24:05 A buddy and I were touring id about a month before Quake 3 DC was released. We were walking through and noticed Quake 3 on a TV with a Dreamcast under it. Neither of us knew it was in the works, so we grabbed Marty Stratton (he was giving us the tour since he was kinda the guy that managed Quakecon and we were there as volunteers) and said "DUDE! Is that Quake 3 running on a _Dreamcast?!"_ He got a big grin and said "Oh yeah! You guys wanna see it?" Super fun way to find out about it. Fun fact: the PC version of Quake 3 could crossplay with the Dreamcast online. You had to patch back to version 1.16n and download a map pack that contained all the Dreamcast specific maps and you were golden. We actually ran a server for it at one of the CPL events. id's engine tech was just crazy flexible and could be made to perform on anything. I'm fully convinced John Carmack is a hyper advanced AI that aliens left on our planet just to give us amazing video game engines.
You were super lucky. Getting excited over ports of games to the Dreamcast back when the console was still in its prime has to be a fun time. I didn't get to experience thr Dreamast until 2003 and I really feel like I missed out.
I lived in Japan when this went obsolete and I grabbed every game in their catalogue at cents on the dollar (well yen). A year later I gave it to my young cousins. 25 years later they still talk about how fun that console was.
Holy hell, I couldn’t imagine my uncle just giving me a console with every damn game made for it as a birthday gift, that would be a wish from heaven for any kid lol
I was one of the 12 people that had the Dreamcast broadband adapter and the mouse and keyboard. Playing Quake 3 against people on dial up and on a controller with one stick... good times. The Dreamcast really was so ahead of its time.
Oh hai. I'm one of the other dozen that had both _and_ ran it through a VGA adapter on a monitor for clean 640x480 signal. It's wild that Sega really had what was essentially an off the shelf PCMCIA card off to the side for peripherals, USB on the front, and entirely off-the-shelf components from Hitachi, PowerVR, and Yamaha inside. It was definitely an extremely bright sign of what consoles were going to become: entirely off-the-shelf hardware with no bespoke parts to speak of. It's really too bad that Sega of America couldn't hit their ass with both hands, a map, and a massive pot of money just waiting for them.
You can still play Quake 3 online on the Dreamcast today. It's also cross-platform with the PC version (PC must be on patch 1.16n with DC map pack installed). The PAL version of Q3A sadly lacked support for the broadband adapter but the NTSC version did.
I was one of the 40 people who had kb&m but no broadband. We speak fondly of playing quake against plebs with a single, tiny, stick. We remember you low ping bastards too, but we don’t talk about it.
Dreamcast was a gem. The fact that one could use the memory card as a tamagotchi and even play games on it, shows that the console was too far ahead of the curve.
There were so many great things about the Dreamcast. But even as a former SEGA booster, when I saw those controllers I knew that it was 90s SEGA all over again. After poor support for the Sega CD, I didn't buy the saturn either.
ahead of the curve? the Dreamcast was a terrific piece of kit, but the VMU concept never really went anywhere beyond that console generation. I think they were just innovating in every element they could, and some innovations were prophetic and others weren't.
Unreal Tournament gets a nice framerate boost if you plug in a keyboard, open up the command command line and type in a command which disables decals. This will disable decals left from bullet holes and fragged players, and it'll make the game perform better.
@@toshineon Does it really? 🤣 I never owned a Dreamcast, so I wouldn't know, but I am using a PS2 and it surprisingly doesn't make much noise when I play a game.
@@Asaylum117 Yeah, the fan noise is pretty loud, but the worst part is the disc drive. The laser moving around while reading has gotta be the loudest I've ever heard from a disc drive.
@@toshineon Honestly, I love the insanely loud whirring of the disc drive. It's charming to me for some reason. But I wanted to share, there's a noctua fan you can buy that works insanely well. Also of course an SD card mod that removed the disc drive altogether. If you're into mods definitely check those out
Learning there is a Dreamcast FPS with brain jacking and a villain named Geist really takes the only wind out of the GameCube game Geist's unique feature lol.
I disagree. Geist still has a lot of cool stuff to it. Being able to possess any thing from a mouse to a kitchen fan is awesome. Not to mention the puzzles that go along with that. The story itself is excellent as well. Really the main negative in that game are the FPS controls. Which is obviously a big negative to have, but the story and puzzles make up for it IMO
There is something incredibly beautiful about the way the Dreamcast renders. I don't know what it is, but nearly every game on the console somehow looks good in a way I can't describe.
It was full 480p in a time when everything else was half that resolution. It was the first "clear" gaming console in a time when blurry images were all that other consoles could render.
@@BFKAnthony817full screen anti aliasing certainly helped and its something that made the image quality more appealing to me than pretty much all PS2 games
I remember getting my Dreamcast as a christmas present, along with the game Shenmue (which I had been quite fascinated by reading about it in game magazines). I still have the Dreamcast and Shenmue to this day.
The PS2 version is funny because it was back in the day when ports to different platforms could be wildly different. The PS2 version has a third person camera!
