Dreamcast Totally Explained

Everything about Dreamcast totally explained

The is Sega's last video game console and the successor to the Sega Saturn. An attempt to recapture the console market with a next-generation system, it was designed to supersede the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Originally released sixteen months before the PlayStation 2 (PS2) and three years before the Nintendo GameCube and the Xbox, the Dreamcast is part of the sixth generation of video game consoles, Dreamcast was widely hailed as ahead of its time, and is still held in high regard for pioneering online console gaming. Nevertheless, it failed to gather enough momentum before the release of the PlayStation 2 in March 2000. Sega discontinued the Dreamcast in March 2001, and withdrew entirely from the console hardware business; however, support continued in Japan where consoles were still sold in 2006 and new licensed games were still being made by companies of the arcade market until 2007, not to mention the huge and current worldwide support of the homebrew community.

History

In 1997, the Saturn was struggling in North America, and Sega of America president Bernie Stolar pressed for Sega's Japanese headquarters to develop a new platform which eventually became the Dreamcast. At the 1997 E3, Stolar made public his opinion on the Saturn with his comment, "The Saturn isn't our future" and referred to the doomed console as "the stillborn".

Design

When the time came to design the successor to the Sega Saturn, the new President of Sega, Shoichiro Irimajiri, took the unusual step of hiring an outsider, Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM Austin, to head a "skunk works" group to develop the next-generation console. It soon became apparent that the existing Japanese hardware group led by Hideki Sato didn't want to relinquish control of the hardware department, bringing rise to two competing designs led by two different groups.
   The Japanese group led by Hideki Sato settled on an Hitachi SH4 processor with a PowerVR graphics processor developed by VideoLogic (now Imagination Technologies) and manufactured by NEC. This was originally codenamed "White Belt". The first Japanese prototype boards were silkscreened "Guppy", and the later ones "Katana".
   The U.S. skunk works group (11 people in a secret suite away from the Sega of America headquarters) led by Tatsuo Yamamoto settled on a PowerPC 603e processor with a custom 3dfx Voodoo 3 graphics processor, which was originally codenamed "Black Belt". The first U.S. prototype boards were silkscreened "Shark" and later "Dural" (whose name was taken from the shiny character from Sega's own Virtua Fighter series).
   When 3dfx declared its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in April 1997, it revealed every detail of the contract with Sega. Sega had been keeping the development of its next-generation console secret during this competition, and was supposedly outraged when 3dfx publicly laid out its deal with Sega over the new system in the IPO.
   In July 1997, rumored as a result of 3dfx's IPO, it was decided that the Japanese "Katana" would be the chosen format, renamed Dreamcast. In September 1997, 3dfx filed a lawsuit against Sega and NEC (later including VideoLogic), stating "breach of contract", and accusing Sega of starting the deal in bad faith to take 3dfx technology, although they later settled.

Launch

The Sega Dreamcast was released on November 27, 1998 in Japan; on September 9, 1999 in North America (the date 9/9/99 featured heavily in U.S. promotion); and on October 14, 1999 in Europe. The tagline used to promote the console in the U.S. was, "It's thinking", and in Europe, "Up to [6Billion] Players."
   Sega Dreamcast was the first console to include a built-in modem and Internet support for online gaming. Previous consoles such as the Genesis, Saturn, NES and SNES had online capabilities, but these were comparably limited and/or required extra hardware (XBAND, NetLink, Sega Channel).
   Sega Dreamcast enjoyed brisk sales in its first season, and was one of Sega's most successful hardware units. In the United States alone, a record 300,000 units had been pre-ordered and Sega sold 500,000 consoles in just two weeks (including 225,132 sold on the first 24 hours which became a video game record). In fact, due to brisk sales and hardware shortages, Sega was unable to fulfill all of the advance orders.
   Sega confirmed that it made US$98.4 million on combined hardware and software sales with Dreamcast with its September 9, 1999 launch. Sega even compared the record figure to the opening day gross of, which made $28.5 million during the first 24 hours in theaters. Chris Gilbert, senior vice president of sales, Sega of America, said on November 24, 1999: "By hitting the one million units sold landmark, it's clear that the Sega Dreamcast consumer has moved beyond the hard-core gamer and into the mass market." He also likened it to a music album going platinum or a film netting $100 million in box office receipts.
Before the launch in the United States, Sega had already taken extra steps in displaying Dreamcast's capabilities in stores nationwide. Much like the PlayStation's launch in North America, the displays of titles such as Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, Power Stone, and Hydro Thunder helped Dreamcast succeed in the first year.
   Although Dreamcast had none of EA's popular sports games, due in part to EA's losses from the Sega Saturn, Sega Sports titles helped to fill that void. The biggest competition between Sega Sports and EA Sports in the U.S. was their (American) football and basketball games. This started with one of the launch titles of the Dreamcast, NFL 2K. Both Madden 2000 and NFL 2K were highly regarded, with the Dreamcast boasting a new graphics engine and Madden retaining the same engine that made it solid from the years prior. It wasn't until the next years release of the games where the Dreamcast proved its worth in the video game market. This was when NFL 2K1 outsold Madden NFL 2001 with about 410,000 copies.

