DREAMCAST: Sega's Fall From the Cutting Edge | GEEK CRITIQUE

9 999 the date alone is enough to fill the hearts we old Sega faithful with bittersweet reverence if you were lucky enough to have a Dreamcast back then then I hope this brings back some memories but as hard as it is for me to believe those memories took place almost 20 years ago the Dreamcast is as old now as the Atari 2600 was then there have been many generations of gamers now who never played any Sega console let alone the last one and even if you were gaming back then if you skipped the Dreamcast in favor of something else you might look at this little white box and wonder what all the fuss is about how can a console that lived thrived fell and died in a mere 510 days way back at what we can now accurately call the turn of the century still stir up as complicated an emotion as bittersweet reverence why does the Dreamcast still matter I was there and by the end of this I'll hopefully be able to answer that question for you but please keep this in mind a whole lot of my perspective here is viewed to the lens of who I was at the time a freshly minted teenager living in the US who had just spent his entire childhood as a Sega fan I mean I was never an elitist I'd play anything I could get my hands on but I was always rooting for Sega they were like my home team however like most 13 year olds I didn't even know the definition of the word nuance with that disclaimer out of the way here's the part of the story you probably know [Music] the Sega Genesis against all odds helps Sega not just compete with Nintendo but actually surpass them and become the top hardware manufacturer in the industry for a short time but just as quickly as the rise came to fall as Sega oversaturated the market with way too much gimmicky hardware and then abandon it before it could even get off the ground it was insane like let's see how many ridiculous variations on the Genesis we can add at once let's make an expensive CD add-on and then fill it up with god-awful FMV games Oh you've paid 180 bucks for 32x congratulations it was pretty much dead a year later even the Saturn Sega's flagship 32-bit system struggled to make it even three years in the US every move the company made backfired every opportunity they had was squandered by the late 90s Sega's reputation among gamers and within the industry was a laughingstock at best no really before Christmas one year my mom called a store to reserve a Sega Saturn for me and the guy who answered the phone laughed at her and told her there was no way a kid was on a Saturn surely he must have been asking for a PlayStation instead right yeah that's how bad it was anecdotes aside I think the harsh facts of Sega's downfall are widely understood even today and they should be nobody wants to make those same mistakes just look at how long Nintendo kept pushing out Wii U games even after it became obvious it was never gonna get off the ground but here's the thing just saying that Sega pushed out too much hardware and made a few bad moves ignores why that was the company's strategy in the first place and this is the other side of the story that I feel gets overlooked these days Sega's short-sighted practices hurt their reputation drawer but the very same approach was what had made them a household name in the first place I mean this was the company that gave away what would have been their most lucrative game with every Genesis sold just to build as much of a lead as possible on the Super Nintendo this is the company that surprised launch the Saturn months ahead of schedule at the very first e3 this is the company that invested insane resources into making technological leaps years or even decades before those hurdles could or should have been left anyone remember the Kinect well Sega had a full body motion control 1993 nowadays we've got Xbox game Pass or Playstation now but in 1994 Sega was pioneering at games on-demand service these days we've got the Nintendo switch but in 1995 Sega had a handheld console hybrid of its own a fully featured portable Genesis that you could also hook up to a TV sometimes these ideas worked most of the time they didn't but it didn't seem to matter whether it was profitable what mattered is that the company was always on the cutting edge ruthlessly albeit blindly driving the industry forward a couple of risky Gamble's pay off big time and made Sega the king of gaming only for a string of bad hands to bring them right back down Sega's whole approach to the market was to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck that attitude wasn't smart safe or sustainable but it's what brought them to the dance now to be clear the corporate culture did change a lot in the mid-90s Sega of America in particular lost a ton of autonomy leading into the Saturn years but to see the company emerge from all of that still alive still kicking and hungrier than ever to reclaim their crown to the point that they'd stake everything on one last dream was electrifying Sega bet everything on the Dreamcast Sega toss on Charro died for the Dreamcast and what rose from the ashes was a more mature savvy er company to finally have their head on straight from a business perspective but with that old attitude still intact the Dreamcast was a powerhouse with all the trimmings and minsum it was the bleeding edge and make no mistake this was the dance if you want an example of just how crazy brave Sega was at the time there is none better than the Dreamcast bestseller Sonic Adventure I know that probably sounds ridiculous to a lot of you I can take off the nostalgia goggles and see how certain aspects of it especially these cutscenes come across nowadays that's what the new by the way people thought it was outdated just a few years after it came out but on September 9th 1999 nights we care that it wasn't the most polished game in the world I didn't even notice because there had never been anything quite like this before and it's weird to say but I don't think there could have been no real Sonic game had come out on the Saturn and with hindsight there was a good reason for that high-speed 3d platformer like this demands expansive stages that just weren't have been possible on previous gen Hardware in that way saw it was the perfect franchise to