Talk:Dreamcast

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  1. /Archive 1 - 2006 and earlier

Contents

[edit] Links

Fixed the link to Sega Japan's Dreamcast Database and removed the link to IGN. IGN is mentioned (and linked!) within the article at least once. In addition, IGN 1. isn't up-to-date in terms of recent developments regarding the hardware nor the community and 2. also a commercial service.

Thus I replaced the link to IGN with one to www.dreamcast-scene.com, a free WIKI project with its focus set on everything DC.

- DCEvoCE 12:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] KallistiOS and Free Software

I rewrote a good bit of "The return of the Dreamcast" to add more info about KallistiOS. Linux, Net-BSD and QNX are great projects, but the main software used for hobbyist development is KallistiOS which (other than the mentioned Windows CE SDK) enables programmers to release perfectly legal open source software and even commercial products without a license by Sega. I tried to reflect that with my additions.

- DCEvoCE 12:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Removal of Trivia section

I have removed the trivia section. It has become 'In Popular Culture', in which I have left the information about the Dreamcast appearing on various TV shows, etc.

The information on the reset method has been moved to 'Hardware' and the rumoured Metal Gear Solid port info has been moved to 'Games' and clarified.

Blue Swirl 21:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reading of Japanese name

I noticed the difference between the romaji reading and the katakana for the name of the Dreamcast. I'm interested in this because every Japanese person that I know pronounces it as doriimukasuto but the official name is doriimukyasuto. I changed the romaji to reflect the katakana given. Darryl L James 00:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] We are way off!

I found a site called http://www.vgcharts.org they look at companys monthly reports and tally up their sales figures. For games like Shenmue and Sonic Adventure we are off by 300 000 to even 1 million if I read it right! Check it out, its a pretty relyable soruce and get back to us if you think we should put some info in. --Elven6 16:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

It's particularly unreliable, thank you. - A Link to the Past (talk) 22:36, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent Games Outside Japan?

There is a lot of information here about these recent games, Last Hope and the like, but no mention of any of them (DC versions) being available somewhere other than Japan. This is also true for the game's own articles. Could anyone tell me if they are available in the UK, US or EU, and if so, either update this page or the games own pages to say so?? Most of our users aren't from Japan, so this would be useful info to have. Tom walker 10:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Last Hope is officially available to everyone and runs on any Dreamcast. The other games are Japanese-only and run only on Japanese machines. There's not much practical difference, since you can't go into a store and buy Last Hope--pretty much only importers will carry it anyway--and it's easy enough to play a Japanese game with a boot disk. Ken Arromdee 08:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nintendo 63

under the selected home game consoles section that lists all the generations and whatnot the nintendo 64 is listed as nintendo 63. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Yarbles75 (talk • contribs) 03:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Treamcast might infringe Sega's rights

Article says: "In reality, this system is no different from a Dreamcast pre-modified with a third party shell, as the system's internals still use first party hardware, and the only modifications are the outside casing and internal sound and video adjustments."

This is not quite correct. It has a region check removed, so that U.S. games can run on it, which implies that they probably have modified the BIOS. --IlyaMinkov 03:26, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: Actually, this sort of multiregion modification can be done without modifying the bios through hardware. I am not sure that this is what was done on the Treamcast, but given the rest of the systems functionality, it would seem likely. 128.237.236.117 18:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)Quzar

[edit] The DreamCast Symbol

Why is the Symbol on the Article blue? I've never seen a dreamcast with this blue icon... Isn't it supposed to be Orange? Or is my Dreamcast Wrong? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Biggman15 (talk • contribs) 05:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

North America and Japan had Orange while Europe had Blue, I dunno why they changed the pictures though. --Elven6 16:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, So it was at least an official color... Then I'm not complaining anymore...--Biggman15 03:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I restored the previous logo picture since both North America and Japan used the orange one. The older picture of the system itself had both logos, so that picture was a nice compromise. --Jtalledo (talk) 21:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I heard that they changed it to blue for europe because of copyright reasons. everything's copyrighted these days...--67.84.12.248 01:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The orange logo was similar to a German telecom company's logo. Blue Swirl 00:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC) should it also be noted the simalaits of the dreamcast remotes and the x-box remotes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.164.44 (talk) 18:23, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

only partially true. it wasn't a telecom company, but the book company "tivola". they have a swirl as logo, even though it's more red-ish, it looks pretty similar to the one sega used. check it out at www.tivola.de --Xiaopang 12:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Semi Protect

Looking through the history, it seems to me this article needs to be semi protected. Any thoughts? Tom walker 22:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so ... seems to be pretty stable to me. SpanKY 07:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Well... I'm just thinking 9 IP adress edits reverted in just over a week... I'll keep an eye on it for now, it may have stopped, I'll say here if it continues to be a problem. Tom walker 15:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

128.2.101.22 (talk) 13:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)== "The doomed console" ==

At the end of the first paragraph of "History" section, it says:

The Saturn is not our future" and referred to the doomed console as "the stillbirth".

