26th January 2015, 9:14 PM
Quote: ABF, what did you love about the Dreamcast?
The games, of course. Nintendo has always been my favorite console manufacturer, but Sega's always been second on my list. I may not have owned Sega consoles in the '90s, but I probably played more Genesis than SNES (because more of my friends had the Genesis, while of course I only had PC and Game Boy before getting that N64), and I loved the Genesis Sonic games, then and now. But I always thought of Sega as second, so, like, I wanted a Game Gear and Game Boy, but got the Game Boy... and then wanted a N64 and Dreamcast, but got the N64. I'd have gotten both for sure if I had the money. I did get Sonic 3 & Knuckles Collection for the PC (the Genesis games, ported over) somewhere in '99 or '00, though, and loved it of course.
Anyway, the DC's library is loaded with great, great games! Sega made so many great games for that system in such a short time, and third-party support was pretty solid as well. The DC has a really, really good software library. I like the controller too; it's not as good as the Saturn 3D controller, but it is good. The system's hardware design is also really, REALLY cool; the DC is one of the best-looking consoles ever. I like the Dreamcast more than the PS2 or Xbox for sure, though of course I am quite biased against Sony. (Sony's evil! As for the Xbox, it's good, but too many of its games are either multiplatform or also on PC for me to consider it great. Sega's Panzer Dragoon Orta is my favorite Xbox game... great game.) Dreamcast graphics don't match up to the GC, Xbox, or (image quality aside) later PS2, but the gameplay does. The DC has lots of great 2d fighting games too, something which died off pretty much immediately after the DC did.
As for the graphics, though, my standard for 6th gen graphics is of course the Gamecube, and the DC is very far behind the GC graphically. I know that the DC released more than 2 two and a half years before the Gamecube (in Japan, where both first launched), but still, it's far behind. Sure, some games do a better job than average at pushing its hardware, but that DC games such as Rush 2049 which really look almost the same on N64 apart for framerate, visual effects (lights, reflections), and resolution (screen and texture resolution) got praised for their visuals says a lot.
The Dreamcast IS a generational leap above the N64, and sure, I was impressed back in '99 when I first saw Sonic Adventure, but it really shows that Sega had to release the thing too early. The DC's biggest problem, graphically, is that its maximum polygon counts are only a fraction of what the Gamecube, Xbox, and PS2 can do. The absolute best anyone ever got out of the Dreamcast is maybe 3 million polys a second, and few DC games get up to that level; the only one I always see mentioned is Le Mans 24 Hours. That game looks great, just as good or better than any early PS2 game for sure, but compared to Gamecube or Xbox games, it doesn't match up... and the PS2, while it started off with some ugly games and has awful image quality, CAN put just as many polygons on screen as the GC or Xbox -- all three can get into the ~15+ million polys range.
That limitation can't be helped for a system that released in December 1998, but Sega was only in the position of having to launch too early because they'd messed things up so badly in the mid '90s (32X, Saturn, Dreamcast). Unfortunately for them, DC didn't sell well enough... and as we now know, Sega needed the DC to be a massive hit in order to survive as a hardware manufacturer, because they just didn't have the money to stay in. They never had as much money as Nintendo, and when they did make money they wasted it (unlike Nintendo, who always has focused on profits and remaining debt-free). Really, on a financial level, it's kind of crazy that the Dreamcast released at all, but Sega was too stubborn to give up without one last try.
Yes, I've been criticized quite a bit on other forums for my opinion on Dreamcast graphics. :p But darnit, so many DC games really do look like enhanced last-gen titles... and that max polygon count is a problem that would have held back the DC had it lived longer, though of course I'm sure you'd see more games that look more like Test Drive Le Mans than the early DC titles.