The Sega Dreamcast turns 25 years old today (In North America)

The year is 1999. In that year, films such as Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Fight Club, and Pokémon: The First Movie came out in theaters. Shows like SpongeBob SquarePants, The Sopranos, Futurama, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy premiered on TV. Songs such as “…Baby, One More Time” by Britney Spears, “Can I Get A…” by Jay-Z feat. Amil and Ja Rule, “No Scrubs” by TLC, “Butterfly” by Crazy Town, and, yes, “All Star” by Smash Mouth topped the charts. In Japan, anime such as Corrector Yui, Excel Saga, Medabots, and One Piece premiered on TV while Digimon Adventure premiered both in Japan and internationally. Video games like Super Smash Bros., Unreal Tournament, Final Fantasy VIII, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Persona 2: Innocent Sin came out while Sega launched arcade games like Crazy Taxi, Emergency Call Ambulance, Harley-Davidson pinball, and South Park pinball. (Sega Pinball‘s last two games before they were sold off to Stern Pinball this same year.) Sega had done something else even more significant on this day that very same year, though. (Anyone else feeling a little Déjà vu?) Sega launched the Dreamcast on the easiest date in video game history to remember: 9/9/99. Happy 25th Anniversary!

Throughout 1999, Sega had cranked the hype machine up to 11 for Dreamcast, setting this up to be Sega’s grand return to the console race following their many missteps with the Sega Saturn. On September 9th of that year, the Dreamcast would launch with an abundance of excellent games available right away, including Crazy Taxi, The House of the Dead 2, NFL 2K, Power Stone, Soul Caliber, Hydro Thunder, and, of course, Sonic Adventure, and that’s not even half of what gamers could choose from on day 1. In fact, because Sonic hadn’t made a big splash on the Saturn, Sonic Adventure was as much a return to glory for Sonic as the Dreamcast was for Sega. With such an incredible launch, Sega raked in almost $100 million USD in just that first day, insuring that no matter what happens after that, Sega rang in the new millennium in style. While the console did not last long commercially, even compared to the Saturn, it made such a lasting impression that it enjoys just as much of a lofty spot in gaming and pop culture history as the Genesis before it.

Join us after the break as we start thinking about this incredible legacy.

When the Sega Dreamcast launched on that fateful day of 9/9/99, it brought with it several innovations to the console video game world. The first that comes to the minds of many would be the Visual Memory Unit, or VMU, a memory card which was a mini-gaming device in itself. With it, you could download little mini-games to the VMU from certain games to play on the go as well as use the screen for certain features while playing Dreamcast games. It was so ahead of its time, no other console since has tried anything like this, making it a unique part of the Dreamcast’s identity.

Online gaming was also a big selling point for the Dreamcast, as while it wasn’t the first console to have an online connectivity solution, certainly not even the first from Sega, it was the first to come bundled with a pre-installed 56K modem to get you connected right out of the box. Some of the launch games, such as Sonic Adventure and NFL 2K, already had online features ready to go, and a frequently updated web browser was available on multiple dedicated discs as well as demo discs. Sega would later release the Broadband Adaptor, or BBA, for those who had upgraded their online connection to a faster and more reliable Cable or DSL service. Online features would go on to be commonplace, and downright pivotal, with video games on all consoles to this very day, something longtime rival Nintendo was infamously resistant to embrace during the Gamecube years.

Speaking of games, Dreamcast played host to some of the most memorable and respected franchises Sega had ever produced, such as Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5, Shenmue, Samba de Amigo, Phantasy Star Online, and the 2K Sega Sports series, which all began on Dreamcast. It was also the home of two of the most beloved games in Sonic the Hedgehog history, Sonic Adventure 1&2, with the latter being the story inspiration for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie. Beyond Sega, a lot of other legendary games such as Dead or Alive 2, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, Rayman 2, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, and D-2 would launch on, and become synonymous with, the Dreamcast, while Capcom launched some of the most beloved fighting games of their golden years, such as Marvel vs. Capcom 1&2 and Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 on Dreamcast.

Sega launched the Dreamcast with a similar “in-your-face” attitude to the one that worked out so beautifully for them with the Genesis. They presented the system in North America with a series of TV commercials taking you inside the console, where many of the games’ characters, including ones from third-party games as well as real-life sports athletes from the day, lived, worked, and socialized, unbeknownst to the console’s owner. The tagline “It’s Thinking” was heard in many of these ads, in reference to the Dreamcast’s incredible utility compared to other consoles of the time.

Sega even went as far as to present the console at heavy metal concert tours such as Ozzfest 2000 and Limp Bizkit’s Anger Management tour. Limp Bizkit, one of the biggest Nu Metal bands around at the time, went down in history as the most memorable celebrity endorsement of Dreamcast, with adorable grandpa frontman Fred Durst being especially vocal about his love for online Dreamcast games like Quake III Arena (2000) and giving away autographed consoles in contests. At these tours, Sega would show off the Dreamcast in their own “Mobile Assault Tour” trucks, where concertgoers could go up and demo some of the hottest games on the system.

Sega deployed a number of “Mobile Assault” trucks along the way featuring playable Dreamcast setups with Sonic Adventure Tournament discs. (Durst is rumored to be a pretty formidable Quake III opponent as well) pic.twitter.com/BlTpBNN4gP

— crazy ass moments in nu metal history (@numetal_moment) April 7, 2023

Gleamed some info for this lil thread from Sega Dreamcast Info (https://t.co/kA6fbBNyXx) and Sonic Stadium (https://t.co/W23JofxgdU). Thanks to those websites as well!

