Dreamcast

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Dreamcast
Dreamcast logo
console
Manufacturer Sega
Type stationary game console
generation sixth generation of consoles
publication
JapanJapan November 27, 1998
United StatesUnited States September 9, 1999
EuropeEurope October 14, 1999
Main processor CPU : Hitachi SH-4 32 bit (128 bit FPU ), 200 MHz (360 MIPS / 1.4 GFLOPS )
Storage media GD-ROM , CD-ROM
Online service USA: SegaNet
Europe: Dreamarena
Units sold approximately 10.6 million
Most successful game Sonic Adventure
predecessor Sega Saturn
successor none
Dreamcast controller (right) and VMU (left)

The Dreamcast ( Japanese ド リ ー ム キ ャ ス ト , Dorīmukyasuto ) is the (for the time being) last game console from the Japanese company Sega . The name "Dreamcast" is made up of the English words "Dream" and "(Broad-) cast" (broadcast), which means something like "dream broadcast". The logo (a swirl) is intended to symbolize the expandability of the console. The production of the game console was stopped in 2001, until today new games that are programmed by fans (" homebrew ") appear. As a game console of the sixth console generation , the Dreamcast competed with the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube .

history

Development and start of sales

By 1997 at the latest, Sega and the Sega Saturn were far behind in third place in the game console market (behind Nintendo 64 and PlayStation ). At this point in time, Sega began developing a successor. Initially, two competing teams were working simultaneously on a new platform. One of the teams was led by Tatsuo Yamamoto, a developer at IBM , and the other team, Sega's in-house development department, was led by Hideki Sato.

The SH4 processor as used in the Dreamcast

Sato and his team decided to use a Hitachi SH4 processor and a VideoLogic PowerVR2 graphics processor for the new platform . Yamamoto's group also opted for an SH4 processor, but decided to use 3dfx graphics hardware instead of the PowerVR2.

Initially, Sega preferred Tatsuo Yamamoto's prototype with the 3dfx graphics chip, but ultimately opted for the design by Hideki Sato. 3dfx, who had already expected the order, later sued SEGA for this step. However, the litigation was settled. A separate optical storage medium, the GD-ROM , was also developed for the new console, but it could also read commercially available CDs.

Initially, the console was known under various working titles, including a. “Guppy”, “Katana”, “Dural” or “Black Belt”, until they finally decided on Dreamcast.

Developers later also had the choice between two different Dreamcast operating systems: a system developed by Sega, Katana, and a version of Windows CE specially ported to Dreamcast by Microsoft , which also supported DirectX. The Katana system was mostly used by exclusive titles, while Windows CE was mostly used for porting PC games. The two systems were not, as is often assumed, contained in the console itself, but on the GD-ROM of the respective game.

The Dreamcast logo as used in America and Asia

The Dreamcast was finally released on November 27, 1998 in Japan, on September 9, 1999 in North America and on October 14, 1999 in Europe. The sales launch was particularly successful in the USA, where over 500,000 basic devices were sold within the first two weeks. Well-known games that were available from the start included Soul Calibur , Sonic Adventure , Hydro Thunder, and Power Stone .

In the USA, all sales records were broken when it was launched. There were 600,000 pre-orders. Almost $ 100 million in sales were made in the first 24 hours and a million consoles were sold within a few weeks.

In Japan and the US markets, Dreamcast was released under an orange icon, which was colloquially known as "vortex". However, due to legal conflicts, the European version of the Dreamcast vortex was colored blue, as the German publisher Tivola has a similar orange company logo .

Sega also tried to make the name "Dreamcast" better known as a sponsor of sports teams. The top team at the time, Deportivo La Coruña and Arsenal FC, London had, among other things, printed a Dreamcast lettering on the jerseys of the time.

Despite the good start, SEGA was unable to maintain the high Dreamcast sales figures. In particular, the situation for Sega turned negative when Sony released the PlayStation 2, which had already received good ratings and caused media hype. The PlayStation 2, which should technically surpass the Dreamcast and contain an important function with a DVD drive, dominated the game console market from then on. In May 2000, more PlayStation 2 consoles than Dreamcast devices had been sold in Japan. At this point in time, the Dreamcast had been on the market for a year and a half, the PlayStation 2 only about two months. The sales of the PlayStation 2 were sometimes more than ten times the Dreamcast sales.