Competition

In April 1999, Sony announced its PlayStation 2. The actual release of the PS2 wasn't until March 2000 in Japan, and October 26, 2000 in the United States. Sony's press release, despite being a year ahead of the launch of the PS2, was enough to divert a lot of attention from Sega. With the looming PS2 launch in Japan, the Dreamcast was largely ignored in that territory. While the system had great initial success in the United States, it had trouble maintaining this momentum after news of the PS2's release.
   Dreamcast sales grew 156.5% from July 23, 2000 to September 30, 2000 putting Sega ahead of Nintendo 64 in that period. For the month of November 2000, Dreamcast passed the Nintendo 64 as the second best selling system. During that time, the PlayStation 2 was plagued by production shortages, with people often paying in excess of $1000 on eBay for Sony's next-generation console. However, Dreamcast's online capabilities through SegaNet, and a price cut around the second half of 2000 (which made it half the price of the PS2) did little to help sales once the PlayStation 2 was launched. American public attention also noted the Playstation 2's much hyped graphics and its ability to play DVDs, as it cost less than a standalone player at the time.
   A key to Sony's relatively easy success with the PlayStation 2 was that they already enjoyed brand-name dominance over Sega after the huge success of the original PlayStation, while Sega's reputation had been hurt due to commercial failure of the Sega Saturn, Sega 32X, and Mega CD. In particular, Sega's attempt to quickly kill off the struggling Saturn (which lagged in North America and Europe) in favour of Dreamcast had angered many third-party developers in Japan, where the Saturn had still been able to hold its own. While initial Dreamcast sales were strong, many prospective buyers and game developers were still skeptical of Sega and they held off from committing, possibly to see which console would prevail. By early 2001, game publishers abandoned Dreamcast development en masse in favor of the PlayStation 2 and canceled many nearly completed projects (notably Half-Life).
   In 2000, the announcements of the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube were widely regarded as the last straw for Dreamcast, which fueled speculation that Sega didn't have the resources for a prolonged marketing campaign.

Outside U.S. and Japan

Sega had problems choosing suitable companies to promote Dreamcast outside the U.S. Marketing in European countries was done somewhat poorly, whereas Sony marketed the PlayStation 2 in each country's local medias, such as newspapers and street shows. Sega recruited third-party companies to promote Dreamcast, some of which didn't allocate sufficient money for advertising.
DreamArena (the European equivalent to SegaNet, the Dreamcast online service) was a fiasco in Finland because the cost of connection was more than three times the amount of a normal ISDN internet connection. This was due to the fact that Sega allowed open pricing for third-party companies. The companies stated that the price was steep due to a lack of potential customers, but most believe that the companies were just using the open pricing to their advantage.
Many important titles were never released outside of Japan, and many were hard to find without importing them. While Dreamcast did receive a price cut in the U.S. to coincide with the PlayStation 2's American release, the European pricing remained the same, even when the PlayStation 2 was released in Europe.

End of production

On January 31, 2001, Sega announced that production of Dreamcast hardware was to be discontinued by March of that year, although the 50 to 60 titles still in production would be published. The last North American release was NHL 2K2, which was released in February 2002. With the company announcing no plans to develop a next-generation successor to Dreamcast, this was Sega's last foray into the home console business. Massive price cuts were quickly instituted in order to move the abundance of unsold hardware and the system had quickly dropped to prices as low as US$49.99 new.
Though Dreamcast was officially discontinued in early 2001, commercial games were still developed and released afterwards, particularly in Japan. Unreleased games like Propeller Arena and Half-Life continued to become available to the public through warez groups and independent hackers.
   On February 24, 2004, Sega released their final Dreamcast game, Puyo Pop Fever. Afterwards, a small number of third-party games were still being released, such as Chaos Field released in December 2004, Trizeal released in April 2005, Radilgy released in February 2006, Under Defeat released in March 2006, and most recently Last Hope released January 2007, Trigger Heart Exelica released February 2007, and Karous released March 2007. Visual Novel games were still released even when the Dreamcast was discontinued. There was a big support until 2004. The last Visual Novel game released on Dreamcast was Angel Wish, in early 2005.
   Despite its short lifespan, as of 2007, Dreamcast is still a popular and highly-regarded console among many fans due to its impressive library of both mainstream and more offbeat titles. It is even starting to gain a cult following, as the system is becoming harder to find.
   Sega would later re-release the Dreamcast through the Sega Direct division of Japan in early 2006. Although they were only refurbished units, they did come with the new Radilgy game and a phone card.
   Several Dreamcast emulation projects have emerged after Dreamcast's end of production, with Chankast being the most notable, along with the recently released nullDC.

