Where did it all go wrong?? (Dreamcast in general)

Member Name: harru

Product:	Dreamcast in general
Date:	27/04/02 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good games, ridiculously cheap, internet ready

Disadvantages: no more games being made, can be hard to find peripherals, not quite as good as the next gen consoles

Curse Sony. I have often wondered how their overrated, under perfoming console has been such a success. They seem to have a vastly superior publicity team who have managed to sell a vastly inferior console. Sega, on the other hand, concentrated far more on the actual performance of their hardware and software, and maybe naively did not back it up with a good marketing scheme.

The Dreamcast, nearly 4 years after its release in Japan, does not look outdated or old, and the graphics on the best games are as good as playstation 2. It supports up to 4 players on many games, and unlike any other console - including x-box and gamecube, the dreamcast is internet ready from the box. In the U.K. you can now select an ISP to use with the dreamcast, meaning it is possible to get unmetered access.

The games, of course, are the most important thing on any system. Without top quality games, it does not matter how many zigabytes of graphics the box can produce - its going to be rubbish. The dreamcast does have top quality games. While they were being made Sega had the backing of all the major game producers, and of course, Sega are no dunces when it comes to making games. The top games on dreamcast, in my humble opinion, are: Sonic Adventure (1+2), Crazy Taxi (1+2), Powerstone 2, Metropolis Street Racer – (miles better than Gotham Racing on X-box), and Virtua Tennis. Of course, this is not a definitive list and there are many more top class games that I haven’t played.

Although now defunct, the dreamcast is still worth getting. Anyone looking for a stop-gap before they can afford the stupidly priced X-box or waiting for a decent game on the Gamecube can do much worse than pick a dreamcast. It’s possible to get a dreamcast +2 controllers, 5 good games and a memory card for under £100. Those of you who have already got one – hold on to it! It’s my guess that they will one day be worth significantly more than £100!!

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