Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 264: PAX West 2019 - The Dreamcast 20th Anniversary Necromancy Jam

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

Two decades ago, Sega summoned into the world the mightiest of its consoles: The Dreamcast. And then, almost as quickly, it took the poor thing into the woods out back and ran it through proverbial the wood chipper. Dreamcast died too young, but its sudden demise wasn’t the end. We pick up the story 20 years later, exploring the ways in which Dreamcast represented Sega’s spirit at its finest and how its legacy persists even today. Panelists: Jeremy Parish, Morgan Shaver, Mike Drucker. Originally recorded September 2, 2019 at PAX West.

This weekend Retronauts, it's Unliving. That's a joke, see, because the dreamcast was it's thinking, and this is the Dreamcast's 20th anniversary necromancy jam, which means it was dead and now it's alive again. So it's unliving. Yes, I explain my own joke. Thank you for joining us for the comedy explainer hour. I'm Jeremy Parrish, co-host of Retronauts,

and the Sega Dreamcast is 20 years old in America this week, which blows my mind because it means I'm also 20 years old. And so here to celebrate my birthday with me, we have a panel of really cool people, including Mike Drucker, former Nintendo writer, current TV writer. Morgan Shaver, current writer for all gamers, and I also do social media for Tetris. And I'm Chris Souza, former Games Press and tournament organizer,

and now I own Pixar PR, working with the beautiful Indies. And happy birthday, Jeremy. And we're going to talk about the Dreamcast because it is 20 years old in America, older in Japan. And it was a great system that did really well here, but not well enough to make up for the fact that it didn't do well in Japan and went away much too soon, much too young, to be replaced by this Xbox, I guess. It's a shame. It was a fantastic system and really, in a lot of ways, represents the culmination of everything that Sega as a first party was about.

There's just so much creativity, so much quality in the Dreamcast library. they managed to do a lot in about the space of three years or so and made them most of this little system. It was a pretty darn good swan song, in my opinion, for the Sega first party era. But unfortunately, it was not to be in Sega now. I guess they're a first party again. They just made the Genesis Mini that comes out in a few weeks,

so does that count? Are we counting them as a first party again? Yeah! Okay, yeah, awesome. A little bit. It's back, folks, at the kitten. No, wait, that was Atari, never mind. Anyway, so yes, I'm assuming people here are here because they love Dreamcast.

Is there anyone in this audience who does not like Dreamcast? All right, you're allowed to stay. Hopefully people who may or may not be tuning in to watch this on Twitch also love Dreamcast. You are also allowed to stay if you don't because maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll satisfy your curiosity about why people do enjoy this system so much. You don't have to pay attention to the screen. I did not prepare a slideshow. It's all verbal with us, not visual.

But we are going to do a little bit of history of the Dreamcast. But first, before we do that, I would like to quiz the panelists. This is a quiz panel. Okay. On what your experience was, your launch day experience, or at what point you first played Dreamcast, first bought it, whatever. So, yeah, just jump in and tell us all about it, Mike. I bought a Dreamcast first day

I was in it was my first year of high school and what my brother and I did was we took all of our strategy guides that we had bought from Barnes & Noble and returned them and it wasn't enough like there was also like savings

I have this thing where throughout my life my parents put money into a college fund and I would talk them into spending it on a video game called so which I've done for the virtual boy in the Dreamcast so it's a great record but I so we literally took a bunch of books that we owned and had used and returned them

and they like accepted half and we bought it and it was honestly to me that's probably the best new system experience I've ever had like just like turning it on sole caliber even like ready to rumble boxing like just the way it looked

like Nintendo 64 was great because you had Super Mario 64 but Dreamcast it felt like it launched with as a kid so many good games and to just experience them felt so crazy yeah that that boot up the first time you turn on that system It's so different than anything that had come before on other consoles.

Like the 32 big-generation consoles, when they had boot-up screens, it was like, I'm in your face. Like, I love the PlayStation 1 startup sound, the br-hr-hr-h. I will say that the Dreamcast startup had one thing, which is whenever you had the VMU, and it'd be like, and then it would also do the opening sound. You forgot to replace the battery. But, yeah, Dreamcast was so mellow, so sedate. And, you know, the name, Dreamcast was supposed to be like Dreamcast.

broadcast, I think. It's a strange name for a console, but there was that sort of, like, I don't know, Enya-ish quality to the startup chimes that really said, huh, this is different, the soft whites and the orange. It felt like it was less aggressive than previous consoles. Definitely it was a different look for Sega who had, you know, up to that point peddled, especially in America, just jet black consoles, glossy black consoles. And this was, you know, light gray, soft white, very, very, you know, It just, yeah, it had a different quality to it that made it stand out from what they had done before. Morgan, how about you? I didn't have it at launch.

So when it launched, I was younger. I was about seven or eight. But I had my first experience with Dreamcast at a babysitter's house. So the babysitter had like three different, like, teenage sons, and they were all really into video games. So they had everything, SNESS, SNESS, and 64 Dreamcast. And I found myself kind of gravitating towards the Dreamcast more in the game. on the Dreamcast because they were so unique and original and so I just remember like begging

like I really want a Dreamcast I really want a Dreamcast my mom was like what what is a Dreamcast so yeah my experience was just growing up of you know gaming and remembering the Dreamcast as being more unique than the other consoles that I was familiar with so I played a lot of weird games on that I'm listening to you talk about

how old you were when the Dreamcast came out is making me realize that I really am not 20. I'm the old person here, and you are the young whippersnappers with different perspectives. But, Chris, what about you? It's a similar experience where I remember being seven years old, and my stepfather actually came home with two new pieces of hardware. One was the Dreamcast, and one was our first DVD player. And I got Sonic Adventure One, and he brought home the Matrix for himself.

