Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
All of them were pretty sweet, each for its time, but of course the last couple are the closest to modern sensibilities, if not pioneered some of those, while still having a treasure trove of worthy exclusives each, often newly discovered to this day for many of us thanks to fan translations, leaks & such.
Dreamcast was a great system in a lot of ways but the controller was awful, let's just be real about it.
Only the d-pad was awful (well, on par with the other companies' so a huge downgrade from Saturn). Hall effect stick and hall effect full analog triggers = win. Single stick didn't matter until its death (folks forget it barely did anything even in hyped games like GTAIII, MGS2 & 3). They did fuck it up when it could have been an upgrade of the Saturn 3D pad but not to the extent most say/compared to the competition. Had the system lived it could have a dual analog controller overtake over time as it did on the PlayStation where unlike the Saturn the upgrade became the standard anyway
Mouse and keyboard and online > dual analog for FPS of the sort though. Pioneered where it counted making that capability standard (but in the end died fast so didn't get as many games as it could have had with such features). Mkb on console is still hyped when it appears 2+ decades later, lol. Games did dual stick since it existed but sucked at it (Alien Resurrection PS, Gungriffon PS2). With abxy move/stick look/dpad actions, MDK2, Outtrigger etc. play the same. Lock on like Maken X/Prime/Zelda was best for the gen (still ace). Every genre was 100% viable on DC's pad even after it died:
It could do every genre PS2 and Xbox did even though during the PSP's lifetime twin sticks were more standardised when during DC's lifetime dual analog was still more often a miss than a hit, no matter how some pretend (lie) this or that one game where it was somewhat workable was the norm. Edit: TimeSplitters games just felt/played better using the N64 single pad GE style controls anyway. Move and turn on the left stick. With aim assist it felt like a grounded third person action game character in first person rather than generic, floaty and badly tuned gamepad FPS controls of this sort:


Mouse and keyboard and online > dual analog for FPS of the sort though. Pioneered where it counted making that capability standard (but in the end died fast so didn't get as many games as it could have had with such features). Mkb on console is still hyped when it appears 2+ decades later, lol. Games did dual stick since it existed but sucked at it (Alien Resurrection PS, Gungriffon PS2). With abxy move/stick look/dpad actions, MDK2, Outtrigger etc. play the same. Lock on like Maken X/Prime/Zelda was best for the gen (still ace). Every genre was 100% viable on DC's pad even after it died:

It could do every genre PS2 and Xbox did even though during the PSP's lifetime twin sticks were more standardised when during DC's lifetime dual analog was still more often a miss than a hit, no matter how some pretend (lie) this or that one game where it was somewhat workable was the norm. Edit: TimeSplitters games just felt/played better using the N64 single pad GE style controls anyway. Move and turn on the left stick. With aim assist it felt like a grounded third person action game character in first person rather than generic, floaty and badly tuned gamepad FPS controls of this sort:
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