The already battered Sega could hardly counter this success with the Dreamcast. In the meantime, hackers had also found a way of playing black copies on the Dreamcast with a special boot CD distributed over the Internet without a modchip or other modifications . Product piracy became a serious problem for SEGA.

By the end of 2000, the price of Sega shares fell by 76%, and in the first half of 2000 alone the company posted a loss of almost 350 million euros.

Cessation of production

Dreamcast sales did not improve even after the unsuccessful 2000 Christmas business. After heavy losses and a continued decline in the share price, Sega finally announced in January 2001 that Dreamcast production would be discontinued by March 2001. However, the 100 or so Dreamcast games from SEGA and third-party manufacturers that are still in development should still be released. SEGA itself now wanted to gradually withdraw from the console business and in the future only produce software for game consoles from other manufacturers. Many Dreamcast projects that were still in development only appeared for other platforms after the production stop or were partially discontinued. Some of these no longer published titles were about to be completed, such as the Dreamcast version of Half-Life or the game "Propeller Arena". Playable beta versions of the latter two later appeared on the Internet.

After the end of production

After the end of production, as a result of drastic price reductions, the sales figures for the remaining stocks also improved in Europe. In Japan, however , the big breakthrough never came due to the lack of good role-playing games , which are very important for the Japanese market. Nevertheless, new Dreamcast games were still being developed there years after production ended.

In Europe, Bigben Interactive took over the remaining Dreamcast inventory and its marketing. Bigben tried to present a few more games to European fans that Sega originally intended only for the Japanese market. These included titles such as Shenmue II or Rez . In 2002, however, the last official games appeared in Europe.

The small American company bleem! brought three commercial CDs of the PlayStation emulator bleemcast in 2001! on the market. Each of these CDs emulates a PlayStation game; there were versions for Gran Turismo 2 , Metal Gear Solid and Tekken 3 . Originally, this emulator should have appeared in further versions. Years of litigation with Sony , the manufacturer of the PlayStation, put the software company under such financial strain that it had to disband in 2001. bleemcast! was one of the first programs on Dreamcast not licensed by Sega and did not use any program routines or libraries from Sega. It was written entirely in assembly language and also appeared on CD-ROM , not Sega's specially developed GD-ROM format .

Only a few commercially distributed programs were also released without a Sega license, including the Codebreaker cheat module or the Blaze DCMP3 and Pelican MP3 MP3 players .

"Hello Kitty Dreamcast" - one of the many special editions of the Sega Dreamcast

In Japan, actually the weakest market for Dreamcast, smaller companies developed new Dreamcast titles for years, which were also officially licensed by Sega. These were also imported by North American and European fans at an increased price. Most of the titles of this era came from the genres Shoot'em Up and Visual Novel . One of the most famous Dreamcast titles of the time is Ikaruga .

Many of the Dreamcast games released between 2002 and 2007 are ports of NAOMI games. The Sega NAOMI is, so to speak, the arcade version of the Dreamcast, which is technically largely identical to it.

Dreamcast fans organized several petitions over the Internet to persuade some Japanese manufacturers to post their NAOMI games on Dreamcast as well (for the many activities of the fan movement, see The Dreamcast Scene section ).

Some petitions have been successful, for example, in 2003 the Japanese studio G.Revolution released a Dreamcast version of Border Down (2003), a hugely successful shoot'em-ups game.

At the beginning of 2003 the Dreamarena , Dreamcast's online service in Europe, was closed. However, some games that were not directly linked to the Dreamarena server, such as Phantasy Star Online , Quake III Arena or Starlancer , can still be played online today.

In 2004, Sega also surprisingly released the very last Dreamcast game in Japan, Puyo Pop Fever , which was also a conversion from the NAOMI machine.

In March 2006, the Japanese studio G.Revolution brought another Dreamcast title, Under Defeat, onto the market and once again impressively demonstrated the graphic performance of Sega's last console.

