It's hard to believe, but today marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Dreamcast. I can't say it feels like yesterday, but man, it's a long time for sure.

I was finally able to nab one of the little plastic white boxes in late 1999, after having a chance to see it on different occasions. The game shown was always some sort of fighting game, but I knew there was much more to it. My new system came with Flag to Flag, the (now deceased) CART Championship Auto Racing Team game, Sonic Adventure and for some odd reason, Monaco Grand Prix. The first two were my choices, and the third, my father's. He thought he'd get into games again, so he got an F1 game for himself. His mistake. What an awful game to get back to - no official license, it pailed in comparison to Flag to Flag in just about every way. On the other hand, Flag to Flag was awesome, even though it was broken to no end in the fact that you could 'bump-win' your way through every race and take out literally the entire competition.

Anyway, before the Playstation 2, the Dreamcast really felt like a "new gen" console, a step above the then current crop of games. Graphics were a huge improvement from past systems, and for a while, it seemed like there wouldn't be a match to Dreamcast games in terms of presentation and feel. Even today, Dreamcast games look very good, specially when hooked up to a VGA monitor using the special adapter, and it's one of the few consoles that emulated almost flawlessly various arcade games.

I won't get into the history and the sad events of the Dreamcast's life, mainly because I'm just lazy to write about it, and since so many people will be doing the same, I'll leave it to all the other write ups about it. I'm here to remember it, hell, be reminded of it, since I still own my original system and it still works perfectly. The Dreamcast is the only video game I consider to collect games and items for. In 2003, after years of procrastination, I started my collection when I bought an original, nationally produced Shenmue game. Shamefully, up to that point, I had owned only a handful of legit games, with a bevy of burned copies I downloaded off the internet. But upon buying that Shenmue copy, something clicked, and since then, I've been building a healthy library of games and accessories. The rarest of the bunch are my Shenmue II European copy, which took lengths and lengths of effort to obtain and Garou: Mark of the Wolves that I bought while visiting New York last year. While both aren't exactly rare on other gaming system options, they are cool games to own on the Dreamcast for sure. Among the paraphernalia of items, I've managed to get one of the awesome arcade sticks from Sega, a Dreamcast keyboard, Seaman and even a mouse. Somehow, to me, the Dreamcast feels like something worth collecting and playing, even if it was killed off too early. I don't consider myself a collector, far from it, since I play every game I ever got for it and hardly keep them in shrines for 'mint condition'. My game collection has spread so far that it practically occupies an entire shelf in my room, among other assorted game crap there.


My shelf - sorry about the flash, it's a rainy day. Sorry for the mess, I'm just a lazy bastard. If you look at the bottom left corner, you can see the box in which my Dreamcast lives nowadays. The left-most column is my extremely slim Sega Saturn library. And yes, that's a James Bond VHS collection in the upper shelf.


It's worth mentioning how well the Dreamcast was supported in Brazil - TecToy, the local distributor, had a great line of games out for it, and to top it off, at reasonable prices. Unlike the current crop of games sold off at ridiculously overcharged prices, Dreamcast games were reasonable purchases, making it a good, current game system to own at the time. Sega had a great history with the Master System and Mega Drive in the past, supporting both way past their life cycle, to this day even, bundling both with built in games still found in stores, but it has been a bit different with the Dreamcast, as it's a rare find in stores, if at all. Either way, I'm thankful for the treatment it's been given, even going as far as owning a few of the nationally released titles like Vigilante 8 and Blue Stinger.

Am I sad about the history of Sega post Dreamcast? To be honest, no, not really. They had an incredible console in their hands, and messed it all up with the consumer. They took their main mascot and trounced it with awful games. But in that wake, they brought out a great little new series of games with Yakuza (Ryu Ga Gotoku), which to me is almost enough to clean their name.

What's important to remember today is not the series of mistakes Sega as a company made over the years, even though it's one hell of a laundry list, but how awesome the Dreamcast was and still, in a way, still really is. You doubt it? Look past its ridiculous name, and pop in a game or two, you won't regret it.