Dreamcast

Sega Dreamcast

NTSC Dreamcast with PAL controller and VMU
Manufacturer	Sega
Type	Video game console
Generation	Sixth generation era
Retail availability	JP November 27, 1998 NA September 9, 1999 EU September 14, 1999 AUS September 14, 1999 PAL December 3, 1999
Discontinued	2001
Units sold	10.6 million[1][2]
Media	CD, 1.2 GB GD-ROM
CPU	200 MHz Hitachi SH4 RISC
Storage capacity	VMU, Nexus Memory Card, Zip Drive (unreleased)
Graphics	100 MHz PowerVR2 CLX2
Online services	SegaNet, Dreamarena
Best-selling game	Sonic Adventure, 2.5 million (as of June 2006)[3]
Predecessor	Sega Saturn

The Dreamcast (Japanese: ドリームキャスト Dorīmukyasuto^?) is a video game console made by Sega, and is the successor to the Sega Saturn. The Dreamcast was the first entry in the sixth generation of video game consoles and was released in late 1998, before its contemporaries — Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube.

Sega discontinued the Dreamcast in North America in March 2001 and withdrew entirely from the console hardware business, making it the company's last console. However, support of the system continued in Europe and Oceania until the end of 2002, as well as in Japan, where consoles were still sold until 2006 and new licensed games continued to be released.

According to Bernie Stolar, former President and CEO of Sega of America, the Dreamcast was discontinued because the new chairman of Sega wanted the company to focus on software.^[4]

Despite its short lifespan, the Dreamcast was widely hailed as ahead of its time, and is still held in high regard for pioneering online console gaming—it was the first console to include a built-in modem and Internet support for online play.^[5][6] As of 2010, the console is still supported through various homebrew video game releases.

History

In 1997, the Sega Saturn was struggling in North America, and Sega of America president Bernie Stolar was pressed by Sega's Japanese headquarters to develop a new platform. Two competing teams were tasked with developing the console–a skunkworks group headed by IBM researcher Tatsuo Yamamoto and another team led by Sega hardware engineer Hideki Sato.

Sato and his group chose the Hitachi SH4 processor architecture and the VideoLogic PowerVR2 graphics processor for their prototype. Yamamoto and his Skunkworks group also opted for the SH4, but with 3dfx hardware. Initially, Sega decided to use Yamamoto's design and suggested to 3Dfx that they would be using their hardware in the upcoming console, but Sega later opted to use the PowerVR hardware of Sato's design. This was attributed to 3Dfx leaking details and technical specifications of the then-secret Dreamcast project when declaring their Initial Public Offering^[7] in June 1997 a move which readers on Gamespy.com named one of the dumbest mistakes in video game history.^[8] Sega's shift in design prompted a lawsuit by 3dfx that was eventually settled.^{[9][10][11][12]}

With Sega's machine, no operating system resides in the device until it is loaded in on a disc with each game. The advantage, Sega executives say, is that developers can always ship products that use the version of an operating system with the newest features and performance enhancements. The operating system used by some Dreamcast titles was developed by Microsoft after 2 years of work with Sega. It was an optimized version of Windows CE supporting DirectX. According to Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering Group, "Microsoft had initially wanted Windows CE to be Dreamcast's main operating system. It isn't." ^[13]

Launch

The Dreamcast was released in November 1998 in Japan; on September 9, 1999 in North America and on October 14, 1999 in Europe. Despite problems with the Japan launch,^[6] the system's launch in the United States was successful. In the United States alone, a record 300,000 units^[14] had been pre-ordered^[6] and Sega sold 500,000 consoles in just two weeks (including a record 225,132 sold during the first 24 hours). In fact, due to brisk sales and hardware shortages, Sega was unable to fulfill all of the advance orders. Sega confirmed that it made US$98.4 million on combined hardware and software sales with Dreamcast with its September 9, 1999 launch.^[15] Four days after its launch in the US, Sega stated 372,000 units were sold bringing in US$132 million in sales.^[6]

