I know a lot of people love it, which is fine, it's just never been my thing. I can definitely see it inspiring some wanderlust for the areas around where it takes place!
@@InglebardGaming I’m finding there are two kinds of retro games, all time classics like Mario or Zelda or my current obsession street fighter alpha 3…. And then there are games that ….. you really had to be there lol
I loved the Dreamcast so much, 9/9/99 was a magical day. Soul Calibur was my favorite at launch. I was gutted when they pulled the plug on it. I actually stopped console gaming after SEGA's departure from the console market.
Same I was subscribed to the official magazine at the time and heard the news on there, fully supported Sega all the way back to the master system and had all their consoles so it wasn't the best of news when I heard it
The Dreamcast was amazing when it launched. I think it's fair to call it the starting point of modern gaming. Not just because of the visual increase, which was huge, but many of the game genres companies experimented with on it that were essentially born on the system are still with us on modern platforms. I also really liked Soul Calibur at launch, but I LOVE DoA2, barely played SC after it came out!
As for The idea of labeling the Saturn as a total failure, This seem quite a American attitude towards the Console. When ever you see a RUclipsr telling you how much of a disaster the Saturn was, they often tend to be American. In Europe and Japan it seems to be a bit more Respected.
It's an idea (the Saturn is a failure idea) that started in the game magazines of the era and took on a life of its own online, much like the whole 'the genesis has terrible sound!' nonsense. I mean, there's no arguing it sold less than a third of the next closest competition. But in the annals of history, its game library alone makes it incredibly worthwhile, IMO. I enjoy seeing the recent pushback to the whole failure thing at least 😁
@@InglebardGaming It is a great Console, I've owned since 1996 and I still play and collect to this day. Here in the UK it seemed fairly Popular at the time. Not as big as the Playstation, but on par with the N64 in terms of popularity. Great channel by the way. I was watching your video on Sega games on the Amiga earlier as well. Very Nice.
@InglebardGaming I don’t think I’m disagreeing, but I would say the view that the US Saturn was a failure was more of a symbiotic situation. Sure, the magazines offered commentary on what certain decisions and games’ performances amounted to, but all along the way, you had Sony Fanboys with their own (predominant) narrative, big software store managers (who often didn’t read magazines, but balanced their opinions on customer commentary and higher-ups instructions), and Sega’s own boneheaded decisions. You even had mags like GameFan, who had a number of die-hard Sega apologists (pun intended), pushing Sega’s products, but weren’t enough. A lot of issues in the US were caused by Sega themselves. That said, of the biggest issues was that Sony correctly anticipated (and ushered in) the cosmically important paradigm shift of 3D graphics being the new standard for gaming, whereas Sega did not build a 3D-centric system, even after adding the other processor. I’m not saying the Saturn sucked at 3D, but almost every decision related to the Saturn hardware made it less powerful, way more expensive to manufacture (killing their profit both before and after they dropped the price), and more difficult to squeeze out 3D performance approaching the PlayStation. With worse lighting (or no lighting). Lower texture resolution. More draw in. To clarify, I totally agree with you that there were some awesome killer apps that helped me feel really good about choosing Saturn over the PS, at least until games game out that I knew Saturn could never even approach….at least until 30 or 40 years in, with unlimited spare time. I will say that it’s only a matter of time until PSX home brewers start creating homebrew PSX versions of Sega Rally, but with less draw-in and full-on lighting effects and transparent windows, or Last Bronx with lighting in hi-res.
The Saturn was the first time Sega won the hearts of Japan. As Mega Drive didn't do well against TG16 and SNES. As where Saturn did very well against PS1.
I love both the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast. I remember my mom getting me the Saturn when it came with Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter 2 and Daytona USA. Then we found the Netlink at toys r us for very cheap. Whats so funny is I never used it to play online games but I did use it to surf the internet lol. Great video!
I bought my Dreamcast when it was first released in 1998, imported from Hong Kong. It didn't have the modem out the box, just a piece of plastic where it would have been! Not that it mattered back then during the dark days of dial up.
One thing I learned after releasing this video is these early HK releases seemed to all ship without a modem. I might have known and forgot, happens at this age 👴
@InglebardGaming Definitely not a criticism my friend, as you said in the comments, most major regions got the modem, must have been some reason the HK version didn't ship with one.I only bought this version because it was cheaper! 😅 Mine also came with a demo disc with a preview of Shenmue
... I was there "at the time" and got the game when it was brand new, literally the first day in stores. If you like it, knock yourself out, enjoy it. It was never the best game ever made. The controls were incredibly clunky, there were lots of pointless collectables, you did a lot of walking and don't even get me started on the forklift scene when Ryo gets a job. The best thing about this game were the Sega classics you could play in the arcade. it was ambitious, I'll give it that, but nothing about the moment to moment gameplay was compelling, it was incredibly dull.
@InglebardGaming YES that forklift scene was the BS that broke me as a gamer. After the Saturn, I was going to sit gaming out for a while….but the DC launch was so damn strong! When Shenmue came out, I drove forklift for a job. So I go home to play some games to escape the mindless drudgery, and sh*t, I’m working the same job I hate IRL. In a game I’m ostensibly playing for fun. Think I had to go to therapy for that one lol
As a kid who was raised with Sega consoles. I'll always love that period. As an adult, I bought a lot of old Sega games etc. I am torn between the Saturn and Dreamcast, unable to decide which was best. My fav Dreamcast addon that I own is a Karaoke unit, boxed, complete and clean white as it possibly could be. I wanted it because I think the Dreamcast looks awesome when in a tower setup.
Yeah, it's tough to pick between them, it's why I think you almost have to look at them together since even together they only represent the length of a typical single hardware generation. Obviously the DC is vastly technically superior, but we still only had basically one typical console generation of time with both combined.
I didn't "forget it" I just left it and a lot of other things out because I keep these videos to 11 facts. If I end up doing another video on this topic though, it'll definitely make the cut. It'll definitely be a good long while before I revisit any systems I already covered, though.
I've seen a few people online say this. All DCa should have come with a modem, in Japan and Europe they shipped with 33k modems vs the 56k modems we had in the US version. Maybe there was another variant with no modem sold there in limited quantities.
@@InglebardGaming I believe it's a HK version. It was ordered from NCSX. My fav store back in the day for imports. Ordered pen pen, vf3 and sonic with it.