I think it is ambiguous. Which one was the doomed console? Saturn or Dreamcast? Could someone please clarify? --CrazyTerabyte 20:58, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

It seems obvious to me that 'doomed console' refers to the saturn. I would comment though, that these quotes have no sourcing, and a reference should be found for these statements. 128.2.101.22 (talk) 13:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need for a new section: system architecture

There doesn't seem to be much information on the system's architecture. There is one vague reference to Windows CE. Given that a huge part of the failure of the Saturn was arguably due to its rushed and messy architecture, it would be good to have more info on this side of things for the Dreamcast article.

[edit] Need atlas.

Hmmm. Apart from appearing a little biased, the following statement is geographically flawed.

"Marketing in European countries was done somewhat poorly (for example, Sega Australia's OIC, preferred to pay himself and his lacky's 3/4 of the budget to sit around and drink coffee, therefore, leaving a tiny amount to advertise with) ..."

James (from Australia)

11:38, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of production and end of production numbers

These lines were removed due to not be verifiable, and highly questionable.

"By the time Sega decided to cease development of Dreamcast, about 10 million consoles had been manufactured. While this number may seem impressive, more Dreamcast systems were sitting unsold in warehouses, retail and distribution channels at the time than had actually been sold to the public."

This is quite false.

http://dreamcast.ign.com/articles/090/090862p1.html

In addition to stating the reasons for discontinuance (which makes it quite a good source for those wishing to edit the article further), the link above, which quotes Sega of Japan officials, states that Sega had a surplus of 2 million units.

http://dreamcast.ign.com/articles/090/090934p1.html

This link, from a few days later, gives the exact number of surplus units for each region as follows:

280,000 in Japan 1.2 million in US/North America 460,000 in Europe 90,000 in Asia Total: 2,030,000 units.

It also gives the number of sales from that period, which correspond to about double what the left over surplus was (in effect, Sega sold a little over half of what they had expected).

http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/technology/2000/0331/tech.games.html

That link above states that Sega had sold less than 5 million units. While I don't know if that's world-wide or US only, regardless it only would represent sales up to March 31, 2000 (when the article was published). So that's not representing however many million or couple of million Sega sold in the interim from March 31,2000 to the end of Dec. of that year (as Sega at the end of Jan. 2001 officially announced they were going to discontinue the unit).

Anyway, all of that is why I deleted the statement in the wiki article. In addition to the statement in the wiki not being verified, the evidence points to it actually being false. There was no way that there were 3 or 4 million or so units sitting on store shelves in addition to the 2 or so million Sega had in warehouse surplus (again, 5 million units had already been sold up to that point, and even then 5 million may be a low projection). Why do I state that? Simple: those units that Sega had gotten rid of were shipped to retailers, and retailers wouldn't order that many if millions more were sitting on their shelves.

--Therealspiffyone 22:02, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Final price point changed

The final official price point for Dreamcast was $49.99, not $39.99.

--Therealspiffyone 22:05, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ""explosion"

Was their any truth to the rumor that several Dreamcasts with manufacturing defects can explode? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.19.105.251 (talk • contribs).

[edit] I made a mistake in my editing summary

My summary states that I "reverted vandalisms by 86.11.134.16". That was a mistake I made. I actually resumed the last correct version by 86.11.134.16, and reverted the vandalism by 24.147.197.98. Devil Master 16:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Running burned games

How do you run a game such as Half Life? My dreamcast, unmodded, will not accept the CD-R with the Dreamcast version of Half Life on it.  :/ 72.192.54.23 21:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

What exactly does this have to do with the article? Devil Master 11:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Dreamcast 2

' Hello, do you people know if there were pkans for a DC2? I remember a long time ago a sign in the sega website saying "what about a dreamcast 2?" but i do not remember any details, or if it really referred to a next console or just some kind of advertisement. Thanx, ~Daniel32708 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Daniel32708 (talk • contribs) 08:30, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Famed WORKING Zip Drive in Public Hands!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250163670619

This user claims to have a working Zip drive that he is selling, with pictures and all, it seems fasinating, if the modder community gets their hands on it, then they could probably replicate it! So how do we immortalize this in the article? Since it is a ebay page and it will disaper! --Elven6 20:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too many codenames?