Man, never expected you to cover something like Maken X. That is a game where Kazuma Kaneko really went wild with the art. So sad that he doesn't get the recognizition he rigjtfully deserves.
Shwacked! Has gotten a few genuine chuckles out of me over the years but out of all recurring Gman bits, for me none of them come close to the day he started putting in soundbites from Tourettes Guy Take 11:16 for example. No one on this Earth can emote cuss words with the sheer conviction of Tourettes Guy.
Steam Deck has been an amazing way to re-experience Dreamcast games, especially shooters. Why? Because once you have EmuDeck set up, you can easily remap shooter controls to be much more intuitive. So for example, because the DC lacked 2 analog sticks, typically the face buttons would be for movement while the analog stick would be for aiming, which was awkward. But on Deck, you can instead map the left stick to the face buttons for movement and the right stick for aiming. But here's where things get wild and what sets the Steam Deck above the other handhelds... You can then do gyro aiming in Dreamcast games! So that when the right stick or right trackpad is merely being touched (as in the gyro is only activated when they're touched and isn't active all the time), the gyro can act as the Dreamcast's left stick, so you now have full on gyro aiming acting as the left stick in Dreamcast shooters. Or you can map the right trackpad to emulate the Dreamcast's left stick, and have trackpad + gyro aiming, which feels even more accurate. And speaking of the trackpad - Silent Scope on Dreamcast feels insanely good to play using the Steam Deck's trackpad, way more intuitive and faster than using an analog stick, so the trackpads are fantastic for on rails shooters, which the DC had a lot of. If you're an old school Dreamcast fan, get yourself a Steam Deck. Once you have EmuDeck set up, no other device on the market does a better job at placing your Dreamcast games directly on the main UI in such an elegant fashion. And then there's the added layer of being able to easily customise the controls or the frame rate - on a per game basis.
@@_lemon52 Sorry for the late reply; didn't see it. So you just set the Steam Deck right stick to act as the left stick and that's it. I'm assuming you have EmuDeck setup, and you're asking how to map the DC left stick to SD'd right stick, so you can have dual stick modern FPS controls. You can then go to Gyro settings, and have it act as the left stick, and only be activated while touching the right stick, so now you have modern FPS controls + gyro.
But how do you use the Fishing Controller, Microphone for Seaman, Maracas for Samba De Amigo and Racing Wheel accessories? Also the VMU screens? All the weird controllers are half the fun of Dreamcast.
0:57 I remember having to send my Hydro Thunder disc to the publisher because it had no music, and they sent me a fixed copy. Ahh... before we got internet updates. I loved that game.
I played Maken X to death back in the day. The differences between the japanese and european versions were pretty big. The special attacks actually only cost health in the european release, so in the jp version you could just spam them to no end. And the guy in India had actually a completely different character model in the jp version as well. He had six arms, a completely different face. Good times, good times.
Sega fucked up majorly before the release of dreamcast. All this CD, 32x and saturn business left them to position that many major retailers didn't want to see their asses again.
I hated Illbleed when it came out. After 20 years people on Reddit told me to give it another shot...and now its one of my favorite games on the console its just so unhinged. One level you are a ghetto version of Woddy from Toy Story and you go to hell to save a sex doll from a demonic Sonic the Hedgehog 😅
It's a shame western developers never really came to terms with the Dreamcast hardware. It had so many great hardware optimization features that made it extremely competitive or even ahead of PC hardware at the time (1998-2000). Like how the tile-based deferred rendering helped with geometry culling and improved rasterized performance, or how 4-bit paletted texture could be compressed to a ratio of 32:1 instead of 4:1. Theoretically allowing the Dreamcast to offer 60MB worth of texture memory, as long as you designed them with 16 colors in mind (I mean you don't need much more for "single-material textures" like grass, dirt, wood, stone, steel etc. and you can always use other texture formats where it makes sense). For engines and graphics assets built ground up for the hardware it was just way ahead of its time. unfortunately, many western developers just made straight conversions of PC games using PC optimized engines, resulting in pretty crude results on the DC... Quake III is really the only game showcasing a decent effort of hardware optimization.
QUAKE III: I beat Xero on the highest difficulty mode by hiding behind a pillar and railgunning him to death. He couldn’t see me and had no path tracking to me. There’s no other way to win that match!
Maken X is such a great game. I love the lore, the character design, the gameplay--for me, that's almost exactly how I play Oblivion. It's all just so unique. That first playthrough was such a trip because of how interesting the worldbuilding and the aesthetics and design were. The soundtrack is utterly phenomenal. Shoji Meguro did such a great job with the soundtrack and it's such a shame people don't acknowledge it as much as they should. It also has just an incredible amount of replayability given the 6 endings the game has. That game makes me wish they did a proper remaster of Maken X just because theres so much character lore and worldbuilding lore to be expanded upon. It has so much potential for a good modern remake. I have Maken X on my top 10 Dreamcast games of all time and I stand by it. Its still just so good.
the only reason i know about it, is that back in the day q hayashida's first manga was based on this, and it was quite long running too like 10 volumes or something
As weird as DC controllers were, they were indestructible. The one analogue stick was a hall-effect, first and only such in consoles for 25 years now.. Only in the last years have 3rd party premium controllers rediscovered the tech. Microsoft made a big deal of bringing back hall effect triggers for Xbox One controllers years ago (Dreamcast pioneered those too). But Microsoft has stuck with those nasty potentiometer analogue sticks, they and Sony seem to have a 99 year contract with Alps for those awful things.