Yeah, seems like from what I've been seeing the early HK releases didn't have the modem. I either a) didn't know that or b) knew it a long time and forgot because I'm old.
Technicly the Power VR tech was first introduce on PC accelerated graphics card like the Diamond Edge that was running a PC version of Ridge Racer they was reuse by NEC for the Dreamcast as a power VR 2 upgrade and was still remaketed by STI micro as the famous Kyro Power VR 3 for PC market, those one was not as powerfull as an NVIDIA but get lack of interest, today your smartphone probably have a Power VR tech embeded in your ARM CPU or Snap Dragon chip they are widely use in smartphone.
The European DC had a 33k modem instead though. The dvd was too expensive in 1998, not 1999. GD Rom was very secure. Just the backdoor with mil cd compatibility was a problem. All these game sales numbers are US numbers.
Being US based, I do normally either discuss worldwide or US numbers and point out when I'm talking about other regions, sorry for not making that clear in this video. DVD Rom was still pretty expensive in 1999. In fact, the average price of a DVD player in the first half of 1999 was $443.39 according to a report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'll provide the link at the bottom of this post. By the time the PS2 hit the US in November of 2000, the cheapest standalone DVD players were in roughly the $200 range and most were still 300+. I've linked an article from IGN from the August 2000 about some of their DVD player recommendations with prices at the time. And saying something is secure except for the thing that totally broke it... well that makes it NOT secure, I don't see much room for argument there. US Bureau of Labor Statistics report covering through Dec 1999: www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/dvd-players.htm#:~:text=InfoTech%2C%20Inc.%20reports%20that%20the,half%20of%201999%20was%20%24443.39. IGN DVD player buying guide from August 2000: www.ign.com/articles/2000/08/19/dvd-player-buyers-guide
I remember getting a Dreamcast on 09/09/1999 and best of all I got it for free!!! Sadly I sold it a few years later and all the games I had for it, but ended up buying a used one from either Funcoland or Gamestop and have slowly been buying up games here and there through the years and have a fondness for the system, but have to agree with most that the controller is just awful. lol
Yeah, it has a lot of games that are still great, many of which were ported to other systems, but some of its unique versions of things still stand out. And yeah, worst official Sega first-party gamepad controller ever, for the time of its release.
The Dreamcast was the second console to include a modem. The Saturn was the first. Sure, you had to purchase the Netlink complete version of the system. Nevertheless, it came a year before the Dreamcast.
The netlink Saturn was a special edition, not a standard edition, the vast, vast majority of Saturns sold did not come with a netlink. The DC was the first system to include a modem as standard in the major regions.
Lol your music is s bit dramatic and too loud but the facts were cool though, another fact about the Dreamcast was that it was more popular in Europe and the UK compared to the rest of the world and we even got exclusive games for the console which the US did not receive
Well the music is there for a bit of fun, primarily, the melodramatic nature is definitely on purpose. I tested the volume on three setups, so sorry it was too loud on your equipment. I wouldn't call the DC more popular in Europe, it sold best in the US by far, more than half of its total sales (over 5 million) were in the US alone while it sold 1.79 million in Europe.
@@InglebardGaming It bears remembering that Europe isn't a country, and was even less integrated at the time. Marketing, pricing and availability could differ a lot between different European countries, so something could be a big hit in one part and unheard of next door.
I'd argue that the GD-ROM format was secure. It's just that Sega (foolishly, IMO) thought creating the MIL-CD format would be a good idea. Originally intended to give music CDs extra functionality when run on the Dreamcast, it opened up a backdoor for hackers to run software off of CDs. Had they excluded this feature, it would have stymied the efforts of pirates and would have required more sophisticated hacking (I'm not sure a modchip would have circumvented it). The Dreamcast doesn't really have an operating system per se. It had two different development environments, the Katana SDK and Windows CE. The Windows CE operating system files were only on the discs and not built into the Dreamcast. It was meant to make porting PC games easier, but it doesn't really seem to have been used that way (it could just be hearsay, though).
I can understand where you're coming from in general, but still have to disagree on both points. Whatever the reason, including obviously the mil-CD compatibility, it's pretty impossible to argue the format was secure when the DC was hacked thoroughly and extremely quickly. Regarding the OS situation, if you consider the OS as the software that interfaces with the hardware and manages its resources, which is one of the most basic and common definitions of an OS, then yes, Sega had one for the DC. It doesn't need to have user accessible features or bells and whistles.
@InglebardGaming The MIL-CD is what allowed for the hacking. The problem with GD-ROMs being read is something that would show up regardless since development systems will be able to read GDs. Typical disc drives have a hard time with that, and without homebrew like we have, it would require major hacking to use the Dreamcast as a disc dumper. Regardless, dumping discs will have little point unless there's some way to play them. Without MIL-CD support, there wouldn't be an easy way to do this until emulation started to catch up. At least, that's how I see it. The Dreamcast has more of a BIOS/boot ROM, IMO (I don't think it has a kernel, for example). Thus, I feel like it's stretching the definition of what an operating system is to call it that. Though, I could be mistaken, so no big deal either way.
Sort of a side note to this conversation, I think it's also a safe bet there would have been modchips or attachments to allow piracy on the system if Sega hadn't killed it off so quickly. It wouldn't have surprised me if the DC lasted longer if there were HDD mods like those that eventually became available for the PS2.
@InglebardGaming Maybe. I don't think Sega really thought ahead enough for an HDD add-on to be too realistic (the serial port on the back isn't particularly fast). Though they did have a Zip disk drive planned at one point. I'm not sure how easy it would have been to create a modchip to trick the disc drive into loading a CD instead of GD (it's all conjecture anyways since Sega never bothered trying to prevent it on the initial releases). I don't think GD-ROMs were an ideal choice for other reasons. DVD video support potentially boosted PS2 sales. If the Dreamcast lived long enough, it may have also run into issues related to the limited size of GDs compared to DVDs (similar to the GameCube and its use of mini-DVDs). It may not have been a huge hurdle, though, since I don't think it hurt the GC that much. As an aside, there is a Dreamcast modchip that makes it region free for those who don't have an Action Replay/GameShark, Codebreaker/Xploder, or other boot disc (or would rather not disc swap). Edit: I just want to add that I think what you mentioned could have been realistic possibilities. The reality of a modchip would depend on how difficult it would be to trick the Dreamcast into thinking it was loading a GD instead of a CD. It could be as simple as sending the appropriate signals from the disc drive to the BIOS/boot ROM (like most modchips of the PS1 and PS2 generations) or a hacked BIOS like with the Xbox.
