It seems everyone here are celebrating the DC at the moment,which isn't really a change since the last white hope is always been celebrated at one point or another.
But I think there's a darker side to the DC story and this particular story hasn't ended because many Sega gamers that brought the system be they new or old are still suffering from what happened with this system.
Not the way it was crushed by sony or the fact it was generally ignored by the gaming public and press at the time. No, what the DC did was spoil a generation of sega fans with excellent games, to the point that those fans expected Sega to keep coming up with titles of the high standard that the DC generation of games set and by doing so any game released after that period regardless of being ok or very good was never going to match the standard which in my opinioon has resulted in people declaring Sega is crap or shit or worse because they weren't as great as the DC.
Not really understanding that previous sega systems with their own libary of games didn't necessarly match the playability,the fun and lastabilty that the DC seemed to have in its abundance.
The games that sega released when they re entered the third party race were very good,most were on the xbox but there were some on the PS2 as well. But if anyone remember's the general reaction to these games from the forums at the time it seemed that sega was over the hill. Worse, people were ignoring their arcade efforts at that time for various reasons and seemed to just focus soley n their console efforts. And that created a false preception which was quickly picked up by overzealous journalists and rival game fans that Sega was a dirty word in terms of game quality, but had the audacity to compare the newer titles to their DC ones which many i may add never brought the DC in the first place. They were just jumping on the bandwagon to the genuine confustion felt by many sega fans at that time.
While the noise has quieted down now, many people are still under a lot of misconceptions about Sega, where or who can make a good game, complaining about Sega west actually making games for the sega brand and so on. Not realising that as long as i've been buying sega games for console at least for over 28 years now they've always kind of operated that way.
Were now approching TGS. And there's a buzz about RGG and VAL and several others. You'd almost think that since they've gone third party those are the only great games they've produced after the DC era. And that criticism isn't leveled at just sega fans but most fans of gaming who frequent gaming forums, who actually take time to play their game and interact on the gaming netspace that 360 and PS3 offer.
Sega is guilty of letting a cat out of a bag but that cat just created an almost hysteria of expectations that no game company can continully live up to. Has sega produced bad games since DC? Yes, but they also produced bad games for all their systems at one point.
The question is was the output of real terrible games more than anything else they released? I'd say no just like any other games company. But no company has the legacy of the DC hanging over their head. A proud legacy to be sure but also a distracting one especially when the guys at sega try to conform to peoples demands on games even though certain games like Sonic, can arguable be said whose quality started to decline long before the DC was a light in Sega's eye.