So it's two of the most iconic pieces of media of all time, of course. And I remember just playing Sonic, and I was a huge Sega fan as a kid, but, well, as a younger kid, but seeing it in 3D was just mind-blowing. And, you know, the controller and the actual memory card, it was a very special place in my heart for that console. And I'll bring up the rear because as the resident old person here, I was a working professional by the time Dreamcast came out and had just money to the, throw around because I was also very single and did not have any other human beings to spend money on. So I actually bought Dreamcast on a whim on launch because what I was really looking forward to that week was Final Fantasy 8. So history has come full circle this week, really. But I picked up Final Fantasy 8 and then they had a couple of Dreamcast systems left

and I thought, why not? It looks kind of interesting and people are really into this game where you fight as a lizard man. So I should try it out and picked it up and spent the next two weeks playing Final Fantasy 8. But then eventually I finally unboxed my Dreamcast and set it up and started playing an earnest. And yeah, there was a lot of really great stuff on it. And Dreamcast got me my second professional writing gig,

which was writing a GameSpot guide for Skies of Arcadia. This was back in the days when writing about video games on the internet paid really, really well, and I made a lot of money for playing Skies of Arcadia. So I will always cherish Dreamcast for that. But also, I really love Skies of Arcadia. It's a great game. It needs to come back. Remaster Sega. You heard me. All right. That deserved more than the golf applause it got. It's a very good. Yeah, there we go. Show Skies of Arcadia, the respect it deserves. Listen to that, Sega. How can you turn down all these earnest faces? How can you make these beautiful children cry. Bring back to the Arcadia. Anyway, so Dreamcast was a great system,

but it launched at a really tricky time for Sega because at the time Sega was in a bad way. They'd had a rough time with their most recent consoles. Actually, you know, if you look back the almost 20 years before Dreamcast launched, Sega always had kind of a tough time with its consoles. The very first system it launched, the first console it launched, only came out in Japan, the SC-1000, which was basically a Calico-Vision. You can actually port games between SC-1000 and SG-1000 and ColicoVision really easily. And it was a moderate success. It was launched the same day as Nintendo's family computer, Famicom, also the N-E-S, which just crushed it. But Sega did not actually expect their system to sell as well as it did. So they said, hey, you know, we didn't

completely lose money on this thing. Let's keep going. So they created a computer version called the SC-2000 that only came out in Japan, and the Mark 3, the third system, that only came out in Japan. But then they said, what if we took this outside of Japan, and they sent it to America as the master system? And it didn't really do anything here, but Brazil loved it. Brazil loved it so much, and also Europe really liked it. So they, you know, kind of found some success there. Didn't do much in America, didn't do much in Europe. But they, you know, kind of took that as a chance to move ahead and get ahead of Nintendo with a 16-bit era and launched the Mega Drive in Japan in 1988, which became the Genesis here in 1989. And that also was not much of a

success in Japan, but America and Europe loved it. And that fueled Sega for a long time. It also made Sega of America kind of in a way more powerful, more, you know, to have more influence within the corporate hierarchy than the home base of the company back in Japan, which caused a lot of friction. And unfortunately, Sega of America really squandered that clout and that success by saying, hmm, we should upgrade the system with a mushroom that sits on top and plays Star Wars arcade. And so they gave us the 32X, and it was not good. And it was kind of a disaster. And it really made a mess of their next console, the Saturn, which just completely tanked here because people remembered the 32X and said, no.

But in Japan, they didn't have the 32X. They escaped that fate, and Japan loved the Saturn. So the problem Sega had, kind of leading up to this point, is they just couldn't get the world to agree. Is Sega good or not? Like, every generation, one region would say, we love Sega, and the other region would be like, Nintendo, please, or Sony.

And so Dreamcast was the point at which they really needed to just muster their forces and make everyone love Sega. And so that's what they really sought to do. And to make this happen, they had basically like an internal contest, sort of, where the American division started developing, you know, advanced 64-bit hardware, which they codenamed, I want to get this right, Black Belt. But then in Japan, the team there, the development team, was like, hang on, we're Sega. So they started developing their own hardware, which they called Durall. Actually, yes, Darol, named after the Boss and Virtual Fighter 2. America's version was based on 3D...

They were both based on the same core chip, but the American version was based on 3DFX graphic cards, and the Japanese version, Darol, was based on NEC graphics cards. And eventually they sat down and said, we have to choose one of these. We can't have two systems at the same time. So they went with Doral, the Japanese version, based on NAC power VR technology. And that was actually right there

the very bad beginning for Dreamcast because 3DFX had said, wait a minute, guys, we were working together and we were going to launch a console together and you basically turned your back on us. That's not cool. So they sued Sega for about $150 million, which is not a good way to start out

with a profitable console. Ultimately, they settled for, I think, $10 million, $10.5, but still it's a bad sign. So things were kind of rough from the beginning. Doral's code name was changed to katana because I guess a sword is cooler than basically the Terminator

T-1000. I don't know. I kind of like the T-1,000. What do you guys think? T-1,000 is one of my favorite Terminators. See, there you go. Definitely the T-1,000 for sure. Definitely. So, yeah, just, you know, going into Dreamcast, what did you

personally think of Sega? in general. Did you have thoughts on Sega? Were you aware of console wars? You might have been a little too young to have lived through the horrors of the 16-bit console wars, but there are still people out there. They are the equivalent of the man living on the island still fighting the war 20 years later. They play that torch. They're ready to go to war. I think I grew up in the perfect time for the Sega Nintendo War because of Mortal Kombat. And if you guys remember, like, especially like me being like a little shitty kid where I'm like, man, like I love Nintendo. I love Nintendo. I would have died for Nintendo. And then like Mortal Kombat came out

and I was like, fucking losers. Like I'm going to fucking play it on Genesis where you can rip out a spine. And now I play Mortal Kombat 11 on Switch. So, yeah. I mean, I didn't get too much of that war like growing up. I didn't really see too much of it. I was just kind of interested in all of the consoles. But like looking back now, I'm kind of like, yeah. I, I don't know. I'm kind of like, yeah, I can see that for sure, but I definitely liked the Dreamcast, so, but I didn't know anyone else at the time besides the people whose Dreamcast I was playing on liked the Dreamcast, so it's a little weird. Yeah, I was just a dumb little kid that just like blue hedgehogs. You know, I was really excited just to play video games. I never really understood there was some

sort of rivalry. It's like looking back now and now that I work in the industry being like, wow, I was so naive, but all I care about the time was the software and what really matters. in the end. And that's what we kind of look back on on this legacy of Dreamcast, is what an amazing library that was unfortunately kind of overlooked. Yeah, I grew up playing Nintendo Systems, but that was just because we could only afford one console at a time, and they had more of the games that I wanted to play.