Can’t wait until Gman reviews the FPS libraries of the Atari Jaguar, 3DO, GameCube, SNES, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega Saturn, Gameboy & Gameboy Advance, DS, Xbox, and Amiga.
I think if Sega hadn't burned its bridge with AMD which in turn cost its connections with EA and some other high profile 3rd parties, and they had included a DVD player in the DC, theyd have lasted that entire console generation. Might have even prompted them to make a DC2.
Sega were in no financial position to put a DVD player in their 1998 hardware console, that would have driven up the manufacturing costs and consumer price up by hundreds of dollars Also EA's effect on the sales of the dreamcast were not that signficant and wouldn't have been worth giving these greedy "people" sports exclusivity over the entire system The dreamcast failed solely due to segas inability to financially hold out until the dreamcast could bring a profit
For a millisecond, you had me wondering if purposely avoiding the Kiss game every time I saw it on store shelves was a mistake. Luckily, I'm glad I didn't miss out on that disaster. I think something they could have done to circumnavigate the lack of a second thumb stick, they could have gone the Metroid Prime route, where you press and hold a button to lock in on an enemy, which allows you to move and strafe while staying on target. A dedicated 180 button on the D-Pad would help, too. N64 could have used a similar system just fine, too. Honesty, button combinations are a pretty smart way to take advantage of limited buttons.
“Moving through these empty areas and occasionally getting into gunfights with hostiles.” Literally sums up all but one of my deployments to Afghanistan 😂
Left stick to aim, right face buttons to move was standard on N64, it was even the default on a few ps1 games (e.g. alien resurrection). For some reason it swapped over a few years later and everyone forgot that it was ever the other way round
The Kiss shooter has a special place in my memories, mainly because it made me a member of the Kiss army and introduced me to the wonders of rock and roll music
can't forget Detroit Rock City, love that fucking movie and the soundtrack filled with classics "heey chongo!" [Godzilla starts playing as the camera moves towards the Hulk of a brother]
You can get a Dreamcast USB4MAPLE adapter for $30 which lets you use a PS3 or Xbox 360 controller with a Dreamcast. The USB4MAPLE adapter has four modes. One is true dual analog mode, which believe it or not, actually works in Q3A and UT. They actually built into the game future dual analog support. On Quake III, I believe it's control scheme #4. However, and equally useful, is it's "FPS mode." It flips the left stick to the right stick, and also maps the face buttons to the left stick. It gives you movement on left stick, looking on the right, and the looking is still true analog control. It's amazing and basically works with everything, Half-Life and Soldier of Fortune included. The last special mode is Twin Stick mode, so it operates like a Twin Stick for games like Virtual On. I got the adapter for $30 from Dreamcast Live Shop and bought a generic wired 360 controller for $14. Works great!
My old man bought us one and we loved it. I’m currently tracking down games right now for the Dreamcast as a collector hobby. Will always be one of my favorite systems
3DO has several interesting options for exclusive FPS games, especially with PO'ed getting a remaster soon. I still want a Saturn FPS video though, gotta see you trudge through Congo.
Shwacked! Has gotten a few genuine chuckles out of me over the years but out of all recurring Gman bits, for me none of them come close to the day he started putting in soundbites from Tourettes Guy Take 11:16 for example. No one on this Earth can emote cuss words with the sheer conviction of Tourettes Guy.
Considering who developed Maken X, expect nothing less of difficulty from the team behind Shin Megami Tensei. Atlus is known for their games having brutal difficulty.
Dude, another awesome video. Have to say brother you've put me onto quite lot of awesome games I've otherwise overlooked or just missed out on entirely. What a legend.
A toast to one of gaming's very last home console of the 20th century. 🥂 To many of us, Sega's departure really hit home for the loyal fanbase of all these games. But i wonder, if rail shooters should've also been included on this list since its also in first person perspective but that's another debate for another time I guess. RIP Sega (1983-2000). 🕯💐
Its genuinely funny you bringing up the 357 sound effect, because there were more sounds from Spec Ops and Rainbow Six specifically that made shining features in Madness Combat and Thing Thing years if not decades later
I owned Quake 3 for PC, but I found out after purchase that my PC couldn't run it. So I was quite happy with the Dreamcast port and noting that they played very similar to eachother.
There was no saving the Dreamcast. Once Sega decided not to go with a DVD drive to save money, they were doomed. The PS2 overtook the entire market because of that DVD drive.