Hardware

The power light, like the Dreamcast logo in NTSC regions, was orange (this color was chosen because the Japanese consider it to be lucky). Games were sold in jewel cases. In North America, these initially had the Dreamcast name and logo on a white background, but later games used a black background, similar to the PlayStation's. Japanese games used an orange-and-white scheme, and European and Australian games used blue.
   The unit was packaged with a video cable which supported composite video and stereo sound. Available separately were an RGB SCART cable, an S-Video cable, an RF connector (included as standard in the UK, Germany and Portugal), and a VGA adapter (see accessories below).
   Although there was no reset button on the Dreamcast system itself, there was a way to reset a game during play. If the player wanted to reset a game, they'd have to press the A, B, X, and Y buttons all together and then press the start button. This would then take them to the game's main menu. If repeated, it would take players to the Dreamcast menu.
   In North America, a black Dreamcast was released in limited numbers with a sports pack which included two Sega Sports titles. This was the same as other models except for the black casing and the Sega Sports logo located directly below the Dreamcast logo on the lid. Electronics Boutique offered a blue Dreamcast through its website. Similar offerings were sold through the Lik Sang website. Cases of different colors like blue, red, orange, and green were sold for replacements of the original casing. In Japan, Sega released many varieties of the system, including a limited edition Sonic anniversary version, a pink Sakura Taisen version, and a Hello Kitty version released in 2000 in Japan which, due to its limited production, has become an extremely rare collector's piece. The package contains a keyboard, controller, VMU, mouse, and a Hello Kitty trivia game. The console and accessories came in both translucent pink and blue in color with some printed designs.
   The Brazilian version, manufactured by Tec Toy under license, was essentially the same as the North American version, but its video output was converted to the PAL-M standard and didn't come with the modem, which was available separately.
   Dreamcast in Europe had a blue spiral logo, similar to the logo on earlier Sega systems. This change is thought to have been for copyright reasons: German company Tivola Publishing (External Link

) had been using a similar swirl logo years before Sega branded Dreamcast with the orange swirl.
   As well as the VGA mode to connect to a PC monitor (again using an adapter), the European Dreamcast supported PAL video, in both 50 Hz and 60 Hz modes. This was a first for game consoles, as no previous PAL console had offered the option to play games at full speed, using the ability of many PAL televisions to operate at 60 Hz. This feature was exploited in previous consoles but only by modifying the console with a chip to allow it to run NTSC games (for example, Sony's PlayStation), or by adding switches to the internal circuitry to manually select between 50 Hz and 60 Hz (for example, SEGA's Master System, Mega Drive or Saturn). Although the 60 Hz code had to be enabled on the disc, doing so was a simple matter, and only a small number of games lacked it. The 60 Hz feature has become standard on all major consoles released since.
   Games in Europe were sold in jewel cases exactly twice as thick as their North American counterparts, possibly to enable the inclusion of thick instruction booklets containing instructions in multiple languages.
   A third-party company from China named Treamcast released a portable modified Dreamcast which used the original first-party Dreamcast components with a custom made plastic casing. This small system with its fold-down display resembled the later PS One. Many companies included software and a remote with the unit that enabled it to play MP3s and Video CDs. When the Internet import video game store Lik Sang contacted Sega to ask permission to sell a modified version of the system with Sega trademarks on the system, they were told that Sega didn't approve of the unit, and felt that it violated their trademarks. In reality, this system is no different from a Dreamcast pre-modified with a third party shell, as the system's internals still use first party hardware, and the only modifications are the outside casing and internal sound and video adjustments.
   In 2005, the internet import store Lan-Kwei started selling a "Treamcast" portable modified Dreamcast with a 16:9 widescreen LCD. Aside from the cosmetic differences in the case to accommodate the larger screen, there are no differences between the original Treamcast and the newer widescreen model.

Technical specifications

Processor

SH-4 RISC CPU with 32-bit Instruction Set and 128-bit FPU functions (operating frequency: 200 MHz, 360 MIPS, 1.4 GFLOPS)

Graphics Engine

PowerVR2 � *CLX2, 7.0 Mil polygons/second peak performance, supports Trilinear filtering. Actual maximum in game performance (with full textures, lighting, gameplay, etc.) of over 5 Mil polygons/second.

*Tile Based Deferred Rendering eliminates overdraw by only drawing visible fragments. This makes required fillrate almost independent from scene depth complexity, thus making up for a low, compared to other 6th generation consoles, nominal fillrate of 100 MPixels/s as effective fillrate can be triple that amount. � *Graphics hardware effects include gouraud shading, z-buffering, anti-aliasing and bump mapping.

