Hit with gaming nostalgia

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Written by: Jed

This past week’s been quite ironic for me, as GDC introduced the future of gaming on the cloud with services like OnLive, I’ve spent my week putting in some serious time happily on a last-last-gen console? The Sega Dreamcast. Hands down my favourite gaming system of all time.

The Dreamcast was revolutionary, maybe too much. Online play? Yeah it had it, and it was free as well.  But given my bandwidth (or lack of it), it was a barely touched feature. Not that many games did fully support it anyway – only the 2K Sports games, and Phantasy Star Online (shocking) come to mind right now. Nonetheless I really appreciated its online capability, solely for being able to update sports rosters. I’m not sure which version of NBA2K first offered it, but it saved me hours of manually moving and creating missing players. Of course now, all of this is standard with a current-gen console.

Another innovation the Dreamcast brought with it, was with its memory card, the VMU (Visual Memory Unit). It was unnecessary, probably impractical, but mind-blowing nonetheless. Coming from a generation that went crazy for Tamagotchis, it was a nice throwback. To this day I haven’t encountered a memory card I could play mini-games on, not to mention have a screen.

The Dreamcast also wasn’t a stranger to gimmicky peripherals. Samba De Amigo maracas anyone?

It had the standard light-gun controllers that proved invaluable in games like House of the Dead 2, and Confidential Mission. But Sega didn’t stop there. Mouse and keyboard support? Not only were they useful for online web browsing, they were fully functional in console’s FPS offerings. But more than that, Typing of the Dead – yes, typing zombies to death, would you have it any other way?

With the arcade scene all but dead (practically dead at its release), the Dreamcast brought the cabinet home. Shooters like already mentioned House of the Dead, driving classics like Crazy Taxi, and your favourite Capcom 2D fighter (pick one) – it was on the system.

It had a game for every genre, what sports-gamer doesn’t love the 2K Sports series of games? Japanese RPGs? Try Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II. FPS craziness? There was Unreal Tournament. Open world awesomeness? Shenmue. And of course the franchise Sonic platformers.

All this shouldn’t be forgotten. Which is why I hope (and intend) to provide a series of video flashbacks to the greatest system that ever was – the Sega Dreamcast.

Stay tuned.

PS – it also has the best logo, boot screen and sound in the history of ever.