Launch titles such as Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, Power Stone, and Hydro Thunder helped Dreamcast succeed in the first year.^[16] Sega Sports titles helped fill the void left by a lack of Electronic Arts sports games on the system.^[17] Dreamcast sales grew 156.5% from July 23, 2000 to September 30, 2000 putting Sega ahead of the Nintendo 64 in that period.^[18] However, Sony's launch of the much-hyped PlayStation 2 that year marked the beginning of the end for the Dreamcast.^[19]

End of production

On January 31, 2001, Sega announced that it was discontinuing Dreamcast support by March of that year^[20] . The last North American release was NHL 2K2, which was released in February 2002. With the company announcing no plans to develop a next-generation successor to Dreamcast, this was Sega's last foray into the home console business.

Sega Europe continued to support the Dreamcast till 2003 noteable exclusives include Shenmue 2, Head Hunter and Rez unarguably the highest rated games for the system^[21].

During the following years, unreleased games like Propeller Arena, Hellgate and Half-Life were leaked on the Internet .

Although production of the Dreamcast ended in 2001, Sega of Japan continued selling refurbished systems and releasing new games till 2007. Many of the games were initially developed for Sega's NAOMI arcade hardware, including Sega's final first-party Dreamcast game, Sonic Team's Puyo Puyo Fever, released on February 24, 2004.^[22]

The last Dreamcast units were sold through the Sega Direct division of Japan in early 2006. These refurbished units were bundled with Radilgy,^[22] and a phone card. The last Dreamcast games published by Sega of Japan were the 2007 releases Trigger Heart Exelica and Karous.^[22]

3 other NAOMI games Exzeal, Illmatic Envelope: Illvelo and Mamonoro were supposed to be ported to the Dreamcast, when Sega abruptly decided to discontinue the production of GD-ROM's.^[23]

A method was found for playing Mil-Cd's without any hardware modification and through a free software development kit called KallistiOS, software support of the console continues with homebrew games, emulators for older systems and media players being released for the system. Independent commercial games such as Feet of Fury, Last Hope and DUX have also been released. ^{[24] [25]}

Digital revival

Several Dreamcast emulation projects have also emerged including Chankast and nullDC.

On June 10, 2010, at E3 Sega announced that Dreamcast titles would soon be available on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. The first two titles to be released are Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi.^[26]

To celebrate the announcement Sega distributed Dreamcast themed T-Shirts at their in exchange for fond memories with the system^[27]

Hardware

Internal view of a Dreamcast console including optical drive, power supply, controller ports, and cooling fan

Mainboard of a Dreamcast console.

The system's processor is a 200 MHz SH-4 with an on-die 128-bit vector graphics engine, 360 MIPS and 1.4 GFLOPS (single precision), using the vector graphics engine. The graphics hardware is a PowerVR2 CLX2 chipset, capable of 7.0 million polygons/second peak performance and trilinear filtering. Graphics hardware effects include gouraud shading, z-buffering, anti-aliasing, per-pixel translucency sorting (also known as order independent translucency) and bump mapping. The system supports approximately 16.78 million colors (24-bit) color output and displays interlaced or progressive scan video at 640x480 video resolution.

For sound, the system features a Yamaha AICA Sound Processor with a 32-Bit ARM7 RISC CPU operating at 45 MHz,^[28] 64 channel PCM/ADPCM sampler (4:1 compression), XG MIDI support and 128 step DSP.

The Dreamcast has 16 MB 64 Bit 100 MHz main RAM, 8 MB 4x16-bit 100 MHz video RAM and 2 MB 16-bit 66 MHz sound RAM.^[29] The hardware supports VQ Texture Compression at either asymptotically 2bpp or even 1bpp ^[30]

The system reads media using a 12x maximum speed (Constant Angular Velocity) Yamaha GD-ROM Drive.

Accessories

A black 56k Dreamcast modem

Among the most notable accessories are the Dreamcast VGA adapter which allowed Dreamcast games to be played on computer displays or High-definition television sets in 480p (progressive scan) and the VMU accessory - a memory card with a small screen that provided a variety of functions for various games. Also made available for specific games were the arcade stick and light gun controllers.