@@InglebardGaming Still disagree. The GD-ROM format itself is STILL secure as no one can make an unauthorized GD-ROM discs. It was the MIL-CD support of the Dreamcast that made cracking and duplicating the GD-ROM format completely irrelevant. It's the equivalent of installing an impenetrable vault door to a bank vault but there's a giant window using breakable glass right beside it that is INTENDED for looking inside the vault. So, people found a way to break the glass window that is MIL-CD to get into the vault instead of going through the vault door that is the GD-ROM. The last batch of Dreamcasts made removed the MIL-CD support so you couldn't boot up CD games on those units and that would have been the future if Sega continued with the Dreamcast.
Blue Stinger was the first survival horror game I ever played for any system. I basically liekd it. I onyl ever played it once, though. Might have to try it again some time!
Interesting stuff. I'd heard about Black Belt, but was under the mistaken impression it would have been more powerful. I regret that I didn't support the Dreamcast at the time. I remember thinking it was a pretty cool system with some interesting features, but I was in love with Sony back then and convinced the PS2 would be better in every way. Still love my PS2, but it was nowhere near as innovative or unique as the Dreamcast. In many ways I think the Dreamcast was more killed by the idea of the PS2 than by the PS2 itself. All the tech demos and hype around PS2 really killed the Dreamcast's momentum at a crucial phase in its life, and much of that PS2 hype wound up being exaggerated smoke and mirrors.
You're right, there's no doubt the impending PS2 release was a major factor, too. I saw employees at EB actively tell customers NOT to buy a DC because "the PS2 is coming soon and it's going to be WAY better!" I think all the major factors are the piracy, the money sega lost on Shenmue, the impending PS2, and just good old fashioned mismanagement at Sega.
@@InglebardGaming Yeah I agree with all of those. The 3Dfx lawsuit didn't help either. I heard Sega wouldn't have survived at all if it wasn't for their biggest investor bailing them out with a loan, then forgiving their debt on his death bed.
Yes, Isao Okawa, Sega's former chairman, forgave all the debts that Sega owned him and gave Sega $695 million worth of his stock before he died in 2001. This was huge because Sega's losses at the time were reported to be over $500 million.
@@InglebardGaming Absolute legend. As much as it sucks that Sega had to exit the hardware side of games, it would've been far more tragic if they'd folded completely.
Speaking of the classical music you used in the background, there is a Dreamcast game called Mercurius Pretty: End of the Century. Based on the title alone, this is an updated version of Mercurius Pretty released to the Dreamcast in 2000. It's a raising simulation game of some kind, and I don't know much about it all. The whole title gives me vibes of Beethoven's ninth symphony.
The fishing controller does, but it's not technically a Sega product, Ascii manufactured it with the Dreamcast branding on it and Sega made it the "official" Dreamcast fishing controller. There were also other fishing controllers from other brands.
I didn't think the Dreamcast sold that many! I think a big part of those sales were made from the existing stock sold after Sega gave up the console? Nice epic music, what game is that from? ;)
The DC sold way better in the US than any other region, significantly over half of its total sales came from here alone. In other parts of the world it sold worse than Saturn, which was to be expected considering it was only on the market for 2-3 years depending on the region. The epic music is of course from the game of real life 😁
The Power Glove isn't really comparable to the Wii remote or what Sega was planning with the Air Nights controller. There were also motion controllers dating back to the Atari 2600 days, like the Le Stick and even the balance-board like Joyboard (from Amiga, no less). Also in the case of the Wii, the Wii remote was included with the system and almost every game for it used the Wii remote and it started the motion control craze that the other companies tried to copy, that didn't happen with the prior motion controllers. The Le Stick, Joyboard, Power Glove and others were barely supported optional accessory. The Air Nights controller, who knows which category it would have fallen into, it looks like Sega MIGHT have even considered it as a primary controller for the system. Anyway, the key point is the Wii wasn't first when it came to motion controls, but it was the first system to have a motion controller in every box and unquestionably the system that popularized them. Sega's controller looks and sounds (by description) really similar to it, much more so than any other prior motion controllers.
I never saw a U Force in person, just had friends back in the day talk about how bad it was, lol. I knew it well from the magazines of the time, but never got to try one myself.
If this video doesn't contain the line "Dreamcast isn't what killed Sega, Saturn was", it's missing a very relevant point as to how Sega ended up where they are now - they hated to admit their failure with the Saturn so much, that they frequently blame the Dreamcast for their downfall. Also around 3:45 - PS2 had both a dialup and a LAN adapter. Xbox OG and Gamecube ALSO had broadband support. Also, that's not even the first time consoles had internet support - Sega Channel and XBand both existed for the Genessis, and I'm fairly certain there was an XBand for SNES... and in Japan, they had a direct Satellite feed cartridge. "Piracy Killed the Dreamcast" - couldn't be further from the truth. Sega released a revision of the dreamcast that could detect illegal copies and refuse to boot them. It was the complicated mess called the Saturn that really killed the Dreamcast. Sega lost virtually all 3rd party developers because of the Saturn (capcom being one of the very few that stuck around), and many outright refused to even try the Dreamcast dev kit to see how much better it was because of the Saturn's nightmare inducing bs. Now, the ease of piracy early on certainly didn't help... but it was far closer to a mosquito bite compared to the fact that Nintendo and Sony were getting far more 3rd party titles, and had much stronger 1st party games. Had Sega not skipped a main entry Sonic game for Saturn (3D Blast is a spinoff, and is one of the first times a non-Sega devteam made a Sonic title), and hadn't made the Saturn an outright mess to dev for (it had 7 different processors for various things, and you had to code certain things multiple times for each "section" of the console, and you had to do things exactly right or things just wouldn't work), the Sega would still be making consoles today, and quite potentially would be dominating the market.