It was a Catch 22. Sony was only able to incorporate a DVD player at a remotely affordable price because they could manufacture the parts in house and eat the cost, and co-owned the rights to DVD. There was no viable path to success for Dreamcast. They were too small of a company to go head-to-head with the likes of Sony and Microsoft. Maybe they could have found a way to sort it out a few years earlier, but they were just out of options by the late 90's.
@@OriginalName90 Oh, i'm not denying that. The Dreamcast would have had more of a fighting chance if it had the DVD, because early in the fight it was holding its own with some respectable numbers. SEGA's issues were always hardware related. Genesis was great, but the addon frenzy of the mid 90s really turned consumers away and cost more money than developing a whole new system. The Saturn was over-priced and lacked a broad appeal due to its, frankly, limited library of games. The Dreamcast was a major step in the right direction, with quite a capable hardware base... But without the DVD drive they had no hope in Hell of competing. Even Nintendo's excellent and underappreciated Gamecube was something of a failure. (Which is why that console is actually fairly expensive to collect for.)
I always wonder if this part about the DVD drive isn't just a barely related reason to why the PS2 became the best selling console to have ever existed (up to now, early 2024). Young teens back then were completely into the Sony PS2. People literally stormed a shopping mall in France when it released in 2000. The economy and its price allowed parents to pay for it and the DVD drive allowed for more advanced and bigger games because of the many gigabytes it provided.
Well the PS3 had a BD and the xbox 360 didn't, so I wouldn't say that's the main reason, console launch timing, price of the console and exclusive launch title's IMO play a much bigger part, also proper marketing in the case of the WIIU
I loved playing quake 3, Soldier of Fortune, and Psycho Circus on the Dreamcast as a kid. Such great memories… that DC intro is forever engraved into my mind!
Maken X is so good! You have to make a video on it. I would also recommend PetRock's video, as he explains all the Chinese I-Ching and how it ties into all the characters and their motivations. This game is a gem. Peak Atlus.
The only Dreamcast FPS games I had back in the day were KISS Psycho Circus and Unreal Tournament. So many hours spent playing that Unreal Tournament on our first dial up internet connection. It worked better than you would think too.
First time I ever beat Half Life was on Dreamcast. I was 12 and pirates in my country were very proficient, they released this version WITH TRANSLATION. With its broken framerate, Dreamcast controller and my lack of gaming skills it was quite an achievement.
Before we had a PC up to snuff for gaming, we had quake 3 arena and the modem. I was too young to really comprehend how ahead of it's time the Dreamcast was when I was playing death matches with my friends who lived 25 mins away by bike
Legend has it Soldier of Fortune is still Loading. To be fair with Half-Life, even though version leaked was the "Gold" version that would supposedly be sent to the factory for pressing, the developers came out years later and said that the last few weeks before release were going to be spent optimizing the game better for the Dreamcast, and fix the ever growing save file bug on the VMU (at the beginning of the game a save would be around 32 blocks, but near the end it would balloon to over 100 blocks). Still can't believe it was cancelled a mere month before release date. I also remember them developing a second version that was multiplayer only which included Deathmatch and Team Fortress Classic.
I owned Quake 3 Arena for the Sega Dreamcast, and the Dreamcast release of Soul Calibur was the best version of that game on ANY platform. I'd seen Unreal Tournament and Half Life for the Dreamcast but only played them on PC through gog (UT) and Steam (HL).
A fun thing to keep in mind for Maken X in the future is that it also has a PS2 version, Maken Shao, which puts the game in third person and reworks a lot of elements even if it's still the same core game beneath it all.
Virtuacop was a game me and my brother always played on the Dreamcast. I never knew it was based off an Arcade game until we didn't have the console anymore
I don't know if a billion people told you this already but I'll mention it anyway. You aren't actually playing as Kay in Maken X but the sword. The sword is sentient.
9:48 I remember one day my dad came home with brand new boxes copies of KISS Psycho Circus, Heavy Metal F.A.K.K 2, 4x4 evo, Blair Witch vol. 1, and Rune. He got them from a promo that was being run at the radio station he worked at. I wonder if that's any connection to what you were talking about?
My bowling alley had Carn-Evil and i used to just dump quarters into it every Sunday. Love that game to death and was always surprised as Midways most successful light gun game they didnt do more with it.
Some of my go to shooters on the Dreamcast back then were sof 2 and slave zero, while not the best ports still fun games. Also Ding Chavez is forever a legend : )
Tbh I didn't even know that the Dreamcast had fps games I loved mine as a kid, until it stopped working one day for whatever reason, I still play Jet Set Radio, and Sega GT 2002 started my love of racing sims/games
Maken X looks so cool. Honestly looks like it's pretty decent first person melee, which is still a rarity. The enemy feedback and depth perception looked pretty good!
I really liked the PS2 version of Maken X, renamed Maken Shao. Funny, they switched it from first person to third person but kept the tank controls. At least it's easier to parry enemy projectiles in third person. PS2 version also uses the uncensored character designs. Namely the Indian guy at the bottom left at 19:22 looks totally different, he's supposed to have four robot arms on his shoulders instead of floating hands.
