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When the Sega Dreamcast arrived on American tablets 20 years ago, 9.9.99, it was sold like crazy, at least for a while. It was Sega's last chance in the hardware sector. The 32X had been a dismal failure, as it had been announced along with the most advanced Sega Saturn in Japan. The Sega Saturn was crushed and burned when Sega surprised consumers and developers by publishing it without warning to E3 (at the request of Sega of Japan). Only Sony came on the scene an hour later and reduced the Saturn by $ 100. Yes, it's the same thing they used with the PlayStation 4 18 years later.
The Dreamcast would eventually fall on the PlayStation 2, thanks in part to the support of developers like Electronic Arts and Squaresoft, but for a moment it was the place to be. It was like a return to form for 
In the Tech Report, we talk about hardware of any age. To celebrate Dreamcast's 20th anniversary, let's look at some of the incredible hardware features that made Dreamcast such a futuristic console, even if they did not end up transporting it in the future.
Let's go online: the integrated modem
Sega has really seen the future come with this one. The Dreamcast was the first console to include online connectivity in the box as an integrated dial-up modem. Japan received a 33.6K modem, while the most recent US version received a 56K version. Here's where things get wild, though. At that time, in 1998/99, the wide most of us had dial – up internet access, and for many of us at that time, the college dormitories were the first time we experienced the power of one. Fully operational Ethernet port. Even in this case, Sega had a broadband adapter that would allow you to remove the 56K modem and replace it with an Ethernet adapter. You can play games like Roquette Chu-Chu and Phantasy Star Online with your friends, assuming you know more than one person with a Dreamcast. In addition to all this, the system had a lightweight web browser.
Microsoft's Xbox will ship with an Ethernet port a few years later. While Microsoft was later, he had the monetary muscle to build a good gaming network in the form of Xbox Live that ultimately allowed everything to work. But Sega saw the future coming and tried to prepare for it impressively early. The list of compatible online games included games such as NFL 2K1, Quake III Arena, Jet Grind Radio, Phantasy Star Online, and Virtua Tennis 2.
Click, Click, Bang: Mouse and keyboard game
To further enhance this built-in modem, you can use a mouse and keyboard. The thing even had access to Windows APIs via Windows CE to facilitate PC ports. You can connect to Dreamcast as if it was a PC. Games like Quake III Arena also supported the mouse and keyboard, which means that not only could you play with PC players, you could compete with them.
So many pixels: the VGA connector
At this point, console play was a strictly intertwined affair. While PC gamers enjoyed all this pixel density, console gamers had much fuzzier screens. That was up to the Dreamcast VGA adapter. This connection box exploited the Dreamcast's ability to transmit in 480p resolution and allowed output on a rare, progressive-scan TV, or, better yet, a VGA monitor. The box also included a 3.5mm jack for output to the headphones or speakers. By that time, I had just started my studies, so VGA access allowed me to tidy up Dreamcast in my tiny dorm office and enjoy Sky of Arcadia in glorious clarity VGA. At the time, this upgrade seemed revolutionary.
Vroom, Vroom: Analog Triggers
Nintendo has added shoulder buttons. Sony has doubled the number, disposable razor style. The Dreamcast, however, was the first console to incorporate analog triggers. Games like Metropolis Street Racing and Sega GTwho both felt like serious contenders Gran Turismo"The throne at the time, felt great on the controller and offered a much better racing experience. Shooting games felt good too. The triggers added greater fidelity to the feeling of handling a gun. C & # 39; was Halo: Combat Evolved on Xbox that finally understood, but the Dreamcast has started.
The PlayStation 2 DualShock had its charms, but I will always remember the Dreamcast controller as the first time I had a favorite console controller.
Second screen Gaming on the Go: the VMU Sega Dreamcast
The Dreamcast VMU is a strange artifact of its time. It is an attempt to turn the Sega Dreamcast into a social material limited by the material capabilities of the time. The VMU, or virtual memory unit, was Sega Dreamcast's answer to the memory card. One of the best parts of the PlayStation on the Sega Saturn was the memory card. With the memory card, you can bring your game to a friend or exchange another card for more space. This was a huge advantage over the Sega Saturn. Sega was not happy just copying the memory card. Instead, Sega placed a small, low-resolution LCD on the card, powered it with a CR2032 battery, and placed the card port on the Dreamcast controller instead of the console.
During playback, the controller became a second screen. resident Evil put the life counter on the screen. the NFL2K the games would allow you to plan off-screen games to take your opponent by surprise.
On the go, the system can run miniature games. It was little more than a glorified Tamagotchi. But it was a Tamagotchi Sonic and a Sky of Arcadia Tamagotchi and a Sega GT Tamagotchi. At the time, it was incredibly cool to take my console games on the road, but the batteries that were dying all the time, the easy-to-lose hood and the limited features kept it from becoming a major feature.
Hey, Dreamcast: Voice Control
The last item on my list might be the strangest. The Dreamcast was the first game console to introduce voice control as a significant part of the game. This game, of course, was Marine, the ultra-strange game on a fish with a human face. The game required the microphone to play because it was the only way to interact with the strange thing Nautilus-tadpole, frogfish-man. It worked surprisingly well given the fact that the game was released almost 20 years ago. I remember it was less frustrating than shouting at Google when I wanted to set a reminder.
Activity Room: GD-ROM
While the passage of cartridges to optical media opened the game to unimaginable possibilities, it also posed many problems. Sega, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo has all struggled to understand that optical discs were easier to copy than cartridges. Sega's answer was the GD-ROM, the 1GB disk.
The timing of the Dreamcast has retained the system as much as anything else. He has beaten the PlayStation 2 on the market for over a year and the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox two years. By the time these systems came on the market, the DVD had already taken over and the PlayStation 2 had even become the main DVD player for many players.
Sega decided to go on DVD and opted for a denser CD-ROM called GD-ROM. The GD-ROMs have brought the recesses closer to the CD-ROM, giving the disc a 42% advantage over its CD-ROM capacity and also making its games theoretically more difficult to copy.
Only that did not make things more difficult. I did not even finish my first year of college before friends exchanged Dreamcast pirated discs. The technology gave the impression that Sega was competing with the previous console instead of acting as copy protection.
The Dreamcast was a strange console. In the end, many of these features have added little to the system. Very few games supported things like the modem, the mouse, the keyboard and the microphone. Even less intensive features such as VMU required platform-specific support for cross-platform games. This means that they have often been ignored by developers outside Sega Studios. Nowadays, console players expect high-definition games, online games and a microphone is included. Analog triggers are standard on Xbox and PlayStation controllers. Meanwhile, features such as voice commands and second-screen games have appeared several times over the years between Dreamcast and now. Controller and mouse support is now back in fashion.
The Dreamcast may have been dead for a long time, but this strange progressive device will live long in the hearts of many players. Now, if only Sega released a Dreamcast equivalent to the Sega Genesis Mini.
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