Peter Moore: I Didn't Kill the Dreamcast

[-Dragmire-]

^-snip-^

Superior handhelds? Like the Game Gear? The one that was so giant it barely qualified as portable, had a downright terrible screen that could barely be seen in indoor light and was useless in outdoor light (killing its portability even more), took 6 AA batteries and sucked them down in a few hours, and barely had any decent games to play on it?

There was nothing superior about the Game Gear. Game Boy kicked its ass for a reason: better portability, better battery life with less batteries needed, and most importantly, way better games.

I still own my Game Gear(and Game Boy as well), I agree with all your points but one. The indoor/outdoor view for the Game Gear is fine(although it had viewing angle issues), it's the Gameboy that had outdoor viewing problems due to lacking it's own light so outdoor reflections obscured the image.

Gameboy definitely had better games in general but I'll always return to my beloved GameGear for this game.

Spoiler

 

[Wolvaroo]

If you can find 8 AA batteries to power the brick. Still was fun.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

What's sad is that the Dreamcast was ahead of it's time. It had better graphics than any system out there and tried to do online multiplayer before Xbox did. Hell, it came with it's own built-in modem!

Yeah, its time. Evidently, 2001 was no longer its time - by that point there were three consoles more advanced than it.

It could have given the PS2 a run for its money, but it probably was weaker overall. It's like the Saturn; the Saturn did 2D better than any of the other systems, and while it was difficult to program for in 3D, when a dev knew what they were doing, it produced some of the best visuals of its generation (case in point, the Saturn version of Shenmue, which almost looked like a PS2 launch game.) The real problem is that Sega screwed up the transition from the fourth generation to the fifth generation by making all of the useless addons for the Genesis[footnote]The Sega CD was a pretty cool idea, but the 32X was a mistake. While it wasn't as bad of a system as everyone says it is, it was a terrible business move, since it confused people about Sega's real 32 bit system.[/footnote]. They never quite recovered from that mistake, and it's a real shame.

Thats a weak excuse. People always say that the 32X brought own the Sega brand, but gamers don't hold grudges like that. If a company is capable of launching a new console, if that new console is good, as well as being able to weather the future, then the past shouldn't matter, people will buy that console. The simple truth was, that Sega did not make a console as good as the Ps2. The Xbox and Gamecube managed to carve niches out by getting some high profile exclusives developed internally and externally, and the Dreamcast simply did not do that. Gun to your head - look at the Dreamcast library, for all its ups and downs. Is there a game in there that can compete, on levels of replayability, influence, scope, quality, all of that, with Halo, Metroid Prime, GTA III or Ico? If not, then you know why it died. The Dreamcast has a library built on fun, quirky little games, but when its time for the true meat of gaming, it didn't deliver. It was a system of a bygone era, standing on the precipice of a new age, an age it simply wasn't built to handle. An age of crime epics, of devoted love stories, of greek tragedies. Of tragedies of a galactic scale. An age marked by Metal Gear Solid 3, Persona 4, Sly 2, and Psychonauts - the new golden dawn of gaming.

The Dreamcast was still using CD's - there was no hope for it in the new millenia. Its death was a foregone conclusion the day Sony showed the world the Ps2 - all that was left was for Sega to recognise the inevitable and choose their time and place, preferring to go out on their own terms than with an inevitable whimper as it was finally refused to be stocked.

The gamers didn't have to hold a grudge; the Saturn was such a failure that they were in the hole by the time the Dreamcast launched. The Dreamcast was a modest success, but not big enough to pull them out of that hole -- ergo, they made the decision to pull the plug.

Edit: Also, the Dreamcast used GD-ROMS, not CDs. They held a full gigabyte of data, which was comparable to the minidiscs used on the Gamecube. As for full experiences: Shenumue, Soul Calibur, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, any of these ringing bells for you? The Dreamcast had games, it's just that Sega was in a weak position financially when it launched, and Sony was in a very strong position; I know I went from the PSX to the PS2 at least partially out of brand loyalty. I went from the Genesis to the Playstation because even as a kid, I could tell the Saturn wasn't going anywhere. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, I always loved, but never actually owned. They run about $30 used these days; I'll probably wind up buying one at some point.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Sega always had the superior consoles, but somehow always drew the shorter end in the console wars. This includes the portable consoles.

Umm....the Super Nintendo was more powerful technically than the Megadrive.

Debateable. The Super Nintendo had Mode 7, more colors, and a better sound chip than the Genesis, but the genesis' processor ran at around 7 MHZ, compared to the SNES's 3. Sonic The Hedgehog would have been literally impossible on the SNES. Basically, for a few generations there, it wasn't so much "this system is outright more powerful than all the others" as "this system is better at feature X, while this one is better at feature Y." The 32/64 bit generation was especially extreme about that, with the Saturn having the best 2D capabilities, and solid 3D capabilities that were very difficult to program for, while the PSX has great 3D capabilities, and mediocre at best 2D abilities. The N64 had 2D abilities somewhere in betweeen the PSx and the Saturn, but its 3D abilities were very different from either of the other systems. It allowed trilinear texture filtering, which made for smooth textures, rather than pixelated ones, hardware anti-aliasing and it also lacked some of the artifacts you see on PSX and Saturn 3D games -- most notably the way flat surfaces seem to bow out when you get too close to them. The N64 was limited, however, in that the cartridges didn't have enough room to store things like voice acting, FMVs, or, importantly for the graphics debate, large texture files. That's why N64 games occasionally had such blurry textures. Also, the PSX was able to crank out slightly more raw polygons in a scene than the N64 was, but texture size aside, the N64 was able to do more with the ones it had.

 

[4RM3D]

Sega always had the superior consoles, but somehow always drew the shorter end in the console wars. This includes the portable consoles.

Umm....the Super Nintendo was more powerful technically than the Megadrive.

And the Game Gear was way better than the Gameboy. Also, the Dreamcast was better than the N64. Anyhow, I wasn't purely talking about hardware, but the total package. The Super Nintendo was pretty good though. I guess it even better than the Megadrive, but the other Nintendo consoles weren't as good compared to Sega.

In the end both Sega and Nintendo had good consoles.