10 years of Dreamcast; the 10 best games.

Sega’s Dreamcast celebrated its 10th Birthday recently so this would seem the perfect time to take a look at ten of the Dreamcast’s best games.

The Dreamcast has always been something of a paradox; a superb gaming machine with great games that was somehow never truly loved until it was dead.

Despite its short life, the Dreamcast is blessed with a fine catalogue of games so picking ten is not going to easy! I’m sure your list may well differ from mine so please do let us know what you think.


10.
Space Channel 5 (Sega/United Game Artists).
Space Channel 5 is a music rhythm game similar in many ways to Parappa the Rapper. Primarily taking control of the sexy Ulala (Space Channel 5’s reporter), you must dance and blast your way through the game in an attempt to beat the Morolians; an alien race forcing everyone to dance against their will.

Packed full of style and humor, the game very much has Mizuguchi’s (Rez/Lumines) style throughout and even Michael Jackson manages to cameo!



9.
Samba De Amigo (Sega/Sonic Team).
Sonic Teams rhythm action game was in many ways the first sign of things to come in the shape of Nintendo’s Wii and it’s no coincidence that the game has also appeared on that platform.

The game came bundled with two hand held maracas which connected to a special sensor bar that plugged into the Dreamcast. Sensors in the bar and on the cords of the maracas could determine the exact position of the maracas when the player held them so if you were instructed to shake the maracas above your head, the software could tell if you doing so.

Samba is great fun to play (I still prefer the Dreamcast version to the Wii’s) and has loads of charm and character as you’d expect from a Sonic Team title. A great family/party game that was rarely put away in our household. It’s just a shame that obtaining the original game with Sega’s maracas is such an expensive affair these days.



8.
Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Capcom).
Capcom’s conversion of their arcade hit is not only one of the Dreamcast's best fighting games; it’s also one of the best Street Fighter games ever. In fact many people still put this game up as THE best Street Fighter game. The Dreamcast played host to the first home version of the game and it is wonderful to play in every respect.



7.
Crazy Taxi (Sega/Hitmaker)
The Dreamcast played host to many of Sega’s arcade game conversions, and Crazy Taxi was one of these which I simply could not put down.

The style, the music (by The Offspring and Bad Religion), the frantic game play (which involves tearing round a city transporting passengers to their destinations), everything about Crazy Taxi just screamed play me.

In many ways time hasn’t been kind to Crazy Taxi as a franchise due to lame ports and sequels, but the Dreamcast's original is still a joy to play and it suits the controls of the Dreamcast’s joypad perfectly.



6.
Skies of Arcadia (Sega/Overworks).
RPG’s were never in great supply on the Dreamcast, especially in the West where the only other RPG release of note was Grandia II.

Despite this lack of content for RPG fans, Sega still managed to deliver this superbly fresh RPG based on Sky Pirates. Using your airship to travel between islands which floated in the air, Skies of Arcadia was a supremely crafted adventure that managed to distinguish itself from its contemporaries and still feels fresh today.



5.
Ikaruga (Treasure).
Only ever released in Japan on the Dreamcast; Ikaruga was Treasures spiritual sequel to its seminal ST-V arcade and Saturn shooter, Radiant Silvergun.

Ported over from the Dreamcast based Sega Naomi arcade hardware, Ikaruga blended manic shooting action with an almost puzzle like quality as players attempted to chain enemies of different colours by changing the polarity of the main craft.

Featuring beautiful graphics and masterful game play, Ikaruga quickly became one of the Dreamcast’s most imported games. Whilst both the later Gamecube and XBLA conversions are very good, many will argue (myself included) that the best home experience of Ikaruga remains on Dreamcast.



4.
Shenmue (Sega/AM2).
Produced and directed by Sega legend Yu Suzuki (Out Run/Virtua Fighter), Shenmue was probably Sega’s most ambitious Dreamcast game.

The game aimed to give the player total interactivity set in a world that tried to mimic real life as much as possible with its simulation of time, weather and interactivity. It’s not an easy game to get into but its worth the effort as the player is rewarded with a world quite like any other produced at the time and graphics that really did push the Dreamcast.

Shenmue’s budget and ambition was huge and this is reflected in every aspect of the game. A classic.



3.
Jet Set Radio (Sega/Smilebit).
In many ways the Dreamcast showcased Sega at its creative best. Much like Shenmue, Jet Set Radio showcased Sega’s creative talent at its very best.

The game pioneered cel-shaded graphics and its style was completely unique at the time. The games premise centre’s around roller blading graffiti gangs in Tokyo; the player skating round avoiding trouble, racing and tagging various objects.

On paper Jet Set Radio shouldn’t be my type of game and yet it is an utter joy to play and still unique in its blend of style and game play. It also spawned a superb sequel called Jet Set Radio Future (one of my favorite games of all time) which was released on Microsoft’s Xbox console and both games feature superb soundtracks (the soundtrack to JSRF is the only game soundtrack I have ever brought!).



