Description

The Sega Dreamcast was Sega's final console, it was the first console with online support. The console used GDs which stored 1 gigabyte, this was only a minor improvement from a CD's 700 MBs and meant the Dreamcast was behind the other 6th gen consoles in power. Unlike the Sega Saturn the Dreamcast did have a mainline Sonic game, the console had Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 which were the first Sonic games with 3D voice acting and voice acting; Sonic Adventure 2 served as the introduction of Shadow who became one of the most popular Sonic characters. One of the Dreamcast's most unique features was the VMU which was a memory card that plugged into the controller rather than the console and had an LCD screen that would display something relating to the game being played; some would even let you install mini-games onto it that could be played when not connected to the console. The Dreamcast sold a similar number of units to the Saturn and was the weakest selling of its generation and was discontinued less than a year and a half after its European release, this was due to intense competition with the PS2 and a lack of 3rd part support plus the fact the Sega's reputation had been on a downward spiral since the late Mega Drive years, following the Dreamcast's discontinuation Sega became a third party developer and ported many Dreamcast games to the other 6th gen consoles. Despite this poor commercial performance the Dreamcast is arguably Sega's most beloved console with the exception of the Mega Drive and one of the most loved consoles ever created, this can be attributed to Sega's amazing 1st party games in this era such as Shenmue which is considered to be one of the first open world games and Jet Set Radio which pioneered cel-shading in games. One of the most impressive Dreamcast games was Phantasy Star Online which was the first online RPG for consoles and its popularity has lead to people keeping private severs up despite the official servers shutting down many years ago.