There are some good points here so let's talk about them. First, the PS2 did not come with a modem in every market, only a few of them. I did talk about xband on Genesis and SNES in the video and other modems for older systems like the NES. But the DC was the first system that implemented online connectivity as standard out of the box and online wouldn't be as 'easy' on other systems until the next generation. On piracy, if the DC had lasted longer, I'm sure there would have been other contemporary ways to boot copied games. As for it not being an issue, hard disagree there, with the exceptions of the PSP and Wii I don't know of any system during its commercial life time where it was as big an issue. The amount of people I saw with CDRs of DC games was staggering back in the day, and this for a system that in the US only had a commercial life of about 2 years. On the PSP and Wii it became a problem later into their lives and I would argue was less impactful because of that. Regarding what killed Sega in the hardware business, there were a lot of factors. I've been talking about that in other comments. Piracy was a factor but not the only one, there was the money they lost on Shenmue, there was the mismanagement at SoJ, there was the bad will from the perception of Sega releasing and killing hardware quickly because of the 32x and the Saturn and more. When it came to third party games, there were some big companies there in the early days of the DC in particular. The thing had Soul Calibur at launch and DoA 2 a few months later. Capcom stuck around, Konami was there to a lesser degree, you had big contemporary hit games like Quake III and Unreal Tournament. That support dried up as it became apparent that most DC games weren't selling all that well. Which I think again ties in, at least in part, to the ease of piracy for most of its life. In the final analysis of Sega in the hardware business, no the DC is definitely not 'what killed Sega,' but mistakes during the DC era were the end of about 8 years of missteps at Sega that compounded over time.
Seeing how quickly they acted like Sega Cd wasnt even a thing within 2yrs Saturn was out in Japan, 32X released in murica.. clearly SOJ&SOA didnt agree with what was best going forward.. along with rejecting Sonys courtship.. Kalinske being replace by shudder bernie stolar
The Dreamcast controller is just so bad. Only 1 analog stick, 6 buttons instead of 8 which was already the standard for the Saturn controller! Last but not least the weight is awful with 2 vmu. I love the Dreamcast but damn the controller is so wrong
At least some games like Unreal Tournament, OutTrigger and Grand Theft Auto 2 relied on the directional buttons for additional actions, considering the Analog Joystick being one of the main inputs for turning and aiming. Speaking of the Dreamcast controller design, Retro Fighters was able to redesign it to satisfy modern gamers, and the StrikerDC happened. I wanted to play with a wired Red controller, but around that time StrikerDC controllers tend to be pricey. It's not as cheap as a Brawler64, another Retro Fighters product.
I basically knew about all these facts except for the motion controller. Nintendo Wii controllers were definitely based on the Saturn one. Piracy killed the Dreamcast as much as it killed the PS1 and PS2. No, it was definitely Sega's own decisions that sealed the fate of any future Sega consoles.
I'm definitely with you that Sega's executive decisions played a major role in their hardware fate. I'd say it was that, the money they lost on Shenmue, the piracy issue and more. While piracy was a thing on the PS1 and 2, it wasn't nearly as easily accessible as it was on the DC and didn't happen as early in the consoles' life. Remember, all you needed was a CDR drive and disc to burn games that worked in the DC. On the PS1 and 2 it was never that simple. Now, on the Wii and some later systems, it'd be even easier, so I could agree if we were talking about those, too.
@@InglebardGaming Piracy on Ps1 was very simple and started with a trick of changing discs on the fly and then with a super easy to install modchips,all videogame shops modded ps1 in half an hour and cheap and you could buy the latest import bootlegs cheaply. Ps2 was a little more tricky on start but after a while, same situation with ps1. Without piracy ps1-ps2 would NEVER had the sales they had globally, they would be mostly the half in numbers.
@vasileios6301 PS1 still needed a mod and most of the time even with a mod you had to do disc swaps and all that. They also weren't as available as early in the PS1's lifespan. With DC you burned the boot disc and the games, nothing else needed. When self booting games showed up soon after, you literally just put the cdr in the DC and needed zero extra hardware or swapping. It was never as easy as DC.
@@InglebardGaming Maybe you didnt live how exactly rampant the piracy on ps1 was from the very beggining. Before Sony addressed the problem with the easy swap method, modchips were already out and no swap needed anymore.Also dc wasnt easily hacked at once, selfboot games were available at least after a year later and a half later and ps2 was there with its dvd, then the game is over. Piracy wasnt the problem for dc failure neither Shenmue. DVD was and top companies like EA.
@vasileios6301 Back in the PS1's hey day, I knew very few people that messed with piracy on the system until the mods became available. The early swap tricks were unreliable and had issues. Mod chips were easier and reliable. Eventually, when the mods that plugged into the expansion port became available, that's when from what I witnessed piracy on that system really took off. But that was a few years in. For general reference: www.xda-developers.com/how-paperclip-enabled-piracy-original-playstation/
@MarginalSC I loved the Saturn 3D pad., so not with you there! Great dpad, love the analog nub and the same size buttons, although I do prefer concave buttons.
I regard Yu Suzuki as the greatest videogame designer of all time but Shenmue, to me, is almost complete dogshit and the perfect encapsulation of the death of Sega.
Shenmue is the reason I have a love for endlessly wandering around Japan when I’m there XD
I know a lot of people love it, which is fine, it's just never been my thing. I can definitely see it inspiring some wanderlust for the areas around where it takes place!
@@InglebardGaming I’m finding there are two kinds of retro games, all time classics like Mario or Zelda or my current obsession street fighter alpha 3…. And then there are games that ….. you really had to be there lol
Dreamcast was a beast for it's time. Dead or alive and soul calibur looked like the ps1 fmv parts kinda. It looked that good at the time.
Yeah, it was basically the introduction of a lot of "modern" graphical features that are standard today.
@@InglebardGaming Indeed.
I loved the Dreamcast so much, 9/9/99 was a magical day. Soul Calibur was my favorite at launch. I was gutted when they pulled the plug on it. I actually stopped console gaming after SEGA's departure from the console market.
Same I was subscribed to the official magazine at the time and heard the news on there, fully supported Sega all the way back to the master system and had all their consoles so it wasn't the best of news when I heard it
The Dreamcast was amazing when it launched. I think it's fair to call it the starting point of modern gaming. Not just because of the visual increase, which was huge, but many of the game genres companies experimented with on it that were essentially born on the system are still with us on modern platforms.
I also really liked Soul Calibur at launch, but I LOVE DoA2, barely played SC after it came out!
