MyMedia Retrospective - Sega Dreamcast

What is MyMedia Games Network Retrospective?

MyMedia Games Network Retrospective is a regular feature that will take a look at various video game systems, technological advancements and accessories from the past. This may be a trip down memory lane for some people or a history lesson for others. Over time many companies have contributed to the video game industry in their own way, whether it’s a revolutionary step forward for others to follow, or a prime example of what not to do. With that said, let’s take a peek into the past.

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For gaming hardware design and production this was make or break for the Sega. After two failed add-ons for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis and the Sega Saturn not holding up well against the dominating force of the Sony Playstation. Sega stepped back up to the plate for the final time in the battle of videogame console supremacy. To try and recapture the stronghold they once had in the 16bit era. After a string of pre production code names that included White Belt, Black Belt, Dural, Dricas, Vortex, Katana, Shark, Guppy and development in secret labs by two separate design teams the Sega Dreamcast was eventually spawned. Late 1998 the Dreamcast was released in Japan with a somewhat unsuccessful launch due to only having four games available none of which impressed the punters. The US launch went a lot smoother being released on the unique date of 9/9/99 and boasting an eighteen game line up compiled of multiple genres. 225,132 Dreamcast units were sold in the first 24 hours and a total of half a million in the first two weeks making this the most successful console from Sega. A month later the Dreamcast was released in Europe and Australia with less marketing flare due to some bad choices in local promotional companies. These early sale figures were enough to let both Nintendo and Sony know that Sega was still in the fight.

The Dreamcast was designed to eclipse the Nintendo 64 and the Sony Playstation in both hardware performance and features. Some of these features implemented by Sega have been carried on to the consoles we play today. Packed away in the sleek outer casing of the Dreamcast lies a 128bit 200 MHz Hitachi processor and NEC's VideoLogic PowerVR chipset that could produce impressive 3D graphics with special effects like gouraud shading, z-buffering, anti-aliasing and bump mapping. Moving away from the twin Hitachi processor setup of the Sega Saturn was a good move on Sega’s behalf as the majority of game programmers found it difficult to extract maxim performance from a twin processor set up. Comparatively the Dreamcast was much more programmer friendly than its predecessor. Further enhancing the visuals the Dreamcast could output a true 480 progressive signal on a monitor or HDTV via an adaptor. PAL region consoles could operate in both 50 Hz and 60 Hz modes allowing games to be played at their full speed which was previously an option that requires some form of illegal modification. The Dreamcast operating system was Microsoft WinCE. Not only did this provide an easy to use operating system for the Dreamcast it gave Microsoft the opportunity to be recognised in the home console market. Not long after Microsoft went off on their own creating the now successful Xbox series.

Online gaming was not a new concept at the time but Sega were the first to fit a home console with a built in modem. Online gaming, downloadable content, Internet browsing, emails and long distance phone calls could all be done on the Dreamcast. With a number of peripherals released to suit these features. At this moment in time broadband Internet was not as readily available as it is today so the standard inbuilt modem for the Dreamcast was 33.6 kbit/s or 56 kbit/s depending on region or model. Later on Sega did release a broadband modem. Unfortunately there wasn’t a large number of games that had the ability to play online. Servers were provided by SegaNet, Dreamarena, and GameSpy for the duration of the console’s life. Some of the online games can still be played today thanks GameSpy and private servers or connection via IP address. With broadband being the standard for online communication these days all the current generation consoles now have high speed online capabilities. You have to give credit to Sega for pioneering this now standard feature when high speed internet was still out of reach for most people.

