Keeping up the run of talking about pure 10/10s, I've decided to dedicate this week's issue to the best console to ever do the damn thing - The Sega Dreamcast. A machine that not only has the library of bangers that stand up extremely well in 2022, but also was the machine released when I had turned an age where I started having disposable income and was a bit more knowledgeable and discerning about videogames and their quality. The perfect console for the perfect time. A simpler, better time.

Can't go back. Can't go back.

Dreamcasts From Another World.

I was never a Sega kid. I jumped from NES, to SNES, to N64 - loyal to Nintendo throughout most of my youth, but the lure of Sega’s sleek, white GD-ROM playing space ship was enough to convince me it was time to give in to the Dreamcast. If only my 8 year old self could’ve seen me. He’d have been disgusted. Treacherous behaviour.

My time with the Dreamcast was, like the console, all too brief. I actually bought it only a few months before Sega called time on it and soon, everyone had begun to move on to the PlayStation 2. It was over just as soon as it began, but no console burned as brightly in its limited shelf time. Look at other console failures - the 3DO, the Virtual Boy, the Jaguar - the real quality in the libraries for these machines is almost non-existent. The Dreamcast has solid gold in its archives. Absolute all-time classics. 128-bits of greatness. I traded in my entire N64 library to get a Dreamcast. Mint in box titles that I would absolutely kill to have right now, but I don’t regret it because the Dreamcast was responsible for some of my favourite moments in my own gaming history.

One of these moments isn’t even a game. I didn’t have the internet at home, because we didn’t have a family PC capable of such things. My Dreamcast, however, did. No page looked right, due to the Dreamcast having exactly one font in one size, but it didn’t matter - one purchase of a five metre long network cable later - I had the INTERNET. A window into this fascinating world of information, wrestling spoilers and hardcore pornography. I’d wait until I heard my parents go upstairs to bed and then run this enormous cable from my console, out of my bedroom door and across the length of the next room to plug it into the nearest phone socket. Thing is, this cost a fucking fortune. We didn’t have an ISP, as was needed at the time, so we were likely being charged per megabyte. It didn’t matter to me, I needed to look up that game FAQ and a bollocking at some point in the future certainly wasn’t going to stop me there and then. Some of us more enterprising Dreamcast users would wire their console through their VHS recorder, granting the ability to ‘tape’ the Internet for use at a later date, whether that be that crucial piece of information for a game you were having trouble with, or filling a Memorex with loads of smut. I heard.

The online was a key factor in why I bought a Dreamcast. Not for grot, like, but for the far sexier Phantasy Star Online. The first online game I had played. The first online community I was a part of. I've told this story a million times on various podcasts, streams and in articles, but there was a magic to that time period that is lost forever. No mobile phones, no instant messaging that was available to me, so my mate Matt and I had to make a pact every evening whilst at school.

"Midnight, on this server, in this block" was the deal. Midnight would usually ensure that both our respective parents would be in bed and asleep, giving us the chance to run those network cables to the nearest phone line and get online. Being sat in that lobby at five past, ten past, just waiting to see if they'll show up before running some levels for a couple of hours. The amount of times I'd show up to college on three hours sleep because we were on a good run through Ruins on Hard probably does a fair job of explaining why my A Levels weren't up to much. It was an addiction - the kind you hear about with World of Warcraft and that. No MMORPG has gotten its hooks into me like Phantasy Star Online did and I don't think any ever will. It was the future, a true generational leap.

I was in my late teens when I got my own Dreamcast and, although I didn't have my own PC to access the internet, I had close friends who did and this led to us finding out about games that didn't get coverage in the magazines we bought. It also allowed us to find guides and help that was needed to try and get better at the games we played against each other. Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the Saturn lit the touch paper but having access to games like Street Fighter III, Mark of the Wolves and Soulcalibur. This was my first taste of proper, competitive fighting games. Not in regards to the full, fledgling FGC - we lived nowhere near any TOWN, nevermind an arcade or any scene - but we all played each other a lot and wanted to get better than one another. We looked up stuff, largely on GameFAQs, and tried to pull it off in matches. It was the first time I understood what was going on under the hood in a fighting game, rather than just that basic, surface level.

The Dreamcast also had ports (of admittedly varying quality) of PC titles, giving me a taste of that classic era of early 3D graphics card titles. I played Quake 3: Arena, a game that was at one point the very pinnacle of visual fidelity, online against other players, on my console. That might sound trivial now but you have to understand - everyone else had a PS1 or N64 and, at best, a PS2, which STILL didn't do that. Not yet, anyway.

It might sound daft, but having stuff like MDK2, Unreal Tournament and even stuff like Hidden And Dangerous rubbing shoulders with Sega's library of arcade classics was another thing that made the Dreamcast feel really special, like it was so much more than the consoles that came before it. Probably also started my awful habit of playing highly regarded PC games on consoles throughout the DC/PS2 period. Shout out to my PS2 Deus Ex crew!

One of the main reasons why I was able to play so many incredible games during my time with the Dreamcast is one of the main reasons why the machine's life was so short-lived. It was astoundingly easy to get hold of copied games and play them on the console. Coupling this with having access to magazine and the internet that talked up import only releases and, for the first time in my life, having some disposable income, led to me seeking out obscure and interesting titles wherever I could. Getting my hands on Fire Pro Wrestling D and Giant Gram 2000 was hugely important on helping my love of Japanese Pro Wrestling blossom and without piracy, there's no way I would've been able to check them out. It wasn't something I had a massive amount of access to but just having the option to be able to source an Ikaruga or a Third Strike while previously, import titles were practically unreachable to me, was incredible.

There was also the slightly less illegal Bleemcast! emulation discs. These allowed you to play specific PS1 games on your Dreamcast, with a bit of added texture filtering thrown in! Again, another thing that made you think the Dreamcast was this all-in-one mega console, I could borrow my brother's Metal Gear Solid discs and play them! I had the MGS and Tekken 3 Bleem! discs - two top tier games from the previous generation, playable on my new Sega machine. Again, just absolutely mind-blowing at the time.

No game sums up the Dreamcast more so than Shenmue. Ambitious, beautiful, unique and completely doomed from the very beginning. I recently replayed the game and, unsurprisingly, it has aged a bit in the years since its release. You have to understand though, there was NOTHING like this. The level of detail, the sheer amount of things to do, no matter how tedious or minor, was presenting a glimpse at a future of gaming that nothing else on any system was even close to in regards to scope.

Like most cutting edge games, the edge has shifted considerably and thing that were revolutionary and mind-blowing are now awkward and even a bit backward but despite all of this it still has a certain something. A charm that means that it all - somehow - works as a whole. The deliberately slow pace and the small scale of the game area means you get to know it all intimately by the time you’re done with it, and the atmosphere of the backstreets and the shopping area still makes it feel like a real, if slightly weird, place to explore.

That's the main thing about Shenmue that is timeless. Dobuita Street and the surrounding areas are a real place, captured on a disc. It's a memorable, endearing slice of virtual life that occasionally asks you to kick the fuck out of some goons, play a bit of Space Harrier or ask around about sailors. Also, the forklift stuff is actually fine and good.

One day, Ryo Hazuki is going to walk back through the gates of the Hazuki Estate and Fuku-San's face when he sees him return home is going to be what kills me.

THANKS FOR READING.

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