Being able to play free games without using a modchip was a great deal for me. Unfortunately i was looking for homebrew as downloading commercial games would be the illegal route and yes you could download commercial games and play them on the system if you had the specific software to do so.
But i will not get into that discussion as thats going into the piracy category and i wouldn't want to stick myself there. I did however get 2 games free with my Sega Dreamcast and that was the Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver and The Next Tetris Online. What i was looking for was Sonic Adventure but those 2 games were fine minus the issues of not being able to play The Next Tetris Online cause i believe it had problems connecting to servers or they shut the server down which doesn't matter because as of 2003 most games went offline by then anyways with the exception of PSO, Quake 3 Arena, 4x4 Evolution and Star Lancer. However eventually the official servers shutdown for pso. But you can now find hack servers to play PSO online for the Sega Dreamcast.
I thought Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver was a great game but after awhile it just feels like your doing the same thing over and over and it got bland after awhile. I liked how they updated the graphics though cause it was sharper then the Playstation version and was more vibrant and colorful. Well i know i didn't get Sonic Adventure when i bought my Dreamcast but i then decided to look around for the game. I called a local game shop and by surprise they had the game and i picked it up.
Well you've played the earlier versions of Sonic the Hedgehog aswell as the newer games. We all know that most of the newer games with the exception of Sonic Generations have been horrible. But when Sonic Adventure came out it proved that Sonic can go 3D and it can make a great game. Colorful graphics, fun mini games and a great adventure made it a very fun game for the family there wasn't any multiplayer in the game it was just a fun game for everyone to take turns.
Another Sonic Adventure game was produced and it was a big hit and it was one of the last games made for the Dreamcast. Sonic Heroes came out and it felt almost like the "Adventure" series of games but instead you played as a team which changed the game play a bit. It was fun but to some the Adventure series was probably the best 3D games and Heroes killed it.
Well there was a lot of great games for the Dreamcast but there was one that really stuck out and had the biggest production costs of any game released in the year 2001. Shenmue was released being the first open world game and it helped other companies use that same concept later in games like Grand Theft Auto. Yu Suzuki decided we could make a RPG game using fighting mechanics similar to games like Virtual Fighter and that idea indeed worked.
It brought 2 things together in one world fighting and RPG and i believe that fans of both those genres of games would enjoy it. Unfortunately the game didn't bring in enough sales cause the Dreamcast didn't bring in enough sales. The biggest problem was that you could play backed up games without using a modchip. Later Sega acknowledged this problem and made a "Sports" system which would lock out the usage of playing backed up games on a CD-R. But that system didn't save Sega and they were still losing money.
Around the same time the Sports system got released PS2 was on the verge of getting released. The major difference was that PS2 had a DVD player and Dreamcast didn't. PS2 from what i heard at the time was the cheapest DVD player on the market and the fact you could play games made it a very good choice for gamers and movie watchers you got 2 things in one system for a great price. The Dreamcast couldn't be saved and when the PS2 came out Sega was making crazy deals to get a Dreamcast in every house hold. Those deals didn't work people wanted the PS2 and Sega decided i think its time we pull the plug on the system.
Very sad news so many great games available for the system like Power Stone, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Phantasy Star Online and Sonic Adventure. The Dreamcast also had amazing arcade ports basically do to the fact the NAOMI arcade platforms used identical hardware to the Dreamcast and one of the being the GD-Rom. So most games that were released on the Naomi later got ported to the Sega Dreamcast which wasnt hard to do cause they used the identical hardware.
To me the Dreamcast was a great system it was one of the first 128bit systems released. It had some minor problems and some problems that people hated and the major problem was its online servers and the fact the system still used dial up to connect to any of the servers. Which meant that you would disconnect from some games either losing items you collected like in PSO. Sega later cut there prices on the online service oh yeah that's right you had to pay money to use there servers. But even reducing the prices of usage to there servers didn't do well and at the end of Dreamcast production Sega had decided that all games would go online for free except the PSO series of games.
Eventually the Dreamcast was found dead in March of 2001 and was missed by many and it was funny that when the system got the plug pulled it was starting to generate more fans and i think some sites still called it system of the year up to 2004. The system will be missed but still lives on in the fans who still have a Dreamcast that works. I once again hope you enjoyed the read and i will have another news post available for the 4th episode of The DCeric Show. I hope you watch the episode at the top of the page cause there will be a more in depth experience which shows gameplay aswell information that may not be here.
Thanks
Eric
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