The codenames at the beginning of the article are beginning to get excessive and distracting. I think they should be moved to somewhere else in the article or deleted. Theswillman 04:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Repair" needs sorting (or removing)

Do Sega repair consoles? Until recently it said

Even though Sega has discontinued the repairing of Dreamcast and Saturn consoles, and stopped production…

and then an anon changed it to

People still can get their Dreamcast fixed by SEGA. It costs $55 and as of Oct 5th 2007 Sega still repairs Dreamcasts. They stopped production…

One of these is wrong, and in any case the fact needs a reference. I removed it to here until it's sorted.

By the way, the anon's is perhaps correct: I am nearly convinced by the sheer intellectual force of his/her argument (from my talk page):

SEGA STILL REPAIRS DREAMCASTS I JUST HAD MINE REPAIRED THIS FRICKEN MONTH.SO STOP CHANGING THE DREAMCAST THING RETARD

but I don't think this counts as a verifiable reference! --RobertG ♬ talk 07:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Copying Section

first of all i think that this section is quite useless as it explains nothing and is full of inaccurate statements. the writing style is also not worthy of keeping this section. anyway, i deleted the second half that was "explaining" stuff about d2. first of all it doesn't make sense to single out one specific game, because there were lots of games out there, that used the gd-rom to its full extent and second of all, d2 is not one of those. only one of the four discs really maxes out the gd-rom, while all others still leave plenty of space on the disc. also a gd-rom doesn't hold 1.1GB as mentioned in that section, but 984MB max. whoever wrote that part about d2 most likely just downloaded a rip of it and drew his own conclusions. something like that should stay out of wikipedia --Xiaopang 16:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

in retrospect, i also deleted the middle part. someone started with "Prior to the discovery of the swap file..", which doesn't make sense at all, because the ominous "swap file" wasn't mentioned and explained beforehand, so i deleted it. also, there is no swap file. apparently the writer means dummy-files, but those have nothing to do with making multi-disc-games swappable. again, imo this has nothing to do with this dreamcast article and should stay out. so far the copying section was nothing more than a place to spread wrong facts and urban myths about rips. the short first part that remains needs further explanation, because it doesn't make much sense if you don't really know anything about booting dreamcast games. again, explaining something like this can't be the goal of an encyclopedia... --Xiaopang 16:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Backwards Compatibility?

Did the Dreamcast have any backwards compatibility features with Sega CD or Saturn games? This may be a good addition to the article, whether it did or didn't. Number3son (talk) 20:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The graphics hardware (i.e., CLX2) was not designed to have backwards compatibility for Sega CD or Saturn games. Simon Fenney (talk) 13:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dreamcast in Europe

I believe that this section is quite subjective and should be removed

"Some important games also lacked European releases. Many important titles were never released outside of Japan, and many were hard to find without importing them to the United Kingdom. Sega put most of its efforts into fighting the console war in the U.S., disregarding European markets."

every console under the sun had games that never got European releases, and this was not a big issue for the Dreamcast, i can personally think of only two major games that reached America, but missed Europe, whereas, i can think of 5 major games which reached Europe but missed America (Shenmue 2, Headhunter, Fighting Vipers 2, Rez, Evil Twin) also, some major games, such as Metropolis street racer, were actually released earlier in Europe. the fact that Sega took the time to fix the European PAL display problem, makes me wonder where the "disregarding European markets" statement comes from. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.243.181 (talk) 03:37, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

unless someone gives me a valid reason otherwise i am going to delete this section on disregarding European markets, which, at best has no supporting evidence, and at worst could well be the opposite of the truth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.251.97 (talk) 00:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

If anything there should be a note of the odd treatment across markets. As discussed, there were many games of Japanese origin that were released in only one of the two (North American and European) markets, with seemingly no rationale behind it. The evidence doesn't suggest a strong bias (relative to other games companies/systems) either way, but it also doesn't indicate a treatment that is in concert with standard practices. More research may be merited. 128.2.101.22 (talk) 13:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is the katakana correct?