But I always looked onto my friend's Sega Systems and really wished I could play those games more than just, like, going over to their house. So when I finally did get a job, one of the first things I bought was, you know, professional job, paying real money, was a Sega Genesis Model 3, which was awful. It was the little tiny one that didn't hook up into anything and was kind of crappy.

And also a Sega Saturn, which I really got into it for a while and really enjoyed. And that actually convinced me to go back and buy a proper Genesis and a Sega CD and explore that library. So when Dreamcast came out, even though I was like Final Fantasy 8, I still wanted to get into the system and really finally have a proper Sega experience. and that's probably what killed Sega. I'm really sorry about that. So Sega went ahead with the Dural architecture

and partnered up with NEC. And they also forged a partnership with Microsoft who was going to provide them an operating system. And Windows CE did show up as an optional operating system on the Dreamcast that almost no one used. I think that's how you play like the puzzle game that's built in, Spiral or whatever that's called? I know what you're talking about, but I don't...

Swirl, that's it, not spiral, swirl, that's the one. And I think Choochoo Rocket also runs on Wynn C.E. But otherwise, Microsoft was like, hey, here's a foot in the door, a back door to get into the console market, and they used that experience with Sega, once Sega faded away to nothing, to launch their own console, the Xbox,

which you may have heard of. So that didn't really work out well for Sega. They also went with something called the GD-ROM as their media for this. It's like a CD-ROM, but it held a gigabit instead of 750 megabytes, hence the GD-ROM. It was like a CD-ROM except your friends in middle school could burn you games onto it. Do you guys remember how easy it was to Pirate Dreamcast games? It's probably why I'm part of the problem, but I was in middle school. I don't know.

Shame on you, Mike. Well, I remember when, like, the day after Sega announced that it was discontinuing the Dreamcast, Dreamcast, Sony released a mass market GDROM burner. It was literally like they were saying, we are urinating on your grave, Sega. It was a little dark. But, you know, it did allow them to have games with more storage capacity than had come on previous consoles.

They were just a little ahead of the curve on this and couldn't take advantage of DVD like PlayStation 2 did a couple of years later. But the system ultimately debuted in November, in Japan with four games. That's not what we're talking about here. We're commemorating the good 20th anniversary launch because the four games that launched in Japan were, well, Virtua Fighter 3 team battle was okay. I seem to remember that it was a little iffy and then they redid it for the American version and relaunched it. Is that correct?

I... The Japanese version doesn't have a versus mode. Yeah, there you go. Japanese version does not have a versus mode. I was going to say that So I knew there was some kind of weird jank about it. So, yes, they shipped that one too early. Godzilla Generations was a kind of janky Godzilla fighting game by Quintet, the RPG makers. And that was kind of ugly and not great. That didn't come out in America.

There was July, a graphical, like, visual novel about romance, which, you know, that's a very valid genre, but it's maybe not a system seller, especially when you had, you know, the ability to go to any Japanese shop and buy a, a dirt cheap NEC PCFX which was nothing but visual novels and then finally there was pin pin triselon which was a game about racing

penguins so it really feels like was that game called Pin pin pin triselon oh I'm going to buy that okay go ahead it really feels like Sega of Japan was trying to recreate

the magic of the American Saturn launch where it just came out virtually it had no game games for like six months, and they were like, that is the model that we want to subscribe to. I really don't understand it, because they really should have known. Like, I don't know if they said, well, they messed up with that, but we can do it right. But they didn't do it right. Anyway, fast forward about 12, 11, 10 months later, nearly a year, and the system does come out in America, headed up by former Sony executive Bernie Stoller, who was like, I'm going to kill

the Saturn, and we're going to just, you know, let the, let the, let the, let the, you know, the field life fallow for a year, and then we're going to hit it hard with the Dreamcast launch. And it was amazing. It was the biggest and best console launch ever to that point. Do you guys remember the hype of 9-999? Yeah, there was like the commercials, and it was such a big ad campaign. It was almost like waiting for Christmas. I could not wait to get my hands on a dreamcast. Yeah, there was a lot of hype, and I still remember that like it's thinking. It was very Oh, yeah. Yeah.

They tried to do a little bit of that, like, sort of surreal 32-bit advertisements that Sega was doing with, like, the theater of the mind. Yeah. And, you know, Sony's, you are not ready. But they dialed it back just a little bit and made it, you know, like, hey, here's the Dreamcast. It's the console that's smarter than you. I think that was the message they were trying to convey.

But it was a smart console because it launched with 19 games, which was unprecedented. You know, you look back at, like, the Nintendo 64 and two games. So going into the next generation, having 19 games, most of which were actually very good, was a little overwhelming. Like, the system itself sold for, I want to say, $2.99, is that right? $1.99. Man, what a deal. That's like getting two free games in there, with that extra $100. But then you basically had, you know, like a candy store of software that you could pick from. There were racing games and fighting games and boxing games and what else? There was a game where Sonic could raise little pets in a garden, and there was a weird survival horror game.

It was just a fantastic launch. Of the console launch games, Mike, you were there day one. What were the two biggest ones for you? Well, Soul Calibur, obviously, but that feels like a cheap answer. Looking back, it doesn't hold up ready to rumble boxing because it's basically racism, the video game. but at the time I loved racist video game it was super fun it was like a cartoony game

and I loved punch out and I feel like that space just wasn't filled by anything so for me like sole caliber for being this very serious fighting game and then ready to rumble almost being the opposite where it was like a goofy fun game so your dream cast was not about its thinking it's a it's about it's fighting

it's fighting it was yeah it's fun fighting fun fun you guys I mean I didn't have it day one but I think the two that stands for me were Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. Those are the two that I think played the most aggressively.

Yeah, I... Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was to say, just Capcom is... Some of my favorite Capcom titles were, you know, launch titles, well, not launch titles, but came out on Dreamcast first. So, Co-Veronica, I think, personally, is the best fixed camera of Resident Evil, sorry,

and Dono Crisis has always been amazing. Oh, yeah. Except for three. We won't talk about three, but I think that we're going to see a renaissance in that series. soon. Fingers crossed. Yeah, I bought several Dreamcast games at launch,

and once I cracked open the system weeks later, you know, I tried all of them, and Sonic Adventure, I was kind of like, hey, maybe I just don't like Sonic. I don't know.

