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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Digital distribution to kill future classics?

Digitally downloading your games is a convenient and often cheaper method of building your games collection. The games are usually automatically patched, the ’stores’ never close and they can deliver your chosen game (more or less) there and then.

The lack of packaging probably helps the environment and certainly saves on shelf space; if my house is anything close to normal for a gamer then for many of us there is a constant battle on the shelves between games, movies and music who do not wish their physical selves to be re-located to the darkness that is the bottom drawer.
The major bonus of digital downloads for me though, is that it has allowed a whole series of smaller titles to rise; games that would have struggled within the normal channels are thriving as digital only releases. These titles are spanning everything from traditional bedroom coded projects, publisher back catalogue revamps, right up to the bigger budget exclusives such as the recently released Shadow Complex. Arguably we’ve never had it so good!

But the digital distribution model does concern me a great deal. Because as much as I’m enjoying the benefits, I can’t help but worry about the future pitfalls.


Some of my favourite games recently (Shadow Complex and Rez HD immediately spring to mind) have been exclusively available via the download model. These are games which, if they had of existed on physical media would have taken up the ‘premium space’ on my shelves and relegated a couple of lesser titles to the tomb which is the drawer.

They are both games that I will return to regularly and both are titles I could see myself revisiting in years to come (perhaps more so with Rez HD because of the games nature). The question that irks me though is will I always be able to return to them?

Because the media is digital I am very much reliant on the continued support (in this example) of Microsoft and it’s Xbox Live Arcade service.

If my game corrupts or if I change my console, it’s easy enough to re-download my games. If I run out of space on my HDD I can temporarily delete a few games and re-download them later. But what happens when that service is no longer there?

Console life cycles vary, but on average a system tends to remain current for around 6 years before it begins to fade into obscurity. Sure some systems last longer (PS2) and some shorter (Dreamcast/Xbox) but eventually they will naturally die in terms of availability. And when that happens the support of both the manufacturer and the various publishers dies too.

With physical media, your game is for the most part safe. It does not die when the support dies, at least not it it’s well looked after. Many gamers continue to play their classic games from the very dawn of gaming’s short history.

Dead consoles can be replaced via 2nd hand sources such as eBay or the local boot sale as can any poorly looked after games that have become damaged. Ultimately, if you loved a game from yesteryear, it’s simple enough on the whole to play it today.

The same principles however do not apply to the download era. Once Xbox 720 and PS4 launch, the services provided to PS3 and 360 owners will gradually decline and eventually cease. Suddenly the security of the re-download feature will become redundant. Will this mean that your much loved games are simply living on borrowed time?

From a personal view, this uncertainty bothers me because I can’t imagine the possibility of some of my favourite games being permanently resigned to fond memories. I want to be able to play these games for as long as I’m a gamer, I want to introduce these future classics to the next generation.

We are a completely different model to other media types; games are always based on specific hardware formats, and this is where gaming digital content differs so much from other types of entertainment such as movies and music.

So what happens? Emulation is one answer but it is far from ideal. There’s no doubt we are spoilt with the excellent emulators that already exist but as systems become more complex, can we really expect these part time non profit coders to keep up?

Even today, there isn’t a 100% perfect emulator for the Dreamcast despite the fact the system is over 10 years old and ‘died’ young. Sega themselves couldn’t emulate the Saturn and so eventually acquired the Giri Giri emulator, itself not perfect and now ironically abandoned. And besides, if you ‘own’ the game, you surely will want to play it on its original hardware where possible.

In some cases it may be possible to back up the games to DVD/CD, and certainly it is possible with the 360 to do this but it does require a fair amount of know how. On top of that your games are tied to your Live account, and of course there’s no guarantee that in future these accounts will operate in the same manner or for that matter, exist at all.

So are we doomed to losing our favourites? It’s certainly going to be an interesting time when the new consoles hit; I just hope that it doesn’t prove to be some kind of Digital D-Day.

In the meantime all eyes are firmly on the PSP Go’s download only model. Just don’t get too attached to your games eh?

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