The Dreamcast used its own format for games known as the GD ROM. This format was developed by Yamaha for Sega and could hold up to 1.2 gigabytes of information. Providing almost double the storage capacity of a CD ROM allowing for larger more detailed games. The Dreamcast started off with bad line up of games when launched in Japan but not long after a respectable and diverse game library quickly grew. True to the original arcade ports such as the critically acclaimed fighting game Soul Calibur that even to this day still looks impressive. Sega-AM2, Tatio, SNK Playmore, Capcom, and many other developers released their arcade games on the Dreamcast. A number of PC games made its way over to the Dreamcast such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament. Quake III Arena was the first online FPS game for a gaming console. It wasn’t all ports form other platforms on the Dreamcast many original games were available. Sonic Adventure received high scoring reviews with its silky smooth 3D graphics and great controls. Sonic Adventure became the Dreamcast highest selling game moving 2.5 million copies off the shelfs. Other unique titles include Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio and Seaman all helped show case what the Dreamcast could do. Having four controller ports on the system and online gaming helped expand the Dreamcast into the social multiplayer market of gaming. From the hardcore arcade fanatic to the puzzle game playing enthusiast and everyone in between there was games on the Dreamcast to suit everyone.

Advanced hardware, impressive visuals, strong software line up, unique features and a successful US launch sounds like a recipe for continued success but sadly it didn’t turn out that way. In March 2001 Sega pulled the plug on the Dreamcast discontinuing the hardware line but still promising to release the fifty plus games they still had in production. A number of contributing factors were involved in the Dreamcast demise. After disappointing loyal Sega fans by abandoning previous platforms like the Mega CD, 32X and Saturn Sega had lost quite a lot of brand credibility. It was hard for some people to trust Sega to continue supporting a system after they have launched it. Even developers were cautious about the number of accessories they manufactured after suffering financial losses with the Saturn. The Sony Playstation was runaway success and Sony had proven that Playstation brand was one worth investing in. Even though the Dreamcast was released over a year before the Playstation 2 it wasn’t enough to draw attention away from it. Sony had consumers salivating about the second Playstation system way before it was available by using cunning marketing and hype which was enough too keep people from buying the Dreamcast instead. Once the Playstation 2 was released it was pretty much game over for the Dreamcast with the final nail in coffin being the announcement of the Nintendo Game Cube and the Microsoft Xbox.

Software support still continued after the hardware was discontinued. Sega’s final game was Puyo Pop Fever released in early 2004. Third party developers and the homebrew scene kept releasing new games right up to 2007. Dreamcast hardware made a reappearance in 2005 with the Treamcast that emerged from China. The Treamcast is basically a modified NTSC Dreamcast that features a flip-up TFT screen and could play CD-Rs, MP3s and Video CDs with special software. Sega stopped the sale of these units through some outlets because of the pirated firmware installed. The Treamcast can still be found on the streets of Hong Kong, ebay auctions and number of online stores. Last but not least refurbished Dreamcast units were rereleased in 2006 through Sega Direct in Japan and came with the pack in game Radilgy.

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Roughly based on the Saturn’s analogue controller the Dreamcast controller takes all the vital components that make a good controller and added a few extras. Four traditional action buttons, two analogue trigger buttons, a start button, D-pad and an analogue joystick is what the controller compromised of. Since there was no reset button on the actual Dreamcast unit resting the system could be achieved by pressing Y+B+X+A and start. If repeated you would be taken back to the Dreamcast menu system. The introduction of the Analogue trigger buttons allowed more accurate control for racing games and nowadays analogue buttons are a common feature on controllers. The Dreamcast controller featured two slots that could be used for a number of accessories. In the centre of the controller there was a cut out window where the VMU display to be viewed. Given the location of where the controller cord exited a small groove under the second port could crimp the cord making it exit away from the player. At times the cord could pop out of the groove which bothered some users. Another complaint about the controller design was its size. People with smaller hands found it difficult to hold comfortably. A large number of aftermarket controllers were released in various designs. Some of which had a specific gaming genre in mind like the Ascii Pad that had six button layout suited for fighting games.

