Online and Memory Cards you could interact with.

what?

the video below shows Soul Calibur running on an arcade machine that is a more powerful version of the PS1 hardware, it's basically like a PS1 Pro so to speak in terms of hardware improvements over the PS1, and next to it the Dreamcast port


even here you can see a pretty big jump in every department. higher polygon count on every object, higher res textures, way cleaner image, and way more details in the backgrounds.
so this is a comparison with the same game running on a Dreamcast vs. an arcade board that is about 1.6 to 1.7 times as powerful as the PS1

now let's go one step down to actual PS1 hardware with SoulEdge/SoulBlade, the predecessor to Soul Calibur

 

[polybius80]

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..

DC had a very good texture compresion algorithm and nice vram space for textures but you are exaggerating, the DC compression is good but is not 5:1 compared to PS2(CLUT) or GC(S3TC), consoles like GC and PS2 work using faster memory and small cache(1 MB and 2+ MB), while DC aparently has way bigger texture caches it runs in MB/s that is really slow compared to Ps2 and GC, they can change it many times during frame

 

[RetroAV]

I think this is a strange statement... I'll explain why.

The arcade hardware that Soul Calibur ran on, was a Playstation 1. it was a PS1 in arcade form the way the Naomi is a Dreamcast.
This was commonly done because devs were using it as a lead platform often and understood the system.

The Dreamcast surpassed the Half decade old Playstation.

You cant compare the System 12 to something like the NeoGeo or the Model 3 which were higher cost purpose build arcade hardware.
The Dreamcast BARELY edged out the Model 3. It was better at a few things though- than the model 3. But it was not a giant leap.
Many model 3 games ported to DC suffered because the Model 3 used a different kind of polygon (square) and the Dreamcast used triangles(more common)
it ran into some weird issues with ports.

You can't compare System 12 (PS1) because it's from a different generation? Didn't you just do that when you compared Neo Geo to PS1 and Saturn? I'm confused...

 

[Starlight Lotice]

what?

the video below shows Soul Calibur running on an arcade machine that is a more powerful version of the PS1 hardware, it's basically like a PS1 Pro so to speak in terms of hardware improvements over the PS1, and next to it the Dreamcast port


even here you can see a pretty big jump in every department. higher polygon count on every object, higher res textures, way cleaner image, and way more details in the backgrounds.
so this is a comparison with the same game running on a Dreamcast vs. an arcade board that is about 1.6 to 1.7 times as powerful as the PS1

now let's go one step down to actual PS1 hardware with SoulEdge, the predecessor to Soul Calibur

I am not denying that it was more powerful at the time of course, but I felt that the Jump wasn't as big as I would have expected given that most PS1 ports went to the Dreamcast (that were better of course).

People tended to hold off to see if the PS2 looked and performed better, which is debatable as Thicc_Gurls says, although the PS2 at the time had the advantage of DVD storage to make their games larger.

 

[RAIDEN1]

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.

I wouldn't go that far to say the PS2 was one the most difficult console to develop for of "all time" I think the Sega Saturn may have something to say about that....if the PS2 was that bad, it wouldn't have ended up being the sales behemoth that it was and I wouldn't say the Dreamcast got lucky due to the relative lack of competition.....Sega surely would have known after the smash-hit success of the PSX, there was no chance Sony would walk away quietly...Sega were on the ropes circa 1998, a shadow of what they were hell in 1988, straight-away you soon heard that Dreamcast could not handle MGS 2.......I wonder how far off it would have looked up against the PS2 version....

 

[Physiognomonics]

Later PS2 games were well out of the reach of Dreamcast... You could probably DO the games but they would not be identical. In texture quality maybe, Dreamcast had no issues
at all with clarity, and texturing. Just comparing a game like Final Fantasy 12, Rogue Galaxy, Gran Turismo 4 (even 3 really...), We could go down the list but I just dont think there
is any Question the Dreamcast would have been a graphical underdog, by a big margin, even though I think the gameplay quality on the system was fantastic. I must have played
1000 hours of SF3 Third strike with my friends.