Memory

Main RAM: 16 MiB 64 Bit 100 MHz

Video RAM: 8 MiB 4x16 Bit 100 MHz

Sound RAM: 2 MiB 16 Bit 66 MHz

VQ Texture Compression (5:1 texture compression) Sound Engine

Yamaha AICA Sound Processor: 22.5 MHz 32-Bit ARM7 RISC CPU: 45 MHz,

Copying

The Dreamcast's proprietary GD-ROM format served as a means of copy protection. It was ultimately circumvented. By using a combination of reverse-engineering and exploits in firmware, a standard CD could boot code in the Dreamcast BIOS to enable multimedia functions. This utilized functionality designed for Mil-CD a special type of multimedia CD released to the Japanese market. Soon, creations such as the Utopia bootdisk appeared, which allowed the ability to boot burned CD games. Mil-CD support was removed from the final Dreamcast revision.

Online

Dreamcast was the first system to have online functionality in this generation. It was composed of online servers run by SegaNet, Dreamarena, and GameSpy networks. Online servers were sustained by the lifespan of the system although in Japan it was generally considered as a more popular online system because of its superior arcade game play. Hence more available network modes in games such as Frame Gride, Tech Romancer, and Project Justice. Dreamcast was previously online before the emergence of online play upon its release. Browser technology was made by independent companies such as Planetweb in order to customize the Dreamcast web service into standard HTML coding. This as well as Java, was available for uploads, movies, and mouse support in its later browsers. Dreamarena came with games such as Sonic Adventure, and Chu Chu Rocket while Planetweb offered free browsers with the Dreamcast demo disc inside the Official Dreamcast Magazine. Its final browser, Planetweb version 3.0, was available with all the support and was sold separately.
There are still six online games available: Phantasy Star Online, which is run via the private server at www.schtserv.com; 4x4 Evolution, which is run by Gamespy, though you'll always be able to play games via IP address; Starlancer, which is also run by Gamespy, though there have been reports saying that this game is also going to be forever accessed online; Quake III Arena, which can be ran via a home server on Linux or Windows; Maximum Pool, ran by home servers as well; and SEGA Swirl, which is a strategy game where scores are sent via e-mail to your opponent.

Homebrew

    The Dreamcast continues to have a modest hacking enthusiast community. The availability of the KallistiOS software development kit on the Internet, as well as ports of Linux and NetBSD/Dreamcast operating systems, gave programmers a selection of familiar development tools to work with. KallistiOS is a homebrew minimal operating system that offers support for a majority of the Dreamcast's hardware and peripherals. Its license allows hobbyist programmers to release games created with this SDK to be released commercially. Recent examples being Cryptic Allusion's Feet of Fury (2003), S+F Software's Inhabitants (2005), JMD's Maqiupai (2005), Harmlesslion's Cool Herders (2006), and NG:DEV.TEAM's Last Hope (2007).
   Using the free KallistiOS SDK, a port of the Neo Geo Homebrew game Last Hope, developed by NG:DEV.TEAM was sold via various online stores on January 31, 2007.
   Using KallistiOS, many free games, emulators and other tools such as MP3 and DivX players and image viewers have been ported to or written for the console, taking advantage of the relative ease with which a home user can burn a CD that can be booted by any unmodified Dreamcast. One of the unusual but interesting hack examples is QNX Dreamcast Project.

In popular culture

As part of Sega's promotions of the Dreamcast in Europe, the company sponsored four European football clubs: English team Arsenal F.C., French team AS Saint-Étienne, Italian team U.C. Sampdoria and Spanish club Deportivo de La Coruña.

Sega was a sponsor of the 1999 and 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. During the 2000 program, Ulala (of Space Channel 5 fame) announced the nominees for the Viewers' Choice category.

The plot of the fourth season episode of South Park entitled "The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000" centers around the children trying to gather enough money to buy a Dreamcast.

In MTV's short running show Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, Snoop Doggy Dogg had a skit where he was making demands to police for a crime he committed, and one of the demands was "a Dreamcast with a blue controller"

Mega64, a comedy show parodying video games, made a song about the history of Dreamcast done in the style of Nuthin' but a "G" Thang by Dr. Dre.

The rap artist Del is seen with a Dreamcast controller on the cover of his album Phoney Phranchise.

In the movie The Forbidden Kingdom, a Dreamcast is visible on Jason's shelf near the beginning of the movie.

In the anime show Full Moon wo Sagashite, one of the characters, Takuto Kira, makes a reference to a Dreamcast keyboard when the main character, Mitsuki Kouyama, mishears the kanji in a Japanese word.

In the TV show My Wife And Kids a Dreamcast can be seen on the lounge table and is even played in some episodes. It was soon replaced with a Gamecube and then a Playstation 2.Further Information

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