Here’s an amazing fact: Sega hasn’t been in the console business for longer than they’ve been in. And while the Dreamcast has finally made it to the struggling giant, for a platform that has only lasted a few years, it has certainly left a legacy behind.
You would think that a console that “failed” in 2001 would be long forgotten in 2019, but many of Dreamcast’s biggest and best games are still making their mark on video games today, from Soulcalibur arrive Shenmue.
Also worth remembering: it has the best console startup process of all time. Like molten gold dripping under the pale moonlight into a fine marble tub.
In honor of Sega’s fallen hero, we’ve put together this list of the best games for the Dreamcast, for those who might be interested in getting around and picking up one, or those who were do and want to take a tragic trip in memory .
This unranked list was made based on several core considerations. Firstly, and most obviously, most of these are games that we think are simply the best Dreamcast games, which are our personal favorites. But there are also games here, after two decades of space and time to consider, that we think have defined the Dreamcast experience.
JET SET RADIO
I know I said this list isn’t rated, but I lied. Jet station is the best Dreamcast game. I know it has flaws regarding difficulty and time limit (some of which were addressed in the later Xbox port), but the colors, the music, the style… this is a distillation. millennium filter, is the perfect standard-bearer for all things beautiful. and good about Sega Dreamcast. If you could only own one game for this system, it should/would be this.
NFL 2K1
No one knew it at the time, but NFL2K is one of the most important sports video games ever created. Back when the Dreamcast came out, EA Sports decided they didn’t want to release the game for the system, which meant no Madden. No problem, Sega realized, so they went out and bought Visual Con Concept from the developer, who not only continued to seriously challenge Madden in the football space to the early 00s, but is now killing EA in basketball with NBA2K series. 2K1 is their second soccer attempt on console, and not only is it a better sports game than the first, but it also features online multiplayer, something rival platforms won’t be able to catch. five.
IKARUGA
Originally an arcade game, By Ikaruga The first home portal was on the Dreamcast, where it was only released in Japan. That didn’t stop Westerners from importing it in bulk, and what they found was one of the smartest and most beautiful shmups ever made. The color flip mechanic at the heart of the game is such a simple idea, but even two decades later, it’s still the same. perfect.
PERIOD
An expensive and beloved project, ahead of its time, commercial bombing leaves a flaming wreck (and a beautiful legacy) upon awakening? We can talk about the Dreamcast itself or we can talk about Shenmue.
Its heavy emphasis on story and its revolutionary (if uncomfortably fundamental) implementation in a video game earned it a lot of praise upon release, but also a lot of indifference from a market that isn’t ready (or, let’s be honest, just doesn’t care) for its quirks.
ELECTRIC STONE 2
There has never been and never has been another fighting game series quite like it Power Stone. Where most other fighters comfortably exist in abstract space, Power Stone The games attempted to recreate the proper 3D space for their arenas, including varying heights and destructible objects. Both are an explosion, but Power Stone 2 is the better game. Also, that old Capcom character design is just to die for.
REZ
As Jet setand cosmic channeland many more Dreamcast games, Rez is a game you might have played somewhere else, but the important thing is that it was originally developed with Sega’s console in mind. It was and still is a near-perfect aesthetic experience, especially if playing with its nutso vibrator peripheral.
SPACE CHANNEL 5
If Jet station is the oldest video game, 5 . spatial channel can run a very close second. Its mere existence is testament to how weird and daring a Dreamcast’s library can be, where a real company can take Music video by Janet / Michael Jackson and turn it into a rhythm game, then expect more than three people to buy it.
SEAMAN
Seaman, a piece of software that involves talking into a microphone with a fish with a human face (by Yoot Saito, the creator of the game), has grown old. But just imagine the process involved in achieving this from “hell as hell” to “boarding pitch” to “real game development” to “definitely ok for Leonard Nimoy to voice”, and cherish every step of it.
SONIC’S ADVENTURES
There is a common and persistent belief that 3D Sonic attractive game, but to buy that theory, requires you to give up Sonic Adventure, the best-selling Dreamcast game of all time. No looks like amazing, and while actually controlling Sonic isn’t quite as elegant as it is in 2D – something that later 3D Sonic games will continue to struggle with – for 2001, this was a great achievement. It might even be the killer app the Dreamcast desperately needed, if… the console wasn’t dead just a few months later. Sonic Adventure’s release.
SKIES OF ARCADIA
Nothing more than Sega but Blue Skies, and there’s no game with a bluer sky than one set in the literal blue Sega sky. A massive JRPG with an incredible 3D underworld (at the time), it’s not hard to imagine this appearing on any other console and selling millions.
SOULCALIBUR
This series, still running in 2019, needs no introduction, so I don’t need to give one here. Instead, I’ll just say that the original Dreamcast version of Soulcalibur still great and I’ve been writing about video games professionally for 13 years and still type it out, all the time, like Soul Calibur.
SAMBA DE AMIGO
Samba de Amigo marries rhythmic action marries a set of plastic maracas. How they work and how they are set up, is 2000 as it gets:
In the Dreamcast version, each maraca has a string that is attached to a rod located in front of the player’s feet. The rod is a little over two feet long and has a sensor at each end, and each maraca has an ultrasonic generator mounted on its cord; This allows the system to determine the location of each maraca. The rattles can be removed from the top of each maraca for quieter playing.[3] Included in the box is a plastic mat with two brown footprints, helping players to properly position themselves relative to the sensor bar.
MARVEL VS CAPCOM 2
The Dreamcast is home to a ton of great fighting games, so many of them that three of them have made this list. Unlike the other two, which look to the future and see three dimensions, this one is for 2D purists, like MvC2 There’s a roster for the ages, as well as some of the best pixel art ever in a fighting game.
CRAZY TAXI
Yet another example of Sega capitalizing on the success of coin-op, Crazy taxi appeared on the Dreamcast in 2000, a year after the video game’s debut. Its basic design — racing around a city while a giant arrow tells you where to go—so good that Sega patented itand then take EA and Fox to court Simpsons Road Rage because of.
This story was originally published in 2019.
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