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History

Sega's 128bit baby was released in 1999 to a variable response. Would it be able to deliver on it's online promise (6 billion + players boasted the blurb)?. Would it be as poorly handled as the Saturn?. Would anyone bother to develop anything good on it?. Well it has, sort of... Yes it has managed some on-line games, the first being the 16bit looking (but fun to play!) Chu Chu Rocket. Various other games followed, but there has never been an influx of games. To be fair Sega tried their best with Dreamcast but suffered from the same problems as Atari did with their swansong, Jaguar, little money and an in-ability to convince the big software houses that machine was also going to beat off the Playstation and more importantly at the time the Playstation 2. Embarrassingly the ancient Playstation outsold it, software wise. It does have some plus points though. It is very collectable now and has some truly staggering games, such as Shenmue, Soul Calibur, MSR and Jet Set Radio (or whatever they are calling it now), and you can surf the web (in a kind of restricted TV style fashion) with it. Sega's machine has suffered a bit from the kind of cheap conversions, most notably Tomb Raider and a whole host of driving games that look no better than their N64 counterparts. Sega's machine also doesn't have a decent footie sim on it (though it's still trying) which of course is bound to lead to a commercial death....

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Specs

Hitachi SH4 RISC Processor (128bit 3D engine)
NEC CLX2 graphics processor
Yamaha 64 channel sound processor
Custom GD Rom technology with 1gb storage space (no spelling mistake it is GD)
Networking Capability (i.e. 33.6k modem) allowing complete Net use
Four controller ports
Controller (ghastly, as usual from Sega and a conversion of the Saturn's 3D controller) with 6 'fire' buttons, analogue and d-pad controls. Also features two expansion ports for Virtual memory unit and rumble pack.

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The Dreamcast Games

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