Techtite's What Went Wrong --- When Entertainment Goes Awry!

With the release of Soul Calibur 2 on every system under the sun recently, one cannot be reminded of the original game, on the ill-fated Sega Dreamcast. This was a system released a year prior to Playstation 2, and many years before X-Box and Game Cube. In fact, upon release, it’s only real competition was a CD game system without 3D acceleration (Playstation One), and a 3D accelerated system, without a CD drive (Nintendo 64). Yet Dreamcast would be the last system Sega ever made, leading Sega out of the video-game-system wars, forever. What Went Wrong?

What Went Right? Sega had not released a new game system in many years, until 1999 rolled along. Their last systems were the Sega Saturn and Sega Genesis, neither of which could compete very well with Nintendo 64 and Playstation. Playstation, for one, was so compatible with PC technology that many PC games were almost immediately ported to it; Nintendo 64 had first-generation 3D accelerated graphics to admire. Compared to these systems, Sega was far behind.

Then came the promise of the Sega Dreamcast: 3D acceleration, a built-in modem, and Windows CE compatibility, right out of the box. Jumping ahead: Sega kept their word, on all the above promises. Remember all the many, many false promises made by game systems in the past? Well, forget all that. Sega made a slew of bold initial promises, and kept their word, with every single one.

The biggest impressive detail of Dreamcast is how much bang you got for your buck, right out of the box. Although it had its hurdles as well (we'll get to that later), the free-with-system modem was particularly impressive, even to this day. True, out-of-the-box, you had to log onto the internet using merely a joystick for navigation (you can imagine how hard that can be!). However, no additional hardware or peripheral item was required. There was no extra software to buy, no "Dreamcast Live" kit to purchase separately, nor any other hardware. Sure, you had to subscribe to Sega's monthly online service to use the best features, though that's nitpicking; the point is, your return trips to the game store were nil. Everything you needed was right in the box.

The system itself was the best of both worlds in its day: 3D acceleration (like N64), and CD games (Playstation). Although disc technology may not have been DVD-quality (over 4 Gigabytes), each "GD-ROM" could store well over 1 Gigabyte of data; far superior to Playstation-One, or even PCs at the time. It was a small little game system, yet it packed lots of punch.

True, gamers now can say "well it didn't have DVD compatibility" or "it didn't have this" or "it didn't have that," though in 1999, it had more than enough. There is very little reason to believe that this system would fail, if handled properly. It had a modem. It had 1 gigabyte discs. It had admirable 3D graphics (by 1999 standards, anyway). It was a very good system. If there were problems, "potential" wasn't one of them.

Sega always had a penchant for dabbling in new technology concepts with new systems, and the Dreamcast was no exception. The "memory card" to save games wasn't just a card. It was called a "VMU" --Virtual Memory Unit-- and came complete with a small B&W LCD screen. You could manage saved games, without even turning the game system on! In games like Sonic Adventure, mini-games could be downloaded onto the unit, to be played anywhere you wish. VMUs could also be linked, to copy and share game files, or to play a two-player mini-game. The possibilities seemed limitless.

Lastly, there was Sega's reputation. A 3D accelerated, built-in modem game unit could only lead to good expectations all around. Sonic in 3D, as well as other memorable Sega games, should've also meant good news for the system. Yet Sega decided to stop production on the Dreamcast --and video game systems as a whole!-- just a year and a half after the Dreamcast launch. This leads to the question...

What Went Wrong? Sega's first mistake was its determination to release the Dreamcast on a September 9th, 1999 launch date (9-9-99, get it?). If they had waited as little as one full season, maybe the final product would've been more refined; a tougher competitor with all the upcoming systems. Instead, a simple (and forgettable) 9-9-99 launch date ploy was considered more important than anything. This was not a big mistake...though it inspired a few doozies.

The first big problem with Dreamcast began when several games released upon launch were faulty. Clearly, this was because of a strict 9-9-99 launch date leading to shoddy manufacturing of many of the game discs. Some estimates claim that as many as one out of four versions of Sonic Adventure and Ready to Rumble – two of the jewels in Dreamcast’s crown– was totally unplayable. The official explanation was that one of their game copiers had gone out of calibration, though this means little to a gamer who can't play his favorite game on his brand new game system! The bigger problem: some of the discs affected were Web Browser discs. Quite a few initial buyers were unable to use their system's modem at all. It didn't help that the Web Browser was a packaged-with-system item; getting a new disc was very complicated.

