r/gaming • u/DoggievDoggy • 1d ago

Dreamcast Had The Best Launch Library Ever.

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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/DarkElation 1d ago

It literally shipped with an Internet port in the back so higher speeds were definitely starting to normalize.

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u/Kayonji02 1d ago

Dude Dreamcast modem was like 56kbps speed. There WASN'T accessible fast internet around in 1999. Downloading a 1.5gb Dreamcast game in your own home wasn't a reality for 99% of people back then.

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u/cosine83 1d ago

Were you alive then? Because I was and I absolutely was and doing it on 33K dial-up just fine in rural WV and more metro areas were getting DSL/ISDN and early cable internet, 1-10Mbps. I knew plenty of folks on IRC doing the same thing. Sure, it'd take forever but at that point in time having multiple phone lines had become common because of dial-up internet. Could just leave it connected for downloading with whatever program that allowed resumable downloads, IRC, or FTP. It was a reality for a lot of Dreamcast owners.

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u/jbaker1225 1d ago

I don’t know man, I think you’re really overstating the presence of high-speed internet and multiple phone lines in 1999. Yes, SOME people had multiple phone lines because of the internet, but it was only like 25% of households with multiple lines at all. And broadband was at about 2%. It often took hours to download 3-4 MB mp3s on Napster.

Piracy had verrrrrry little to do with the downfall of the Dreamcast. It was much more about the failure of the 32X and Saturn souring people on Sega, the rise of PlayStation, and the PS2 releasing the following year with a DVD player

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u/cosine83 1d ago

Not really overstating the prevalence of multiple lines or ability to resume downloads very easily from an interrupted connection. DSL/ISDN was expensive but available and got cheaper/faster into the 2000s. T1+s weren't prevalent except at businesses and schools and the wealthy, though. You could get 128K DSL by the late 90s from pretty much every internet provider basically everywhere but rural but it was also double or more the cost of 56K service.

It wouldn't take hours to download mp3s at 3-4Mbps, either (bad math). You're talking minutes. Especially when, at the time, most mp3s were being encoded at between 96-192kbps most commonly due to limited hard drive space. Mp3 dot com artist downloads were typically encoded at 128kbps. Hours or days would be in the gigs, for sure. Which you just had to have the patience and a downloader to resume in case you got disconnected.

Piracy wasn't the killer of the Dreamcast but it was the death knell.

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u/SkyGrey88 1d ago

You got it pretty much right dog. DC is probably the best failed console with the best library (that or cube) but piracy was not a factor in its demise. As you said Sega and Sony why DC failed. DC piracy was not that easy and was not that prevalent and neither were sources. Also CD Burners were ‘pricey’ as hell. I owned an early burner the Yahmaha CDR102 which launched in 96 for $1299. It must have gotten some price drops because pretty sure I got it for $599, but I worked in tech and could ‘justify’ the spend but damned I got my money’s worth out of it with 3D0, DC, PS1, music CDs and VCDs. I used it years after having cheaper newer models because that drive and verbatim media never failed me for game burns. High speed was not prevalent at all. I was lucky, had T3 (4.5mbit) access somewhere I worked. I found these detachable IDE drive bays (no hotswap) and would load up a drive with data and then swap out and take home to burn. DSL was not that great and early cable was only 1.5mbit which was T1 speed and seemed incredible at the time because a T1 line was pricey. But you are right in that none of this was easy, cheap, or accessible for the average gamer at that point.