In Japan, Dreamcast games officially licensed by Sega were regularly released until the beginning of 2007. The final Dreamcast game to be officially licensed by Sega was Karous , released on March 8, 2007. At the same time, the production of GD-ROMs was stopped, so that no more official games could appear. So-called, independent publications, i.e. games without a Sega license and on CD-ROM instead of GD-ROM, are not affected by this and can continue to appear. Since 2007, eight more commercial Dreamcast titles have been released on CD-ROM and new titles are still in development.

On April 1, 2007, the official Phantasy Star Online servers for Dreamcast were shut down. However, the game can still be played online via private, fan-operated servers. Noteworthy here are the server projects SCHTHACK and Sylverant , through which Dreamcast players can even play online together with users of the PC version of PSO.

The Dreamcast scene

Regardless of the Japanese studios that supported Dreamcast with games officially licensed by Sega until around 2007, the Dreamcast fan base remained active on the Internet even after Dreamcast production ended. American and European developers have been supplying Dreamcast with new games that have been sold worldwide since the end of GD-ROM production in early 2007. In addition, a hobby developer scene is still developing new freeware and open source programs for Dreamcast. From 2000 onwards, numerous internet forums and communities were formed, in which Dreamcast fans are still organized today.

As with many other consoles, hackers managed early on to play their own program code, i.e. programs they had written themselves, on the console. Initially, however, the scene's focus was still on making black copies . The Utopia BootCD of the Warez group "UTOPiA" published on the Internet in June 2000 made it possible to play pirated Dreamcast copies without a modchip or other modifications to the console. From then on, practically every new Dreamcast game was cracked and published as pirated copy on the Internet. In 2000 it was still possible to start games directly on the Dreamcast without a BootCD.

Screenshot of the free game Neverball , ported to the Dreamcast.

But this also opened up new possibilities for hobby developers. The first free programs specially developed for Dreamcast (so-called homebrew software) were soon published by leisure developers . The first applications of this kind, such as "GypPlay", "DCMP3" or DCDivX, made it possible to play videos and MP3 files on the Dreamcast. Well-known technology and IT media, such as Golem.de or the c't , even reported on these early homebrew projects for Dreamcast . The first emulators for other systems were soon added. The first, now obsolete, emulator for Dreamcast was "gleam!", A NES emulator. These early publications still used the Windows CE SDK from SEGA and Microsoft and were therefore legally in a gray area.

In 2000, however, some hobby developers began to develop free and legal developer libraries, the best known and most successful of which is the open source project KallistiOS , which has been further developed to this day , but there were also a few other, lesser known projects in this direction. KallistiOS was so advanced that by 2003 it was also used in some commercial projects.

KallistiOS made it possible for hobby developers to publish and even sell their creations without legal concerns, as it no longer used any of SEGA's proprietary program code. The second generation of homebrew applications for Dreamcast (from 2001) used KallistiOS almost entirely and was therefore already completely legal from a legal point of view. Hobby programmers could now distribute their programs over the Internet without hesitation. Dreamcast Homebrew can simply be burned to CD and immediately started on the console. The fact that no modifications (such as a modchip ) were required for this made the console particularly interesting for hobby developers.

Especially after the end of Dreamcast production, Sega's last console developed into an extremely popular platform for hobby programmers . The hobby developer scene only reached its peak long after the big manufacturers had written off the Dreamcast topic.

Hundreds of free applications have appeared on the Internet over the years. The range of topics of the published freeware programs is huge. These include self-developed or ported games, MP3 players, multimedia applications, web browsers and emulators for a vast number of systems, including Super Nintendo , Commodore 64 , Atari 2600 , Neo Geo , Amiga 500 , MSX , NES , Mega Drive , Game Gear , Atari Lynx , Sega Master System . The majority of emulators work relatively well and many games that were actually developed for other systems can be played smoothly on the Dreamcast. It is also possible to play VCDs and DivX films on the Dreamcast.

Doom , one of many games that fans have ported to Dreamcast (here FreeDoom).

