Sega Dreamcast

The Dreamcast features games with the following ratings from the ESRB:. [img]http://cache.etopps.com/images/cards/025-00344fd.jpg[/img]. The Sega Dreamcast currently has over 276 games available in its library.[5]. This facet of the program has attracted investors in addition to sports card collectors. Sega also developed the Dreameye, a digital camera for the Dreamcast, as well as a Zip drive for the console, but these products were never released to the public. Card values are tracked from actual sales on the eBay trading floor, giving each collector an up-to-the-minute portfolio value. The Arcade Stick itself has lived on beyond the Dreamcast, and adaptors are now available to use it on other hardware platforms. If collectors would rather take delivery of their cards, etopps will ship them the cards for a small fee.

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. Card owners can then hold their cards in an online portfolio, while Topps retains physical possession of their cards in a climate-controlled warehouse in Delaware. 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. Collectors are then allocated a number of cards based on the number of orders for each particular card. 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. This new method of distribution contrasts with the traditional sale of sports cards through packs at retail stores. Several third parties made compatible guns for the few light gun games released, including House of the Dead 2 and Confidential Mission. Each week a limited number of sports cards, called IPOs, are offered for sale exclusively online.

American versions of light gun games even blocked out using the official gun. Etopps is a new type of trading card that was launched by the Topps company in 2000. 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. Steering wheel controllers and dance pads were also available. Other peripherals included a fishing rod controller (used for all Dreamcast fishing games) and the maracas for Samba de Amigo.

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. 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, Quake 3 and Phantasy Star Online. 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 controller was somewhat large and a few players found it difficult to hold.

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 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. In Japan, the Jump Pack was named the "Puru Puru Pack". Most Dreamcast games supported a rumble pack ("Jump Pack"), which was sold separately and could be plugged into the controller.

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 of these were manufactured by third-party companies (such as the Nexus Memory Card), although Sega eventually released a 4X memory card. Standard memory cards could also be purchased without the additional features of the VMU. 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.

It could play minigames loaded onto it (a Chao game was obtainable in Sonic Adventure, for example). It had a monochrome LCD screen, a D-Pad, and two gaming buttons. The Visual Memory Unit, or "VMU", was the Dreamcast's memory card. 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.

Recently, in 2005, the internet import store, Lan-Kwei, has started selling a "Treamcast" portable modified Dreamcast with a 16:9 widescreen LCD. 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. 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. Many companies included software and a remote with the unit that enabled it to play MP3s and Video CDs.

This small system with its fold-down display resembled the later PS One. 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. Games in Europe were sold in jewel cases exactly twice as thick as their US counterparts, possibly to enable the inclusion of thick instruction booklets containing instructions in multiple languages. The 60Hz option had to be enabled on the game disc, however, but only a small number of games lacked it.

This was a first for games consoles, as no previous PAL console had offered the user an option to play games at full speed, using the ability of more modern PAL televisions to operate at 60Hz; and is a feature of all major consoles released since. As well as the VGA mode (again using an adapter), the European Dreamcast supported PAL video, in both 50Hz and 60Hz modes. A German company, Tivola, had been using a similar swirl logo years before Sega branded the Dreamcast with the orange swirl. This change in logo is thought to have been for copyright reasons.

The Dreamcast in Europe had its spiral logo in blue, similar to the logo on earlier Sega systems. 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 Sega Dreamcast Hello Kitty special edition was also available in a blue with all the same accessories. The console and accessories are translucent pink in color with some printed designs.

The package contains a keyboard, a controller, a VMU, a mouse, and a Hello Kitty trivia game. Due to its limited production, it has become an extremely rare collector's piece. The Sega Dreamcast Hello Kitty was released in 2000 in Japan. In Japan, Sega released many varieties of the system, including limited edition Sonic anniversary editions, and Hello Kitty outfits.

Cases of different colors like blue, red, orange, and green were sold for replacements of the original casing. Similar offerings were sold through the Lik-Sang website. Electronics Boutique offered a blue Dreamcast through its website. In the United States, a black Dreamcast was released in limited numbers with a sports pack which included two Sega Sports titles.

Available separately were an S-Video cable, a RF connector (included as standard in the UK) and a VGA adapter (see accessories below). The unit was packaged with a video cable which supports composite video and right/left stereo audio. (This color was used as it is considered to be lucky in Japan.) 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 (blue in Europe). The power light, like the Dreamcast logo in NTSC regions, is orange.

The standard Dreamcast unit is made of white and grey plastic. Phantasy Star Online, Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament , Outtrigger, Bomberman Online, and POD Speedzone included support for this device. The modem module in the Dreamcast could easily be replaced with a broadband module to allow networked gaming over Ethernet. 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.

Dreamarena ran until the beginning of March 2002. The service was free, and the game servers hosted within it could not otherwise be accessed from the Internet. 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). In Europe, the online service was known as Dreamarena.