I agree as I stated on my post, in the end PS2 games were easily graphically better, but still they were on the same gen IMO.

Also no PS2 games impressed me more than Soul Calibur.

But in the end if I had to chose a console + 10 games I'd pick the Dreamcast. The 10 best games on Dreamcast are better than the 10 best PS2 games.

 

[01011001]

I am not denying that it was more powerful at the time of course, but I felt that the Jump wasn't as big as I would have expected given that most PS1 ports went to the Dreamcast (that were better of course).

People tended to hold off to see if the PS2 looked and performed better, which is debatable as Thicc_Gurls says, although the PS2 at the time had the advantage of DVD storage to make their games larger.

that was the issue, most games were PS1 ports and therefore looked like high res PS1 or N64 games.
just like most Xbox games were PS2 ports and just looked a bit nicer.

when you look at some of the exclusives tho then you'll see a massive jump from PS1 to DC.

 

[Orta]

It was perfection.

Beautiful sexual perfection.

 

[phil_t98]

that was the issue, most games were PS1 ports and therefore looked like high res PS1 or N64 games.
just like most Xbox games were PS2 ports and just looked a bit nicer.

when you look at some of the exclusives tho then you'll see a massive jump from PS1 to DC.

Metropolis street racer was far ahead of anything else at the time. I remember looking at the cities that you were racing in and that the roads were the exact layout that they were in real life

 

[Dr.Morris79]

It had the best version of Shadowman at the time so yes, it was bloody awsome.

 

[V4skunk]

I remember drooling over Dreamcast gfx back in the day! Going from N64/ps1 gfx to DC was a huge jump!
I ended up getting a DC cheap just after Sega discontinued the console! I paid £100 for the console 10 games an extra pad and two vmu memory cards, all brand new.
The games were Shenmue1+2, Sonic Adventure1+2, Skies of arcadia,RE Code Veronica, Chuchu rocket, Phantasy Star and two other really terrible games.

 

[Entroyp]

A cording to Soul Calibur it was pretty powerful at that time.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

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.

I think it had more to do with SC having devs who were more familiar with the hardware.

 

[FStubbs]

Yes, it was the most powerful console on the market for a good year and a half by a huge margin, so yes, it was powerful at launch.

It had the PS1 and N64 in their later years as competition.

 

[BusierDonkey]

For me the jump from N64 to Dreamcast was and still is the biggest leap I've seen in console visuals. I'm hoping this gen will take the crown but it was a big leap.

Until Dreamcast, if I wanted to be blown away by a game, I went to the arcade. After Dreamcast, the Arcades weren't what they used to be, especially at $1-2/play.



Soul Calibur on launch day looked MUCH better than arcades and honestly holds up well today.

At the time of the Dreamcast I was used to 30fps or lower N64 and it's blurry textures, or PlayStation with no AA and blocky swimming textures. The fact is that just about every game I played in the first month was 60fps and looked an order of magnitude better than the games I had just played through in prior months.

When the PS2 launched, we bought one eventually, but I was not blown away by the visuals especially near launch.

By the time the PS2 was pumping out better looking games, the Gamecube and Xbox were also out with better looking games than the PS2 could produce.

 

[Romulus]

I wouldn't go that far to say the PS2 was one the most difficult console to develop for of "all time" I think the Sega Saturn may have something to say about that....if the PS2 was that bad, it wouldn't have ended up being the sales behemoth that it was and I wouldn't say the Dreamcast got lucky due to the relative lack of competition.....Sega surely would have known after the smash-hit success of the PSX, there was no chance Sony would walk away quietly...Sega were on the ropes circa 1998, a shadow of what they were hell in 1988, straight-away you soon heard that Dreamcast could not handle MGS 2.......I wonder how far off it would have looked up against the PS2 version....

Plenty of devs agree with that though. Selling well doesn't mean most developers didn't have to jump through hoops to code for it and that it didn't have a monster marketing push behind it and coming off the heels of the PS1, which was one of the best selling consoles ever too. It was reported that the documentation to get the PS2 games running was a nightmare, even for the Japanese devs, and for Western devs they couldn't even read it on top of that bizarre architecture. PS3 was likely worse.