It's not like Sega was sitting around doing nothing. They handled all defective disc problems swiftly. However, this was hardly an expense anyone could have predicted. Money that went towards solving this problem could have gone towards a ton of alternate Dreamcast projects, or even added commercials for the system. Instead, all people saw were the CNN news reports of defective software. It's hard to look at promos for the unit the same way after seeing a "commercial" like that one.

If there was a hardware fiasco of the Dreamcast, however, it would have to be the VMUs. These so-called "memory cards" lost all their stored data way too easily, leaving you with all your hard work (and game saves) gone and forgotten. The ongoing rumor was that these VMUs kept your game saves even when power ran low...but if that's the case, where did my game saves go, barely six months after using the VMU, hmmmm? As for its feature to play mini-games; to the best of my knowledge, only Sonic Adventure had such a mini-game...and a rather stupid, "cyber-pet" one, at that. You could download a football game online, though this is pushing it. Sure, black and white animations would appear through the gamepad when a VMU was inserted into them, though these pictograms were a high price to pay for a memory card without the power to keep your game saves, for any long period of time. Is that not the whole point of any memory card?

Clearly, Dreamcast needed a better way to save its files. One such plan was to give Dreamcast its own Zip drive. This was a cute idea: it would plug into the expansion port, fit neatly under the system, and offer disks of roughly 100 Megabytes each. Sadly, this was one of many false promises, of accessories never to be released. That's the surest sign of a system going downhill: promises of hardware expansions that will never see the light of day, to solve problems that should have never existed to begin with. Upon launch, Dreamcast seemed to be a system that would live up to all its promises. That dream would soon fade. Dreamcast was quickly headed downhill.

As for Dreamcast games themselves, they were okay...though "okay" does not sell a system. Few games gave that "wow" factor that games like Super Mario 64 had, back in the day. The reward factor of these games was equally lackluster. The ending of Mario 64 ended with a cute little tune and the saving of a princess and a whole during-credits cinematic of the places you explored, followed by the characters waving you good-bye. Sonic Adventure, by comparison, saves the world from a giant liquid whatever-it-was, and...that's it. Forget Sonic's lack of reward; where's gamers' reward?

The final nail on Dreamcast's coffin came with the release of the Playstation-2, just one year later. Now, I'm not going to start a debate three years after the fact, telling people how these two systems compared. Let's just go through the specs that PS-2 fans were raving about, that Dreamcast forgot to offer. For one, PS-2 was DVD compatible. It was downward compatible, meaning that all PS-1 games, memory cards, and even the controllers, could all be used on the new system. Its games were sold in cool DVD cases, meaning the case itself could hold a memory card and a full-size manual, in addition to the game disc. Best of all: no VMUs to save games meant the memory cards actually worked. At the bare minimum, how cool would it have been if the Dreamcast could have played old Saturn and/or Genesis games? The possibilities are almost staggering.

As the cliché goes, by the time Playstation-2 was out the door you could stick a fork in Dreamcast; it was done. This fork would be delivered as early as January, 2001, when rumors first began that Sega was leaving the hardware business entirely, and would concentrate on games for opposing game platforms. While confirmation of this rumor would not be released until March, it was clear the only thing Sega could do at this point was hope that the millions of remaining Dreamcasts on store shelves would sell...somehow. The price was dropped to $99, which given a fair share of games by then wasn't that bad a price, really. Admittedly, there were more than a few takers of the last Dreamcasts on the shelf, if just as a collection item; the "last-ever" Sega console. However, it was clear it was the end for Dreamcast...and Sega, as a former goliath in the game-system-wars.

Regardless, I will always be amused at the Dreamcast. It wasn't a "folly," nor a major disappointment. Its roughly 19-month lifespan was simply a streak of bad luck and bad choices. Reagrdless of this, it definitely had potential. No less than two times in two years have I taken out the old Dreamcast and played a game or two; a compliment I cannot make towards other defunct systems, like the 3DO or Atari Jaguar. My nephew, earlier this year, was greatly anticipating Soul Calibur 2 and wanted to see Soul Calibur 1 on the Dreamcast. Even two years after the system's demise, he loved every minute of it. Dreamcast was actually a very nice system. It wasn't the system's fault for its failure. It's just another sign of how brutal the video game system wars can be.

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What Went Wrong?

An Analysis Column, by Techtite

The Sega Dreamcast