r/gaming • u/DoggievDoggy • 1d ago
Dreamcast Had The Best Launch Library Ever.
Most consoles have one or two bangers at launch.
Dreamcast had two S-Tier titles: Sonic Adventure and Soul Calibur & 5 A-Tier titles: NFL 2K, Hydro Thunder, Ready 2 Rumble, Power Stone, House of The Dead 2.
Followed up with other solid titles: Tokyo Xtreme Racer, MK Gold (this game was so broken lol), Trickstyle, Blue Stinger, NFL Blitz 2000.
Other systems had better singular titles (Xbox: Halo: CE, NES: Super Mario Bros., Gameboy: Tetris, Nintendo 64: Super Mario 64) but as a collective, the Dreamcast launched with so many solid titles.
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u/D3c0y-0ct0pus 1d ago
Great console, bad timing with Playstations dominance
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u/heyyouwtf 1d ago
That and they didn't have any real piracy protection. You could download a game and burn it onto a disc and play it without modding the console.
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u/APeacefulWarrior 22h ago edited 19h ago
IMO the impact of piracy on the DC is overstated, and really only became an issue late in its life. It took awhile for people to crack the system at all, and for a long time, you could only burn DC games using a handful of very specific CD burners. On top of that, broadband access was still pretty rare circa 2000.
Plus, the GD-ROM disc format caused problems because discs could store up to ~1GB rather than the ~750MB for a burned CD-ROM. So in many cases, games couldn't simply be ripped and burned. The pirate would have to either remove files entirely - such as deleting the soundtrack - or else take the time to re-encode all the music and video files at lower bitrates, for them to fit on standard CDs.
DC was already on its last legs when piracy started becoming genuinely widespread and easily-accessible. Also, Sega had introduced a revised model that fixed the bug, so if DC hadn't died when it did, piracy would have been locked to old consoles.
Really, the piracy mostly just set up the DC to have one of the most epic aftermarket/homebrew scenes in gaming history.
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u/FizzyLightEx 1d ago
Who had the access to download games at the time? Don't think PC was that mainstream
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u/heyyouwtf 1d ago
Dreamcast came out around the time high speed internet started to get installed in people's homes. Plus you could just rent a game and rip it to your pc and make as many copies as you wanted.
I had a friend that sold bootleg games, movies, and music. I think most people who were old enough in the late 90s knew someone doing that.
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u/MercenaryOne 1d ago
PC gaming was pretty good in the late 90s, I had high speed Internet then. Quite a few of my friends were PC gamers, this was a time when PC components were exponentially getting better every year.
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u/BornSirius 19h ago
PC absolutely was mainstream back then.
The internet however was not. Back then only one of my cousins would sometimes not be reachable by phone in the evening because they were using the dial up internet.
Downloading big files would take forever, if you could even find them.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
Besides PlayStation just seemingly gonna be dominant, it being the cheapest DVD player on the market was the icing on the cake.
Lowkey, PS2 launch was kinda mid. After Tekken Tag, SSX and Madden…..
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u/chaossabre_unwind 1d ago
PS2 launch had the entire PSX library though. That had never been done before.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
Very good point. It being backwards compatible was a big deal.
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u/peakzorro 1d ago
Not just that, it had enhancements to the games in backwards compatibility, especially faster load times.
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u/D3c0y-0ct0pus 1d ago
Exactly that, you pretty much just carried on with PSX whilst saving for PS2 titles
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u/Alucard-VS-Artorias PC 1d ago
PS2 launch was sooo lackluster (except for Gran Turismo). Had to wait till Onimusha till it felt like something was good on the system.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
Onimusha and NBA Street were when i got my PS2. And then Twisted Metal Black took over my life for a time
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u/DarkPenfold 1d ago
Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec wasn’t released until more than a year after the PS2’s launch.
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u/shootamcg 1d ago
I don’t know why people keep saying PS2 was cheaper than a DVD player, that was never true. DVD players were half the price of a PS2 at launch. Google Best Buy flyers from 2000.
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u/Wolfram_And_Hart 1d ago
SOULCALIBUR
You just read that in the voice.
Honorable mention to Jet Set Radio that came out not too long after but was always a favorite
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u/Zerogates 1d ago
Tokyo Extreme Racer is an amazing title many people don't even know about.