But once I put a crazy taxi in my system, that was it. That was all I played. This was before Grand Theft Auto, so the idea of just like driving like an idiot doing stupid things

through kind of an open city with ridiculous bad music in the background. Like, that was so far ahead of its time. GTA3 wouldn't launch for another two years. And Crazy Taxi gave me that experience right up front. I don't know, like, the Sega really was at the peak of their creativity, like I said, with Dreamcast. And basically any game that came from Sega in that era,

that console, you just knew it was going to be a good time. Even if you don't like Sonic Adventure, like I can recognize that it is a quality game, which is not one for me. I feel like of all the consoles, including ones to this day, like obviously to this day we have great games that are either based on old arcade games or like things like Street Fighter 5, which then become arcade games after their console exclusives. But the Dreamcast was the only console that felt to me like it was really living up to that promise of an arcade at home. Like everything on it, there were still those arcade games in arcade so you could see them, but you are actually playing them at home with the same exact fidelity. as a console, it felt to me

that perfect strike zone of like, oh my god, I get to play crazy taxi at home now and it looks the same. Even Marvel's Capcom, too, which I still think is top three best fighting games of all time. That was like the way to play at home. And that's a really good observation. I've really heard of that before,

but it's basically the arcade system at your home. Yep. Yeah, Sega was very much about the arcade experience, and that was kind of their selling point all through their console producing career. But I feel Dreamcast is where they really struck a great balance between

giving you a true arcade experience. Like, they literally designed the system to be as close to the Model 3 hardware architecture as possible. And, you know, there was even the Naomi board, which was basically a Dreamcast with a little extra juice in it. So you could get these basically, like,

perfect conversions of games. But they also created a lot of games that were just completely exclusive to home. Things like Seaman. You were not going to play Seaman in an arcade. It would have been how would you even do that? I wish you could. I wish that an arcade had a game where it was like, just talk to a fish.

So traumatized, playing like with all these different people for five minutes. He would just be even more misanthropic. I feel like that's the other thing about Dreamcast we should, I mean, is worth talking about is every system has had its weird fucking games. But Dreamcast I think was, especially for North America audiences, the one

that's like, here's some weird shit, play it. And it really was fun. Like, before Steam, when you could just stumble across a weird indie on a PC, and, like, things not always being localized. Like, the fact that Seaman came to America is fucking great. Yeah, I really feel like, we'll talk about the systems library as kind of like the second half of this, but I really feel like with Dreamcast, you have Sega looking at everything that had come before, not just Sega's own systems, but other systems.

Like, PlayStation was the platform where weird stuff really took off because Sony was like, you know, CD-ROMs are actually really cheap to make. We can put games out at a budget, and we can take. take chances on things that we would never have published before. You would never see on a cartridge-based system in America. And so you've got stuff like Parapa the Rapa and incredible crisis and, you know, just all kinds of stuff that was bizarre and it was great. And Sega was like, we'll do that too.

But, you know, at the same time, you look at that controller, and that controller is huge, but it reflects the design of the analog controller that they created for Saturn, mainly to play Nights into Dreams. I don't know if you'd necessarily, that's a game you'd want to buy a controller just to play it. But it was out there. It was the option. But they made that their standard controller

with the Dreamcast. So you've got analog and you've got D-pad, and both of them are a lot easier to reach than the different components of the, say, the N-64 controller, where you had to hold the controller a completely different way depending on how you wanted to use the controller.

Here you could just, you know, toggle between the D-pad for something like Mr. Drillor, or, you know, the analog pad for something like Sonic Adventure. So it was very versatile. There was also the VMU, which, you know, you can't always be winners, but it was a bold idea. Sony had done something similar around the same time with the pocket station, and I think this was the, you know, kind of the idea,

like here is a way to extend your console play by taking it with you. Now we have the switch, and that finally does it right. of course the switchlight gets rid of that altogether it's just a portable system as opposed to a console you can take with you but this was kind of an experiment a push in that direction and then they also had actual connectivity with actual portable systems they've been on the wrong course with that they connected to the neo geo pocket color which was also a great system that died before its time but it sure did die before

its time so you didn't really get a whole lot of use out of the neo geo pocket link for dreamcast but I love that it was an option that was there and that they recognized, hey, S&K, they're making a really cool hand-on. Let's link up to it and not make our own game gear too. And really, if you look, the Dreamcast has a legacy of just really funky and weird peripherals to go along with its funky and weird games.

I don't know if you guys bought any of the Maracas or the FACC keyboard. I bought the Maraccos. Let's hear about those. I bought the Maracos. took them to school. Yes. And you know what? A good time was had.

I don't mean to brag. I single-handedly started the music game craze in my high school among five people. Yeah, I mean, it had like that little, like, pyrible, like, Tamigachi kind of, like, accessory, too that you could take with you, like, the, I don't know what it was called, but, like, you could, like, bring your, like, Sonic Chow with you. So I had that.

And I never actually owned any, but, uh, Simon Didi Amigo is a great time with the Maracca's, and that, and I remember going over a friend's house who had the fishing rod. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was a good time, very, very gimmicky, I guess. The fishing controller? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I love people who have found completely inappropriate uses for the fishing controller, like, you know, using it to complete sole caliber and things like that.

It should not be possible, but somehow life will find a way. That's basically like the Bloodbourne Speed Run community now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Rock band drums, a guitar. But it's there. I love that it existed. It's so great. Yeah, the Maraca's never worked for me because apparently I am exactly the right height that my arms fall right between two of the calibration zones. So it could never decide, like,

is he tall or is he short? The answer is I'm short, but not quite short enough. So I didn't get the most out of Samba de Migo, but it was like a fun and interesting take on the music genre. It was great. And you had to buy $100 controllers to play it, and they were huge and difficult to travel with. I know because I moved across the country shortly after buying them and really regretted owning them. But it was great that they existed. God bless you, Sega. Let's look at the fun. You just pop playing with that radio, Lord.

