Dreamcast Was the Dreamcast the best gaming console ever made?

[FiorDiLoto]

Over the years, I've been digging more and more into the Dreamcast's history, and I've completely fallen in love with it. Unfortunately, I've never had the pleasure of owning one or even seeing it in person. But from everything I've watched and read, man, was it ahead of its time. It’s just such a fantastic piece of hardware.

Now, I don't want to turn this into a super technical deep dive (mostly because it's not my area of expertise), so I'm throwing the question over to you guys, since you're definitely more experienced with it than I am. Do you agree with the title or not? Care to explain why? I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this incredible machine!

 

[Megarockman _1987 Megarockman _1987]

Not really, but I think Dreamcast is underrated
It had very good graphics for its time, the best arcade ports even internet connection

 

[ShadowsofCreationAga]

Nah. Not enough RPGs xD

Joking aside, hardware means nothing without the library to back it up. Dreamcast's library is actually pretty solid, probably above average in terms of not having as many 'bad' games... but it also wasn't alive long enough to have a huge library of greats that weren't just arcade ports.

 

[Russianbias]

Library is what makes platform/console great. Dreamcast had almost none. So no. Definitely not the best.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

That title belongs to PS2, Dreamcast died way too early before it had the chance to grow though its small library literally had no bad games whatsoever.

 

[Russianbias]

That title belongs to PS2, Dreamcast died way too early before it had the chance to grow though its small library literally had no bad games whatsoever.

- nah, PS2 is one of the things that tanked game development in the 00's due to its hard hardware limitations and popularity that mostly was carried over from PS1 era.

 

[Sorion]

not even close, but it's good system, maybe even a great system, it's a shame it went out of buisness so early because it's game library is a bit short and it's because of it's short lifespan of about 3 years

 

[ZeromusVX4]

It was the best due to the the fact it killed Sega's console development and made it possible for Sonic to be in Smash Bros Brawl

 

[JellyjamLu]

To me it is, but as stated by others, just underrated.
but if you really dig into the library and use peripherals like the maracas, fishing controller etc. its pretty unique and fun arcade experience and it has weird games, really weird, which I adore.

 

[Graw]

The Dreamcast is just one of those systems that came out at the wrong time. It was better than all the 32-bit systems and the n64 but fell short of the ps2 and Gamecube. The homebrew Dreamcast port of San Andreas shows just how much weaker the console actually was. It's like a lot of the other consoles that came out just a bit too early. The turbografx is similar. It's a lot better than the nes and master system but not as good as the snes or genesis.

 

[Stare best girl]

Dreamcast is a great console but... Sega Saturn is the better console

 

[otogirisou]

No, it's ps2

 

[Psychonara]

A lot of the love for the Dreamcast came after its discontinuation when it was easy to pick up the thing for pennies cause most people had already started moving on to the Playstation 2 & Xbox. It was actually less successful than even the Saturn, considering the Saturn's relative success in Japan. With the Dreamcast, it's less about what it was than about what it could have been had a few things been different. It was good & clever hardware and it had some very underrated and underappreciated games as well as a number of classics that first appeared on it. And because of how easy it was to pirate for it and how inexpensive they were for a time on the second-hand market, it really helped to kickstart a lot of the modern homebrew & unlicensed game development scene in general, which up until that point was mostly dominated by very bad Famicom & NES bootlegs.

I remember I got in a debate about this years ago with folks when it came to Jet Set/Grind Radio specifically. A really great game, yes. But if you looked at how much praise the game gets in the internet gaming space now, you'd think the game was a major hit when it came out. It wasn't. Critics were kind of divided on it and very few people bought it at the time.

People think a Dreamcast fan's library looked like this:

When in actuality, our libraries often looked more like this: