The Sega Dreamcast (Japanese: ドリームキャスト; code-named "Blackbelt", "Dural" and "Katana" during development) was Sega's last video game console. An attempt to recapture the console market with a next-generation system, it was designed to supersede Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's N64, and although generally considered to be "ahead of its time", it failed to gather enough momentum before the release of the PlayStation 2 a year later. After the Dreamcast was discontinued, Sega withdrew from the console hardware business.
History
When the time came to design the successor to the Sega Saturn, the new President of Sega, Shoichiro Irimajiri, took the unusual step of hiring an outsider. He hired Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM Austin to head a skunkworks group to develop the next-generation console. However, it soon became apparent that the existing Japanese hardware group led by Hideki Sato did not want to relinquish control of hardware, and so there were two competing designs led by two different groups.
The Japanese group led by Hideki Sato settled on an SH4 processor with a PowerVR graphics processor developed by VideoLogic which was later bought by NEC. This was originally codenamed "White Belt". The first Japanese prototype boards were silkscreened "Guppy" and the later ones "Katana".
The US skunkworks group (in a secret suite at the 303 Twin Dolphin Drive building) led by Tatsuo Yamamoto settled on an SH4 processor with a 3Dfx graphics processor. The was originally codenamed "Black Belt". The first US prototype boards were silkscreened "Shark" (in response to the Japanese "Guppy") and the later ones "Dural".
Contrary to popular misinformation, the Japanese hardware was never codenamed "Dural". This codename was only used by the US group, and in fact, the US hardware team called themselves the "Dural team".
In July 1997, it was decided that the Japanese "Katana" would be the chosen format, renamed Dreamcast. In September 1997 3dfx filed a lawsuit against Sega and NEC (later including VideoLogic), claiming breach of contract, although they later settled. [1] A timeline of the development of the console's GPU may be found here.
The Dreamcast was released on November 27, 1998 in Japan, on September 9, 1999 in the United States and on October 14, 1999 in Europe. The tagline used to promote the console in the US was "It's thinking." The Dreamcast was the first console to include a built-in modem and Internet support for online gaming. It enjoyed brisk sales in its first season and was one of Sega's most successful hardware units. In the United States alone, 200,000 units had been pre-ordered before launch and Sega sold 500,000 consoles in just two weeks. Before the launch in the United States, Sega had already taken the extra step in displaying Dreamcast's capabilites in stores nationwide. Much like the PlayStation's launch in North America, the displays of titles such as Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, Power Stone and Hydro Thunder helped the Dreamcast succeed in the first year.
In April 1999, Sony announced its PlayStation 2, designed to be backwards-compatible with the older PlayStation, and released the unit in Japan in March 2000. The PlayStation 2's ability to play DVDs proved to be a huge selling point due to the fact that the PS2 was much cheaper than many of the DVD players available at the time and due to the growing size of the DVD movie market. This diverted a lot of attention from Sega, even though they touted the Dreamcast's online capabilities (the PS2 would not go online until 2002), and the Dreamcast began to lose money as gamers waited to see which console would come out on top.
In January 2001, Sega announced that production of Dreamcast hardware was to be discontinued, although the 50 to 60 titles still in production would be published. The last North American release was NHL 2K2. With the company announcing no plans to develop a next-generation successor to the Dreamcast, this was the end of Sega's last foray into the home console business.
Though the Dreamcast was officially discontinued in early 2001, commercial games were still developed and released afterwards, particularly in Japan. Many consider the critically acclaimed arcade shooter Ikaruga developed by Treasure to be the Dreamcast's swan song. It was released in September 2002 in Japan only after a large amount of speculation on the game's fate; its US release was on the Nintendo GameCube in April 2003. Hacked releases of games made by Sega like Propeller Arena continued to become available to the public by program decoders like Echelon. On February 24, 2004, Sega released their final Dreamcast game, Puyo Puyo Fever, although a small number of third-party games are still being released, such as the recent release of Trizeal, released in April 2005.
Despite its short lifespan, the Dreamcast is still a very popular and highly-regarded console among many fans due to its impressive library of both mainstream and quirky titles. It is even starting to become a cult classic, as the system is getting harder to find. It was also considered one of the best efforts by Sega to remain competitive and salvage its reputation, after turning off customers and developers through the Sega 32X and Sega Saturn.