I'm trying to get to sleep. We just pop playing with that radio, y'all. I'm trying to get to sleep. We just pop, ooh, we just pop, oh, I'm trying to get to talk. I'm trying to get to, I'm trying to get to. I'm trying to, which, which, you, which, We're going to be able to be. So anyway, some of the good stuff that Sega did. You know, I mentioned that they really were kind of looking at everything that had come before,

and they really were trying to push limits with the Dreamcast. It was the first console that I'm aware of that shipped with online connectivity out of the box. It had a modem built in. You could buy a broadband adapter if you really love PSO. Did you guys play online much? No. I wanted to, but whenever... I had PSO, and I didn't play that online for some reason,

but every time I wanted to... What do you do, if you play PSO offline? What is there to do in PSO offline? Grind. Grind, is correct. You just grind, and you listen to really good tunes, because the music in that game is fantastic. I wanted to hook it up, but it was one of those things where, like,

my dad was constantly on the internet, and that was back in the phone call-up days of whenever the fuck. and so he just wouldn't let me like he refused to like even give me telephone cable to set it up what was he doing what was there to do online he was definitely jerking off he was 100%

like that door was locked and you don't need to lock a door to do spreadsheets my man okay well I'm sorry I no I didn't have the online either similar experience my mother was always online not jerking off but just probably working probably yeah so I didn't have online but I played a lot of offline games yeah my online experiences for console least didn't start until halo 2 and pandora tomorrow but uh I

I watch videos of PSO and I feel like it's it's a shame that I missed it but it's it's kind of great that it's kind of stuck in that time because it makes a little more special I guess but I know you can kind of watch you can play mods online now of it I guess but I wish I could have uh experienced it, but my seven-year-old brain could not comprehend that. Yeah, I ended up not playing any Dreamcast games online because I decided at a young age that I don't like playing video games with other people. So

I was just, you know, misanthropic. So I never, I never thought about grinding alone in PSO. I missed out on such an experience. You can do it in Diablo 3. You can do it. There's so many things, there's so many multiplayer games you can play by yourself when you're lonely. And I recommend you all try it.

Final Fantasy 14. and sucks to be alone, but you... Well, they actually have more concessions to the little out there. They do have more concessions, yeah. So that's good. But you didn't have to go online to play with other people on Dreamcast. They took a lesson from Nintendo, the N64, and it's four controller ports on the front.

They said, let's do that, too. So you have, you know, the ability to plug in four controllers and four VMUs, God bless you, into the Dreamcast, and what four player games were there? Power Stone. PowerStone. Sonic Shuffle. Sonic Shuffle.

Chutu Rocket. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which also has the best commercial of anything. Oh, yeah, yeah. Japanese Chutu Rocket. This is a weird one, but I don't want to say it wrong, but it's South Park Chef's Love Shack. I played weird games as a kid, but it was a great time, man.

We've had two panels in a row today where South Park came up. This really is retronaut. Yeah, but, you know, even, inside the console, it was really, I feel like it was the first 3D console not to have any major defects, any major shortcomings, no huge bottlenecks. Like, you know, the original PlayStation didn't have enough RAM. It had that weird warping graphical effect. Systems before that had super slow disk system, like disc reads. Even the N64 had like no texture memory, so everything is just blurry. And when you play it, you're like, holy God, I've got to go to the ophthalmologist

and get my cataracts removed. No, it's just the system, you're okay. But this console did not have any of those problems. It was just a great 3D, a powerful system, maybe not quite as powerful as PlayStation 2, but it was much more powerful than N64, PS1, Saturn, anything that had come before and really gave you pretty much the equivalent

of playing on a PC at the time. And in fact, it came with a VGA adapter, like you could buy a VGA adapter that would let you play on a PC. PC monitor. So it really did kind of bridge that gap between consoles and personal computers that Microsoft would bridge even more a few years later. But they were just out there. They were doing these things, online play, PC components. It was just such a forward-thinking console. I'll also say, and this is such a dumb addition, but it was such a small console physically

that like bringing it to my high school, I went to like, I went to a magnet school that had a technology program where none of the teachers cared. And so it was like all fighting games. But like it was such a small console that you could easily, like it almost had that quality the GameCube would have a few years later where you could just take it away. It's one of a few consoles where the controller is bigger than the console. Like I hate having this thing on my shelf in a way because the console is like doubling the size of the space that it takes. I don't have to worry about that now because I lent Cat Bailey from Yos Gamer my controller at Pax East and she never gave it back. So right now I have a mute dreamcast. It just sits there quietly thinking, but not playing.

All right. So there were a few things that worked against the dreamcast. Obviously, the extremely bad Japanese launch did it no favors in that territory, and it never recovered. People at that point, like, Sega had television commercials where they had a guy come out and apologize for how terrible the launch was. He was like, I'm so sorry, I'm going to go save the world to make up for it. God bless Sega San Chiro. But, yeah, on top of that, there was some political infighting in the U.S. in electronic arts said, you know what?

We're actually not going to support your console. And like EA or dislike them, they are huge. And, you know, they are especially important in the sports arena. Sega at the time had its own sports brand, you know, the visual concepts studio. But not having EA support the system was a huge mark against it and a huge benefit for everyone else because they had EA games, which millions of people want to play. Let's see, what else was there? Oh, yeah, and just the general infighting between Japan and the U.S.

Like, the two divisions of Sega never really learned to get along again after the big schism during the 16-bit era. And so you had the American side of, you know, the Dreamcast business doing great. It was selling really well here. People loved it. It was reviewing well. Every game sold pretty well. But over in Japan, there just wasn't the support for it. So Sega eventually said, you know, we just can't keep doing this.

We're hemorrhaging money. We've got to pull out. So they killed it. And that was the end. Very sad. But the good news is that in the two or three years that it was alive here in the U.S. And over in Japan, dozens and dozens of fantastic games came out for it. that's what we're going to spend the rest of this panel talking about, our favorite Dreamcast

games. And I don't know if we have a mic out there for people to sound off. Oh, there is one. So we might cut this a little short and let you guys also weigh in on your favorites. But let's get going here. You guys down at the end have been a little quiet because you're not old and musty like me. So we don't have as much of the love of ancient history. So let's talk about some of your favorite games and the things that you really, like, what really drew you to Dreamcast? I do think that Sonic Adventure 1 is my favorite game in the console, but it's definitely not the best. The game, like, as a huge fan of the game, I think it's actually kind of a bad game. But, like, it just has a really very special place in my heart. But I would say the fighting

games, MVC 2, Soul Calibur 1, ready to rumble, I'm sorry, but it was a very huge fan I'm ready to rumble. It was a little, just didn't catch me. Was it the racism? I don't think I knew what racism was, but now that I do, I'm older. There's a lot of it. There's a lot. And then Shenmu is something that I think is, you know, kind of opened up a path for all new types of gaming. I think Shenmu has the indie heart that we see now in a lot of indies.

