The Dreamcast was the beginning, and the end, of the golden age of peripherals

http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/23/5643732/dreamcast-best-accessories-peripherals-golden-age


I never saw this console but I am utterly impressed by the level of cooperation between game and peripheral developers.

Edit: Link fixed.

Games with dedicated controllers are cool!

 

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Still have my Dreamcast. There were some fantastic games for it

 

What was cool about the Dreamcast that it was the first gaming console to go online with gaming even though it was dialup at the start. Then the Original Xbox revolutionized the online gaming with its Xbox live setup. Also remember reading about hacks involving the VMU where you could get access to the hidden storage on it and others making mini games for it. All that stuff that people could do with one system and its peripherals.

 

Hailing the Dreamcast as a god is the popular thing to do. I've had one for a long time, and while it was fun...it wasn't as fantastic as people make it out to be.

 

I still have my Dreamcast fully functional in original box in basement of my house in one huge "legacy gaming card box" next to PS2 (with Messiah mod chip), 2x Commodore 64 (one old fat grey + another newer/slim white), Amiga 500... I'm keeping all that for my grandchildren, one day

Also remember connecting to internet via telephone line and Dreamcast build-in Dial-up modem. It was so fun to browse internet, download savegames and other stuff to VMU... It was slow, but still fun...

Does anybody remember DC games like Shenmue and Shenmue II? They were just fantastic, everything in these games was nothing more than PERFECT... these games were pushing Dreamcast to the max.

 

This 100%.

 

I think the amiga was ftw in its day dreamcast didn't give the same satisfaction, shadow of the beast was one of my childhood epic games, never got the same level of epicness then a screen popping up saying insert disk 2 3 4 5 etc loool

 

I loved the Dreamcast, it was ahead of its time and had some absolutely fantastic games. It's just a shame people had lost so much trust in Sega at that point, which frankly was the main reason the Dreamcast failed. They released far too many upgrade parts/systems over a short period of time, and few people wanted to put money down for something that very well might end up being out of date in short order.

 

+1. The dreamcast was way ahead of its time.

 

I sold mine last year.

I loved it.

 

I don't know anyone who hails it as a god. The problem with it is that Sega didn't go bankrupt, and instead re released nearly everything that was good on the system on other systems. Thus the point of owning one today is moot, unless you're a big fan of some of the obscure games like Illbleed or need to replay Shenmue every month or something. It also had the best looking ports of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2, but the controls were bad on the DC controller, at least in my opinion.

My favorite game on Dreamcast was Demolition Racer: No Exit, ironically enough. That's one entertaining game.

 

The dreamcast has a custom firmware out now (it's been out a while) but now it allows games to boot from a harddrive, once modded in. The firmware is called dreamshell.
As soon as the next version is released, i'll likely put it on my NDS, and mod a small 40GB laptop harddrive into the thing. Right now the HDDs are accessed in PIO mode, with "ok" speeds, still faster than the GD rom drive. BUT they think they can get DMA working with more games.

CDrom = 4x, GDrom = 12x, PIO = 20x, DMA = 70x
An idea on the speeds.
http://www.dc-swat.ru/

I think I might be able to attach an IDE to SATA adapter right to the board, It's a lot of wires, but I can probably manage it.
Then I could just use an external SATA HDD

 

There was online gaming on consoles long before Dreamcast. Just another blown out of proportion aspect of the Dreamcast "being ahead of it's time" many have labeled it.

Xband for Snes and Genesis was available in 1994 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBAND

And Sega's Saturn had netlink service and offered several games for online gaming on the Saturn.

Dreamcast then came a long and incorporated online gaming a year before ps2.

Dreamcast wasn't a bad system, but honestly, what did it have that was so ground-breaking? It was a glorified snk system with tons of fighting games and a handful of rpg's that have not aged well at all.

Doing something first doesn't make you great. Doing it right is what makes you great. PS2's online capability was just as crippled as Dreamcast. Xbox was the innovator as far as online gaming on consoles as far as I'm concerned. Broadband-only with tons of support/dedication for matchmaking, maps, chat, etc.

Wii U is the first to have a touch screen controller, innovative? Sure. Great machine? Hell no.

 

Only games i liked like on the Dreamcast was UFC, Shenmue and Res Evil Codename Veronica which was an exclusive at the time and was actually better than the Ps2 version. I had all the other games like Sega Rally, Crazy Taxi, etc.

Those games became boring after more than 10 mins although Shenmue was a true work of art, i really enjoyed that. Shenmue II wasnt as good as the first i thought but those are the only 3 games that stick in my mind, the rest have been erased from memory

 

Missed out on several games there - I have almost 300 DC games packed away in boxes.

 

Sorry my bad. I was not aware of the SNES/Genesis/Saturn having online capabilities. I didn't say doing something first makes it good. Yes the MS and the original Xbox is what really started console online gaming as we know it today.

 

Nah that response is on me, didn't mean to come off like a d*ck. Sorry. Just wanted to state facts.

 

Online play seems to go a little bit further back with the teleplay modem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleplay_Modem

And there's some links on the bottom there for older products (NES modem in 1988), but I don't think they offered online play, cba reading the walls of text.

 

I'm ashamed to say it, but one of the games I had the most fun with was Seaman. You started with an egg in your fishtank that hatched into a weird man/fish hybrid with the voice of Leonard Nimoy that you could talk to with the included microphone that plugged into the memory card slot on the controller.

Other than that I really enjoyed D2 and the Resident Evil games.