As for The idea of labeling the Saturn as a total failure, This seem quite a American attitude towards the Console. When ever you see a RUclipsr telling you how much of a disaster the Saturn was, they often tend to be American. In Europe and Japan it seems to be a bit more Respected.
It's an idea (the Saturn is a failure idea) that started in the game magazines of the era and took on a life of its own online, much like the whole 'the genesis has terrible sound!' nonsense.
I mean, there's no arguing it sold less than a third of the next closest competition. But in the annals of history, its game library alone makes it incredibly worthwhile, IMO.
I enjoy seeing the recent pushback to the whole failure thing at least 😁
@@InglebardGaming It is a great Console, I've owned since 1996 and I still play and collect to this day. Here in the UK it seemed fairly Popular at the time. Not as big as the Playstation, but on par with the N64 in terms of popularity. Great channel by the way. I was watching your video on Sega games on the Amiga earlier as well. Very Nice.
@InglebardGaming I don’t think I’m disagreeing, but I would say the view that the US Saturn was a failure was more of a symbiotic situation. Sure, the magazines offered commentary on what certain decisions and games’ performances amounted to, but all along the way, you had Sony Fanboys with their own (predominant) narrative, big software store managers (who often didn’t read magazines, but balanced their opinions on customer commentary and higher-ups instructions), and Sega’s own boneheaded decisions. You even had mags like GameFan, who had a number of die-hard Sega apologists (pun intended), pushing Sega’s products, but weren’t enough. A lot of issues in the US were caused by Sega themselves.
That said, of the biggest issues was that Sony correctly anticipated (and ushered in) the cosmically important paradigm shift of 3D graphics being the new standard for gaming, whereas Sega did not build a 3D-centric system, even after adding the other processor. I’m not saying the Saturn sucked at 3D, but almost every decision related to the Saturn hardware made it less powerful, way more expensive to manufacture (killing their profit both before and after they dropped the price), and more difficult to squeeze out 3D performance approaching the PlayStation. With worse lighting (or no lighting). Lower texture resolution. More draw in.
To clarify, I totally agree with you that there were some awesome killer apps that helped me feel really good about choosing Saturn over the PS, at least until games game out that I knew Saturn could never even approach….at least until 30 or 40 years in, with unlimited spare time. I will say that it’s only a matter of time until PSX home brewers start creating homebrew PSX versions of Sega Rally, but with less draw-in and full-on lighting effects and transparent windows, or Last Bronx with lighting in hi-res.
Yes. JAPAN it was as or more popular than ps1.
The Saturn was the first time Sega won the hearts of Japan. As Mega Drive didn't do well against TG16 and SNES. As where Saturn did very well against PS1.
I love both the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast. I remember my mom getting me the Saturn when it came with Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter 2 and Daytona USA. Then we found the Netlink at toys r us for very cheap. Whats so funny is I never used it to play online games but I did use it to surf the internet lol. Great video!
Thanks, appreciate it! I never ended up getting a Netlink myself. One of the few Sega gadgets I never owned.
I bought my Dreamcast when it was first released in 1998, imported from Hong Kong. It didn't have the modem out the box, just a piece of plastic where it would have been! Not that it mattered back then during the dark days of dial up.
One thing I learned after releasing this video is these early HK releases seemed to all ship without a modem. I might have known and forgot, happens at this age 👴
@InglebardGaming Definitely not a criticism my friend, as you said in the comments, most major regions got the modem, must have been some reason the HK version didn't ship with one.I only bought this version because it was cheaper! 😅 Mine also came with a demo disc with a preview of Shenmue
Dreamcast finally!
I do what I can! 😁
Shenmue was the best game ever made at the time, you wouldn't understand
... I was there "at the time" and got the game when it was brand new, literally the first day in stores.
If you like it, knock yourself out, enjoy it. It was never the best game ever made. The controls were incredibly clunky, there were lots of pointless collectables, you did a lot of walking and don't even get me started on the forklift scene when Ryo gets a job. The best thing about this game were the Sega classics you could play in the arcade. it was ambitious, I'll give it that, but nothing about the moment to moment gameplay was compelling, it was incredibly dull.
@@InglebardGaming When i got the forklift job, it felt like i got my first Real job in real life, it's still real to me god dammit lolol
@InglebardGaming YES that forklift scene was the BS that broke me as a gamer. After the Saturn, I was going to sit gaming out for a while….but the DC launch was so damn strong!
When Shenmue came out, I drove forklift for a job. So I go home to play some games to escape the mindless drudgery, and sh*t, I’m working the same job I hate IRL. In a game I’m ostensibly playing for fun.
Think I had to go to therapy for that one lol
fantastic video as usual
Thanks, appreciate it!
As a kid who was raised with Sega consoles. I'll always love that period. As an adult, I bought a lot of old Sega games etc. I am torn between the Saturn and Dreamcast, unable to decide which was best. My fav Dreamcast addon that I own is a Karaoke unit, boxed, complete and clean white as it possibly could be. I wanted it because I think the Dreamcast looks awesome when in a tower setup.
Yeah, it's tough to pick between them, it's why I think you almost have to look at them together since even together they only represent the length of a typical single hardware generation. Obviously the DC is vastly technically superior, but we still only had basically one typical console generation of time with both combined.
Always here watching your content.
Thanks, appreciate it!
You forget to mention the Divers CX 1 which is the official most expensive Dreamcast nowadays ( new in box is between 8000€ and 20’000€.
I didn't "forget it" I just left it and a lot of other things out because I keep these videos to 11 facts. If I end up doing another video on this topic though, it'll definitely make the cut. It'll definitely be a good long while before I revisit any systems I already covered, though.
My import DC from 1998 did not have a modem. Just a dummy corner cap to keep the shape.
I've seen a few people online say this. All DCa should have come with a modem, in Japan and Europe they shipped with 33k modems vs the 56k modems we had in the US version. Maybe there was another variant with no modem sold there in limited quantities.
@@InglebardGaming I believe it's a HK version. It was ordered from NCSX. My fav store back in the day for imports. Ordered pen pen, vf3 and sonic with it.
Yeah, seems like from what I've been seeing the early HK releases didn't have the modem. I either a) didn't know that or b) knew it a long time and forgot because I'm old.