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[Romulus]

For me the jump from N64 to Dreamcast was and still is the biggest leap I've seen in console visuals. I'm hoping this gen will take the crown but it was a big leap.

Until Dreamcast, if I wanted to be blown away by a game, I went to the arcade. After Dreamcast, the Arcades weren't what they used to be, especially at $1-2/play.



Soul Calibur on launch day looked MUCH better than arcades and honestly holds up well today.

At the time of the Dreamcast I was used to 30fps or lower N64 and it's blurry textures, or PlayStation with no AA and blocky swimming textures. The fact is that just about every game I played in the first month was 60fps and looked an order of magnitude better than the games I had just played through in prior months.

When the PS2 launched, we bought one eventually, but I was not blown away by the visuals especially near launch.

By the time the PS2 was pumping out better looking games, the Gamecube and Xbox were also out with better looking games than the PS2 could produce.

The Dreamcast was four years ahead of the PS1 though, that's basically a full generation in those days. And I feel alot of that disparity on the N64 side comes down to the N64's glaring weakness more than the Dreamcast itself. N64 just wasn't designed well at launch and was hard to code for. On top of the Dreamcast being much newer. And, I just don't see arcade games at that time really pushing the boundaries as much like a few years previously.

 

[The Pleasure]

I skipped school to buy a dreamcast on 9/9/99. Soul calibur was a magical time.

 

[RetroAV]

The Dreamcast was four years ahead of the PS1 though, that's basically a full generation in those days. And I feel alot of that disparity on the N64 side comes down to the N64's glaring weakness more than the Dreamcast itself. N64 just wasn't designed well at launch and was hard to code for. On top of the Dreamcast being much newer. And, I just don't see arcade games at that time really pushing the boundaries as much like a few years previously.

I think that's because Model 3 taught developers a lesson when it came to "pushing the boundaries".

I remember Tekken 3 costing 50 cents to play and everyone was on it. Then, I look over at the Virtua Fighter 3 cabinet with its own crowd of people...STARING at it (most likely in awe), but not PLAYING it because it cost a whole $1.00.

The Model 3 games just cost too much to play. No point in "pushing the boundaries" at that point. And so they never really did after that, or at least...not to the levels that the Model 3 did prior.

 

[EverydayBeast]

If the Dreamcast launched today I would play it

 

[Synless]

I remember Method Man on MTV drooling over Dreamcast. He did this number on some of the games. I was blown away at the time.

 

[teezzy]

When Dreamcast dropped, people spoke of it as though the graphics may as well have opened up a portal into another dimension.

We were splooging our panties over how realistic that damn dolphin looked, or the fact that you could open drawers in Shenmue. It was the stuff of legend.

 

[Bonfires Down]

Time from N64 release to Dreamcast release - 2.5 years
Time from Dreamcast release to Gamecube release - 3 years

I think it's safe to say that it was impressive.
More importantly, it was the first console that could do 3D visuals without severe compromises.

 

[loktaiextatus]

You can't compare System 12 (PS1) because it's from a different generation? Didn't you just do that when you compared Neo Geo to PS1 and Saturn? I'm confused...

The concept was that the Dreamcast was a big leap over the arcade.... but the example used was the System 12- a cheaper system, built on 1994 technology (PSX)
and then released 3+ years before Dreamcast, The reason I said it wasnt something you could compare to NeoGeo , vs Saturn / PSX is that the Neogeo was
cutting edge in 1990, not a budget- and this was in response to saying that never before has the leap been as big as what you saw the Dreamcast do to improve
the arcade version of Soul Calibur.

Sorry if this comes off as word Salad- long story short Im saying that the giant leap Soul Calibur made was because the arcade version was already running on
low-cost hardware in the arcade- SO improving on it leaps and bounds a few years later at home was only a product of that - not that previous consoles had not
matched or exceeded arcade hardware from a few years before release.