showcase the Dreamcast and the visual design of Sonic venture is tremendous true to the series strengths every area has its own style and ambience enhanced by a custom lighting engine tailored for the Dreamcast hardware and helped along through what I still consider to be the best most boundless collection of music and a franchise known for it and you know that's an appropriate word boundless because that's exactly how Sonic Adventure felt at the time I could spend hours just lost in this game swapping between the six playable characters who all have their own unique gameplay styles wandering through the open-world adventure fields bouncing from zones to cow gardens to minigames to zones just completely mesmerized by the sheer scope of it all the fact that certain elements of it ache so poorly and so quickly is the price of its ambition Sonic Adventure was a game worthy of its title and among its contemporaries it was extraordinary but hey I did a whole episode on this one a few years back so let's talk about something I couldn't show you back then this was the one feature that Sega really bet the farm on the Dreamcast was the first console that came standard with a built-in modem for online gaming so not only was Sonic Adventure the long-awaited rejuvenation of a character that it introduced me to gaming it was also a trailblazer that gave me a glimpse of what the industry would become online leaderboards community events just page after page of extra content the game even had DLC console games had always been static before this so to be able to download a file and see something new in Station Square just blew my mind so hard and it's hard to imagine how mind-blowing it was because stuff like this is such a new big word as part of gaming now but Sega was doing this stuff ages before anyone else eight years before I was tweeting Pokemon online I was trading Shou in Sonic Adventure but there was something conspicuously missing from this game and in fact none of the launch games had it we had a modem so where was the online multiplayer well for that we'd have to wait a little while longer in the year 2000 saw the launch of what may be the cultist of Sonic teams called classics a landmark moment in the industry and the first online game that I ever played I know it seemed crazy even then with all the power of the Dreamcast packed I spent the entire summer of 2000 playing this simple little 2d puzzle game the single-player mode for a lot of fun too but competing against people online was hope kept me coming back Chuchu rocket on the surface might seem like such an easy little game yet just place arrows to direct mice into your rocket and direct cats into everyone else's but here's the kicker every player can only place three arrows at a time and so every round is spent frantically countering your opponent's moves which constantly undoes the moves you've just made and all this alongside the torrent of roulette events means there's never a dull moment but okay okay as much of a blast as that might have been let's get to the Dreamcast actual signature online game I will never forget the first time I ever loaded up a game and saw this other real people who had made their own avatar just like I had conversing with each other cracking jokes and sharing tips and just moving around in real time it was one of those few watershed moments where I knew that the way I looked at gaming would never be the same this was the first MMO ever developed for a console this was Phantasy Star Online the MMOs that would eventually dominate the Donna had this weird hands-off approach to combat that's like kryptonite to me but benasi Star Online was direct press a button swing a saver time it right do a combo just the sound effects an animation of whacking a monster or of taking a hit god it's like you feel that stuff so it's an online hack and fire to rbp with simple but crunchy combat and while there was plenty of depth to it if you wanted to go there PSO strength wasn't just how easy it was to pick up and play into this day my friends and I still get into it every couple of years god I miss the old Sonic Team hi dizzy and PS o is a showcase for why they used to be one of the top tier developers in the world each of its four stages were completely distinct in terms of enemies set pieces and visual design every state had its own dynamic soundtrack and every stage was capped with a boss battle that does justice to the word ethic now admittedly to actually level up enough to get through all this requires so much grinding it'd be an untenable tour if you were doing it all by yourself so what made it worth it was the community and that made it complete be different from anything else I had ever played I remember how overwhelming it was the first time I got to the final boss saw this idyllic field transform into a hellscape so all the chaos surrounding us but I wasn't alone I had found a regular crew people who had taught me how to play helped me the whole way through and got me here and through all of that through dozens of hours of hanging out in the lobbies through hundreds of rungs fighting this drag it over and over and over again I had a time to feel friends in a video game I remember a Ramar about a name a spy diem man but you're still out there thank you for everything these are just a few of the games that defined the Dreamcast for me but this video could potentially carry on like this for hours on end because ii just would not let up they didn't play it safe with the Dreamcast they didn't put out a bunch of semi sequels to establish franchises no the bulk of Sega's output was built on brand new IPs attached to some really imaginative ideas Crazy Taxi I mean it's exactly what it sounds like a game about getting people from point A to point B as fast as possible by any means necessary it's such a classic video game a real-world concept taken to the extreme where silly concerns like the traffic safety and realism are thrown out the window in the service of fun Crazy Taxi and its sequel executes on that concept perfectly and I still play them all the time see man it's like a madman's tanegashi with an M rating its commitment to meticulously depicting a natural life cycle along with it's surreal aesthetic makes it the most unnerving virtual