For over a decade, I played first person shooters in Windows using a wireless PS/2 ball mouse. Yes, it needed to be cleaned occasionally, but it was never a big problem. It was also quite accurate and I never had any problems aiming at even small targets in the distance with precision. Unfortunately, that's not something I can say about any laser mouse I've ever used. Maybe it's because they're too sensitive, but I find it almost completely impossible to aim at small targets with any degree of accuracy. If I get the horizontal aim just right, the vertical aim will be off. So I move the mouse up slightly and it jitters to the side a couple pixels. So I nudge it back the other way and now it's a couple pixels too low. Move it up a tiny amount and it jumps a few pixels to the other side! ARGH!!! Here's a test I like to do: When you move the pointer over text, it changes to a vertical line with little cross pieces at the top and bottom. Pick a symmetrical letter like A, H, X, etc, and try to center the pointer on that letter perfectly, both horizontally and vertically, and then take your hand off the mouse so that it stays there. How long does it take and how much trouble is it to get it to stay centered? For me, it's an exercise in frustration. Or load up a good drawing program (MS Paint doesn't qualify), load a B/W drawing and try to follow some of the lines in the image with the mouse while drawing in some color. How closely were you able to follow the lines? My ball mouse used to be pretty accurate, but with laser mice, it goes all over, no matter how slowly I go. Note: No cheating by lowering the DPI on the mouse, or adjusting the mouse speed in windows. Perform these tests with the mouse set the way you normally use it.
1:20 no, it was totally because Japan wasn't really a fan of fps games. It's one of the reasons why Xbox didn't really hit it off in Japan until fromsoft came along (with the other reasons being console aesthetic and import stuff)
24:05 A buddy and I were touring id about a month before Quake 3 DC was released. We were walking through and noticed Quake 3 on a TV with a Dreamcast under it. Neither of us knew it was in the works, so we grabbed Marty Stratton (he was giving us the tour since he was kinda the guy that managed Quakecon and we were there as volunteers) and said "DUDE! Is that Quake 3 running on a _Dreamcast?!"_ He got a big grin and said "Oh yeah! You guys wanna see it?" Super fun way to find out about it.
Fun fact: the PC version of Quake 3 could crossplay with the Dreamcast online. You had to patch back to version 1.16n and download a map pack that contained all the Dreamcast specific maps and you were golden. We actually ran a server for it at one of the CPL events. id's engine tech was just crazy flexible and could be made to perform on anything. I'm fully convinced John Carmack is a hyper advanced AI that aliens left on our planet just to give us amazing video game engines.
You were super lucky. Getting excited over ports of games to the Dreamcast back when the console was still in its prime has to be a fun time. I didn't get to experience thr Dreamast until 2003 and I really feel like I missed out.
he then later went on to build rockets
@@rgerberwe need him back to build games.
@@HiGlowie He’s trying to go home.
I remember reading a fan port of quake for Nintendo DS could also cross play with PC, nuts.
That Dreamcast intro screen will never, ever get old.
The Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PS1 had the best intros.
That is a canonic fact.
I feel like that's a thing no console gets right anymore, the intro screen. Gamecube, Dreamcast, PS1, PS2 were all awesome.
Its already old, dog lol
@@Fools_Requiem Yeeees, Dreamcast is a close 2nd but the PS1 startup sound still gives me honest chills
I lived in Japan when this went obsolete and I grabbed every game in their catalogue at cents on the dollar (well yen). A year later I gave it to my young cousins. 25 years later they still talk about how fun that console was.
Holy hell, I couldn’t imagine my uncle just giving me a console with every damn game made for it as a birthday gift, that would be a wish from heaven for any kid lol
I was one of the 12 people that had the Dreamcast broadband adapter and the mouse and keyboard. Playing Quake 3 against people on dial up and on a controller with one stick... good times. The Dreamcast really was so ahead of its time.
Might as well brag about boxing some 12 year olds
It was all about the Dreamcast M&K, Unreal Tourney and Q3A on DC with the right setup was a blast online
Oh hai. I'm one of the other dozen that had both _and_ ran it through a VGA adapter on a monitor for clean 640x480 signal. It's wild that Sega really had what was essentially an off the shelf PCMCIA card off to the side for peripherals, USB on the front, and entirely off-the-shelf components from Hitachi, PowerVR, and Yamaha inside.
It was definitely an extremely bright sign of what consoles were going to become: entirely off-the-shelf hardware with no bespoke parts to speak of. It's really too bad that Sega of America couldn't hit their ass with both hands, a map, and a massive pot of money just waiting for them.
You can still play Quake 3 online on the Dreamcast today. It's also cross-platform with the PC version (PC must be on patch 1.16n with DC map pack installed). The PAL version of Q3A sadly lacked support for the broadband adapter but the NTSC version did.
I was one of the 40 people who had kb&m but no broadband. We speak fondly of playing quake against plebs with a single, tiny, stick. We remember you low ping bastards too, but we don’t talk about it.