The article states that the katakana for Dreamcast is ドリームキャスト (dorimukyasuto), but I saw this commercial on Youtube, and the Japanese pronunciation sounds a lot more like ジンカ (jinka). Is that just the way a Japanese would pronounce "dorimukyasuto" or is the katakana name wrong? Devil Master (talk) 15:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Do you still own a Dreamcast?

I have edited the section as I and many people have reason to beleive that the site is infact not real. Sadly "news sources" such as Kotaku have posted this news, and it's all over Digg.com too. I think someone will need to clean up what I have written as I'm not a Wikipedia editor as such, I just want to clear things up.

On a few forums there's been evidence and talk to suggest that this is all one big scam or hoax.

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17738 http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=180398 http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=85056 http://www.radiosega.net/forum/showthread.php?t=844

The first two have the most details, whilst the second two have less details, I've posted them just incase any future infromation has been posted regarding dreamcast.com

Hopefully things will all become clear and we'll have answers as to who's behind this all.

SegaMark (talk) 03:06, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


I did a whois search for dreamcast.com:

Registrant: SEGA CORPORATION Shoji Takamitsu (Shoji_Takamitsu@sega.co.jp) Haneda 1-2-12, Ohta-ku, Tokyo Tokyo null,1448531 JP Tel. +81.0357367080

Creation Date: 12-Jun-2005 Expiration Date: 12-Jun-2008

Add to that the following page: http://www.dreamcast.com/index_hard.html and it looks pretty official to me. Keep in mind that Unless someone hacked the official DC site, it's legit. I'm not going to edit your unsourced claims out because I might be accused of vandalism (it has happened before), but I hope you or someone else does because while sites like Kotaku are hardly reliable indeed, this seems pretty damn legit.

EDIT: Doing more research I do admit it's somewhat sketchy and might be a phishing hoax. Who knows.

- 75.4.21.103 (talk) 11:52, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

WHOIS information can easily be faked, the domain has not been owned by Sega by almost three years if you look at it on Archive.org, if you check out the last page of discussion on the Assembler games link in my initial post you'll see some examples. I've been in contact with this host and I'm contacting Sega too, the host is looking into this and I'm waiting for a response from Sega. Pretty much everyone except Kotaku has realised this is a fake site and has edited their stories and removed links now.

(Oops, forgot to login first...)

SegaMark (talk) 23:13, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Hahaha, Kotaku.

Yeah, my apologies for not being as skeptical as I usually am. For those curious about the link I provided, it's simply HTML copied-and-pasted from the official SEGA site. It's no different than hideoblog.com aside the fact that the latter somewhat hints that it's fake by linking to a fansite rather than to official sites.

- 75.4.21.103 (talk) 00:23, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I removed this section a couple days back with the edit summary " rm do you still own a dreamcast section - pure speculation, unreferenced, of questionable encyclopedic merit and WP:NOTNEWS". I do see that the gaming blog circuit has picked up on the story. (See, http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/10/dreamcast-com-converted-into-phishing-scam-sega-warns/) Which sources http://mainichi.jp/enta/mantan/news/20080310mog00m200043000c.html (It's in Japanese) as saying Sega is pursuing ""appropriate measures." Still, the information is just coming out, and I believe the article should refrain from mentioning it until this information is further verified, and an English language response from Sega regarding the matter. AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 14:47, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Online Capabilities

Did the NES and SNES really have online gaming capabilities? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.30.73.69 (talk) 12:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly the place to ask, but the SNES had online services in a couple of forms. There was Satellaview and XBAND and for the Famicom in Japan there was the Famicom MODEM. Not exactly online gaming - but internet connected no less. AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 14:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I asked because the article mentioned it and I found nothing else mentioned about it in my online search. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.30.73.111 (talk) 12:33, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Like many Japanese consoles, ingenious ideas like this never took off or ever launched in either the US or European market. HappyWanderer (talk) 13:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hardware section - trivial information

It struck me as strange that the first paragraph of the "Hardware section" discusses the colour of the "on" lamp and later goes on to talk about the spiral logo!

Surely shouldn't this concentrate on the actual real hardware such as electronics, GDrom unit etc? Simon Fenney (talk) 14:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)