There are also numerous multi-platform projects, such as the ScummVM project, with which you can play old adventures like Sam & Max , Indiana Jones 3 and 4, Monkey Island 1 to 3, Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2 on the Dreamcast. Many classic or open source games have also been ported to Dreamcast, such as some first-person shooters from id Software , Doom , Doom 2: Hell on Earth or Wolfenstein 3D . There are also many freeware or open source games specially developed for Dreamcast, such as the Alice Dreams project.

There is also a Dreamcast version of the free Linux operating system . So far, two other operating systems have been ported to Dreamcast with NetBSD and QNX . In addition, a Russian team is even developing "DreamShell", an operating system that was designed exclusively for Dreamcast.

The Dreamcast fan movement, often referred to as the "Dreamcast scene", was organized from the beginning mainly through websites, Internet forums and IRC chat rooms, many of which still exist today. Some of the best-known and still active sites on these sites include Dreamcast-Scene , DCEmulation.org, DCEmu.co.uk (all in English), SEGA-DC.DE (German), Dreamcast.es (Spanish), DreamAgain.fr (French ), DC-SWAT.ru and Dreamcast.org.ru (both in Russian). In addition to the English language forums, the Spanish and French language Dreamcast scenes were particularly strong. A little later, large German and Russian-speaking communities emerged. Contrary to what is often assumed, there were relatively few Japanese homebrew developers in the Dreamcast scene. The "homebrew scene" consisted and still consists mainly of European and American Dreamcast fans. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, the “DreamCon” was also a worldwide meeting of Dreamcast sceneries.

There was also a creative exchange between the "Dreamcast scene" and members of the homebrew scene on other consoles. There were and still are many connections with the hobby developer scene on GP32 , GP2X and GP2X Wiz . A large number of cross-platform projects and the number of programmers who were active in both “scenes” confirm this.

In the meantime, fans have also developed an SD card adapter for Dreamcast, which was produced in larger numbers from 2010 and has been sold on the Internet since then. Many homebrew projects now support this adapter.

In 2003, after a wave of freeware, the first commercial and professionally pressed Dreamcast game was released, which had only been developed by members of the hobby developer scene. The game is called Feet of Fury and is a music game. In contrast to the Dreamcast games that were still being released in Japan at the time, this title was not officially licensed by SEGA and did not appear on GD-ROMs, but on commercially available CDs. Games without a SEGA license are therefore referred to as independent titles ("Indie" for short). Numerous other indie titles have been released since 2003.

Feet of Fury used KallistiOS and could therefore be distributed easily and legally. GOAT Store Publishing acted as publisher , previously just an online shop , whose operators were also fans of the Dreamcast scene.

The then extremely well-known online mail order company Lik-Sang also supported the hobby developer community and added Feet of Fury to its range and advertised the game. By the end of 2005, GOAT Store published three more games from semi-professional developers, Maqiupai , Inhabitants and Cool Herders .

In January 2007 the 2D shoot 'em Up Last Hope was released, developed by NG: DEV.TEAM from Germany and distributed by redspotgames . Last Hope was the most elaborate but also most successful indie title for Dreamcast to date. Last Hope was released - like all indie releases - without an official license from SEGA, but was still distributed worldwide. After SEGA stopped producing new GD-Roms in 2007, only indie titles have been published since then. The Munich video game publisher redspotgames, which already sold Last Hope and emerged from the Dreamcast indie scene, published two more Dreamcast games by the end of 2009 with Wind & Water: Puzzle Battles (2008) and Rush Rush Rally Racing (2009) - at a level of professionalism that has never been seen before in the indie scene.

The German development team HUCast also released DUX, a successful Dreamcast title in mid-2009. Also in 2009 the GOAT Store brought another Dreamcast title with Irides: Master of Blocks . In 2010, Fast Striker , developed and distributed by NG: DEV.TEAM, also a Dreamcast game. In 2011 no new Dreamcast title appeared for the first time, but in the following years new titles such as Gunlord (2012), Sturmwind (2013) and NEO XYX (2014) appeared again.

This makes the Dreamcast one of the most durable video game systems. For the GameCube, published three years after the Dreamcast, the last game was released in 2007; for the Xbox, released around the same time as the GameCube, the last game was released in 2008. The Dreamcast, however, is still supplied with new titles.