pet I've ever seen I thought I had a bunch of weird little v babies and then they started drinking each other yes right as if oh yeah and it comes with a microphone so it can talk to you all that uncanny valley stuff becomes strangely endearing and even philosophical as sea man gets to know you but if you like your kills with a few more thrills how about taking down the undead not with some boring weapon like an axe or a gun let's do it with the most dangerous weapon of all a keyboard typing of the Dead is absurd and campy and wonderful and I mean just look at this they've got Dreamcast strapped to their backs and is displayed straight like of course yeah how else would we handle this I could go on and on the Dreamcast library was packed full of inventive titles that were like nothing else on the market an eccentric rhythm game with retro future jive a pioneering 3d fighting game with simple but super-powered combat a smooth platformer where you played as this bizarre robot boy with magnets in his head oh and who could forget the creative artistry of no that's just football yeah I don't know what it was but Sega always seem to take donnas that I didn't normally enjoy and create games that just old with me I never played sport Sims before our after but I'm a Dreamcast I could play NFL 2k one online and cream for meatheads I've never even met or what about Brooke - a tennis yeah tennis game I'd be skeptical - and everyone I've ever shown it to started out as a skeptic and yet I've played this game with friends deep into the night so many times and you know I really don't play mini story focused RPGs you know the kind of care more about immersion and world building than skillful gameplay and despite that oh do I ever love Shenmue more than anything else on the Dreamcast it's hard to wrap your mind around what an achievement Shenmue was in its time graphics technology came a long way in the 90s in one generational leap the way the games depicted realistic humans went from blocky polygons wagging their heads to something that looked recognizably like people for the first time polygamists can show emotion but all right I can't really show you footage like this this is the best part leave me alone and clean that Shenmue wasn't at least a little strange even when it was brand new it came across as odd and uncanny the game was helmed by a native Japanese speaker directing English voice actors and the script had an excessively literal translation yeah that sounds familiar but I don't know with Shenmue I can't imagine it being any other way it's like one of those poorly dubbed monster movies and this camp eNOS is so core to the appeal way more than I've actually played the game I've joked about hey mister you wanna wrestle by the way focus on is such a jobber or the way that voice actors can't get it straight whether they should be calling this guy Rio or do and the candy dialogue quirks are even more pronounced when nearly the entire first disc is just been wandering around these unfamiliar areas talking to people and that's another thing as gripping as it is when it gets there sinew does take how long long time to get going I mean the most infamous thing about it is one of the very first things you do I'm looking for a place where sailors hang out would you happen to know a place where sailors hang out do you know any places where sailors like to hang out around here do you know of any places where sailors are likely to hang out are those people's sailors why don't you ask them yourself and yeah I love it it's stupid but it's hilarious but here's what the memes miss every single person you talk to has something unique to say to you and that's what was really mind-blowing about Shenmue and what's still kind of unprecedented about it all these years later the depth of the detail just layer after layer of incidental attributes so subtle that the average player wouldn't even know they're there NPCs in Shenmue don't just stand in one spot every character in this game operates on a schedule with a home they come from places they'll go jobs they'll show up for even the people that never make a dent on the plot have names the weather would change in real time and yeah that was graphically impressive but I mean literally real time the story takes place in mid-80s Japan and there's a mode where the weather will match what it was really doing there on a day-by-day basis that doesn't matter it's not gonna affect the game but it's there and that's kind of the point you can collect Sega capsule toys choose whatever drink you want veena kitten open every cabinet enter every room look behind individual picture frames or do what I did and waste the time away playing classic Sega arcade games none of this stuff makes a difference none of it advances the story but it's there because of what Shenmue was trying to be the most complete simulation of the real world that the industry had ever seen now it wasn't flawless by any means but it went to ridiculous lengths to achieve this admittedly all of these accoutrements are more technically impressive than they are conducive to gameplay the titles that followed in shenmue's footsteps would define the genre by giving the player agency not by giving them a curve and perhaps that speaks to why in my mind Shenmue is the definitive Dreamcast title it was the most expensive game ever developed at the time and in order to even turn a profit you would have had to sell more copies than there were Dreamcast's but as always Sega was more interested in making a game groundbreaking than making one that was profitable that was 510 days were some of the best I've had in 24 years of being a gamer I played so many games that might have been million sellers on another console led by characters that could have been icons I experienced instant classics have pushed the boundaries of what gaming could be and redefined what the term meant to me the dreamcast is deserve to succeed Sagan needed a win they earned a win but none of that mattered because outside of that small pocket of hardcore Sega fans gamers at large saw the Dreamcast as a risk not worth taking a monolith was steadily growing over the horizon and it overshadowed Sega through every single one of those 510 days it felt like nobody wanted a Dreamcast because