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More than your average memory card the Dreamcast VMU (Visual Memory Unit) still saved data to flash memory like a conventional memory card. However the VMU featured a monochrome LCD screen, a D-pad and two gaming buttons. When connected to the Dreamcast controller and depending on what game was being played related information would be displayed on the VMU’s display. When disconnected from the Dreamcast controller stored save game data could be viewed on the screen and transferred from one VMU to another. Some games such a Sonic Adventure allowed a mini game to be played on the VMU. The unfortunate down side to these added features is that it took its toll on the watch batteries that powered the unit.

For those that only wanted the basic functions of a memory card to save game data they either had to wait for the official Sega product or purchase one of many aftermarket memory cards. Sega eventually released a stand alone memory card that had none of the extra features of the VMU but provided four times more storage space than the VMU. The additional space was provided by switching between four 200-block sectors.

Just like the Nintendo 64 the Dreamcast offered a plug in force feed back rumble pack also known as a Jump pack or Puru Puru Pack. Kicks, Punches, crashes etc were represented by various levels of vibration through the rumble pack. The only draw back was a small one which comes in the form of increased weight when the rumble pack and VMU were plugged into the Dreamcast controller at the same time.

To compliment the Dreamcast’s outstanding graphics a VGA adaptor could be used to get the best possible display image through a computer monitor or a HDTV. By using the VGA adaptor the Dreamcast could display a 480p image if the game was compatible. Multiple versions of the VGA adapter was available and depending on the manufacturer some had the ability to switch between S-Video, composite and VGA.

Just like the Atari Jaguar the Dreamcast also featured a link cable. Two Dreamcast consoles, two copies of the games and two televisions or monitors was required in order to take advantage of the link cable. Just like most system to system link cables for home consoles this one also lacked software support.

Link Cable Comaptible Games:

• Aero Dancing F
• Aero Dancing I
• Aerowings 2 (Speculated)
• F355
• Sega Tetris
• Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram

BBA, PC Server on LAN Required:

• Quake III Arena

A keyboard and mouse was available for the Dreamcast and plugged into the standard controller port. Primarily designed for use with the Dreamcast Internet browser a handful of games still supported it. The Typing of the Dead, Quake 3, Phantasy Star Online, Railroad Tycoon 2 and REZ supported these peripherals.

The Dreameye is a Digital camera for the Dreamcast that never got released outside of Japan. It came packaged with a with a microphone head set and could be used for online communication. Since the Dreameye featured a 3 megapixel camera is could capture high quality still images which could be saved to a VMU. Images could be sent from the Dreamcast via emails but only after resizing. Sega had plans to releases games to utilize the Dreameye in same way the later Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 uses their Eye Toy and Playstation Eye. It’s quite clear that Sega influenced following generations of gaming peripherals as both Sony and Microsoft has digital cameras for their current gen consoles.

The microphone attachment for the Dreamcast plugged into the Dreamcast controller and allowed the user to make long distance calls via the internet browser. It could also be used for games that had speech recognition. Two games came packaged with the microphone, Seaman and Alien Front Online. The green foam ball that covers the microphone acts like a filter by helping clear up received speech.

Another opportunity for the Dreamcast to use a microphone is with the Karaoke attachment called Dream Karaoke. Rather than use the previously mention microphone Dream Karaoke uses its own microphone. This accessory sat beneath the Dreamcast system providing all the basic functions of a Karaoke machine but required a subscription to the Sega Karaoke service. Songs could be downloaded from the Internet but it had no where to store the downloaded songs so each song had to be re-downloaded each time. Karaoke is very popular past time in Japan and this is where Dream Karaoke stayed never making it to western shores.

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Since the Dreamcast had great graphic capabilities it could reproduce arcade ports that were close to the originals. To further replicate arcade games a number of accessories were released. These accessories were manufactured by both Sega and third party developers some of which could be used for other applications but the majority of them suited the one game.

