Oh now, this one makes me sad! The Dreamcast was the first console I ever bought with my own hard-earned cash at the tender age of 18. I had to wait a few months for that to happen, so I bought it in January, 2000 – so some months before Skies Of Arcadia came along.
Out of the box was Sonic Adventure and the daftly-titled Chu Chu Rocket. Chu Chu Rocket wasn’t really for me but I can see why it was/is so beloved. As a lifelong fan of the ‘hog, I was blown away by Sonic Adventure – especially that very impressive intro sequence with the city flooding. Uh, impressive for its day, naturally.
The pseudo-open world Adventure sections where you either needed to fetch a trinket or perform menial errand before you could get to the next proper ‘Action Stage’. But the level design could be genuinely incredible. Which might seem odd to those less than enamoured by this game’s charms some 20 years later. I am not so blinded a fanboy to not admit the game had very serious problems. Problems that became even less tolerable as the years rolled by. The camera actively fights you. Not quite as bad as it was in Sonic Adventure 2 where if you wanted to go further back in the level, then tough – the camera refused to be pointed in what it considered to be the ‘wrong’ direction.
But great level design, I believe is independent of a game’s larger problems as a whole. For example, Zool has a brilliant opening level despite being completely average in every other respect. So, hitting the jackpot in Casinopolis, riding a bumper car across a racetrack that stretches out across the night sky before dropping you off in the game’s equivalent of Disney World. Amusingly, this area of the park is called ‘Pleasure Castle.’ Hur, hur, dirty laugh.
Soulcalibur is still one of the greatest fighting games ever made, bettered only very slightly by its sequel. Which I didn’t think would materialise. I mean, the Dreamcast was a failed console – other than Sonic, nothing was guaranteed to live on.
Jet Set Radio remains one of my top 10 platform games, a landmark for the genre in how you negotiated the landscape and everybody has to at least try Rez. You would be incomplete as a person otherwise, as I’m sure GC would agree.
Didn’t play Metropolis Street Racer except for the demo, it handled great, just wasn’t my cup of cha.
The Shenmue games were genuine pioneers in the field of open world games and Skies Of Arcadia is that other Sega role-playing game that may tragically never get a remaster or sequel.
I never got the chance to play online, because that was probably beyond most us at the time. That controller was odd, too. You had to essentially play it upside down as the wire connected to the bottom rather than the top. The D-pad was big and chunky, if a tad sharp if you meant to do a lot of fireballs and dragon punches with it and the triggers were not ideal for shooters. But for Soulcalibur? It was ideal. In fact, playing Soulcalibur or any of its sequels has just never felt right on anything else. They go together that well.
I must mention the Visual Memory Units, or VMUs, that you plugged into the top of the controller. These were adorable and not only functioned as the system’s memory cards but were meant to be portable console too, having a little D-pad, buttons, and a screen. This meant that they ate through their battery in about a week. I’m not kidding. So playing any mini-games on it was not very viable. Unless you wanted to spend a fortune on batteries. The mini-games were about as involved and enjoyable as you could expect given their limitations. About the same as Snake on ancient Nokia phones…
What I most loved about the VMU is that it would always display something for every game you played. And not to worry too much when the battery went dead, it would still function as memory storage once plugged in. On Soulcalibur, you had a little picture of your character come up for whoever you were playing. Resident Evil – Code: Veronica and the other PlayStation 1 Resident Evils would display your health status. Skies Of Arcadia would adorably show you Cupil, Fina’s speech bubble-shaped pet who would chirp excitedly whenever you were around his food.
I have played most of these quite recently and, especially Soulcalibur, all hold up remarkably well. I haven’t been back to Code: Veronica for a while. I’m a little scared it will have lost its allure. Also, it is tricky as every Dreamcast I’ve had will eventually develop a fault to do with its power cable. Either that or the port for it. Because it can randomly short out and reset, meaning that you can lose hours. So I’m rolling the dice every time I turn it on.
As you can see, I loved the Dreamcast. Still love it. It is my favourite ever console, despite strong arguments from the Mega Drive, SNES, PlayStation 2, and even Switch. Sorry guys, nothing will ever be able to steal away that very special place in my heart where I can still dream about those Sega-blue skies…
DMR