The Dreamcast scene was repeatedly the subject of reports in specialist magazines, for example the German and British editions of the gamesTM newspaper devoted a multi-page special to the hobby developer scene at Dreamcast in 2009. The former, official Dreamcast magazine, Dreamcast Kult , also reported occasionally on homebrew projects.

technology

The Dreamcast motherboard
The interior of the Dreamcast

operating system

  • Dreamcast console system (for starting CDs, changing settings, etc.)
  • SEGA katana
  • KallistiOS
  • Windows CE for Dreamcast
  • lesser known fan-built systems such as libdream, libronin, and others

It should be noted that every game loads its operating system from the GD-ROM. The Sega Operating System is always active as the lowest instance.

CPU

  • 32-bit SH-4 - RISC - CPU (128-bit FPU ), 200 MHz (according SEGA comparable to a 1 GHz Pentium III games in typical applications)
  • 360  MIPS / 1.4 GFLOPS
  • double superscaler processing unit
  • 800 MByte / sec data throughput
  • Main memory : 16 MB SD-RAM

GPU

  • Graphics chip : NEC PowerVR Series2 (PVR2DC)
  • 100 MHz, 100 megapixels per second (however, the computing power compared to other GPUs is 250 megapixels / sec because the Dreamcast GPU calculates the graphics differently)
  • Polygons : 5–7 million polys / sec with textures and effects (real-world)
  • Graphics memory : 8 Mbytes (textures occupied by a special quadruple compression only 1/4 of the usual memory)
  • Resolution : 640 × 480, technically 1600 × 1200
  • Simultaneous display of colors: 16.7 million (24 bit / "True Color")

Sound chip

  • Yamaha AICA sound chip , 45 MHz, 64 simultaneous voices ( digital sound processor based on the ARM7 )
  • 64 channels
  • Sound memory: 2 MB

optical drive

  • GD-ROM drive, storage capacity 1.2 GB, 12X speed (Yamaha, Samsung)

equipment

The fishing controller , here a model from the third-party manufacturer Mad Catz

Many accessories appeared over the course of the Dreamcast's lifetime. Each game has symbols on the back of the pack that indicate which accessories are officially supported. However, some games also support other accessories. An overview of accessories released for the Dreamcast:

Published accessories

  • Controllers from different manufacturers
  • VMU memory cards
  • Vibration Pack (also known as Jump-Pack or in Japan as PuruPuru-Pack)
  • Keyboard and mouse (to operate the web browser and some games)
  • Race controller
  • Fishing Controller (motion-sensitive controller, could be used in addition to a fish game, e.g. for Virtua Tennis and Soul Calibur , similar to the Wiimote )
  • Dreamcast microphone (voice chat over the browser, a few games)
  • Dreameye (digital camera and webcam, for photography and video chat, Japan only)
  • VGA box (for connection to a PC monitor or compatible television sets)
  • Arcade stick
  • Broadband / LAN adapter (different versions)
  • Lightgun (only for 50 or 60 Hz tube TVs and PC tube monitors via VGA box)
  • Twin-Stick (very robust and heavy arcade stick with two joysticks, only Japan)
  • Maracas and dance mat (for the dance game Samba de Amigo )
  • Dreamkara (Japan only, karaoke add-on)
  • MadCatz Panther (Flight or Mission Stick)

Never released accessories (but exist as prototypes)

  • Zip-Drive (for storing data on Zip media, should appear in 2001)
  • Swatch Interface (you should be able to download data from the Internet at special Dreamcast hotspots)
  • Mobile phone adapter (with the Dreamcast online without a telephone connection)
  • 128 MB VMU - MP3 player (should hit the US market in September 2000 for under $ 100)
  • ISDN adapter
  • DVD drive
  • Motion controller similar to the Wiimote, the technology was used in the "Samba de Amigo" maracas

competitor

During the commercially successful period (1999 to 2001), the Dreamcast competed with the PlayStation in Japan, and with the Nintendo 64 in Europe and the USA. There was extensive media coverage of the PlayStation 2, which was not yet released at the time . Ultimately, Dreamcast did not reach a broad group of buyers. The advantages of the PlayStation 2, the built-in DVD player and the downward compatibility with the PlayStation, as well as the enormous advertising campaigns on the part of Sony, with which Sega, as a pure video game company, could not keep up, are suspected as further reasons. The advantages of Dreamcast - trend-setting online technology, online console games, anti-aliasing, PAL 60 Hz mode, LCD VMU  - were not advertised enough, however, in the opinion of observers.