everyone was counting down the days until October 26 2000 everyone was waiting for the PlayStation 2 just three months later Sega announced the end of Dreamcast production and no matter how much the price dropped as they tried to liquidate their stock Sega could hardly even give the system away ultimately the Dreamcast was the worst selling console Sega ever made the ps2 in turn would go on to become the best-selling game system of all time let me temper what I'm about to say with this the PlayStation 2 became a great console with such a stellar library that by 2005 even I had to get one but five years before that when I was in middle school and just about everyone I talked to dismissed the Dreamcast because apparently the graphics sucked and I had to hear over and over again that this was gonna be the true start of the next generation well I could not stand this overpriced overhyped ugly little black box I mean look at it with its two controller boards now you know what that's appropriate because two was about how many exclusives ahead so we're actually first playing heck you know all the reasons people have the Saturn also applied to the ps2 it was a nightmare to develop for it was twice as expensive Sony had shipping to the boys and couldn't even keep them in stock and the few that were on the market kept failing but no it doesn't matter because it only sucks what Santa doesn't all bow down to the mighty emotion engine ps2 didn't even look like a game console like Sony thought you'd be ashamed Oh know what if people see it and think that you play video games and yet this overblown Pvt Blair was somehow worth ignoring the Dreamcast but the truth is and I never would have admitted this when I was 13 but the Dreamcast's failure was Sega's own fault Sega's awful reputation preceded any move they could have made developers were wary consumers didn't trust the brand and so the system's fate was decided before it even launched I mean everyone knew it was gonna happen common sense said it one of you worth spending your hard-earned money on a console that was just gonna be abandoned a year or two later so it was figure and so it was and really everything was about to change and I was changing - on May 25th 2001 the very last thing I did before I turn 13 was something I'd done a lot as a kid I beat Sonic 1 and I did it on the Dreamcast the other was this compilation of classic games called the Sega smash pack the emulator they used for it left a lot to be desired but it was ok it just seemed like the right way to go out these and I bring it up is because it had a surprisingly heartfelt introduction in the manual and that was probably the first time I ever felt bittersweet irreverence reading this reminded me of everything I loved about this wonderful hobby that I had spent so much of my childhood on night that's when it hit me that the Dreamcast really had failed and that the cause of that failure because the market had so strongly rejected it all of this was just kind of gonna fade away in be a memory you were losing Sega and things would never be the same of course Sega didn't die they're still around today as a third-party developer and a lots changed but they're doing all right but the Sega that I grew up loving the Sega that fought tooth and nail to define their name in the industry only to blindly drive that name into the ground the Sega that made me a gamer that introduced me to this hobby that became my obsession that has become my career that Sega did fade away and in the wake of that so much changed in such a short time through the ps2 success gaming finally became legitimized in the mainstream for the first time being a gamer didn't necessarily make you an enthusiast the whole perception of hardcore gaming was redefined and that's good that needed to happen and I'm glad we are where we are but maybe part of a reason the Dreamcast is so revered is because it was this glorious wonderful dying breath of an era when gamers were guaranteed to be geeks but you know that's not such a bad way to be remembered nothing could have saved the Dreamcast but it did matter and its reputation as an underappreciated Trailblazer has become its legacy the proof of that was a parent that can the start of the episode I could take it as given that even if he never played a Dreamcast you still know it was something special and the reason for that is because people like me have never shut up about it we've never let it die homebrew Kings are still being developed for it there are all kinds of fan developed hardware mods video converters that can help edge it closer to modern standards and most notably that dedicated fan base is the reason I've been able to show you the systems online functions the official servers shut down 15 years ago but Sega net lives again thanks to a fan-made project called dream pipe there's finally an easy way to hook that old dial-up modem to Wi-Fi and the community is spitting gears now getting a huge chunk of the system's library back online and playable again only a few hundred of us now but I'd love to see those numbers surged and I'll be happy to play with any of you guys any time it'll be easy the Dreamcast has had a permanent spot under every TV I've owned for almost 20 years and I don't think that could ever change after all that time I can easily say that this is my favorite game console the Dreamcast burnt fast but it burns so bright that its fans have never left the dream die it's still thinking but hey isn't there one more game you'd really think that me of all people would have said something about after all it was the last time Sega's mascot ever appeared on Sega hardware but that King would become the introduction to the series for a whole new generation by being one of the best-selling games on a Nintendo console it was the end of one ERA and the start of a new one next season on the geek critique I'll look at Sonic Adventure 2 and the games that follow it it is I chart the course the lead Sega's most famous franchise to rock bottom thank you to Benjamin would ring for sponsoring this episode and I hope it was worth the long wait thanks to all of you for watching and until next time you keep geeking i'll Keith's critique [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: The Geek Critique