Dreamcast was a gem. The fact that one could use the memory card as a tamagotchi and even play games on it, shows that the console was too far ahead of the curve.
There were so many great things about the Dreamcast. But even as a former SEGA booster, when I saw those controllers I knew that it was 90s SEGA all over again. After poor support for the Sega CD, I didn't buy the saturn either.
@@MaxAbramson3 No it was fine.
@@dukeljk2191 No, it was nutters. Typical 90s SEGA. Thr Saturn's 3D controller was perfect.
ahead of the curve? the Dreamcast was a terrific piece of kit, but the VMU concept never really went anywhere beyond that console generation. I think they were just innovating in every element they could, and some innovations were prophetic and others weren't.
@@acomingextinction I thought that the VMU could've gone places. Again, criminally underused. Typical 90s SEGA.
Unreal Tournament gets a nice framerate boost if you plug in a keyboard, open up the command command line and type in a command which disables decals. This will disable decals left from bullet holes and fragged players, and it'll make the game perform better.
Cool tip!
240mhz overclock helps too
Man, that Dreamcast intro is so calming. Almost like it has a zen type of feel.
I definitely agree. If only the console itself didn't sound like a jet plane taking off.
@@toshineon Does it really? 🤣
I never owned a Dreamcast, so I wouldn't know, but I am using a PS2 and it surprisingly doesn't make much noise when I play a game.
@@Asaylum117 Yeah, the fan noise is pretty loud, but the worst part is the disc drive. The laser moving around while reading has gotta be the loudest I've ever heard from a disc drive.
@@toshineon Honestly, I love the insanely loud whirring of the disc drive. It's charming to me for some reason. But I wanted to share, there's a noctua fan you can buy that works insanely well. Also of course an SD card mod that removed the disc drive altogether. If you're into mods definitely check those out
@@winlover37 SD card mod definitely sounds interesting, I have something like that for my GameCube, and it's super convenient.
Learning there is a Dreamcast FPS with brain jacking and a villain named Geist really takes the only wind out of the GameCube game Geist's unique feature lol.
I disagree. Geist still has a lot of cool stuff to it. Being able to possess any thing from a mouse to a kitchen fan is awesome. Not to mention the puzzles that go along with that. The story itself is excellent as well. Really the main negative in that game are the FPS controls. Which is obviously a big negative to have, but the story and puzzles make up for it IMO
@@superstimulatedminotaur3681 I really liked Geist too! I just find it quite the coincidence is all
@@nazgulsenpai Fair enough. Geist and Maken X are both pretty underrated games with unique ideas
@@superstimulatedminotaur3681 For sure. This is the first I've heard of Maken X somehow so I'm anxious to find out more about it.
@@superstimulatedminotaur3681 You can play Geist with a mouse injector, so the FPS controls are solved by that
There is something incredibly beautiful about the way the Dreamcast renders. I don't know what it is, but nearly every game on the console somehow looks good in a way I can't describe.
It was full 480p in a time when everything else was half that resolution. It was the first "clear" gaming console in a time when blurry images were all that other consoles could render.
@@BFKAnthony817full screen anti aliasing certainly helped and its something that made the image quality more appealing to me than pretty much all PS2 games
I remember getting my Dreamcast as a christmas present, along with the game Shenmue (which I had been quite fascinated by reading about it in game magazines).
I still have the Dreamcast and Shenmue to this day.
I love kaneko's artstyle in Maken X. I have a collection of most of the games he's worked on, and have the PS2 version of the game called Maken Shao
Seriously, he does not get the recognizition he rigthfully deserves. So sad that he has pretty much disappeared from the industry.
It’s a very groovy art style
It's kind of weird to see almost like an early version of the style they would use for Nocturne and the other PS2 RPGs they did.
The PS2 version is funny because it was back in the day when ports to different platforms could be wildly different. The PS2 version has a third person camera!
Man, never expected you to cover something like Maken X. That is a game where Kazuma Kaneko really went wild with the art. So sad that he doesn't get the recognizition he rigjtfully deserves.
13:38 Why does the attendant sound like she's inhaling her own words 😂
The Dreamcast start-up screen gives me goosebumps every time.
I swear, ALL 6th gen startup (DC, PS2, GCN, XBOX) were goated. While 5th gen only the PS1 was goated.
@@Web720 goated? how about Greatest Of All Time-ed ...shaking head
@@Web720n64 was amazing. Unless you were a bussyboy who didn’t like fps’
@@rgerber
🤓
@@HiGlowie
The topic here is about start-up screens for the console. N64 never had one besides the N64DD.
I know it's weird, but I miss the "Shwacked!" running joke. Something about it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I'm right there with ya!
Warm and fuzzy inside...you know, like your mum!
*Shwacked*
Shwacked! Has gotten a few genuine chuckles out of me over the years but out of all recurring Gman bits, for me none of them come close to the day he started putting in soundbites from Tourettes Guy
Take 11:16 for example. No one on this Earth can emote cuss words with the sheer conviction of Tourettes Guy.