Estimated hardware sales
- North America, 5 million
- Europe, 2 million
- Japan, 3 million
- Worldwide total, 10 million
Technology
Dreamcast used a proprietary format called GD-ROM or "GigaDisc" for storing games in order to discourage software pirates, although it had similar overall technology to the CD-ROM. However, the first run of discs had a high rate of defects; and eventually pirates managed to copy the games anyway (in some cases distributing them before the release of the legitimate versions). The primary reason this was possible was the existence of regular-CD booting code in the Dreamcast BIOS to enable multimedia functions (called Mil-CD) for music CD releases on the Japanese market; this was eventually discovered and exploited by pirates. Mil-CD support was removed from the final Dreamcast revisions toward the end of the console's life, but rampant piracy is often cited, erroneously, as one of the major reasons for the failure of the Dreamcast. (Software sales remained strong throughout the console's lifespan.) Sega's decision to implement a "CD-ROM" (the common public reference to the GD-ROM) was also an effort to save costs, but this disappointed some customers who had expected DVD support; the rival PlayStation 2 sold well partly because of its support for DVD media.
The optical drive in the Dreamcast works in CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) mode, which spins the disc at a constant speed regardless of the laser's position. This is different from a normal CD-ROM drive, which spins the disc in CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) mode, where the disc spins progressively slower as the laser moves further away from the disc's center. CLV exists because the diameter of the data ring on the disc becomes wider as the disc progresses, and the data becomes less densely packed. Therefore, to receive the data at a constant speed, the drive must slow the disc down as the data ring enlarges. But since the Dreamcast works in CAV mode, occasionally, when there was space to spare on the CD-R, Dreamcast game pirates would fill the disk image on which the game was distibuted with empty space at the beginning, so the disk image size would be about 700 MB. Therefore, when burned, the data would be pushed further outward on the disc, mimicking the layout of an actual GD-ROM. This practice is called "dummying." They do this because CD-Rs are written in CLV mode, and the Dreamcast will not read data from them very fast if the data is close to the inner edge. Therefore, the data should, optimally, be as close to the outer edge of the disk as possible, for the fastest loading times. Some pirated games do not have this trait, presumably because they need the empty space, and therefore have longer loading times and choppy music and video (because the data cannot be loaded fast enough).
The curious thing about how pirates managed to copy games stored on a GD-ROM, which can supposedly hold about 1.2 gigabytes of data, to a CD-R, which commonly holds 700 megabytes of data (though 870 megabyte discs exist, but are extremely uncommon) was that many games simply did not use the maximum capacity of a GD-ROM, and therefore fit on a standard CD-R with no modification. Games that did take advantage of the GD-ROM's extra capacity required some tinkering from hackers; the most common method was to downgrade the video and audio portions of the disc to a lower bitrate, so they would take up less space. Although this method is usually successful, a few games, most noticebly Shenmue II and Sonic Adventure, are missing sound and sometimes video on pirated versions. This may be due to the process of "ripping", different from the alternate definition of copying the contents of a CD to a hard drive. "Ripping" in the Dreamcast piracy context means to completely remove some parts of game audio and video, since they are simply too large to downgrade with any success.
The Dreamcast continues to have a modest hacking enthusiast community. The availability of Windows CE software development kits on the Internet, as well as ports of Linux [2] and NetBSD/Dreamcast [3] operating systems, gave programmers a selection of familiar development tools to work with. A homebrew minimal operating system named KallistiOS offers good hardware support (though does not provide multitasking, which is generally unimportant for games anyway). Many emulators and other tools such as MP3 and DivX players and image viewers have been ported to or written for the console, taking advantage of the relative ease with, which a home user can burn a CD which is bootable by an unmodified Dreamcast.
Microsoft co-operated with Sega in hopes of promoting its Windows CE operating system for video games. Windows CE offered easy porting to the Dreamcast of existing PC applications on the Dreamcast, but offered limited capabilities relative to the Dreamcast's native operating system. When developers took advantage of the easy development time offered by Windows CE, the resulting games (e.g., Sega Rally 2) lagged in performance and framerate. The only Windows CE application most users saw was the pack-in CD containing a CE-based dialer and web browser.
The Sega NAOMI arcade game hardware platform uses the same technology as the Dreamcast. NAOMI-based games such as Crazy Taxi were easily ported to Dreamcast.
The Dreamcast is also able to output true 640x480 VGA, which set it apart from other consoles of its day. The system, when combined with the VGA adapter accessory (mentioned below), switched to the mode for the high-res, non-interlaced picture. However, the feature was underused by the public despite the potential for improved video quality with the use of a PC monitor. This was likely due to lack of knowledge on the subject. Also, a few notable games were not compatible with this mode, including certain Capcom fighting games and 2D shoot-'em-up games.
Online
Dreamcast consoles came packed with a disc containing web browser software allowing dial-up Internet access. Dream Passport was the Japanese browser, Planetweb was used in America and DreamKey in Europe. Version 3.0 of Planetweb included broadband, Java and mouse support. In Europe, the final version of DreamKey was 3.0.