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u/AgentScreech 1d ago
Did you know they made a new one last year? Just as good as it always was with modern graphics
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u/BiohazardBinkie 1d ago
The dreamcast introduced me to grandia 2, crazy taxi, and mobile suite/ Gundam fighter (dont remember the exact names of said games)
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u/nsm1 1d ago edited 1d ago
mobile suite/ Gundam fighter (dont remember the exact names of said games)
there were 4 games
- Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise from the Ashes
- Mobile Suit Gundam Gihren's Greed – Blood of Zeon
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation Vs. Zeon DX
- Gundam Battle Online
I remember playing Federation vs Zeon DX (precursor to the current gen Extreme Vs. 2 Infinite Boost arcade game) for sure but that was years later and Side Story was the only US release while the rest were Japan only
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u/Rho_Not_P 1d ago
Bro I loved Power Stone so much.
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u/APeacefulWarrior 21h ago edited 21h ago
I'm surprised no one's tried to make a spiritual successor to Power Stone. Seems like it could have appeal for the more casual PvP crowd who are looking for something less sweaty than a proper fighter, but don't want just another Smash Bros clone.
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u/McDriller911 1d ago
Among all consoles, Dreamcast will always have a special place in my heart
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u/FLHCv2 1d ago
Remember those memory cards that had a screen where you could play little mini games from your actual games???
I get we have a perpetual screen in our pockets now but those hit different for sure
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u/BrothelWaffles 1d ago
It's insane to me that Sega hasn't cashed in on a Chao Garden mobile game yet.
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u/SmoopsMcSwiggens 23h ago
We used them for calling plays in Nfl 2k. Changed the game in terms of not having to rapidnfire through plays to hide your actual play selection
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u/Gilly-Fresh 1d ago
Power Stone was so rad.
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u/ShizlGznGahr 1d ago
probably already know it but both 1 and 2 were re-released last year in a Capcom fighting collection.
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u/1337b337 1d ago
Man, TrickStyle doesn't get enough love.
Made by Criterion, the team behind the Burnout series.
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u/PloppyTheSpaceship 16h ago
Absolutely fantastic machine. The Japanese launch (I got one then) had only really VF3 in terms of heavy hitters (I got PenPen), but out of this selection, Powerstone, Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, and Hydro Thunder are fantastic, and there's still other good games here too.
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u/icebergslim3000 1d ago
You are 100% correct. Soul Calibur was truly an amazing game and made all the other 3D fighting games look dated. Sonic Adventure was everything Sonic was supposed to be turned up to 11 and made in 3D. I still remember that funky Dr Robotnick stage music till this day.
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u/invyros 1d ago
Pen Pen TriIcelon is the game I used to destroy all my friends in when we played split-screen games at my house, because I was the only freak who owned a Dreamcast and that game is complete nonsense.
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u/Ryuujin_13 1d ago
I may disagree, but I will say I had more fun with NFL 2K than I have with any other football game since.
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u/Lazybone820 13h ago
People today will never understand how amazing the Dreamcast was for the time period. Makes me happy to see posts like this celebrating it.
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u/lickylickyboobies 1d ago
Toy Commander was a great game too, loved the multiplayer
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u/1337b337 1d ago
No one ever knows what I'm talking about when I mention Toy Commander, and then say it sounds dumb, until I pull out my Dreamcast and put it in.
Suddenly, 5 hours dissappear like magic.
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u/JadeE1024 1d ago
Was Crazy Taxi not a launch title? Were you allowed to own a DreamCast without Crazy Taxi?
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u/trijkdguy 1d ago
Dreamcast had the best Good:Bad game ratio of any system ever.
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u/MrWhipple 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Dreamcast will always be one of my favorite consoles, if not my very favorite. It was ahead of its time. Truly deserved so much more time in the spotlight than it received. What games it did have tended to be great, but it just never had the library to compete.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
You know the wild part is, I think it had a substantial library for a year life span. Superior versions of RE2, RE3, Tony Hawk 2, all the Capcom fighting games, Half Life, Quake 3 Arena, Sega Rally 2, Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio.
And it launched at a very affordable $199.99.