Same.
I felt shwacked everytime.
Steam Deck has been an amazing way to re-experience Dreamcast games, especially shooters. Why? Because once you have EmuDeck set up, you can easily remap shooter controls to be much more intuitive. So for example, because the DC lacked 2 analog sticks, typically the face buttons would be for movement while the analog stick would be for aiming, which was awkward. But on Deck, you can instead map the left stick to the face buttons for movement and the right stick for aiming.
But here's where things get wild and what sets the Steam Deck above the other handhelds... You can then do gyro aiming in Dreamcast games! So that when the right stick or right trackpad is merely being touched (as in the gyro is only activated when they're touched and isn't active all the time), the gyro can act as the Dreamcast's left stick, so you now have full on gyro aiming acting as the left stick in Dreamcast shooters.
Or you can map the right trackpad to emulate the Dreamcast's left stick, and have trackpad + gyro aiming, which feels even more accurate.
And speaking of the trackpad - Silent Scope on Dreamcast feels insanely good to play using the Steam Deck's trackpad, way more intuitive and faster than using an analog stick, so the trackpads are fantastic for on rails shooters, which the DC had a lot of.
If you're an old school Dreamcast fan, get yourself a Steam Deck. Once you have EmuDeck set up, no other device on the market does a better job at placing your Dreamcast games directly on the main UI in such an elegant fashion. And then there's the added layer of being able to easily customise the controls or the frame rate - on a per game basis.
I do this but can only get the d pad mapped to the face buttons not the analog stick, how do you do this?
@@_lemon52 Sorry for the late reply; didn't see it. So you just set the Steam Deck right stick to act as the left stick and that's it. I'm assuming you have EmuDeck setup, and you're asking how to map the DC left stick to SD'd right stick, so you can have dual stick modern FPS controls. You can then go to Gyro settings, and have it act as the left stick, and only be activated while touching the right stick, so now you have modern FPS controls + gyro.
But how do you use the Fishing Controller, Microphone for Seaman, Maracas for Samba De Amigo and Racing Wheel accessories? Also the VMU screens? All the weird controllers are half the fun of Dreamcast.
God that DOA2 intro with the bomb factory song “exciter” really is the best intro I’ve ever heard!
9/9/99, the greatest release date a console ever had and ever will, also that VMU, man was that a fun system.
Greatest release date, not near the greatest console release 😂
0:57 I remember having to send my Hydro Thunder disc to the publisher because it had no music, and they sent me a fixed copy. Ahh... before we got internet updates. I loved that game.
I played Maken X to death back in the day. The differences between the japanese and european versions were pretty big. The special attacks actually only cost health in the european release, so in the jp version you could just spam them to no end. And the guy in India had actually a completely different character model in the jp version as well. He had six arms, a completely different face. Good times, good times.
Yeah, I played the US and JP versions and was surprised that JP seemed to be easier.
I read the Manga Adaptation
Still better then Ghost wire Tokyo
@@chillhour6155 What's wrong with that game?
Sega fucked up majorly before the release of dreamcast. All this CD, 32x and saturn business left them to position that many major retailers didn't want to see their asses again.
I needed to hear that intro, it soothes my soul.
Justice & Mercy - Soothe My Soul.
GMan, if youre gonna tease our tips by playing Dreamcast games. Then you'll need to play Illbleed
I hated Illbleed when it came out. After 20 years people on Reddit told me to give it another shot...and now its one of my favorite games on the console its just so unhinged.
One level you are a ghetto version of Woddy from Toy Story and you go to hell to save a sex doll from a demonic Sonic the Hedgehog 😅
This
@@immitationstation3369 Try Blue Stinger as well, made by same people.
It's a shame western developers never really came to terms with the Dreamcast hardware. It had so many great hardware optimization features that made it extremely competitive or even ahead of PC hardware at the time (1998-2000). Like how the tile-based deferred rendering helped with geometry culling and improved rasterized performance, or how 4-bit paletted texture could be compressed to a ratio of 32:1 instead of 4:1. Theoretically allowing the Dreamcast to offer 60MB worth of texture memory, as long as you designed them with 16 colors in mind (I mean you don't need much more for "single-material textures" like grass, dirt, wood, stone, steel etc. and you can always use other texture formats where it makes sense).
For engines and graphics assets built ground up for the hardware it was just way ahead of its time. unfortunately, many western developers just made straight conversions of PC games using PC optimized engines, resulting in pretty crude results on the DC... Quake III is really the only game showcasing a decent effort of hardware optimization.
QUAKE III:
I beat Xero on the highest difficulty mode by hiding behind a pillar and railgunning him to death. He couldn’t see me and had no path tracking to me. There’s no other way to win that match!
Let's raise a toast for the Dreamcast. 🍷 It was gone too soon
Maken X is such a great game. I love the lore, the character design, the gameplay--for me, that's almost exactly how I play Oblivion.