The games still playable online are Quake III Arena, Starlancer, 4x4 Evolution, Phantasy Star Online, Maximum Pool Online, and Sega Swirl, which still have dozens of players online. Fans have developed servers for playing Phantasy Star Online; the North American version of Quake III Arena can still be played online by finding or setting up a server using software and a map pack released by Sega. Although the online features of most commercially-released online-capable Dreamcast games are no longer supported, some games are still playable online[4]. Other major online games include 4x4 Evolution (first crossplatform online game), Starlancer, and Ferrari F355 Challenge.

About twenty-two games, including Quake III Arena and Phantasy Star Online, supported SegaNet. The SegaNet online dial-up service (US$29/month membership) attracted 750,000 subscribers in America alone. 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). In Europe, the final version of DreamKey was 3.0.

Version 3.0 of Planetweb included broadband capabilities, Java, Flash, and mouse support. Dream Passport was the Japanese browser, Planetweb was used in America and DreamKey in Europe. Dreamcast consoles came packed with a disc containing web browser software allowing dial-up Internet access. Other well known implementations in graphics started on Sega's console by developers were cel-shading and bump mapping.

Also, a few notable games were not compatible with this mode, including certain Capcom fighting games and 2D shoot-'em-up games. This was likely due to lack of knowledge on the subject. However, the feature was underused by the public despite the potential for improved video quality with the use of a PC monitor. The system, when combined with the VGA adapter accessory (mentioned below), switched to the mode for the high-res, non-interlaced picture.

The Dreamcast is also able to output true 640x480 VGA, which set it apart from other consoles of its day. However the DC has less memory, and all of it´s games are on G-Rom format. The Sega NAOMI arcade game hardware platform uses the same technology as the Dreamcast, and therefore NAOMI-based games such as Crazy Taxi were easily ported to the Dreamcast. The only Windows CE application most users saw was the pack-in CD containing a CE-based dialer and web browser.

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. 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. Microsoft co-operated with Sega in hopes of promoting its Windows CE operating system for video games. 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.

A homebrew minimal operating system named KallistiOS offers good hardware support (though does not provide multitasking, which is generally unimportant for games anyway). 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. The Dreamcast continues to have a modest hacking enthusiast community. Rather than downsampling the audio and video the hackers compressed the video game data on the disc and wrote a small program to decompress the data on the fly.

Some even denote a high amount of hardware and software knowledge, like the method used on the Echelon release of Skies of Arcadia. However, downgrading or removing audio and video streams wasn't the only method used by release groups. "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. 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.

Although this method is usually successful, a few games, most noticeably Shenmue II and Sonic Adventure, are missing sound and sometimes video on pirated versions. 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. 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, they 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. 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).

Therefore, the data should, optimally, be as close to the outer edge of the disk as possible, for the fastest loading times. 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, when burned, the data would be pushed further outward on the disc, mimicking the layout of an actual GD-ROM. 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 distributed with empty space at the beginning, so the disk image size would be about 700 MB.

Therefore, to receive the data at a constant speed, the drive must slow the disc down as the data ring enlarges. CLV exists because the diameter of the data ring on the disc becomes wider as the disc progresses, and the data moves past the laser at a faster rate than inner rings. 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. 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.

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 potential customers who had expected DVD support; the rival PlayStation 2 sold well partly because of its support for DVD media. Mil-CD support was removed from the final Dreamcast revisions toward the end of the console's life, but rampant piracy is often cited as one of the major reasons for the failure of the Dreamcast. 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. 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).

Dreamcast used a proprietary format called GD-ROM (Gigabyte Disc Read Only Memory) or "GigaDisc" for storing games in order to discourage software pirates, although it had similar overall technology to the CD-ROM. Several Dreamcast emulation projects have emerged after the Dreamcast's end of production, with Chankast being the most notable. It is even starting to become a cult classic, as the system is getting harder to find (in fact, although the Dreamcast was officially discontinued in January 2001, Sega continued to produce the console for a short time afterwards due to rising demand, not least among collectors and hard-core fans). 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.

On February 24, 2004, Sega released their final Dreamcast game, Puyo Pop Fever, although a small number of third-party games are still being released, such as the recent release of Trizeal, released in April 2005, or the upcoming releases for 2006, Rajirugi and Under Defeat. Hacked unreleased games like Propeller Arena and Half-Life continued to become available to the public by program decoders like Echelon. 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. Many consider the critically acclaimed arcade shooter Ikaruga developed by Treasure to be the Dreamcast's swan song.

Though the Dreamcast was officially discontinued in early 2001, commercial games were still developed and released afterwards, particularly in Japan. By the time Sega decided to cease development of the Dreamcast, about 10 million consoles had been sold. With the company announcing no plans to develop a next-generation successor to the Dreamcast, this was Sega's last foray into the home console business. The last North American release was NHL 2K2.