— crazy ass moments in nu metal history (@numetal_moment) April 7, 2023

Sadly, it’s hard to discuss the Dreamcast without bringing up how quickly it had left commercial relevance and taken the rest of Sega down with it. While the Dreamcast would go on to be reasonably successful commercially and critically, Sega as a whole was in no position to keep the console, and themselves, afloat regardless. In January of 2001, Sega made the shocking announcement that they were preparing to bow out of the console race and release the last couple of games they had planned within that year. The PlayStation 2 had already had its own amazing launch the year before, Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance would launch in the Summer of 2001, and the Nintendo Gamecube and Microsoft’s Xbox would launch that holiday season. After that, Sega would begin to produce games on all those consoles and on PCs, including ports of a few Dreamcast games and games that were originally meant to be on Dreamcast such as Toejam & Earl III: Mission to Earth, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter 4, and GunValkyrie (All from 2002). Sega continues to exist today as a third-party games developer and publisher, bringing all sorts of games to today’s consoles and PCs with no desire to return to the console race. (Beyond mini consoles like the Sega Genesis Mini 1&2 and Astro City Mini, which were not designed to compete with major consoles like PlayStation 4 or 5 or Nintendo Switch anyway.) When all was said and done, Sega had sold about 8.2 million Dreamcast consoles worldwide. Imagine how many more could’ve sold if its life didn’t need to be cut so short?

Even if Sega had finished releasing games on Dreamcast a long time ago, passionate game developers have continued to support the console with all new games. Due to the Dreamcast’s incredible ease for programming games for, (And a roundabout way of loading custom software using the console’s unused MIL-CD booting feature) developers have been releasing all new indie games on the console as early as 2001. In the 2000s, new indie games from after Sega’s exit from the console race were rare, but as the years went on by, new Dreamcast games became much more common and varied. Many of those games, including some early indie games from the 2000s, are still on sale today on sites like PlayAsia, Video Games New York, Pixelheart, Bit Station Games, Stone Age Gamer, VGNY Soft, and Wave Game Studios. You’ll occasionally hear about some of these new games right here on SegaBits as they come out.

New hardware is being developed for Dreamcast today too. The talented folks at Dreamcast Live have not only developed the DreamPi, a new, cost-effective solution for connecting Dreamcasts online on broadband with the original dial-up modem, but have even restored the online servers and features for many Dreamcast games, with more and more games returning online over time. Experienced engineers have been working on upgrading the VMU into what they call the VM2 with all new features. Brand new plastic shells and button casings are being developed to replace the original shells for both the Dreamcast console and the VMU. Retro-Bit are even still hard at work on an all new upgraded Dreamcast controller with 6 face buttons, new and improved d-pad and analog stick, and even wireless connectivity. There are also Optical Drive Emulators, or ODEs, being made to replace or work alongside the original disc drive to load games as digital files like .ISO or .GDI. New, affordable VGA kits are being made to be used in place of Sega’s original, now very expensive, VGA Box for high quality 480p video output with supported games, with the Behar Bros. having the most well known examples, as well as Retro Gaming Cables UK having a component cable based solution for VGA output. There are even new power supplies being developed, which is especially nice because a lot of the original power supplies in Dreamcast consoles are beginning to fail from age.

Sadly, many classic Dreamcast games are not available on modern platforms today, at least not in an official capacity. There are a couple here and there, but most know of Sega’s own “Dreamcast Collection” which released on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 as a series of native ports of games which, at first, included Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5: Part 2, and Sega Bass Fishing. This later expanded to include Jet Set Radio, Sonic Adventure 2, and, for reasons only Sega knows, NiGHTS Into Dreams. Shenmue 1&2 HD is also available today on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. On Xbox, all games except for Space Channel 5: Part 2 are backward compatible, and that one cannot be bought digitally anymore with the Xbox 360 online store now being closed, though it is still available on Steam and the PlayStation Store for PS3. M2 had been working on emulation of the NAOMI arcade hardware, which is one of the arcade boards based on Dreamcast hardware, but as of this writing, nothing has come of that yet. Capcom, for their part, are about to re-release the arcade versions of their classic Dreamcast fighting games as part of Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics and Capcom Fighting Collection 2 very soon. Most of those fighting games were on NAOMI, so it seems Capcom beat M2 to the punch.

Though its time in the spotlight was short, and we may never truly know the full potential of the Dreamcast, it lives on in the hearts of gamers everywhere, especially for those were there to see it launch 25 years ago. Let us know in the comments below if you were there, what your fondest memories with Dreamcast were, and what your favorite Dreamcast games are. Even if you’re a younger gamer who’s only discovering the magic of Dreamcast today, please tell us all about what you love about Dreamcast too. While you’re at it, you can read up on Dreamcast memories as written by fellow SegaBits writer George, listen to his and Barry’s Sega Talk video on Dreamcast from the 20th anniversary, and watch the Swingin’ Report Show video featuring Barry and myself talking about our special Dreamcast memories together. (I used to go by Elkplaysandpaints)

And hey, if you got a Dreamcast, make some time to fire it up and fashion some new memories as you raise your glass to Sega’s console swan song. (Just don’t hit anyone with it.) Here’s to 25 more years of thinking.

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