Oh, yeah. And it's, yeah, absolutely, right? And it's such a weird anomaly of a game to come out that time. I mean, so is Seaman, I guess, too. But Shenmu was special to me. And I'm glad that we're going to. get three now, and hopefully it's good. Fingers crossed.

Yeah, Shimu is another, it's very much a dream cast game in that it is a game that just was ahead of its time. It came out too early. It was this kind of open, free-form adventure, but it also had a structure to it. And, you know, you look at open world games now,

and they've got a lot of that. There's, like, schedules and routines, and, like, GTA4 was basically like, hey, Nico, it's your cousin. Let's go boating. Like, you just, yeah, let's go drinking. like constantly well you know shimu already had the need to like get home before the landlady was like hey you're home too late uh so i mean even things like uh and you know jobs where you could drive a forklift and play space harrier when did yakuza begin was that after shedman after yeah

yakuza was placed like that's clearly a you know an influence and then even games like persona some social sims that have open cities yeah like the the landlady the boarding house lady was basically Morgan from Corsona 5 20 years early, 15 years ago. I think some of my favorites were definitely like Jet Set Radio was a really big standout to me. I played a lot of that game.

Res is a really big standout in my mind. I remember a lot of res. And, you know, it's like the Seaman. It's not necessarily a game I would say it was good, but it's probably one of the most original games that I've ever played. even just thinking about it it's definitely like a koiyma game

without being a koiyma game too these weird fish humans with Leonard Leonard Newman yeah very very odd and you use like a microphone to like move around I feel like Seaman is a game that C man

which C man is a game that I don't think there's really been a proper follow up to it and I really feel like that is something that is maybe five or ten years away, I think once, you know, machine learning, AI, get good enough that computers can have a respectable conversation with you. We'll see developers kind of exploring that space, but right now it's just, it's just not there. And, you know, they must have spent a lot of money

on that because Leonard Nimoy was the voice of C-Man. He couldn't have come cheap. No. And just the amount of dialogue in there and the amount of weird permutations for what was basically a Tomoguchi, but way more elaborate and way more, uh, way moodyer. Like, it was a really grouchy Tomoguchi. The only competition was, what, like, hey, you Pikachu, maybe? Yeah. And it's, like, very, very different games.

Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was, I'm looking forward to that becoming its own genre, but we are years away from that. Yeah, we're like, yeah, you're exactly right. We're like five years away before the nostalgia catches up with the people developing things. And they're like, hey, we could actually do that now. Yeah.

It would work. But then, you know, you mentioned res. That actually didn't come to the U.S. on Dreamcast, and it was kind of this highly coveted import. It came out in Japan and Europe. And people, you know, if people imported a Dreamcast game, that was probably the one because it had such a great reputation. And that's another game that was so far ahead of its time

that they are literally still remaking it and it still feels fresh and new. You know, ResVR just came out like two years ago and is basically that game plus a new stage at the end. And it still is great. It's still, you know, incredibly engrossing. It holds up, yeah. You know, and that was, Tetsuya Miziguchi was the lead designer on it.

He was with, I want to say, AM2 at Sega, and really did a lot of the sort of genre-breaking, boundary-pushing games at the time. You know, he started out doing racing games, but quickly jumped over to other things. He also, excuse me, someone else talk. So, my theory is that Crazy Taxi is the most 90s video game. Are you okay? Yeah, okay. She's finding a doctor for me. It's the most 90s video game.

Have you played the Dreamcast or GameCube releases that have not cut the music or brands out? It's like you're listening to the offspring while driving to Tower Records. It's such like a nostalgic game, and it still holds up as a game, but don't, like, when you buy the new version, it's disappointingly stripped down of all the branding that made it so 90s. It was an extremely 90s game, but I was going to mention Mizuguchi's other

big game for Dreamcast, which was Space Channel 5. Ah, yeah! That was also a music game, a game very built around music, but not 90s music so much as, like, funky, retro-futuristic music. It was kind of all over the place. He found a

a piece from like 60s called, oh crap, I can't remember the name of it, but it was just like this completely forgotten, what's that? Mexican Flyer, yes. Thank you. You won a prize. I don't know what it is. Yeah, he found this, you know, this kind of like funky track from decades prior and was like, I have to use this as the core of my game. And he built a video game around it and also Michael Jackson for some reason. And, you know, it was pretty much. cut from the cloth of Parapa the rapper, where it's basically just, you know, call and repeat commands. But it had so much style, and it had such an interesting vibe, and it was very much about, like, that sort of feel-good, you know, like the ending of Dragon Ball where everyone throws their souls into the ginkidama or whatever, like everyone gathered together to save Earth from dancing aliens with a reporter. I don't know. It was a wild concept, but it just very simple, very fun, very direct, and extremely memorable.

Also getting a VR version. That's playable or was playable on the floor here. Okay, I didn't even know about that. I mean, I knew about the VR version, but not that it was here. That's over now. What's that? You can't play it. It's done. I'm sorry. Well, I also have to give a shout out to one of my personal favorite Dreamcast games, which was not exclusive to this system, but the best version was on Dreamcast, and that's Mr. Driller. And I love the perversity of Mr. Driller because Namco made two games for Dreamcast. They launched with Soul Calibur, and it blew everyone's minds. It was this incredibly deep fighting game with amazing graphics

and just so much to do and so much to unlock. And so when, you know, it came for Namco's follow-up game, people were like, what are they going to give us? And it is a simple pastel-colored arcade game about drilling holes in blocks of cookies and cake. And it's so not Soul Calibur. And people were just like, what in God's name even is this? But it's one of my favorite series.

It's just so simple and very challenging and fun. And, you know, the Dreamcast really did justice to those high-res graphics, I think. Everything was pink and green and adorable, and I love it. Any other things you guys want to call out? I still call it Jet Grind Radio because I'm not. I refuse. Thank you. Thank you, one dude who's on my side. I know...