*Hong Kong Dreamcast unit!* 💡
Technicly the Power VR tech was first introduce on PC accelerated graphics card like the Diamond Edge that was running a PC version of Ridge Racer they was reuse by NEC for the Dreamcast as a power VR 2 upgrade and was still remaketed by STI micro as the famous Kyro Power VR 3 for PC market, those one was not as powerfull as an NVIDIA but get lack of interest, today your smartphone probably have a Power VR tech embeded in your ARM CPU or Snap Dragon chip they are widely use in smartphone.
TecToy sold the Dreamcast in Brazil without a modem.
That’s interesting and I didn’t know it.
The European DC had a 33k modem instead though.
The dvd was too expensive in 1998, not 1999. GD Rom was very secure. Just the backdoor with mil cd compatibility was a problem.
All these game sales numbers are US numbers.
Being US based, I do normally either discuss worldwide or US numbers and point out when I'm talking about other regions, sorry for not making that clear in this video. DVD Rom was still pretty expensive in 1999. In fact, the average price of a DVD player in the first half of 1999 was $443.39 according to a report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'll provide the link at the bottom of this post.
By the time the PS2 hit the US in November of 2000, the cheapest standalone DVD players were in roughly the $200 range and most were still 300+. I've linked an article from IGN from the August 2000 about some of their DVD player recommendations with prices at the time.
And saying something is secure except for the thing that totally broke it... well that makes it NOT secure, I don't see much room for argument there.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics report covering through Dec 1999: www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/dvd-players.htm#:~:text=InfoTech%2C%20Inc.%20reports%20that%20the,half%20of%201999%20was%20%24443.39.
IGN DVD player buying guide from August 2000: www.ign.com/articles/2000/08/19/dvd-player-buyers-guide
I remember getting a Dreamcast on 09/09/1999 and best of all I got it for free!!! Sadly I sold it a few years later and all the games I had for it, but ended up buying a used one from either Funcoland or Gamestop and have slowly been buying up games here and there through the years and have a fondness for the system, but have to agree with most that the controller is just awful. lol
Yeah, it has a lot of games that are still great, many of which were ported to other systems, but some of its unique versions of things still stand out. And yeah, worst official Sega first-party gamepad controller ever, for the time of its release.
GD-roms had a capacity of 1.2gb and not 1gb as it is false stated on a few websites, including the english wiki.
Don’t forget the indie DC group is massive support bringing games to the Dreamcast ….like GTA3 many more
The Dreamcast was the second console to include a modem. The Saturn was the first. Sure, you had to purchase the Netlink complete version of the system. Nevertheless, it came a year before the Dreamcast.
The netlink Saturn was a special edition, not a standard edition, the vast, vast majority of Saturns sold did not come with a netlink. The DC was the first system to include a modem as standard in the major regions.
Lol your music is s bit dramatic and too loud but the facts were cool though, another fact about the Dreamcast was that it was more popular in Europe and the UK compared to the rest of the world and we even got exclusive games for the console which the US did not receive
Well the music is there for a bit of fun, primarily, the melodramatic nature is definitely on purpose. I tested the volume on three setups, so sorry it was too loud on your equipment. I wouldn't call the DC more popular in Europe, it sold best in the US by far, more than half of its total sales (over 5 million) were in the US alone while it sold 1.79 million in Europe.
@@InglebardGaming It bears remembering that Europe isn't a country, and was even less integrated at the time.
Marketing, pricing and availability could differ a lot between different European countries, so something could be a big hit in one part and unheard of next door.
I'd argue that the GD-ROM format was secure. It's just that Sega (foolishly, IMO) thought creating the MIL-CD format would be a good idea. Originally intended to give music CDs extra functionality when run on the Dreamcast, it opened up a backdoor for hackers to run software off of CDs. Had they excluded this feature, it would have stymied the efforts of pirates and would have required more sophisticated hacking (I'm not sure a modchip would have circumvented it).
The Dreamcast doesn't really have an operating system per se. It had two different development environments, the Katana SDK and Windows CE. The Windows CE operating system files were only on the discs and not built into the Dreamcast. It was meant to make porting PC games easier, but it doesn't really seem to have been used that way (it could just be hearsay, though).
I can understand where you're coming from in general, but still have to disagree on both points.
Whatever the reason, including obviously the mil-CD compatibility, it's pretty impossible to argue the format was secure when the DC was hacked thoroughly and extremely quickly.
Regarding the OS situation, if you consider the OS as the software that interfaces with the hardware and manages its resources, which is one of the most basic and common definitions of an OS, then yes, Sega had one for the DC. It doesn't need to have user accessible features or bells and whistles.
@InglebardGaming The MIL-CD is what allowed for the hacking. The problem with GD-ROMs being read is something that would show up regardless since development systems will be able to read GDs. Typical disc drives have a hard time with that, and without homebrew like we have, it would require major hacking to use the Dreamcast as a disc dumper. Regardless, dumping discs will have little point unless there's some way to play them. Without MIL-CD support, there wouldn't be an easy way to do this until emulation started to catch up. At least, that's how I see it.
The Dreamcast has more of a BIOS/boot ROM, IMO (I don't think it has a kernel, for example). Thus, I feel like it's stretching the definition of what an operating system is to call it that. Though, I could be mistaken, so no big deal either way.
Sort of a side note to this conversation, I think it's also a safe bet there would have been modchips or attachments to allow piracy on the system if Sega hadn't killed it off so quickly. It wouldn't have surprised me if the DC lasted longer if there were HDD mods like those that eventually became available for the PS2.
@InglebardGaming Maybe. I don't think Sega really thought ahead enough for an HDD add-on to be too realistic (the serial port on the back isn't particularly fast). Though they did have a Zip disk drive planned at one point. I'm not sure how easy it would have been to create a modchip to trick the disc drive into loading a CD instead of GD (it's all conjecture anyways since Sega never bothered trying to prevent it on the initial releases). I don't think GD-ROMs were an ideal choice for other reasons. DVD video support potentially boosted PS2 sales. If the Dreamcast lived long enough, it may have also run into issues related to the limited size of GDs compared to DVDs (similar to the GameCube and its use of mini-DVDs). It may not have been a huge hurdle, though, since I don't think it hurt the GC that much. As an aside, there is a Dreamcast modchip that makes it region free for those who don't have an Action Replay/GameShark, Codebreaker/Xploder, or other boot disc (or would rather not disc swap).
