Look, it’s the
hardware. No, seriously, look at it. Compact, solidly built, well
designed, and for its time, powerful too. Care and thought were given
as to what the Dreamcast should be, how it should achieve that and
how it would do so whilst being as unobtrusive as possible. Not much
bigger than the disc drive itself, four controller ports (for when
multiplayer meant sitting in the same room as the other players – I
know, how quaint!), and a quiet, yet reassuring, fan. The whole
package just works, even after more than twenty years since its
release. You don’t see the neat cooling system for the processor,
nor the power supply that is built into the console itself, or
the modem that promised (but didn’t quite deliver) online play.
Nope, the Dreamcast is surely the ultimate in 1990’s console
design. It is a half way house between the toy-like Nintendo’s,
Sega’s Megadrive and the original PlayStation that preceded it, and
the growing bulk that epitomised the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s
original X-Box. In the following console generations, only Nintendo
continued the playful console design with the Gamecube, Wii and Wii
U. For me though, the Dreamcast is style and power in a perfect design.
Of course, it’s
more than just the box. There is the controller too. After the rather
small PlayStation pad and the ergonomic challenge that was the N64’s
pad (honestly, going back to that after twenty years revealed great
muscle memory and tremendous hand cramp!), the Dreamcast's controller is ergonomically excellent. Big enough to fill your hand
yet light enough not to become a nuisance over a long gaming session,
the pad allows you to comfortably grip the outside edges whilst your
index fingers fall neatly onto the left and right triggers. The
analogue stick is balanced just about right, with less give than the
PlayStation’s woeful effort (indeed, I have never enjoyed using the
official PS controllers because of the feel of the sticks) and the D-pad is clicky
without feeling stiff. It’s not perfect (nothing is), and without
any Visual Memory Units/Memory Cards in place, it can feel too light
and insubstantial. That also betrays the slightly too-cheap plastic
used in the construction, with the nagging fear that the analogue
stick and triggers might not stand up to too much use but I can
honestly say I’ve not had a DC pad fail on me yet. The connecting
cable is also a bit of a nuisance, stick out of the bottom of the pad
rather that the top which would be facing the console. Finally, the
era of the Dreamcast betrays the early days of 3D gaming, equipped with only
one stick: first-person shooters in particularly fare poorly against
the twin stick pads of the PlayStation and X-Box.
Enough about the
hardware. What about the games? After all, software sells hardware,
and it’s here that the Dreamcast proved itself. From the jaunty
playfulness of the menu screens – so different from Sony’s and
Microsoft’s more sombre experiences, to the half decent (for its
time) web browser, the initial user experience is one of fun. I have
fond memories of using the Dreamcast’s internet browser long before
I could afford a decent PC but having said that, harking back to a
56.6k modem and a 14 inch CRT television is probably not a good thing
in this day and age.
On to games then,
and I’d like to focus on just three titles. Yeah, I know, there
were dozens of decent, and more than a few great, titles for the
Dreamcast but these three stick with me now and have the added
benefit of being system exclusives, at least until the Dreamcast was
retired, when two were ported to the PlayStation 2 and the third was
improved in a spiritual sequel on the X-Box. They show what the
Dreamcast was capable of and why it was such a generational leap
ahead of the PlayStation and N64, even giving the PS2 a great run for
its money.
First up, Metropolis
Street Racer. “It’s not about how fast you drive. It’s about
how you drive fast.” Never has a tag line described a game this
perfectly. That it appears at the end of a ballsy intro sequence that
mixes real world driving and in game clips shows straight away that
the developers were aiming for something special. A real world racing
game with some nice arcade flourishes, MSR lived and died by its
Kudos system. Set in, for the time, stellar recreations of London,
Tokyo and San Francisco, MSR puts you behind the wheel of dozens of
real-life vehicles and inventive tracks, and dares you to have fun.
Using the Dreamcast’s clock to provide real-time day/night cycles
adds a touch more realism and, whilst the handling of each vehicle is
mostly realistic, the game never forgets that you’re supposed to
show how well you can drive. It can seem a little unforgiving to
modern day gamers but then challenge was always part of the fun.
True, the cityscapes are a little flat, but the sheer amount of
texture work that was put into MSR is astounding and, compared to
previous gen titles, looks amazing. Hell, even the PS2 struggled to
offer something as visually exact. But what really does it for me is
the soundtrack. Written by Richard Jacques, each track nicely takes
the piss out of its respective genre and to this day, I still think
of MSR whenever I hear Summertime by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh
Prince – the mock song in MSR is that good. If ever a single
soundtrack demonstrated a composer’s talent, MSR’s does it for
Jacques, and there is more from him later on. MSR’s developer,
Bizarre Creations got the template so right that once the Dreamcast
was discontinued, they created Project Gotham Racing for the X-Box.