2.
Soul Calibur (Namco).
To this day I’ll never understand why Soul Calibur, a launch title for the Dreamcast, never propelled sales of the console into the stratosphere. Was it the poor marketing by Sega? Perhaps people never really saw it promoted? Whatever it was, this game should have shown the masses what the Dreamcast was truly capable of.

At the time, Soul Calibur looked simply amazing (and to be fair it still does) and it played beautifully. Had this been put next to a Playstation running Tekken in stores up and down the country, the Dreamcast may have had a different fate

The game came with a VGA option and using this option produced mind blowingly sharp visuals. So good that I still play this today Soul Calibur is a masterful piece of programming by Namco.



1.
Rez (Sega/United Game Artists).
Ok, ok – this is a biased choice! Rez is one of my favorite games ever and I’ll play Mizuguchi’s hypnotic masterpiece as long as I’m still a gamer. Probably beyond that if it’s possible!

At its most basic Rez is simply an on-rails shooter; you move the firing reticule around the screen and shoot enemies. You can collect upgrades that allow your character (essentially a hacker avatar) to evolve (take more hits) and power ups that temporarily take out all the enemies for you, kind of like an auto pilot. And that’s it, that's literally is all you do.

But of course Rez is so much more. The sound effects (for example when an enemy is destroyed) are essentially portions of electronic music; string together a few kills and your ears will be greeted by the sounds of drums and trills which blend in with the games ever evolving beat.

The visuals are striking and unique, somewhat a cross between a game and a music visualizer. Each part of Rez, the visuals, the music, the sound; blends in together to form part of a truly hypnotic and mesmerizing experience.

It’s not an easy game to describe, and at its core it is simplistic. But sit yourself in a darkened room, turn up the volume and let your mind immerse itself in its vibrant world and you’ll find a gaming experience quite like any other.

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Next-Gen? Really? Then sort the damn controllers out!

Last night I fired up Ikaruga on XBL Arcade. I’ve played the game to death before on both the Dreamcast and the Cube/Wii but I felt like a blast and grabbing a couple of achievements too. Big mistake.

20 minutes later and I am swearing at the screen, wondering if it would survive a Nana Shoryuken. For real.

You see I didn’t get my achievements. First time round I barely cleared stage 1. And why? Because of the bloody 360 controller.

Analogue sticks just don’t cut it for careful placement of your ship in Ikaruga, it’s just not precise enough. When I tap left I want to move left a tad, not jolt miles left and a bit down.



No problem, use the D-Pad I thought. After all, D-Pads and old skool style games usually go well together. Right? No! Because the D-Pad on the 360 pad would make you think that we’ve gone backwards since the days of the SNES and the Mega Drive. To put it bluntly, it’s crap.

Now I know that in an ideal world I’d have an Arcade Stick plugged in the 360 and none of the above issues would matter. I’d be happy blasting, satisfied that when my craft explodes it’s because I screwed up. And probably because my reflexes and hand/eye co-ordination are not quite as good as they used to be.

Problem is I don’t have an Arcade Stick for the 360. I have a few dotting around for various systems but in the case of the 360 they are only going to be useful for pretending to play in attract mode.

Ironically if I could have used the PS3 pad I’d have probably been ok since the D-Pad on it isn’t too bad. With that it’s just the sticks and triggers that suck (although some aftermarket add on trigger extensions have helped with one of the issues I have with that pad). But of course, despite the fact it has a USB lead, I can’t plug it into my 360.

And here lies my issue. Games consoles have come a long way since the days of the SNES, Mega Drive et all. The 360 that survives (just!) under my desk can stream things from my PC, play online, and has USB ports. The PS3 in my living room can take keyboards and USB sticks because it too has USB ports. But I can’t interchange my pads to my liking. Even if I buy a third party 360 Arcade Stick, chances are it won’t work on the PS3 and I’ll be damned if I’ll buy a stick for each console. I've done that too many times in the past as it is.

Thing is, now that modern consoles support and use USB, why the bloody hell can’t we have a standardised controller format? Why can’t the consumer just buy one style of specialist controller instead of having to potentially buy two or three?

If I want to use the FPS superior 360 pad on the PS3, let me! What’s the problem if I want the PS3 D-Pad on my old skool style XBL Arcade games? Why cant’ I have an Arcade Stick for SF IV that works on both machines? Would it really hurt that much?

I’m not saying each machine shouldn’t have its own controller design, but seriously the basic functions are the same, let me choose whose I want to buy, stop forcing me to compromise my gameplay or have more controllers clogging my living space up than I have games!

Because ultimately that’s the choice you get – compromised gameplay or spending more money than is reasonable on suitable control equipment. And that’s not Next Gen, its last gen ideas from companies that still can’t think outside the box.

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