Sega Dreamcast came out in the United States 10 years ago on September 9th, 1999. It had a great library of games, brought online gaming to consoles in a big way, and was considered by many to be the best gaming console ever. I disagree with the latter; the Super Nintendo holds that title. However, Sega Dreamcast had a lot of amazing games and innovations throughout its short lifespan. Production of the console ended in 2001, but games were still being made for years after. The power that Sony wielded with the Playstation branded and easy Dreamcast software piracy led to the console’s early death. Despite that, Dreamcast had many classic games in its library of over 700 and I am going to name off a bunch of them and the people who brought them out.

Contributions made by Capcom
Capcom released a lot of awesome arcade ports for the Dreamcast, mostly consisting of shmups and fighters. This massive list includes Marvel vs Capcom 1+2, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Power Stone 1+2, Rival Schools, Capcom vs SNK 1 +2 , Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Plasma Sword, Tech Romancer, Giga Wing 1+2, and sequels to some of the aforementioned games. Not only that, this was the first console to get Resident Evil: Code Veronica. The Dreamcast versions of many of these arcade ports were excellent; not only that, games like Marvel vs Capcom 2 are still played at the Evo Championship series on that console.

Contributions made by Midway
Sega Dreamcast was the last console that Midway released games for that weren’t classic arcade compilations and still worth playing. This company has fallen far from its glory days but they did release the best version of NFL Blitz with its “2000″ edition, and they also ported one of the most fun racing games ever, Hydro Thunder. Other great games they released on the Dreamcast included NBA Showtime and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing. They excelled during the Dreamcast era at making arcade sports games, but then they fumbled the ball when they couldn’t decide between making Blitz and arcade football game or a simulation like Madden.

Contributions made by Namco
Namco made Soul Calibur more awesome than its arcade counterpart by putting it on the Dreamcast. This was unprecedented and was unfortunately the beginning of the end for many arcades. I think the first Soul Calibur is still the best in the series, even with its weird physics. Some also consider it to be the best Dreamcast game ever.

Contributions made by SNK
As the Sega Dreamcast died, so did SNK. They did come back as SNK Playmore, but the Dreamcast had some of the best SNK games ever. For starters, they had The King of Fighters ‘98, ‘99, 2000, 2001, and 2002. Some of those games had extras that other versions of those games didn’t have, including characters and strikers. But SNK kicked it up a notch with Last Blade 1+2, a weapons-based 2D fighting series that does some things better than Samurai Showdown, and some things that series doesn’t do at all. But that’s not all. SNK also released their best game ever on the Sega Dreamcast, Garou: Mark of the Wolves. That game deserves its own post and some day, I am going to write it.

Sega, the leader
Sega had its work cut out for them. They had some solid support from some of the big third party publishers at the time, but were missing EA and Square, who were dominant on their respective sides of the gaming planet. Sega countered EA by making better sports games with the NFL2K, NHL2K, NBA2k, and Virtua Tennis franchises. EA later countered, not by making better games, but by buying exclusive rights to the NFL license. Not having Final Fantasy or its copycats didn’t help Sega either, but they did try things with the genre like airship battles in Skies of Arcadia and attempting to simulate a life experience in Shenmue. Speaking of simulating life, they had a game called Seaman in which you could communicate with this creature that conversed with you. Its genius seems to have been forgotten during the recent storm of Peter Molyneux’s latest hypefest, Natal.

Sega released a lot of original games and arcade ports on the console that are also noteworthy, including Chu Chu Rocket, Phantasy Star Online, Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, and Samba de Amigo. That’s a lot of amazing stuff! Sonic and his shitty friends also went 3D with Sonic Adventure 1+2, which where okay games. I thought the second of those games was more fun to play, but that’s not saying much because the first one had you play as Big the Cat, a retarded cat fisherman(or is it fishercat?) who is essentially the Jar Jar Binks of the franchise. If I were to pinpoint the exact moment that the Sonic franchise started going downhill, it would have to be the second you had to start controlling Big the Cat. In all honesty, I think Big the Cat is the real reason Dreamcast died. Okay, not really, but his presence had a negative impact on the Sonic series of games from that point on.

Dammit. I hate to end this post on a negative note, so I won’t. Sega did some awesome things during the time of the Dreamcast and a handful of publishers also put out their best work ever. A lot of the Sega Dreamcast games have some things in common; they are typically bright and colorful, simple arcade-style games that are very easy to jump into. I think that was the strength of the Dreamcast, but it’s possible that lacking games with deeper experiences didn’t help the console too much, nor did a lack of support from some key third party developers. In spite of those shortcomings, the Dreamcast is still fondly remembered for having a great collection of games and will continue to do so.