Special features

AV output

The Dreamcast masters the “50/60 Hz” screen display for European games. Some PAL television sets can also play back games in 60 instead of 50 Hz. This means faster game speed and better picture quality. This function can also be found on the following consoles GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. There is also a VGA adapter with which the Dreamcast can be connected to a PC monitor with a resolution of 640 × 480, but not all games support this.

Controller and VMU

The Visual Memory Unit , VMU for short, is a memory card specially developed for the Dreamcast. This is not plugged into the console, as is usually the case, but into the game controller. The VMU also has a small monochrome display, a small directional pad and two action buttons. This makes it possible to load and play small games - similar to Tamagotchi or the PokéWalker - on the memory card. You can also call up the time and date and manage (copy and delete) scores. Two standard button cells are required for this. The VMU can therefore be taken anywhere in your pocket. You can also plug two VMUs together at their interface. For example, some mini-games allow you to exchange data or let your Tamagotchi-like figures compete against each other, and scores can be transferred.

If the VMU is plugged into the game controller, the display shows current game information through a peep window in the controller. This can be, for example, a picture of the current character, a key combination to be executed or important data about the game such as the cards of the respective player. This concept cannot be found in this form in any other console on the market. At most the Nintendo GameCube enters into a similar symbiosis with the Game Boy Advance . The Game Boy can be used as an additional controller for some games, for example, or additional content can be downloaded onto the Game Boy.

The game controller offers space for two VMUs or one VMU (front) plus vibration module (behind) or one VMU (front) plus microphone (rear). However, this has the disadvantage that the controller becomes a little heavier and the hands tire more quickly.

Online functions

Modem for the Dreamcast

The Dreamcast is the very first game console to have a factory-installed modem (56 kbit / s in the USA, otherwise 33 kbit / s), which can be easily removed, for example to replace it in the event of a defect or to replace it with the broadband adapter available separately . The broadband adapter, of which only small numbers have been produced, allows you to play at DSL speed. Long before Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network , Dreamcast offered an online service for game consoles with the Dreamarena and SEGANet .

A total of 26 titles appeared that could be played online with the Dreamcast. Eight titles can still be played online today, but in some cases only through private servers provided by fans. The titles that can still be played online are Quake III Arena , Starlancer , Toy Racer, Phantasy Star Online Ver. 1 & 2 (only via private server), 4x4 Evolution , Maximum Pool (only via private server) and SEGA Swirl .

Some games also support the downloading of additional content on VMU, games could also be put on the Internet and downloaded again.

The different Dreamcast web browsers can also be operated completely by controller, but keyboard and mouse are available for more convenient use. In North America and Japan, different ones were included, PlanetWeb (America) and DreamPassport (Japan / Asia). The European browser DreamKey was a European version of DreamPassport. A GD-Rom with a browser was included with every Dreamcast device. The Dreamcast browsers received multiple updates. The last version, DreamKey 3.0, could be obtained free of charge from Sega from the beginning of 2002.

Games

A total of 216 games by Sega and later Bigben Interactive were published for the Dreamcast console for the PAL regions .

Many Dreamcast titles represented innovations in video game history. Phantasy Star Online was the very first online role-playing game on a game console and is still supported by a large fan base today. Soul Calibur moved on a graphical level that has long been in the sixth generation of consoles as a reference. The game Shenmue was a big step forward in the categories of realism and game world size and the graphics were outstanding for that time. Many titles that first appeared at Dreamcast were later also implemented for the Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 and were in some cases better sold there than at Dreamcast due to the large group of buyers. An example of this was Phantasy Star Online, which achieved much larger sales on the Gamecube and later on the Xbox (despite the graphics that were already slightly out of date at the time of release) than it did on the Dreamcast.