The Dreamcast was one of the first home console systems to offer online gameplay with the game ChuChu Rocket! (which was distributed free to Dreamcast owners in Europe). The SegaNet online dial-up service (US$29/month membership) attracted 300,000 subscribers in America alone. About twenty-two games, including Quake III Arena and Phantasy Star Online, supported SegaNet. Other major online games include 4x4 Evolution (first crossplatform game), Starlancer and Ferrari F355 Challenge. Although the online features of most commercially-released online-capable Dreamcast games are no longer supported; fans have developed servers for playing pirated copies of Phantasy Star Online, Quake 3 Arena can still be played online by setting up a server using software and a map pack released by Sega, and hackers have also made it possible to play an unreleased bowling game online. Other games still Online are Ferrari F355 Challenge which is an Arcade style racing simulation, 4x4 Evolution cross platform, and Maximum Pool Online which still have hundreds of players online. In America, SegaNet ran until the beginning of January 2003.
In Europe, the online service was known as Dreamarena. This was created and operated for Sega Europe by a partnership between ICL and BT (ICL developed the web sites and software, with BT providing the dial-up capabilities and network infrastructure). The service was free, and the game servers hosted within it could not otherwise be accessed from the Internet. Dreamarena ran until the beginning of March 2002. As the DreamKey web browser was customised to only work with Dreamarena, Sega subsequently offered a free replacement version which would allow connection with the user's own Internet service provider.
The modem module in the Dreamcast could easily be replaced with a broadband module to allow networked gaming over Ethernet. Phantasy Star Online version 2 included support for this device.
Models
The standard Dreamcast unit is made of white and grey plastic. The power light, like the Dreamcast logo in NTSC regions, is orange. Games were sold in jewel cases which initially had the Dreamcast name and logo on a white background, but later games used a black background.
The unit was packaged with a video cable which supports composite video and right/left stereo audio. Available separately were an S-Video cable, a RF connector (included as standard in the UK) and a VGA adapter (see accessories below).
In the United States, a black Dreamcast was released in limited numbers with a sports pack which included two Sega Sports titles. Electronics Boutique offered a blue Dreamcast through its website. Similar offerings were sold through the Lik-Sang website. Cases of different colors like blue, red, orange, and green were sold for replacements of the original casing. In Japan, Sega released many varieties of the system, including limited edition Sonic anniversary editions, and Hello Kitty outfits. The Sega Dreamcast Hello Kitty was released in 2000 in Japan. Due to its limited production, it has become an extremely rare collector's piece. The package contains a keyboard, a controller, a VMU, a mouse, and a Hello Kitty trivia game. The console and accessories are translucent pink in color with some printed designs. The Sega Dreamcast Hello Kitty special edition was also available in a blue with all the same accessories.
Units manufactured with the version number of 2 would not read CD-R media and therefore could not be used to play pirated games, and also had the unfortunate side effect of not being able to play independent games such as the three bleemcast! discs, Feet of Fury, Inhabitants, or Maqiupai.
The Dreamcast in Europe had its spiral logo in blue, similar to the logo on earlier Sega systems. This change in logo is thought to have been for copyright reasons. A German company, Tivola, had been using a similar swirl logo years before Sega branded the Dreamcast with the orange swirl. As well as the VGA mode (again using an adapter), the European Dreamcast supported PAL video, in both 50 and 60Hz modes. Games in Europe were sold in jewel cases exactly twice as thick as their US counterparts.
A third-party company from China named Treamcast released a portable modified Dreamcast which used the original first party Dreamcast components with a custom made plastic casing. This small system with its fold-down display resembled the later PS One. Many companies included software and a remote with the unit that enabled it to play MP3s and Video CDs. When the internet import videogame store, Lik-Sang, contacted Sega to ask permission to sell a modified version of the system with Sega trademarks on the system, they were told that Sega did not approve of the unit, and felt that it violated their trademarks. In reality, this system is not any different than selling a Dreamcast pre-modified with a third party shell, as the system's internals still use first party hardware, and contain no modifications whatsoever aside from the outside casing and modifications for internal sound and video.
Recently, in 2005, the internet import store, Lan-Kwei, has started selling a "Treamcast" portable modified Dreamcast with a 16:9 widescreen LCD. Aside from the cosmetic differences in the case to accommodate the larger screen, there are no differences between the original Treamcast portable modified Dreamcast and the newer widescreen model.
Accessories
The Visual Memory Unit, or "VMU", was the Dreamcast's memory card. It had a monochrome LCD screen, a D-Pad, and two gaming buttons. It could play minigames loaded onto it (a Chao game was obtainable in Sonic Adventure, for example). It could also display a list of the saved game data stored on it, and two VMUs could be connected together (end-to-end, needing no other hardware) to exchange data.
