Sega Dreamcast

On November 27, 1998, Sega dropped the Dreamcast on a market battle in Japan. It was the first console of the 6th generation of home entertainment systems: it would be followed by PlayStation 2 (PS2) from Sony, GameCube from Nintendo and Xbox from Microsoft. It was the time when the gaming market was changing and the dipole of the 90s (Sega, Nintendo) was giving way to that of the last 15 years (Sony, Microsoft). Dreamcast was the first system at 128 bit and at the same time SEGA's latest attempt to reverse a disadvantageous situation: its previous console, Saturn, had failed against PlayStation and Dreamcast seemed to be a recovering last chance. And it was. Regardless of the fact that it finally didn't manage to do it.

The Dreamcast made a big mistake: it was ahead of its time. So much that even if the brakes were pressed, it would seem out of place, far from what the players wanted then. Proof of the above, the built-in modem that provided access to the internet and therefore internet game and all that in 1998, when the world was just discovering the beauties of the world wide web. Its logo was one of the most beautiful we've ever seen on a console, and its design is beautiful and compact. Its controller was a bit weird (reminiscent of Saturn's tragic 3D controller) and certainly uncomfortable, but it had a liquid crystal display, making reality what a decade later, the rest manufacturers would be developing.

As for the games? Dreamcast didn't do badly either: 636 official releases counted with the last being the NEO XYX from Success that was launched in February 2014! Although third-party companies (the various major studios & publishers, so to speak) did not help the Dreamcast much, SEGA itself took care to support it with, if nothing else, impressive titles. Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, Shenmue, Seaman, SEGA Rally Championship 2, Soulcalibur, Virtua Striker 2, Capcom vs. SNK, Resident Evil - Code: Veronica, Grandia II: games that made an impact when they were released and are still remembered by players today. But SEGA had multiple problems: the success of the PlayStation and the bad precedent set by Saturn turned other big companies in the area toward Sony. After just one year of life, the game was over for Dreamcast.