Twenty years of Dream

Today is the day that the Sega Dreamcast celebrates it twentieth anniversary. 

Even now, people are saying positive words about it and, believe it or not, games are still being released for it. That’s quite an achievement given how limited the life of any gaming console tends to be.

It would appear that history has been somewhat kinder to the Dreamcast, especially when compared to Sega’s ‘consoles that aren’t the Genesis/Megadrive’. One would think that was the product of a company that had learnt from their mistakes and doing everything in their power to deliver a winner of a product. Equally likely is that the Dreamcast pioneered many of the features that are now commonplace in recent consoles. But perhaps the most likely reason is that it had a short-lived lifespan that was only ended by Sega pulling out of the hardware race. And as the saying goes, Nothing helps a cause like the blood of a martyr – one need only ask John F Kennedy, James Dean and Firefly. 

I still have my Dreamcast and I am unwilling to part with it. And it would seem that that is the consensus with people who still have their Dreamcast: It was a great console and certainly worthy of more than being reduced to a footnote in gaming history. This, coupled with the martyr status, is reason enough why people hang onto their Dreamcast, why they still use it and why some people have gone out of their way to continue to release games for it even when the console long ceased being in production. And if those factors still matter then it’s safe to say that the Dreamcast is ultimately a far cry from a failure. 

So here’s the twenty years of the Dreamcast. It may have been a last roll of the dice for Sega but what a way to go out.