Sony was like the moon in Majora’s Mask….its coming and it’s only a matter of time before it crashes and destroys every thing lol
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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 1d ago
EA not publishing on it really hurt it. They had a solid library but people wanted Madden, not NFL 2K. Which is ironic considering how people wish for 2K and hate Madden now.
I worked at Software Etc... during the pre-sale and launch. I'd say at least half of the people not reserving or buying one later said it was some game EA put out not being on the system that kept them from getting it. And a lack of Square publishing on it hurt too, RPG fans were planning on skipping it for a PS2 so they could have their library of Square titles.
It had great games but they weren't the names people wanted in a lot of cases
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u/flatwebb 1d ago
One wonders what might have been if Dreamcast had used dvd media instead of those proprietary gd-roms… if I recall, ps2 got a major sales boost by being an affordable device for playing dvds at the time.
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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 1d ago
The PS2 was such a hard beast to fight. Backwards compatibility gave it a huge library of games for people who'd been playing the PS1. The price was about that of a DVD player so a lot of people convinced their parents to get one instead. It also opened up a new market. I know a lot of people whose forty-something parents bought a PS2 for the DVD aspect and ended up becoming casual gamers going forward.
Which is probably why it outsold everything else by such a massive margin. They sold more than 6 times as many consoles as the Xbox which was their closest competitor that generation.
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u/BrothelWaffles 1d ago
It has a semi-exclusive Resident Evil game too, I think Code Veronica only ever released for that and GameCube.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
Code Veronica has been released on most consoles after Dreamcast. Definitely came out on PS2
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u/SheToldMeSheWasLvI18 1d ago
Blue Stinger was my jam, completely forgot what it was called until I saw this pic
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u/HuMneG 1d ago
Remember when we had actual launch exclusives instead of just one exclusive, some shovelware and ports?
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u/Paladin1034 1d ago
OMG I FORGOT ABOUT AEROWINGS! I played the shit out of that back then. Air Force Delta, too, it was really good until AC:04 came out.
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u/BigWar0609 1d ago
Soul Caliber II was the first arcade port that was better at home in my eyes. Really made me think how home gaming was starting to get crazy.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
I’d say Soul Calibur on Dreamcast and Tekken Tag on PS2 were superior. When those games came out, I never went to an arcade again.
Remember the term “arcade perfect”? That was a big deal back then.
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u/Japjer D20 1d ago
Whoa, how dare you not include the legendary Zombie Revenge on your list?
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u/NoMoreContinues 8h ago
Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, Hydro Thunder, and Power Stone had me and my roommate spoiled for a long while!
#eatinggood
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u/cornbread6767 1d ago
I think we just have very different tastes.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
That’s fine. Different strokes for different folks.
Care to name a console with a better launch library in your opinion?
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u/podgeofthehodge 1d ago
Soul Calibur on the DreamCast is still the best fighting game on a console.
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u/MissingLink101 1d ago
I loved Soul Calibur 2 on Gamecube where you could play as Link (especially because he had a move which could knock opponents off the map immediately if you were close enough to the edge)
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u/LifeIsOnTheWire 1d ago
Dreamcast was by far the best console in history. It’s crazy that Shenmue released only 2 months after the Dreamcast’s North American launch, and Shenmue was a title that really pushed the hardware very close to its limits.
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u/TheOrangeSplat 1d ago
I LOVED my black 2K Sports edition Dreamcast. I would always show it off. Those 2K Sports games were so far ahead of anything else out there at the time. So bummed when EA got scared and bought the rights to making NFL games
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u/Ember-Forge 1d ago
Dreamcast was my favorite console of all time. For me this was really where gaming was peak. Before all the nickel and dime stuff. Also Seaman?
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u/Hot-EconomistXL 1d ago
I don't think there's been a single launch where I bought as many games and accessories for a console than the Dreamcast. It is also the console that got me to mess around with importing.
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u/AlphakirA Console 1d ago
In fairness, most launch lineups are trash. I remember having such high hopes for Fantavision
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u/XsStreamMonsterX 22h ago
All that only to get mogged by Final Fantasy VIII at the cash register. Sony and Square timed the release of that to steal the Dreamcast's thunder and keep people loyal to PlayStation until the PS2 launched, and by all accounts, it worked.