Standard memory cards could also be purchased without the additional features of the VMU. Most of these were third-party, although Sega eventually released a 4X memory card. The 4X cards did not have the VMU screen or stand-alone abilities, but they had four times the space by switching between four 200-block sectors.
Most Dreamcast games supported a rumble pack (jump pack), which was sold separately and could be plugged into the controller.
The Dreamcast controller offered an analog stick, a D-pad, a Start button, four gaming buttons (labeled A, B, X, and Y), and two analog index finger triggers on the underside. It also contained two slots which fit memory cards or the rumble pack; the uppermost one had a window through which the VMU's display could be seen. The Dreamcast controller was somewhat large and a few players found it difficult to hold.
Unique to the Dreamcast among current console gaming systems, it could use a VGA adapter for output to a computer display and HDTV compatible sets (which provided much better quality than a television set).
The Dreamcast supported a mouse as well as a keyboard which was useful when using the included web browser, but was also supported by certain games such as The Typing of the Dead and Phantasy Star Online.
There was a microphone peripheral used for Alien Front Online, version 2.6 of the Planetweb Web browser (long distance calling support), the European Planet Ring collection and Seaman. Other peripherals included a fishing rod controller (used for the Sega Marine Fishing line) and the maracas for Samba de Amigo. Steering wheel controllers and dance pads were also available.
Sega also produced a light gun for the system, although this was not sold in the US presumably because Sega did not want its name on a gun in the light of recent school shootings. American versions of light gun games even blocked out using the official gun. Several third parties made compatible guns for the few light gun games released, including House of the Dead 2 and, much later, Confidential Mission. The only other light gun compatible games were Death Crimson OX and its Japanese only prequel, Virtua Cop 2 on the Sega Smash Pack, and a light gun minigame in Demolition Racer No Exit.
Sega also released the extremely heavy-duty and well-regarded Arcade Stick, a digital joystick and six buttons using the same switches internally as an arcade machine. Although it could not be used for many Dreamcast games, due to the lack of the analogue joystick, this helped cement the Dreamcast's reputation for 2D shooters and fighting games. The Arcade Stick itself has lived on beyond the Dreamcast, and adaptors are now available to use it on other hardware platforms.
Screenshots
The Sega Dreamcast currently has over 276 games available in its library.[4]
The Dreamcast features games with the following ratings from the ESRB:
- Everyone: 151
- Teen: 93
- Mature: 32
Technical specifications
- CPU: SH-4 RISC CPU with 128 bit graphic computational engine built-in (operating frequency: 206 MHz 360 MIPS/1.4 GFLOPS)
- Graphics Engine: PowerVR2 CLX2, capable of drawing around 7 million polygons per second (though rarely pushed this far; the models for the polygons would become a limiting factor, chipping away video memory for the textures)
- Memory: Main RAM: 16 MB (Hyundai), Video RAM: 8 MB, Sound RAM: 2 MB
- Sound Engine: Super Intelligent (Yamaha) Sound Processor with 47MHz 32-Bit ARM7 RISC CPU core built-in (64 channel PCM/ADPCM)
- GD-ROM Drive: 12x maximum speed (when running in Constant Angular Velocity mode)
- GD-ROM: Holds up to 1.2 GB of data. A normal CD-ROM holds 700 megabytes.
- Inputs: USB-like "Maple Bus". Four ports support devices such as digital and analog controllers, steering wheels, joysticks, keyboards and mice, and more.
- Dimensions: 189 mm x 195 mm x 76 mm (7 7/16" x 7 11/16" x 3")
- Weight: 1.9 kg (4.4 lb)
- Color: White
- Modem: Removable; Original Asia/Japan model had a 33.6 kbit/s; models released after September 9 1999 had a 56 kbit/s modem
- Broadband: these adapters are available separately and replace the removable modem
- Color Output: Approx. 16.77 million simultaneous colors (24 bit)
- Storage: Visual Memory Unit ("VMU") 128 Kb removable storage device and 4x memory cards that hold four times as much data
See also
External links
- Dreamcaster's Realm - A Dreamcast news site
- Dreamcast-Scene - Wiki based database including scene news
- PlanetDreamcast
- SEGA-Universe
- DreamcastHistory
- Dreamcast Emulation - Run emulators and applications on your Dreamcast
- DCEmu A newer site with content similar to the above
- DC Secrets Fansite focusing on game tips.
- Dreamcast technical details and other articles
- The Dreamcast section of GameFAQs
- El Bucanero DC Dev - Website with homebrew Dreamcast software and tools, like VMU Backup CD (a collection of over 3200 savegames) and VMZip (savegame compressor).
- The Chaos Rift A new site in the Dreamcast Homebrew Department.
- VMU Saves Online – Online colection with more than 3000 VMU files, available for download in .VMI/.VMS format.