In most regions the Dreamcast included a removable modem. The original Asia/Japan model and all PAL models had a 33.6 kbit/s while consoles sold in Japan and US after September 9, 1999 had a 56 kbit/s modem. Brazilian models manufactured under license by Tec Toy did not include a modem, which was available separately. The regular modem could be replaced with a broadband adapter that was sold separately.

A special link cable was produced allowing the Dreamcast to interact with the Neo Geo Pocket Color^[31][32]. As the Neo Geo Pocket Color was unsuccessful in western regions very few games took advantage of this feature.

Games

As of November 2007, the Dreamcast has 688 official games available in its library. There are also numerous homebrew games for the Dreamcast and games continue to be released by certain companies.^[33] Games were sold in jewel cases; jewel cases in Europe were twice as thick as their North American counterparts, possibly to have space for thick, multilingual instruction manuals.

Among the official games are Dreamcast online games that could be played over the Internet. The online servers were run by SegaNet, Dreamarena, and GameSpy networks. Online game support was particularly popular in Japan, with releases of network compatible games such as Tech Romancer and Project Justice. Web browsers were developed by independent companies such as Planetweb to allow access to web sites and included features like Java, uploads, movies, and mouse support. Dreamarena came with games such as Sonic Adventure and Chu Chu Rocket.

There are six games that can still be played online. Quake III Arena and Maximum Pool are still accessible via various servers. 4x4 Evolution and Starlancer are still online through Gamespy. SEGA Swirl can be also be played online with its play by e-mail game. Phantasy Star Online has private servers where people can use the PAL version with an action replay/code breaker boot disc to bypass the online check and connect to the server.

Models

Due to its short production span, only a few official Dreamcast models were released. The primary models released in 1999 had a grey tint and a weaker and quieter system fan while the later models of 2000 were a light grey-white colored tint with a stronger system fan and a faster, louder laser disc reader. The later model disc drives did not feature faster load times, except it was needed for protection against piracy. Since some consumers noticed the CD-R and CD-RW discs would not load on these drives, was due to the disc burns at certain speeds. The discs will not load at all due to the laser passing the data with the optical lense twice instead of once to read the CD-Rs. The power light, like the Dreamcast logo in NTSC regions, was orange. In the PAL Regions, the logo was blue. This was changed to avoid a trademark dispute with the German video game/DVD publisher Tivola, whom already used an orange swirl as their company logo.

Some special Dreamcast models were released in certain regions. In North America, a limited edition black Dreamcast was released with a Sega Sports logo below the Dreamcast logo on the lid, along with matching Sega Sports-branded black controllers. Electronics Boutique offered a blue Dreamcast through its website. In Japan, Sega released many varieties of the system, including a pink Sakura Taisen version, and a Hello Kitty version released in 2000 in Japan which, due to its limited production, has become an extremely rare collector's piece. The package contains a keyboard, controller, VMU, mouse, and a Hello Kitty trivia game. The console and accessories came in both translucent pink and blue in color with some printed designs. The final Dreamcast models were released in gold exclusively in Japan.

Japan also saw the release of two limited edition Dreamcasts based on Capcom's Resident Evil Code: Veronica game, one a clear pink Claire Redfield model that included a copy of the game and a special pink VMU and also a clear dark blue model that also included the game and a blue VMU. The blue model had the Resident Evil trademark S.T.A.R.S. logo on the lid. Sega also released the limited R7 ("Regulation#7," referring to the second provision of the first section of regulation seven in the Japanese penal code pertaining to businesses that are deemed to affect public morals) Dreamcast in Japan. This model consists of a special refurbished Dreamcast unit that was originally used as a network console in Japanese pachinko parlors, in a newly designed black case with a black controller in a black retail box, all marked with R7 branding. Due to its late date of release and common availability, it is considered one of the more easily obtained limited edition Dreamcast units by collectors.

References

External links

• Sega Dreamcast at Sega of Japan (official website) (in Japanese)
• Dreamcast at the Open Directory Project