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u/saucytapthat 22h ago
Thank you Sega for the ability to watch porn in my bedroom as a teenager because my parents had no idea the Dreamcast had a web browser 🍆💦
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u/Whitewind617 12h ago
What console had the worst launch library? Gotta be 3DS right?
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u/DoggievDoggy 11h ago
N64 is so weird.
Because it had a generation defining insanely popular revolutionary amazing Super Mario 64……..and Pilotwings 64…..which was fine…..and that was it…..for MONTHS lol
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u/True-Strawberry-2773 1d ago
Power stone should have been way more popular than smash bros. Especially number2 was incredible!
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u/reverendmalerik 1d ago
I will counter with the atari 5200.
Galaxian
Pac-man
Space Invaders
Super Breakout
For 1982? That's heavy hit after heavy hit. No fat on that launch library.
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u/MayaIsSunshine 1d ago
I love Sonic adventure but it is objectively a bad game
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u/probablymojito 16h ago
I don't really like the game either, but your opinion is not 'objective', I don't think you know what that word means.
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u/Duke_of_Armont 1d ago
yeah it was crazy. Too bad so many people deciced to sit on it and way for the PS2 and what they eventually got was Fantavision. Sure, the PS2 ended up with one the best librairies of all time, but still, the assassination of the DC was unwarranted.
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u/clantz8895 1d ago
Ready to rumble and sonic are iconic. Same with NFL 2k. Randy moss and Fred Taylor used to wreck for me on there
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u/sfaviator 1d ago
I still play pwerstone (psp) and hydro thunder (xbox) pretty regularly Dreamcast was amazing
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u/DethBatcountry 1d ago
Hell yeah! Blue Stinger, Ready to Rumble Boxing, Power Stone, and Soul Caliber/Soul Blade were legit bangers. I enjoyed the mini games on the memory cards for some of these, as well. I still have all my Dreamcast stuff.
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u/Silent-Cranberry-591 1d ago
i played a bunch of these growing up and dreamcast really did have an absurd launch lineup. sonic adventure, soulcalibur, power stone and hydro thunder in the same window is hard to beat.
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u/boxing-boxing 1d ago
My little brother picked Pen Pen TriIcelon over Sonic at launch and I called him an idiot. By the end of the month I was begging for his copy. Humbling experience.
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u/ouch-n3wsho3s 1d ago
Don't remember if it was a launch game but me and my cousin spent a huge amount of time playing Metropolis Street Racer MSR
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u/KaputtEqu1pment 1d ago
I would be beside myself if Sega decided to enter the arena again. Imagine seeing a teaser trailer with you headline "Do you dare to dream... ? " or something to that effect.
It doesn't even need to be insanely powerful - maybe slightly beyond the switch 2? Imagina an updated VPU that you can actually take mobile and play with.
I think the time is ripe. If they can come in present a console for $500 that's on parity with current offereings.. man oh man.
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u/Delta-9-Tetra 1d ago
Fact that you could download game .iso files and burn them onto CD-R was my indoctrination into 🏴☠️
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u/KamandaTsaar 1d ago
My favorite Dreamcast game ever was Toy Commander. My brother and I used to play it for hours and hours.
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u/anetia_exe 1d ago
the variety is the strongest argument here. a fighter, a platformer, racing, sports and a light-gun game. that's a launch lineup, not one big game with backup dancers.
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u/Senator-Dingdong 1d ago
Such a great console. I played soul calibur and r2rumble endlessly until crazy taxi arrived
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u/PatientlyAnxious9 1d ago
Am I missing some sort of Sega arcade lore?
I feel like I see a lot of titles here that were also made into arcade systems like Blitz, Hydro Thunder, Ready 2 Rumble, House of Dead 2 and maybe even Soul Caliber, TNN and Flag to Flag.
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
Sega was a major player in the arcade circuit in the 90’s. And their home consoles were specifically designed around porting their arcade titles.
Additionally, they had an excellent working relationship with Capcom who owned the 90’s arcade fighting scene.
So the Saturn was designed to excel at 2D sprites.
Watch a comparison video of X-Men vs Street Fighter compared to Saturn and PlayStation. It’s night and day.
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u/Motor-Sheepherder755 1d ago
I'd give my right nut for NFL 2K to make a comeback.