Pretty much an updated MSR, it did well enough to spawn three
increasingly good sequels, this time with licensed music (I
discovered Spanish industrial metal band Freak XXI purely through
their contribution to PGR3). Naturally, the PGR series expanded the number
of cities, with Edinburgh, New York, Sydney, Las Vegas, the
Nurburgring, Moscow and Quebec City being featured in later titles. One of the cool things in PGR2 was the real-world shop
fronts in Edinburgh, to the point where I could stop outside the
in-game Edinburgh store of my then employer and see what mobile phone
deal was being advertised (in a very pixelated way, a Nokia 8310). The thing is,
without MSR, that would never have happened and it’s MSR that is
the star here. Demonstrating the true graphical capabilities of the
Dreamcast and proving to all and sundry that the generation of the
PlayStation and N64 had truly ended, MSR may have been matched but never bettered.
Headhunter received
some, unwarranted in my view, comparisons to the seminal Metal Gear
Solid, upon its release. With great stealth mechanics and some neat
VR training missions, you may be forgiven for comparing the two
titles. However, Headhunter was tonally a different beast, yet when it
failed to match these preconceptions, the reception from gamers
turned a little sour which is grossly unfair on Headhunter, in a
similar vein to In Cold Blood on the PlayStation (a lesser known
classic from Revolution Software), which was also given an MGS
comparison, but that’s for another post. What you got with
Headhunter was an accomplished third-person stealth action title that
offered solid gun play, great game design and a polished presentation
that recalls the best of Paul Verhoeven. You play Jack Wade, the
titular headhunter tasked with solving the murder of his boss and unraveling a conspiracy regarding organ harvesting and betrayal. The
game switches between on-foot sections and a marvelous motorbike
traversal system that really warrants a game all on its own. What
really lifts it though is the live action newsroom sequences
delivered in a superbly mocking and cynical style, tongue firmly in
cheek and knowingly winking at the audience like a signal lamp with a
stutter. Topping all of that is the score, another tour-de-force by
Richard Jacques. Sweeping and majestic where needed, intense and
heart pounding in action sequences, Jacques gives Headhunter the
cinematic polish it so richly deserves. Challenging and thoughtful in
equal measure, Headhunter could not have been accomplished on any
earlier hardware and only the lack of a second analogue stick makes
the controls a little unwieldy. Ported to the PS2, which also
received a less that stellar sequel (which in itself saw an X-Box
release), I still think Headhunter stands up to this day and if you
want to play it, try the Dreamcast original if you can.
Finally, we have Fur
Fighters. Cartoon animals, all out gun play and violence. A lovely
mix, I am sure you’ll agree. Fur Fighters was developed by Bizarre
Creations and offers a third-person shooter with a dose of on the
nose humour as you take turns as one of the Fur Fighter team out to rescue
your children who have been kidnapped by the evil General Viggo.
Bizarre Creations were on a roll during this period of their
existence and FF confirms that they were more than just a racing game
studio (their later X-Box 360 title, The Club is also a forgotten
gem). The cartoon nature of the game is handled well and the
environments hark to the best of 3D platformers with added weapons.
That impression is added to by the nonsensical nature of the
character voices, a trait that Rare cornered the market with in
titles such as Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie. Whether you like that
style is down to personal choice and I must admit that I find it more
than a little tiresome after a short while. The worst I can say about
the game is that the controls are a smidge clunky, once again due to
the lack of a second analogue stick on the controller. Fur Fighters
filled a niche on the Dreamcast and received a PS2 port which added
cel-shading to the graphics and proper voice acting. These weren’t
entirely successful and the title just seemed to disappear among the crowd on that platform, which is a shame. It does take a decent
amount of effort to complete but once you do, you’ll have
accomplished a great deal of puzzle solving and seen every animal
related joke under the sun, but the main thing is you’ll have had
fun doing it. This stood out on the DC and remains a great game to
this day.
So there are just
three of the numerous titles that show the Dreamcast for what it was, a great games
console. Of course, there were many more: Shenmue 1 and 2, Wild
Metal, Confidential Mission, Typing of the Dead, Quake 3, Hidden and
Dangerous, Shadow Man, MDK2, and Toy Commander are just some that I
owned back in the day, and each was a joy to play. I’ll be honest
and admit I never used the online play facility, nor were the other
three controller ports used – I was, and am to this day, a
primarily solo games player, Mario Kart with my good lady being the
exception.
I still have a
Dreamcast. Not the original system from 1999, but a second-hand one
from an excellent local games store, Games Galaxy. For a very decent
price, I picked up the machine, Headhunter and Crazy Taxi and, let’s
be clear, could have spent a whole lot more, especially when I saw
the Neo Geo, Super Famicom and PC Engine range they offered. Having
such a shop just a couple of miles away that also offers a great
variety of current gen titles is a wonderful thing and if you’re
ever in the north-east of England, I heartily recommend detouring to
Consett and perusing their stock. Their Facebook page is here so you
can see what I am talking about and if you do go, the owner will be
more than happy to oblige if he can.
I’ll slowly
increase my DC software collection as time and funds permit and I can
certainly see quite a little collection forming as time goes by. I
just need to add a VGA or HDMI adapter to improve the video quality
and truly see what 640x480 should look like. Although twenty
years old, there is plenty of life left in the Dreamcast and it
remains one of my favourite systems to this day and that would be purely down to the games mentioned above. They were genuinely a generation ahead of previous systems and it took later rivals a while to match what Sega had achieved. Now if only Sega
would get round to releasing a Dreamcast Mini...
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