Edit: I just want to add that I think what you mentioned could have been realistic possibilities. The reality of a modchip would depend on how difficult it would be to trick the Dreamcast into thinking it was loading a GD instead of a CD. It could be as simple as sending the appropriate signals from the disc drive to the BIOS/boot ROM (like most modchips of the PS1 and PS2 generations) or a hacked BIOS like with the Xbox.
@@InglebardGaming Still disagree. The GD-ROM format itself is STILL secure as no one can make an unauthorized GD-ROM discs. It was the MIL-CD support of the Dreamcast that made cracking and duplicating the GD-ROM format completely irrelevant. It's the equivalent of installing an impenetrable vault door to a bank vault but there's a giant window using breakable glass right beside it that is INTENDED for looking inside the vault. So, people found a way to break the glass window that is MIL-CD to get into the vault instead of going through the vault door that is the GD-ROM. The last batch of Dreamcasts made removed the MIL-CD support so you couldn't boot up CD games on those units and that would have been the future if Sega continued with the Dreamcast.
I loved blue stinger.
Blue Stinger was the first survival horror game I ever played for any system. I basically liekd it. I onyl ever played it once, though. Might have to try it again some time!
@InglebardGaming it's really flawed but it has a nice ambience
Interesting stuff. I'd heard about Black Belt, but was under the mistaken impression it would have been more powerful.
I regret that I didn't support the Dreamcast at the time. I remember thinking it was a pretty cool system with some interesting features, but I was in love with Sony back then and convinced the PS2 would be better in every way. Still love my PS2, but it was nowhere near as innovative or unique as the Dreamcast.
In many ways I think the Dreamcast was more killed by the idea of the PS2 than by the PS2 itself. All the tech demos and hype around PS2 really killed the Dreamcast's momentum at a crucial phase in its life, and much of that PS2 hype wound up being exaggerated smoke and mirrors.
You're right, there's no doubt the impending PS2 release was a major factor, too. I saw employees at EB actively tell customers NOT to buy a DC because "the PS2 is coming soon and it's going to be WAY better!"
I think all the major factors are the piracy, the money sega lost on Shenmue, the impending PS2, and just good old fashioned mismanagement at Sega.
@@InglebardGaming Yeah I agree with all of those. The 3Dfx lawsuit didn't help either.
I heard Sega wouldn't have survived at all if it wasn't for their biggest investor bailing them out with a loan, then forgiving their debt on his death bed.
Yes, Isao Okawa, Sega's former chairman, forgave all the debts that Sega owned him and gave Sega $695 million worth of his stock before he died in 2001. This was huge because Sega's losses at the time were reported to be over $500 million.
@@InglebardGaming Absolute legend. As much as it sucks that Sega had to exit the hardware side of games, it would've been far more tragic if they'd folded completely.
Speaking of the classical music you used in the background, there is a Dreamcast game called Mercurius Pretty: End of the Century. Based on the title alone, this is an updated version of Mercurius Pretty released to the Dreamcast in 2000. It's a raising simulation game of some kind, and I don't know much about it all. The whole title gives me vibes of Beethoven's ninth symphony.
I always appreciate good use of classical music in games and other media!
@08:35 Maybe I'm wrong with this one but didn't the fishing controller have motion sensors as well?
The fishing controller does, but it's not technically a Sega product, Ascii manufactured it with the Dreamcast branding on it and Sega made it the "official" Dreamcast fishing controller. There were also other fishing controllers from other brands.
@@InglebardGaming Ahh thank you! I thought Sega produced them
I didn't think the Dreamcast sold that many! I think a big part of those sales were made from the existing stock sold after Sega gave up the console?
Nice epic music, what game is that from? ;)
The DC sold way better in the US than any other region, significantly over half of its total sales came from here alone. In other parts of the world it sold worse than Saturn, which was to be expected considering it was only on the market for 2-3 years depending on the region.
The epic music is of course from the game of real life 😁
Great video !!! Next time /- please -- no background music !!!
Must've forgotten about the Power Glove. I always thought of the Wii remote as an updated version of that.
The Power Glove isn't really comparable to the Wii remote or what Sega was planning with the Air Nights controller.
There were also motion controllers dating back to the Atari 2600 days, like the Le Stick and even the balance-board like Joyboard (from Amiga, no less).
Also in the case of the Wii, the Wii remote was included with the system and almost every game for it used the Wii remote and it started the motion control craze that the other companies tried to copy, that didn't happen with the prior motion controllers. The Le Stick, Joyboard, Power Glove and others were barely supported optional accessory. The Air Nights controller, who knows which category it would have fallen into, it looks like Sega MIGHT have even considered it as a primary controller for the system.
Anyway, the key point is the Wii wasn't first when it came to motion controls, but it was the first system to have a motion controller in every box and unquestionably the system that popularized them. Sega's controller looks and sounds (by description) really similar to it, much more so than any other prior motion controllers.
Ever try U Force for nes?!
It was awful
I love the Power Glove… its so bad…
I never saw a U Force in person, just had friends back in the day talk about how bad it was, lol. I knew it well from the magazines of the time, but never got to try one myself.
If this video doesn't contain the line "Dreamcast isn't what killed Sega, Saturn was", it's missing a very relevant point as to how Sega ended up where they are now - they hated to admit their failure with the Saturn so much, that they frequently blame the Dreamcast for their downfall. Also around 3:45 - PS2 had both a dialup and a LAN adapter. Xbox OG and Gamecube ALSO had broadband support. Also, that's not even the first time consoles had internet support - Sega Channel and XBand both existed for the Genessis, and I'm fairly certain there was an XBand for SNES... and in Japan, they had a direct Satellite feed cartridge.
"Piracy Killed the Dreamcast" - couldn't be further from the truth. Sega released a revision of the dreamcast that could detect illegal copies and refuse to boot them. It was the complicated mess called the Saturn that really killed the Dreamcast. Sega lost virtually all 3rd party developers because of the Saturn (capcom being one of the very few that stuck around), and many outright refused to even try the Dreamcast dev kit to see how much better it was because of the Saturn's nightmare inducing bs. Now, the ease of piracy early on certainly didn't help... but it was far closer to a mosquito bite compared to the fact that Nintendo and Sony were getting far more 3rd party titles, and had much stronger 1st party games. Had Sega not skipped a main entry Sonic game for Saturn (3D Blast is a spinoff, and is one of the first times a non-Sega devteam made a Sonic title), and hadn't made the Saturn an outright mess to dev for (it had 7 different processors for various things, and you had to code certain things multiple times for each "section" of the console, and you had to do things exactly right or things just wouldn't work), the Sega would still be making consoles today, and quite potentially would be dominating the market.