Old man. You two and I are alone. I don't... Let's see. PSO. I don't know. It's just such a good system overall. I also liked Marvel vs. Capcom, too.

Although, fuck that song. Fuck. I'm going to take you for a ride. That is one of the greatest soundtracks of all time, Mike. It's amazing. I will say, Marvel vs. Capcom, too. Very beautiful game. Also, the first game that I remember

that, remember like 10 years when fighting games were like, what if we have smooth jazz in every level? I feel like that was the first one where it's like, meow, meow, I'm like, they're beating the shit out of each other. Have fun with the music. Anyway, I'm sorry. So I also appreciate the fact that third parties kind of took

a cue from Sega. You know, Sega was like, let's be weird, and third parties were like, yeah, okay, let's do that. So you had legendary Japanese developer, Treasure, who was known for their technical prowess and making these, like, jaw-dropping graphics and just things that filled the screen. And they created Bangayo, where this tiny little spaceship flying around

shooting giant apples. And it's one of the most interesting shooters of all time because every level is, like, a puzzle. It's not about, like, you're scrolling through space and blowing things up. It's like you're moving through these contained spaces, trying to destroy certain objects and complete objectives in the most efficient way.

And it really takes a little while to wrap your head around, but it's really kind of brilliant. And then they also came up with Ikaruga, which is a much more traditional shooter, but built around this light, dark mechanic where the color of your ship can be reversed, and the objects in the world are either black or white, and the way you interact with them differs

depending on which polarity you choose for your ship. And it seems simple, but once you get to like to the second stage, you're just like, I am a humble mortal and I can't handle this. It's very overwhelming. it's an overwhelming game and I love that it has kind of resurfaced

on things like Switch and I think it's on other systems too now it's on next box I think in switch you can actually play it's like one of the only games you can play in like landscape mode which as a matter of fact you can using the Nintendo flip grip available now from fangamer.com

Who made that Jeremy? Some cool guy. I also if you don't mind I would like to give a little shout out to Code Veronica because I think people really overlook that game and it's I forget that it's like a exclusivity deal that made it so that was going to be Resident Evil 3

but then it was forced into a side project for Sega and like it's, I look at that game as big of a jump from something like three to four where like they took that whole format and really evolved on it with the fixed camera is actually

moving with you sometimes and the graphics were exponentially better than they were in two and three and I just feel like it's something that's kind of overlooked and especially now that the series is finally coming back to its roots and improving in every way, I hope that people kind of remember it for what it was rather than leaving it behind in the past.

Well, I also want to mention, you know, before I said something about the system having an ASCII keyboard, which was really created so you could chat with people on Fantasy Star Online, assuming you played with other people for Fantasy Star Online. But they also put it to brilliant use. This was the console that gave us typing of the dead, where they said, what if we took the zombie shooter House of the Dead, That's a good game.

And turned it into a touch-tudor, like a touch-typing tutor. And it's such a ridiculous idea. You're like running through haunted houses with a dreamcast on your back and a keyboard in front of you, typing enemies and typing like broken English phrases at them to destroy them. I love typing it. I didn't play it until it was on PC. So I didn't want to name it because I didn't play it until it was on PC. But it's, I love video.

And I'm not saying this to be funny, but I love video games where the design. designers of the games were like, I don't fucking know. Sure. It's such a good quality. And typing of the Dead is like, yeah, I don't know. It's a silly game. So let's make it sillier. Go for it. And it's better than House of the Dead, too, is a game. All right. And one final game I want to call out before we open this up to the floor is one of the import games that, I don't know if a lot of people played it because it's very heavily Japanese language-oriented, but Sega Gaga, which is clearly this was a simulation game

that was basically a simulation of how hard and terrible it was to work at Sega during the Dreamcast era. They basically made a game about themselves about how miserable their business was and how much their lives sucked. And it's charming and wonderful and people have fan translated into English.

I haven't played that version, but I'd really love to because it's just so like it's like those Sega Tasan Shiro commercials. It's just like so, like, so, I don't know, people having fun with how miserable they are. And, you know, that's, considering how miserable people in the video games industry tend to be, that's, that's something rare. Have you ever worked on, and this is something that, like, I've had in television, when you're working on, like, essentially a ship that's burning and about to sink, it's actually

kind of fun when you can, because you're like, this is going to end, so let's just fucking do it. And it's so much fun, and that's what Sega felt like in that period. Oh, yeah, yeah, that was definitely, like, the last year of OneUp.com. Right. You were just like, I can totally relate to Sega Gaga. Anyway, we've said a lot. So now we're going to let you say a lot. Please, tell us what your favorite game is. It's okay to make a comment more than a question.

I really like Sonic Shuffle, but not that many other people seem to have liked it. It was exactly up to the comfort. competition with Mario Party, but it was fun. I loved it as a kid. You've got a fan up here, so after this, I think you guys get together and play some Sonic Shuffle. A lot of that and Chef's Love Shack back in the day, you know, it's just a good time. I played a lot of that. No, I loved it, yeah. I was really young, but I mean, I remember it's Sonic Shuffle, and then Sonic Adventure, those two, I'd go back and forth. Yeah, and I

played that more than I played the original Mario Parties. Looking back now? Yeah. Maybe it was my time a little differently, but it's a good game. I would love to see them bring that series back. All right. Thanks a lot. Next. Thank you. So the Dreamcast was very much an arcade console. There's not a lot of RPGs worth talking about it, and I still hate you evolution.

But you guys mentioned Skies of Arcadia, and where there is light, there is darkness, there is also Grandia, too, which is the only other RPG worth mentioning. And somehow both of them of them, I still want to play 20 years later. thank God at least Grandia 2 came back. Who is Grandia 2 owned by these days? Is it Square Nix? Gung Ho! Gung Ho! Well, they love you more than Sega does. You hear that Sega?

If Sega were to ever re-enter the console wars and come out with a whole new console, what do you think Sega would have to do this time around? Make it also portable and made by Nintendo. Yeah.

Like the Sega Tindo switchcast. I don't know. At this point, it's hard to say, like, how do you even enter the market at this point? What do people want? Like, do they want a traditional console? Do they want, like, a streaming device? I really don't know what the answer is there.