Views: 666,829

Rating: 4.8198481 out of 5

Keywords: The Geek Critique, TGC, Geek Critique, Josh Wallen, sega, dreamcast, sega dreamcast, sonic adventure, shenmue, vmu, sonic adventure 2, sa2, space channel 5, retrospective, dc, chu chu rocket, typing of the dead, house of the dead 2, power stone, seaman, 1999, 9/9/99, 9.9.99, 9-9-99, soulcalibur, soul calibur, soul caliber, pso, phantasy star, phantasy star online

Id: BDpEwXt9ha4

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/C1V]

You know I had a friend like this once. Way back when I got Unreal Tournament 2k4 I kept hopping around on random servers. Play Onslaught for a bit, next day play CTF or whatever. My family had just also got broadband internet so it was a great time in my life.

Anyway, day after day I kept seeing the same player on maps I played. Some days on the same team, and others day not. I'd talk to him in chat and some days he talked and others he didn't talk much. Either way it was fun to have an online friend. On matches we won I would tell him what a good team we made, on matches we lost or on opposing sides I'd say "Just wait till next game!" Again sometimes he interacted with me and other times he stayed silent. I just thought that was his personality.

Like most computers in 2004/2005 my parents downloaded toolbars and everything else on it so after a while I had to format the computer and rebuild it. First thing I installed of course was Unreal. I install it, go to the menu to change my screenname, and I stopped. The default screen name was Othello, the guy who I had played with all those months. It wasn't one person, it was literally every player who didn't change their screen names and went online. The ones who talked were just being friendly, the ones who didn't were probably like "Who the fuck is this weirdo?"