There are some good points here so let's talk about them.
First, the PS2 did not come with a modem in every market, only a few of them. I did talk about xband on Genesis and SNES in the video and other modems for older systems like the NES. But the DC was the first system that implemented online connectivity as standard out of the box and online wouldn't be as 'easy' on other systems until the next generation.
On piracy, if the DC had lasted longer, I'm sure there would have been other contemporary ways to boot copied games. As for it not being an issue, hard disagree there, with the exceptions of the PSP and Wii I don't know of any system during its commercial life time where it was as big an issue. The amount of people I saw with CDRs of DC games was staggering back in the day, and this for a system that in the US only had a commercial life of about 2 years. On the PSP and Wii it became a problem later into their lives and I would argue was less impactful because of that.
Regarding what killed Sega in the hardware business, there were a lot of factors. I've been talking about that in other comments. Piracy was a factor but not the only one, there was the money they lost on Shenmue, there was the mismanagement at SoJ, there was the bad will from the perception of Sega releasing and killing hardware quickly because of the 32x and the Saturn and more.
When it came to third party games, there were some big companies there in the early days of the DC in particular. The thing had Soul Calibur at launch and DoA 2 a few months later. Capcom stuck around, Konami was there to a lesser degree, you had big contemporary hit games like Quake III and Unreal Tournament. That support dried up as it became apparent that most DC games weren't selling all that well. Which I think again ties in, at least in part, to the ease of piracy for most of its life.
In the final analysis of Sega in the hardware business, no the DC is definitely not 'what killed Sega,' but mistakes during the DC era were the end of about 8 years of missteps at Sega that compounded over time.
Seeing how quickly they acted like Sega Cd wasnt even a thing within 2yrs
Saturn was out in Japan, 32X released in murica.. clearly SOJ&SOA didnt agree with what was best going forward.. along with rejecting Sonys courtship.. Kalinske being replace by shudder bernie stolar
The Dreamcast controller is just so bad. Only 1 analog stick, 6 buttons instead of 8 which was already the standard for the Saturn controller! Last but not least the weight is awful with 2 vmu. I love the Dreamcast but damn the controller is so wrong
Yeah, I was definitely never a fan of the controller. Seemed like a giant step backwards from the Saturn 3D controller.
At least some games like Unreal Tournament, OutTrigger and Grand Theft Auto 2 relied on the directional buttons for additional actions, considering the Analog Joystick being one of the main inputs for turning and aiming.
Speaking of the Dreamcast controller design, Retro Fighters was able to redesign it to satisfy modern gamers, and the StrikerDC happened. I wanted to play with a wired Red controller, but around that time StrikerDC controllers tend to be pricey. It's not as cheap as a Brawler64, another Retro Fighters product.
I basically knew about all these facts except for the motion controller. Nintendo Wii controllers were definitely based on the Saturn one.
Piracy killed the Dreamcast as much as it killed the PS1 and PS2. No, it was definitely Sega's own decisions that sealed the fate of any future Sega consoles.
I'm definitely with you that Sega's executive decisions played a major role in their hardware fate. I'd say it was that, the money they lost on Shenmue, the piracy issue and more.
While piracy was a thing on the PS1 and 2, it wasn't nearly as easily accessible as it was on the DC and didn't happen as early in the consoles' life. Remember, all you needed was a CDR drive and disc to burn games that worked in the DC. On the PS1 and 2 it was never that simple. Now, on the Wii and some later systems, it'd be even easier, so I could agree if we were talking about those, too.
@@InglebardGaming Piracy on Ps1 was very simple and started with a trick of changing discs on the fly and then with a super easy to install modchips,all videogame shops modded ps1 in half an hour and cheap and you could buy the latest import bootlegs cheaply. Ps2 was a little more tricky on start but after a while, same situation with ps1. Without piracy ps1-ps2 would NEVER had the sales they had globally, they would be mostly the half in numbers.
@vasileios6301 PS1 still needed a mod and most of the time even with a mod you had to do disc swaps and all that. They also weren't as available as early in the PS1's lifespan. With DC you burned the boot disc and the games, nothing else needed. When self booting games showed up soon after, you literally just put the cdr in the DC and needed zero extra hardware or swapping. It was never as easy as DC.
@@InglebardGaming Maybe you didnt live how exactly rampant the piracy on ps1 was from the very beggining. Before Sony addressed the problem with the easy swap method, modchips were already out and no swap needed anymore.Also dc wasnt easily hacked at once, selfboot games were available at least after a year later and a half later and ps2 was there with its dvd, then the game is over. Piracy wasnt the problem for dc failure neither Shenmue. DVD was and top companies like EA.
@vasileios6301 Back in the PS1's hey day, I knew very few people that messed with piracy on the system until the mods became available. The early swap tricks were unreliable and had issues. Mod chips were easier and reliable. Eventually, when the mods that plugged into the expansion port became available, that's when from what I witnessed piracy on that system really took off. But that was a few years in.
For general reference: www.xda-developers.com/how-paperclip-enabled-piracy-original-playstation/
I still dislike the focus group that gave rise to the DC controller's design.
Pretty much Sega's worst first party gamepad controller, unfortunately. At least for the time it came out.
@InglebardGaming The prototype drawing that looked like the Saturn 3d pad would've been worse. (Hated the 3d pad.) Small consolation there at least.
@MarginalSC I loved the Saturn 3D pad., so not with you there! Great dpad, love the analog nub and the same size buttons, although I do prefer concave buttons.
@@InglebardGaming It was fine for 3d, just hated it for fighting games. So it was unbalanced in that respect IMO.
I lvoed it for fighting games, too, lol. I thought playing SF Alpha 2 on it was great!
I regard Yu Suzuki as the greatest videogame designer of all time but Shenmue, to me, is almost complete dogshit and the perfect encapsulation of the death of Sega.
Totally with you there. I LOVED Yu Suzuki's games before Shenmue. Shenmue, to me, was a super clunky, dull, mess. But it looked and sounded amazing.