Designed for the game Bass Fishing the Fishing Rod accessory brought more of the original arcade feel into the comfort of your home. This accessory uses motion sensing to translate actions represented in the game in similar fashion the Wii Remote interacts with the Wii Console. An analogue stick and all the game action buttons are still present on the Fishing Rod to avoid juggling between two peripherals. There were a few games that have undocumented compatibility with the Fishing Rod such as SoulCalibur and Tennis 2k2. An aftermarket version was also released by Interact but it didn’t perform as accurately as the original Sega item.

A strong heavy arcade stick from Sega kept fighting game fans happy with the classic 6 button Street Fighter layout. A steel top, accurate buttons and joystick made this the must have accessory for arcade game enthusiasts. A number of aftermarket Arcade sticks were produced but nothing topped the original Sega item.

 

 

 

The Twin Sticks was designed for one game only and that was Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram. Released in Japan only and in limited numbers this was and still is a rare item to come by. Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram was also one of the few games that could take advantage of the Dreamcast link cable.

 

 

 

The Samba De Amigo Maracas is another game specific controller and designed for the Samba de Amigo music game. Ultra sonic sensors in both the Maracas and base unit are used to track movements of the Maracas. This accessory was also released in limited numbers.

 

 

 

An arcade shooting game isn’t much fun with out a gun. Sega released a good quality light gun that featured a VMU port just like the actual Dreamcast controller. A rumble pack could be inserted into this port to further enhance the gaming experience. This is one accessory that never made it to the shores of USA because at that time the horrible Columbine shootings incident just occurred. Sega not wanting bad press avoided having their company name attached to anything gun related. Further down the track a number of aftermarket light guns were available in the USA and globally. There was only a handful of games that used this accessory one of them being the cult smash House of the Dead.

What was mentioned above is a small portion of the accessories that were available for the Dreamcast. A number of steering wheel controllers were released but sadly none of them were outstanding in quality. Taito released a limited number of train driving controllers in Japan to suit Densha De Go! Konami also brought home their arcade smash hit Dance Dance Revolution accompanied with the DDR pressure sensitive dance mat. As you can tell the keyword here when it comes to Dreamcast accessories is “limited”. Both Sega and third party developers were cautious about producing large numbers of accessories after the limited success of the Sega Saturn.

There was also some Dreamcast technology Sega had planned that never made it past development such as the VMU/MP3 player that could allow users to download songs from in Internet and play them off the VMU. A standalone Dreamcast system that could play DVDs just like the Playstation 2 was in the works. This DVD compatible version of the Dreamcast looked more like an actual DVD player than a videogames console. Both these items were surfaced around the time the Dreamcast was coming to an end.

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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, game play, etc.) of over 5 Mil polygons/second.
• Tile Based Deferred Rendering eliminates overdraw by only drawing visible fragments. This makes required filtrate 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 filtrate 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, 64 channel PCM/ADPCM sampler (4:1 compression), XG MIDI support, 128 step DSP

Storage

• Yamaha GD-ROM Drive: 12x maximum speed (Constant Angular Velocity)
• GD-ROM: Holds up to 1.2 GB
• Visual Memory Unit ("VMU") 1 Mbit (128 KiB) removable storage device and 4x memory cards that hold four times as much data.

Input/Output

• Inputs: USB-like "Maple Bus". Four ports support devices such as digital and analogue controllers, steering wheels, joysticks, keyboards and mice, and more.
• Colour Output: Approx. 16.78 million colours (24-bit)
• Video resolution: 640x480 interlaced or progressive scan

Dimensions

• 189 mm × 195 mm × 76 mm (7 7/16in × 7 11/16in × 3in)
• Weight: 1.9 kg (4.2 lb)
• Colour: Majority are white.
• Japan: Various limited edition designs and coloured consoles were produced
• North America: Only a black "Sega Sports"-labelled model and a blue model from Electronics Boutique were officially available

Hardware specifications sourced from wikipedia

 

Sources: Wikipedia planetdreamcast vidgame.net ntsc-uk youtube

 

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Written by: Matthew Armitage