It’s been three weeks since I sent my Dreamcast out to get DCHDMI installed. I’m starting to randomly hear the Pioneer 2 music. Hopefully it gets shipped back to me soon.
How one earth did you break the door switch? Removing a Gdrom drive is one of the simplest things ever.
I replaced the gd-rom logic board (the main cause of slow boot according the internet) and the lid switch displaced when I opened the metal case. Was easy to fix, at least. But even a new verified working logic board fixed my problem, and I don’t have more spare parts.
I just received a pre-modded GDEMU Dreamcast from eBay and have a Retro-Access DC SCART cable on the way… Can’t wait to get back into this console. Just need to figure out how to load up my SD card.
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Check out this documentary-style retrospective with Dreamcast-era developers and game producers. Worth watching if you have the hour and a half to spare.
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All over this! Thanks
SO, SO GOOD.
Sobering, emotional, heart-wrenching stuff.
Yoot Saito is the man. So many good devs and thoughts in those videos. Part 2 is also released.
My post over at Qt3 today… if you haven’t watched these videos… wow… purchasing anecdote included!
John Linneman of Digital Foundry posted links today to these videos that were made this year to celebrate and educate about the origins and ultimate demise of one of the greatest videogame consoles of all time.
20 years ago today, right about this time, I was figuring out if I could afford to purchase one that day. My (now ex) wife and I weren’t exactly rolling in it around this time, but I was a Sega fan and given all the praise it had been getting, I wasn’t sure I could go without it. Later that evening, I got to try it at a friend’s place and right before closing time at Best Buy, I was walking out with a system, SoulCalibur and NFL 2K. I had to scour the mall after that to find Sonic Adventure at a Kay-Bee Toys because it was sold out elsewhere. The list of US Launch games was positively insane and it’s still probably the single greatest launch of them all.
- AeroWings
- AirForce Delta
- Blue Stinger
- CART Flag to Flag
- Expendable
- The House of the Dead 2
- Hydro Thunder
- Monaco Grand Prix
- Mortal Kombat Gold
- NFL 2K
- NFL Blitz 2000
- Pen Pen TriIcelon
- Power Stone
- Ready 2 Rumble Boxing
- Sonic Adventure
- Soulcalibur
- TNN Motorsports Hardcore Heat
- Tokyo Xtreme Racer
- TrickStyle
For many of us, that was just the beginning of a three year ride that had so many unique game highs that will probably never be duplicated again. Sega was at the height of their creative power from 1999 to 2001 and they’ve never been the same since.
If you still have yours, hook it up tonight and pour one out for the console that truly bridged the gap between the 2D and 3D as well as the couch and online eras because the soul still burns.
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I will be doing just that!
I’ll give it a play tonight. It’s a great system.
It came out when I was in seventh grade. I didn’t have one at launch, but instead grabbed one when they were on clearance at various stores for $50 because I knew how awesome its library had gotten at that point - probably right around the time of the GCN and Xbox launches.
When it first came out, I remember one of my friends who got it at launch was saying how each individual finger on Sonic was modeled separately rather than having just a blob for a hand like on PS1 and N64. In my young head, that was a mindblowing fact for some reason.
Then, I went to another friend’s house and played it. I remember asking him to try Sonic Adventure but his answer was, “Sure you can check that out later, but let me show you this cool game called SoulCalibur first.”
Let me tell you, we never played Sonic that day. SoulCalibur melted my fucking face. It was quite an introduction to a new generation of hardware and one that I’ll never forget for as long as I live.
By the way, I’m convinced that the Dreamcast is what started the death of the arcade:
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It may have contributed but arcades had started declining in popularity many years earlier. They peaked in the '80s and had a few boosts after that with Street Fighter II and Dance Dance Revolution.
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I do enjoy the Dreamcast. I was very lucky to be living in Japan on the day of launch. I was there in the lines holding on to my ticket waiting to buy Sega’s greatest.
But even with all the nostalgia I still prefer the Saturn (Japanese of course) as it had so many more titles (over a thousand in Japan) and Arcade ports. Still, I do enjoy the Dreamcast a lot and will be celebrating later this year as that to me is its true birthday.
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Senior year of college. I still remember blowing off classes reading EGM and issue 0 of Official Dreamcast Magazine as 9.9.99 approaches. I went to Toys R Us and found a bunch of random strategy guides clearanced out at a penny each. Bought them all, I think there were around 50 of them. Carried an almost broken cardboard box of strategy guides across the street to Babbage’s where they were giving 2.00 each in store credit for every strategy guide. That was half of my Dreamcast money right there. I remember telling the clerk that I knew someone that worked for a publisher or some other made up excuse, I dont think he was buying it. Clearly, they all still had TRU stickers with a price of .01 on the cover. But I didnt care, that was half the cost of a DC right there, and i was a starving college student.
That story will always stick with me. I had to have a DC at launch, and I was determined to get it by any means necessary.
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Amazing story. DC would’ve made any dorm room fun.
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I’m going to do a ghetto stream using my phone. Expect to hear lots of whirring and clicking from the system and enjoy some sweet Sony Trinitron CRT action. Stock speakers!
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Have no launch memories to share or anything since I was literally 5 years old when it happened, but I had ordered a bunch of dreamcast games last week and the fact it was so close to the system’s anniversary had completely escaped my notice. I did break out some Airforce Delta since I figured I had to do something in honour of 9/9/19,
-until I stopped because the system’s composite output is fucking appaling and prolonged exposure would have caused my eyes to crawl out of my sockets. I bought a s-video cable right after because I just can’t wait for those component cables at this point. But yea, long live the dream!
I finally got around to watching these tonight. I had started the first when they were originally posted. I have a DC now, and played friends DC’s back in the day, but I’ve never had a ton of love or nostalgia for it. That said, I really liked the videos and the developers perspectives on their games, Sega, and the DC.
I know the balance was shifting before the DC was even out, but it certainly tipped and with PS2 (Tekken Tag especially) the industry’s downfall was more then likely guaranteed to happen. That’s when Japan decided we’re no longer welcome to their titles and left us with what… Global VR? blah!
I’m lucky my pc monitor still has some life in it as I have to use the ossc’s own brightness settings to see anything. VGA is truly the best way to play and for an anniversary I would expect to be on nothing less.
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Best ever console that sounds like a fishing rod.
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Yeah I forget I have to move mine away from the wall before I wake up the neighbor.