While many criticisms of this console are valid, it also brought a lot things to the table that, due to its commercial failure, have been swept under the rug. To the vast majority of gamers, it’s about as good as a brick. It’s a punching bag for jokes and ridicule. In the days since its demise just two years after its launch, the Dreamcast has largely been derided as a failure. The only official Sega hardware you can find these days is for resale on places like eBay.

The Dreamcast couldn’t stand its ground in the new millennium against the hype behind the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube that would release over the following two years, giving way to the trifecta’s console competition that has remained constant for the last 20 years. Sega was already slipping with the Sega Saturn’s failure in the mid-90s and the introduction of Sony’s PlayStation around the same. Over 18 years, Sega went toe-to-toe with Nintendo in an arms race over ever-improving graphics, iconic mascots, and outright aggressive marketing. For all its innovations, the Dreamcast also marked the end of Sega’s storied run in the console wars. In many ways, it was ahead of its time.īut perhaps it was too far ahead of its time. It was a bastion for creativity and experimentation in games. It supported file management and data transference. It was the first console with online capabilities, even including a web browser. Like the sun cresting over the eastern horizon heralding a new day, the Dreamcast’s North American release in September of 1999 heralded a new era of gaming. It's a little #tbt to the days before #tbt was a thing.Īt the turn of the millennium, Sega’s Dreamcast emerged. Welcome to 2000s Week! We're exploring the pop culture that shaped us at the turn of the millennium, and examining what the films, shows, and games from the era say about us then and now.

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