In January 2001, Sega announced that production of Dreamcast hardware was to be discontinued by March of that year, although the 50 to 60 titles still in production would be published. In 2000, the announcement of the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube was widely regarded as the last straw for the Dreamcast, since both competitors had deep pockets (like Sony) which fueled speculation that Sega did not have the resources for a prolonged marketing campaign. As a result of these three developments, the Dreamcast began to lose momentum as gamers waited to see which console would come out on top. Electronic Arts also threw its support to the PS2 and their titles helped to negate an otherwise unimpressive PS2 launch.

Even though Sega touted the Dreamcast's online capabilities (the PS2 would not go online until late 2002), much public attention was focused upon the PlayStation 2's ability to play DVDs. Sony's press release, despite being a year ahead of the launch of the PS2, was enough to divert a lot of attention from Sega. 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. Although Electronic Arts declined to support the Dreamcast which included the omission of its popular sports games (due in part to EA's losses from the past Sega Saturn), Sega Sports titles helped to fill that void.

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. Before the launch in the United States, Sega had already taken the extra step in displaying Dreamcast's capabilities in stores nationwide. Sega even compared the record figure to the opening day gross of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which made $28.5 million during the first 24 hours in theaters. Sega confirmed that it made $98.4 million on combined hardware and software sales with the Dreamcast with its September 9, 1999 launch.

In fact, due to brisk sales and hardware shortages, Sega was unable to fulfill all of the advance orders. In the United States alone, a record 200,000 units had been pre-ordered before launch and Sega sold 500,000 consoles in just two weeks (including 225,000 sold on the first 24 hours which became a video game record until the PlayStation 2 launched a year later). It enjoyed brisk sales in its first season and was one of Sega's most successful hardware units. Many Americans knew that the Dreamcast was coming, but didn't know what one was.) The Dreamcast was the first console to include a built-in modem and Internet support for online gaming.

(The vagueness of these campaigns and almost total lack of any in game footage has been touted as one of the reasons for the Dreamcast's eventual downfall. The tagline used to promote the console in the US was "It's thinking", and in Europe "Up to 6 Billion Players". The Dreamcast was released on November 27, 1998 in Japan, on September 9, 1999 in the United States (the date 9/9/99 featured heavily in US promotion) and on October 14, 1999 in Europe. [1] A timeline of the development of the console's GPU may be found here.

In September 1997, 3Dfx filed a lawsuit against Sega and NEC (later including VideoLogic), claiming "breach of contract", although they later settled. In July 1997, it was decided that the Japanese "Katana" would be the chosen format, renamed Dreamcast. This codename was only used by the US group, and in fact, the US hardware team called themselves the "Dural team". Contrary to popular misinformation, the Japanese hardware was never codenamed "Dural".

The first US prototype boards were silkscreened "Shark" (in response to the Japanese "Guppy") and the later ones "Dural". 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 Voodoo 2 graphics processor, which was originally codenamed "Black Belt". The first Japanese prototype boards were silkscreened "Guppy" and the later ones "Katana". This was originally codenamed "White Belt".

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. 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. He hired Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM Austin to head a skunkworks group to develop the next-generation console. 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.

. After the Dreamcast was discontinued, Sega withdrew from the console hardware business. 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. 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.

Storage: Visual Memory Unit ("VMU") 1 Mbit (128 KByte) removable storage device and 4x memory cards that hold four times as much data. 16.78 million simultaneous colors (24 bit). Color Output: Approx. Broadband: these adapters are available separately and replace the removable modem.

Modem: Removable; Original Asia/Japan model had a 33.6 kbit/s; models released after September 9, 1999 had a 56 kbit/s modem. Color: White. Weight: 1.9 kg (4.4 lb). Dimensions: 189 mm x 195 mm x 76 mm (7 7/16" x 7 11/16" x 3").

Four ports support devices such as digital and analog controllers, steering wheels, joysticks, keyboards and mice, and more. Inputs: USB-like "Maple Bus". A normal CD-ROM holds 700 megabytes. GD-ROM: Holds up to 1.2 GB of data.

GD-ROM Drive: 12x maximum speed (when running in Constant Angular Velocity mode). Sound Engine: Super Intelligent (Yamaha) Sound Processor with 47MHz 32-Bit ARM7 RISC CPU core built-in (64 channel PCM/ADPCM). Memory: Main RAM: 16 MB (Hyundai), Video RAM: 8 MB, Sound RAM: 2 MB. Graphics Engine: PowerVR2 CLX2, capable of drawing around 4-6 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).

CPU: SH-4 RISC CPU with 128 bit graphic computational engine built-in (operating frequency: 206 MHz 360 MIPS/1.4 GFLOPS). Mature: 32. Teen: 93. Everyone: 151.