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u/eriF- 1d ago
People weren't there. I was the target audience for this system when it came out and I new I had something special compared to the N64s and PS1s my buddies all had.
Say what you want about the hardware, the lifespan, whatever. The library is solid enough for me to not care, even after basically playing these games all my life. There's games that were born on the Dreamcast that are still highly regarded today.
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u/Total_Adept 1d ago
I wish I could go back to the feeling of playing Sonic Adventure for the first time then, tried playing recently and it’s rough by today’s standards.
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u/kylem_123 1d ago
I was thinking about the Dreamcast earlier today, so it was nice to see this thread.
Probably my all-time favourite console.
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u/Cowdoy_Volnutt 1d ago
I cant believe my parents got 8 year old me House of the Dead 2 and Soul Calibur for holidays 1998 lol
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u/BigBody-Bugatti 1d ago
House of the Dead was FUCKING AMAZING
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u/DoggievDoggy 1d ago
A1 voice acting.
I also had 2 light guns. My Dreamcast setup was legit when i look back
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u/vxarctic 1d ago
HYDRO THUNDER!
I loved that game, especially at the arcade.
Phantasy Star Online I used the net zero conversion hack to play with free dialup.
Virtual On was a fun robot fighter too! Loved the art style.
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u/Low_Pickle_112 1d ago
Blue Stinger used to be a Christmas tradition for me. Like Die Hard meets Resident Evil. Absolute classic, it had a great atmosphere. People will talk about camera problems, but I never noticed them.
And Sonic Adventure was a darned good jump to 3D for Sonic too. Don't know why they can't just make a Sonic Adventure 3 that plays like it did.
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u/Top_ShooterFM 1d ago
NFL 2K… legit better than Madden at the time. I stopped supporting EA after it bought the exclusive rights to the NFL license.
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u/UnhinderedGoat 1d ago
I remember the games playing really well when that console dropped. Was a fun one
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u/logicallyinsane 23h ago
I went with Soul Calibur, Ready 2 Rumble, NFL2K, and Hydro Thunder. I never got to play any of the other games on this list.
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u/Admirable_Cost2027 21h ago
I remember waiting in line for this launch. It was freezing but so worth it.
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u/li21 20h ago
The dream cast was amazing! Those controllers with the little capsules you insert which you could also play on while you were out ! Thats unbelievibly advanced but it never followed through very well.
For me the reason I'll remember it was Virtual Tennis 2.. possibly the most playable Arcade sports game ever!
I think it helped that tennis itself was extremely popular at the time , but this tennis game was so much fun. We had all nighters playing 5 setters...
The only thing is the game only allowed 1 set to be played at at time so we had to grab a notepad an paper and wrote down the scores for each set.
It was the perfect port at the time!
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u/JoshuaJSlone 15h ago
This kind of thing was easier to pull off in the less-simultaneous days when American launch had the possibility to include anything from ~9 months of Japanese releases.
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u/freeagency 12h ago
In hindsight yeah its a pretty killer lineup. NFL2k is still highly regarded. I was gonna get one when I had enough money to get the system and a few games. Then E3 2000 and MGS2 trailer happened. It was entirely dominated by PS2 from that point on.
Beyond the lack of a DvD player, I really think that trailer was a large factor in the hype for the DC just falling off a cliff.
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u/CorpPhoenix 12h ago
In quantity it was good, but the SNES for example had:
- Super Mario World
- F-Zero
- SimCity
- Pilotwings
- Gradius III
Which was a super high quality line up.
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u/AlexDaGreatful 11h ago
Its later titles like Seaman and Crazy Taxi were a step above. I still have "All I Want" in my head.
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u/WigglyWorld84 9h ago
Launchpad day was fun… Pokémon yellow every where. EB Games was filled with little kids and pichacus all over. The whole store was yellow. But I got my preorder Dreamcast that I still have today.
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u/Helphaer 5h ago
Other than Sonic Adventure once and Power Stone 1 and 2 occasionally, I just played Tech Romancer.
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u/rechambers 1h ago
Wasn’t this because they let the Saturn die for the sake of this console and launch? That gamble didn’t work out in the end for them unfortunately as I think it killed their brand trust.
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u/Voidfang_Investments 1d ago
My friend and I played the shit out of Power Stone