Re: Dreamcast review
Re: Dreamcast review
gazuk said:
What I love about Retro computing is that I can now go back and buy the systems I never had/could never afford for next to nothing.
That is very true. It is great to pick up systems you just couldn't afford back at the time and experience and enjoy them first hand. Emulation still never quite delivers a real system true feel and experience.
And I did this with the N64 just after the Gamecube was released. Picked up an N64 with 40 boxed games and 4 controllers for something silly like £40. And ended up buying more N64's just to get the games they were bundled with as it was working out a lot cheaper than buying the games that were being sold at the time on there own.
Hence the reason I ended up with 3 boxed mint condition N64s.
And I sold the duplicate games and third party controllers to a local CEX so actually ended up only spending about £60 in total for the whole N64 collection.
(well that is unlike you factor in the CD64 plus which I purchased new from Hong Hong and the Z64 Mr. Backup which I purchased from someone online).
However some older platforms are starting to get quite rare and commanding higher prices. Who would have thought a couple of years ago that Atari 520ST's would be outselling A500's by quite some margin. About 10 times the price at the moment on evilbay! It seems that Atari STs are finally getting hard to find. Have Amiga owners finally managed to buy them all up and see how long they take to melt? :jester:
But even so, these prices are still a shadow of their original prices when new.
gazuk said:
I am not sure that all those years ago I would have appreciated the Dreamcast like I do now
I think it would have depended when you bought one. I got one before the PS2 was released and so it was a huge step forward from the PSOne. I think if I had bought one after owning a PS2 it wouldn't have been such a great system as I wouldn't have focused so much time on it.
I do still think the Dreamcast handled texture mapping better than the PS2. Although both systems did give textures different looks. The Playstation and PS2 both tended to give a slightly muted look to texture mapping. A little dull, even with colourful graphics. Whereas the Dreamcast always gave textures a high contrast vibrancy that was maybe a little over saturated, and always bith better anti-aliasing that the PS2 has ever managed, created very vibrant arcade quality 3D graphics.
However as PS2 development has continued over the years some very impressive things have been achieved with the PS2 hardware. Many later games were throwing around a lot more polygons and textures than we thought possible at its release. I think the Dreamcast hardware was much easier to code for so the developers got much more out of it early on, and had the 2 platforms continued alongside each other I think the Dreamcast would have run out of steam long before the PS2 as it was showing its limits in 3D capabilities in some of its games already at the time.
However at the time some of the games available for the Dreamcasr such as Sonic Adventure were really pushing things forward and showing a huge step forward compared to the PSOne. And don't forget at the time it was the only console capable of online gaming via its built in modem. I had loads of fun playing online with the Dreamcast. And as I was using that BT dialup internet option (the one where you paid a flat rate per month for dialup) I didn't cost me anything extra in phone bills. I even got hold of the US only released games to play more online. Ones like Bomberman were great. And Phantasy Star Online v2 still hasn't in my opinion been bettered as an online experience, and is a game you just can't replicate by playing offline as it just doesn't have the same feel or experience. That was the game where a DC keyboard became very useful. Plus only the European version of PSO was free to play online, which was another great thing.
One thing that was strange for a console was that the European Dreamcast market always seemed to be the one focused on before the US and Japan. In fact the US were generally always last to get most titles, and didn't even get many. With users having to import European copies. However the US online games did seem to have more online support than most EU games.
But for me, there is one game series that really does the Dreamcast justice, and that was Shenmue. Two brilliant games that should be played by anyone who can get hold of them. The Xbox did see an improved version of Shenmue 2 ported but you then miss the save game linking ability from the first DC game, allowing you to import your character and all your gaming collectables and achievements from the first to continue with the second. A nice feature.
gazuk said:
as Harrison said its a shame that SEGA no longer develop consoles, I guess the story runs very similar to the fall of Commodore and many others who have suffered with poor marketing and some very odd decisions.
SEGA's downfall was two fold. Firstly they enjoyed the success of the Megadrive/Genesis for too long, just as Commdore did with the A500. Instead of putting their efforts into developing their next console they instead just kep designing add on hardware for the Megadrive, with CD drives and 32bit accelerators. Both of which didn't enjoy huge success in terms of games released for them because they were not standard parts of the Megadrive's hardware, so not many people owned them.
If they had instead not developed the CD drive or 32x for the Megadrive, but instead put that hardware into their next console they would have in my view remained a success in the console market. Imagine if they had looked at it in the opposite direction. Building a new console with these technologies, but with a cartridge slow for backwards compatibility with Megadrive games. That would have been the right solution. A new more powerful console capable of entering the 32bit next generation of games consoles, with the storage capabilities of CD, but with backwards compatibility to please the Megadrive owners.
However in my view it got even stranger with the Saturn development. Sega were focusing on 3D in the arcades with games like Virtua Racer. At the time quite cutting edge and impressive. And were trying to add 32bit 3D capabilities to the Megadrive via hardware add-ons. So why did they completely disregard 3D when developing the Saturn? They seemed to completely fail to notice that the gaming world was moving into 3D and was starting to require hardware capable of handling 3D texture mapped objects. Instead focusing on designing the Saturn mainly to handle 2D with parallel sprite processors. Very off after all their 3D efforts before this point. After the market failures of the Megadrive hardware add-ons, which cost them a lot of money to develop, the Saturn was the final huge mistake they made that caused their downfall. Designing hardware that was not where the console market was heading. Sony had them completely beat with the Playstation. Why did they fail to focus on 3D for the Saturn? Very odd. The Dreamcast easily fixed that but it was too late for them to recover.
It definitely mirrors some of the mistakes at Commodore, but not quite as badly.
As a side note I think that the Megadrive was/is just as good as the Dreamcast but in a very different way. I cant think of another platform game that is as fun and as fluid to play as the original Sonic.
Amiga! The Megadrive was a poor shadow of the great Amiga! OK, maybe it could sometimes push larger sprites around the screen at faster speeds, and with a 64 colour palette, but it wasn't as good!
I personally never liked the original Sonic that much. It was fun for a quick game, but the game was too short and unless you were the type of person interested in achieving and unlocking everything possible on each of the levels it wasn't in my view as great as people make out. I much preferred Super Mario World on the SNES. A lot of variety, a lot more things to do, and such a huge gaming world to explore. Almost a platforming RPG before its time.