I would say, look at a shirt. If someone does not want a streaming device, so there's your lesson, Sega, don't stream. Yeah, I don't know. I think it would be a huge mistake for them to reinter. the console market, to be completely honest. I think the best thing they could do if they tried is to pray? What do you guys think?

I feel like if they had like some, if they spent all the money in the world, which they don't have, if they did like a massive exclusive where it was like a, you know, like a Fallout 5 or a GTA 6, that would maybe do it, but I can't imagine otherwise. Yeah. I can't picture it either. I mean, poor ability is nice, having a lot of like third-party titles, nice. maybe, like, having a DVD player. I'm kidding.

I hear they're making a comeback. Yeah, it's making a comeback now. Yeah, I mean, like, a lot of the weird titles, too, that might be interesting, is, like, launching with just these really interesting weird titles that you just have to play, like, C-Man, too. What would it be?

I want to play it. You know, actually, weird titles that you just want to play, maybe if Sega had been the ones to create the play date? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would actually, like, I could have seen that happening.

Like something kind of small, portable, inexpensive, limited, but capable of... It's basically like, you know, a combination between the VMU and the fishing controller for Dreamcast. So it was right there, they blew it. Yeah, I'd say, like, based on your shirt, too, like the only way I think they're going to come back is not going to mean hardware, but they could do, like, a software platform. But I think that their best bet is to partner with places like Stadia or, you know, any of the future consoles and just kind of say, stick to software, but I would love to see them come back in the hardware field. It would be great. All right, thanks.

So speaking of Dreamcast as the essence of 90s, I have to stand up for the essence of 90s anime Psychic Force 2012, which I played when I was about 1314 and is therefore engraved on my heart. And it's a really interesting variation on fighting games that never really got followed up on, because everyone hated it at the time, and I don't know if it's really worth going back to because I'm not exactly the best fighting game player, but I would really love to see someone

at least try to take on that particular style again. So that was what, like, hyperactive sort of dragon-ball-ish, like projectile fighting and that sort of thing? So it was 2D, but you were constantly flying, and you could dash around and shoot psychic powers at each other. it amazingly did not just turn into a fireball war. Right. All right. In general, I'd have to say that I'd just love everything

the Capcom made for the Dreamcast. I mean, you've got Street Fighter 3 in Marvel, but you've also got other fighting games, weird ones like Techromancer, which is just a very obscure giant robot fighting game that had all these weird knockoff Evangeline robots and everything and you had your

Dino Crisis Resident Evil, you also had your shooters like Gunbird and Mars Matrix. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very much it was all-killer, very little filler. Rival schools. Yeah, Project Justice. It was gimp, but it was still great. Yeah, and the one capital

game for Dreamcast that I'm Sad got away was something called Eldorado's Gate which was a serial RPG, like a multi-chapter RPG released in Japan with art by Final Fantasy's Yoshitaka Amano. I don't know if it was any good, but it was just like one of those things you see

you've written about online and you're like, I want that, why can't I have it? Yeah, Capcom was definitely brought their A game along with Sega on Dreamcast. All right, so interestingly enough, I haven't heard anyone here mention it yet. And my favorite game on the Dreamcast is one that I instantly hated when I bought it and shelved for about nine months after playing it. And so I give you Sonic Adventure

too, everyone, because yes, my absolute favorite Sonic game of all time, which I did not like the first time I played it because I felt Knuckles. The knuckle stages had differed so much from the first Sonic Adventure, and I actually spent over a half an hour on Pumpkin Hill the first time I ever played that game. So, you know, I lost interest in it very quickly, and having seen a bunch of comments on message boards in the month following and also going back to Sonic Adventure and actually playing around with the option, and learning that I could listen to Japanese voice actors

instead of the horrendous dubbed voices. You know, that turned my opinion on its head. And when I got back to playing Sonic Adventure 2 and actually learning how to get all A-Ranks in every single stage, and I only wish that I had actually gotten into the Chow raising because I still have not unlocked the Green Hill Zone for that game, but I definitely would like to at some point. But, yeah, I got to say that just learning the mechanics of that game

and how you're actually kind of supposed to play it in this way to get the best ranks on all the stages, that's what really got me to appreciate that game. So I got to go with that one. All right, well, thank you for your kind of. because that makes up for our Sonic 2, Sonic Adventure 2 episode that people are very angry about still.

But there's also a line over there. We have just another two minutes. Oh, yes. Hey, Jeremy. I just want to say I've been listening to Retro Naut since back in the Zip Davis won up days, and thanks for coming to Pax. You're welcome.

So just a couple quick hot takes here. We're talking about Dreamcast being ahead of its time, and I remember Metropolis Street Racer, which later went on I think it was bizarre creations and they went on to make Project Gotham which was launched game on 360.

Anyways, if we remember if you had the Dreamcasts attached to a cable attached to the internet it would actually ping the location on the map of where your track was and then it would be either daytime

or nighttime or dawn depending on what time it was in real time which I thought was pretty interesting as well. Just a couple quick games here that haven't been brought up yet actually just one per person let's move on okay one more question time time for one more question sure and there's a guy behind you wearing a dreamcast shirt so I really feel like we need

to get his say here but thank you for coming out and listening all right I'll keep it quick just so we can hopefully get to others but thanks again for the curated list I thought you guys covered everything pretty good there were just a couple things I wanted to touch on one being fantasy star online I was one of those people that lost a year of my life to that game and I don't regret it at all. I had an Earthlink account set up because I could not find the broadband modem, so I had dial-up just for that for a year at my apartment, and I was always envious of my friends playing EverQuest, and I felt like I got that with Fantasy Star Online, and the community I thought was great as well. Last thing really quick was also virtual on, Oratorio

Tangram. It was incredible, and, you know, the whole twin sticks debacle aside, I was able to get a link cable and I had so many memories of my friends getting together, two TVs, two Twin Sticks, two Dreamcasts, linking everything together and just having a great time with that as a fighting game. I'm glad you brought up the Twin Sticks because that was one of the weird controllers

and that was the game that used them. I think we are out of time, so I'm sorry guys, we can't take your questions, but thanks everyone who came out to this panel and listened to us Yameron for an hour about Dreamcast. Thank you Chris Morgan and Mike for sharing your thoughts and memories.

Thank you for having us. You know,