Some Dreamcast games have also been made available on the seventh generation game consoles. Currently, some third-party Dreamcast games are already available on Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network . SEGA itself announced in June 2010 that it would make a large part of its own Dreamcast portfolio available on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network. Valve also began selling former Dreamcast games for the PC in 2011 via its Steam gaming platform . In early 2011, SEGA released the Dreamcast Collection for Xbox 360 and PC, a game collection that includes Sonic Adventure , Crazy Taxi , Space Channel 5: Part 2 and SEGA Bass Fishing .

Well-known games

See also: Category: Dreamcast Game

Special games

The following games enjoy a special status with die-hard Dreamcast fans, as they were released quite late and partly because of the fans. In response to pressure from fans, who expressed their wish for the respective Dreamcast implementation in the form of collections of signatures and petitions, games for Dreamcast continued to be published and sold even after the Dreamcast production had ceased in the first quarter of 2001.

  • Border Down (2003 Japan)
  • Densha de Go! 2 - Kōsoku-hen 3000-bandai (1999 Japan)
  • Feet of Fury (2003 North America)
  • Ikaruga (2003 Japan)
  • Inhabitants (2005 North America)
  • Maqiupai (2005 North America)
  • Para Para Paradise (2001 China , unofficial publication)
  • Psyvariar 2 (2004 Japan)
  • Puyo Puyo Fever (2004 Japan)
  • Rez (2001 Japan and Europe)
  • Samba de Amigo (2000 Japan, North America and Europe)
  • Seaman
  • Shikigami no Shiro II (2004 Japan)
  • Trizeal (2005 Japan)
  • Radilgy / Radirgy / Rajirugi (2006 Japan)
  • Under Defeat (2006 Japan)
  • Last Hope (2007 Europe / North America / Hong Kong / Japan)
  • Trigger Heart Exelica (2007 Japan)
  • Karous (2007 Japan)
  • Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles (Q3 2008 Europe / North America / Hong Kong / Japan)
  • DUX (Q2 2009 worldwide)
  • Last Hope: Pink Bullets (Q2 2009 worldwide)
  • Rush Rush Rally Racing (2009 Europe / Worldwide)
  • Fast Striker (2010 Europe / Worldwide)
  • GunLord (2012 Europe / worldwide)
  • Stormwind (2012 Europe / worldwide)

Officially unreleased games

  • Shortly after it was announced that Half-Life would no longer appear for the Dreamcast, an image of Half-Life (including the add-on Blue Shift ) was posted on the Internet and was even offered for sale on eBay , which was displayed normally CD-R burned and could be played in any Dreamcast. This version was about 95 percent finished and very playable, but in no way reflected the performance of a finished product. How and why this version found its way into the network and various file sharing sites has never been clarified. The image probably came from a GD-Rom described. Several backup copies exist of this game. Blue Shift was initially developed exclusively for the Dreamcast, but was later released as an add-on for the PC version of Half-Life.
  • Propeller Arena suffered a similar fate as Half-Life . Here an original SEGA GD-R was simply converted into a file (“ rip ”).
  • A playable gold version of PBA Tour Bowling 2001 also appeared in the peer-to-peer network. Since the Dreamcast version of PBA 2001 linked to the same website as the PC version, it could still be played online with it until early 2005.
  • According to a statement by Markus Maki (Development Director and one of the founders of Remedy Entertainment ), never a single line of the Max Payne code was played on a Dreamcast. "I never saw any MaxPayne code running on the dreamcast" . Markus Maki - AWAKENINGS '04
  • From Flintstones: Viva Rock Vegas European (PAL) promotional copies (white label) were pressed. These are very rare and also very difficult to get on eBay. In terms of content, however, the game is more in the middle class.
  • The House of The Dead 3 should be realized graphically with the Cel-Shading technique. Only two screenshots of this project appeared.
  • The game DeeDee Planet did not make it into the market either.
  • GunValkyrie (Trailer)
  • Spirit Force (Trailer)
  • Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse (Trailer)
  • Propeller Arena (Trailer)
  • Innocent Tears (Trailer)
  • Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood (Trailer)
  • Black & White (Trailer)
  • Giants: Citizen Kabuto
  • Heavy Metal: FAKK²
  • Sim City 3000
  • Sonic & Knuckles RPG
  • System Shock 2
  • Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
  • Unreal