[u/McFlyyouBojo]

I have to agree with the video. Back then, there was just SOMETHING about the console. I couldn't tell you what, but this thing was just magic. My friends and I probably spent more time playing SNES, Genesis, Xbox/xbox360,ps2 , but the dreamcast for some reason is the most memorable to me. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they DID try to create new and unique games more often than remake old ideas.

Even though it aged poorly, Sonic Adventures at that time was sheer excitement when you got it for christmas. It was also during these days where we would follow news of E3 super closely through reading vg magazines together.

man, that was a special time. I do miss the dreamcast.

[u/Soulching]

When I was 10 to 14 I was bullied at school really badly, noone at home understood and teachers didnt care. I hated school so much because they were making fun of me and noone were there to help me.(Didnt have any friends at all in school)

BUT, when I came home, I turned on computer and I joined the online world. I found friends which are here with me 12 years later. Gaming community helped me so much, the days when we were playing cs 1.6 clan wars on ESL, when we were playing warcraft 3 in Garena tower defense, and at midnight as a 14 year old we were laughing. Thanks to those people I overcomed difficulties in life. Gaming online world was place in which I found peace and support. And for that I will be eternally grateful

In this moment I am confident, I like people and I am truly happy for my life. When I tell people that I was bullied noone believes me.

English is my second language so sorry about gramma mistakes.

[u/SHCreeper]

Here is the conversation in the comments:
1lichfield
I'm in shock.. I randomly found this video while checking my recommendation...I'm Spidey fucking hell. You even remembered what I looked like.
Really hope you see this message. I'm glad all my late night gaming and PSO addiction back in the 90s didn't go wasted haha

The Geek Critique
Holy crap, like, obviously I was hoping you'd see it, but I didn't actually think it would happen! I couldn't remember the rest of our regular crew, but you were like my mentor in PSO! I'm pretty sure you taught me the Guild Card system, even, because I distinctly remember your name at the top of my list! I'm glad I got your RAmar's appearance right, too!

I was an edgy teen at the time, so my first character was called "Shadow." I had a keybind to say "Chaos Control," and I'd always hit it when I went through warps.

Let's see... I remember you were a bit older than the rest of us, like one time we were all disclosing our ages and you said, "Uh... sure, yes, I'm 12." I remember I had PSOv1 for like 10 days, until the community collectively convinced me to take it back and get v2 instead. But more than anything, I remember you (and your sister I assume, she commented too) being just the COOLEST, always taking the time to help me out and show me the ropes of a completely new style of game. For real: THANK YOU for everything!

1lichfield
Haha yes I remember you! I'm 36 now, I always knew you must of been an edgy teen haha Shadow and I remember your symbol chat. We did play with another girl and someone else but I can't remember their names.

So bizarre how I just put your video on, I was agreeing with everything you was saying about Sega and especially the Dreamcast. I was a Sega fan my "home team" like you and I had a Saturn and needless to say was also laughed at!

The strangest is probably my all time favourite and playing PSO with you and all the other random guys we met,really was the icing on the cake. Even the fear of being NOL'd when joining someone's party on PSO is a fond memory.

I'm glad I met you and was able to take you under my wing and really help make PSO a great experience!

[u/Ah_snapz]

I used to play a lot of Mplayer when I was younger on Quake TF.. well I was friends with a guy name HOTSHOTGG he gave me a gold account and helped me grow.. we played a lot back in the day. I've always been curious if it was the guy who got famous for a bit but I'll never know.

[u/FreeMyMen]

I loved the Dreamcast but I never bought it, my family rented it for my brother and I to play at the local video store. He's wrong about the PS2 saying it only had a few good exclusives, it's insanity. The PS2 was hands down the better console and one of the best.

[u/dalton_cole5]

24 minute video, skip to 8:48 if you don't want to waste your time like I did.

[u/forkandspoon2011]

Drewhawk from final fantasy 11 if you’re reading this I love you bro, we had such good times together.

[u/Lord_Draxis]

Seaman was fucking awesome.