Games of which GD-Roms (playable versions) exist:

  • Castlevania: Resurrection (Trailer)
  • Colin McRae Rally 2.0 (30% completed, playable)
  • Deer Avanger
  • Ecco the Dolphin 2 (Trailer)
  • Half-Life incl.Blue Shift (Trailer)
  • Heroes of Might & Magic III (Trailer)
  • PBA Tour Bowling 2001 (Trailer)
  • Propeller Arena
  • Take the bullet
  • Test Drive Cycles (Trailer)
  • Worms Pinball
  • Geist Force (Playable Beta April 23, 1999)
  • Hellgate (playable beta)

Dreamcast emulation

The first attempts to emulate the Dreamcast hardware on PCs were made back in 2000. However, the first Dreamcast emulators were extremely poorly compatible. The breakthrough in Dreamcast emulation came in 2004, when a Spanish programmer released the emulator Chankast . The first version of Chankast was already compatible with a large number of well-known Dreamcast games and caused a huge stir in relevant Internet forums. Although the development of Chankast was not continued in the following period, the development of a large number of other Dreamcast emulators began. Particularly noteworthy here are Demul and nullDC , which today still exceed the compatibility of Chankast.

Web links

Commons : Sega Dreamcast  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Blake Snow: The 10 Worst-Selling Consoles of All Time ( English ) GamePro.com . May 4, 2007. Archived from the original on May 8, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2013.
  2. Russell Carroll: Good Enough: Why graphics aren't number one ( English ) In: Game Tunnel . September 6, 2005. Archived from the original on July 12, 2010. Retrieved March 10, 2011.
  3. 3Dfx sues Sega, NEC over contract ( Memento from July 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. Sega of America : 3Dfx, Sega, NEC and VideoLogic Settle 3DfxLawsuit ( English ) In: AllBusiness . Dun & Bradstreet . August 4, 1998. Archived from the original on January 5, 2009. Retrieved on December 4, 2012.
  5. http://news.cnet.com/Windows-CE-notably-absent-from-Dreamcast-launch/2100-1001_3-218224.html
  6. BBC Online , November 24, 1999: Dreamcast beats Playstation record
  7. ^ Manfred Rindl, Worrying vortex about the PlayStation 2 in Chip Online , November 22, 2000
  8. Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zockerhausen.de
  9. If you look closely, is the PS2 worth the price? in Chip Online , November 22, 2000
  10. CNN Online, October 19, 2000: PlayStation2: This sequel could be a blockbuster
  11. VGChartz.com: Japan Weekly Chart - Week Ending 07th May 2000
  12. SEGA-DC.DE: Utopia BootCD
  13. heise online , November 24th, 2000: Dreamcast a financial nightmare for Sega
  14. BBC Online , January 31, 2001: Sega scraps the Dreamcast
  15. ^ André Kunz in Game Over for Dreamcast , Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 25, 2001
  16. Sega of Japan Dreamcast Release List ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / sega.jp
  17. sega-dc.de - List of all indie games
  18. SCHTHACK PSO server: schtserv.com
  19. Sylverant PSO server: sylverant.net
  20. http://www.golem.de/0008/9509.html
  21. https://shop.heise.de/katalog/divx-cast
  22. http://www.sega-dc.de/dreamcast/Gleam !
  23. SEGA-DC.DE: Alice Dreams
  24. Indie Dreams Wiki: DreamCon
  25. http://www.sega-dc.de/dreamcast/SD-Karten-Adapter
  26. ^ Jan Heinrich, Sönke Siemens: Play your dream in gamesTM 10/2009, pp. 74–77
  27. Dreamcast Prototype Controller
  28. ^ Dreamcast Online - Online Game List: North America
  29. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2010/06/sega-bringing-dreamcast-library-to-ps3-xbox-360/1
  30. Colin McRae Rally 2.0's Dreamcast Port revealed! - neXGam forum. In: neXGam - Forum. Retrieved October 18, 2015 .
  31. SEGA-DC.DE: Dreamcast emulation on the PC