It's all just so unique. That first playthrough was such a trip because of how interesting the worldbuilding and the aesthetics and design were.
The soundtrack is utterly phenomenal. Shoji Meguro did such a great job with the soundtrack and it's such a shame people don't acknowledge it as much as they should.
It also has just an incredible amount of replayability given the 6 endings the game has.
That game makes me wish they did a proper remaster of Maken X just because theres so much character lore and worldbuilding lore to be expanded upon. It has so much potential for a good modern remake.
I have Maken X on my top 10 Dreamcast games of all time and I stand by it. Its still just so good.
I agree completely, it feels so unique and "Dreamcasty" as hell to me.
the only reason i know about it, is that back in the day q hayashida's first manga was based on this, and it was quite long running too like 10 volumes or something
Insanity. Dreamcast was magic. I’ve been searching ever since those days came to an end and gaming never topped that for me.
As weird as DC controllers were, they were indestructible. The one analogue stick was a hall-effect, first and only such in consoles for 25 years now.. Only in the last years have 3rd party premium controllers rediscovered the tech. Microsoft made a big deal of bringing back hall effect triggers for Xbox One controllers years ago (Dreamcast pioneered those too). But Microsoft has stuck with those nasty potentiometer analogue sticks, they and Sony seem to have a 99 year contract with Alps for those awful things.
Can’t wait until Gman reviews the FPS libraries of the Atari Jaguar, 3DO, GameCube, SNES, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega Saturn, Gameboy & Gameboy Advance, DS, Xbox, and Amiga.
I think if Sega hadn't burned its bridge with AMD which in turn cost its connections with EA and some other high profile 3rd parties, and they had included a DVD player in the DC, theyd have lasted that entire console generation. Might have even prompted them to make a DC2.
Sega were in no financial position to put a DVD player in their 1998 hardware console, that would have driven up the manufacturing costs and consumer price up by hundreds of dollars
Also EA's effect on the sales of the dreamcast were not that signficant and wouldn't have been worth giving these greedy "people" sports exclusivity over the entire system
The dreamcast failed solely due to segas inability to financially hold out until the dreamcast could bring a profit
37:27 reverb farts
Do this for every video he makes, please.
that dreamcast startup theme is (❁´◡`❁)
For a millisecond, you had me wondering if purposely avoiding the Kiss game every time I saw it on store shelves was a mistake. Luckily, I'm glad I didn't miss out on that disaster.
I think something they could have done to circumnavigate the lack of a second thumb stick, they could have gone the Metroid Prime route, where you press and hold a button to lock in on an enemy, which allows you to move and strafe while staying on target. A dedicated 180 button on the D-Pad would help, too. N64 could have used a similar system just fine, too.
Honesty, button combinations are a pretty smart way to take advantage of limited buttons.
“Moving through these empty areas and occasionally getting into gunfights with hostiles.” Literally sums up all but one of my deployments to Afghanistan 😂
Left stick to aim, right face buttons to move was standard on N64, it was even the default on a few ps1 games (e.g. alien resurrection). For some reason it swapped over a few years later and everyone forgot that it was ever the other way round
The Kiss shooter has a special place in my memories, mainly because it made me a member of the Kiss army and introduced me to the wonders of rock and roll music
can't forget Detroit Rock City, love that fucking movie and the soundtrack filled with classics
"heey chongo!" [Godzilla starts playing as the camera moves towards the Hulk of a brother]
You can get a Dreamcast USB4MAPLE adapter for $30 which lets you use a PS3 or Xbox 360 controller with a Dreamcast. The USB4MAPLE adapter has four modes. One is true dual analog mode, which believe it or not, actually works in Q3A and UT. They actually built into the game future dual analog support. On Quake III, I believe it's control scheme #4. However, and equally useful, is it's "FPS mode." It flips the left stick to the right stick, and also maps the face buttons to the left stick. It gives you movement on left stick, looking on the right, and the looking is still true analog control. It's amazing and basically works with everything, Half-Life and Soldier of Fortune included. The last special mode is Twin Stick mode, so it operates like a Twin Stick for games like Virtual On. I got the adapter for $30 from Dreamcast Live Shop and bought a generic wired 360 controller for $14. Works great!
The Dreamcast is my favourite console of all time. It didn't have a long Life span but it had so many classic games
Soulcalibur for the Dreamcast was so amazing dude hell yeah
If you played Southpaw (Lefties & Ambidextrous) the layout was Perfect. For right-handed people, certainly an issue.
My old man bought us one and we loved it. I’m currently tracking down games right now for the Dreamcast as a collector hobby. Will always be one of my favorite systems
Dear Gman, a few games that are right up you alley:
- Bullet Witch
- Infernal
- 3rd Birthday
3DO has several interesting options for exclusive FPS games, especially with PO'ed getting a remaster soon. I still want a Saturn FPS video though, gotta see you trudge through Congo.
Made dinner and a new Gman video pops up. Perfect timing
Shwacked! Has gotten a few genuine chuckles out of me over the years but out of all recurring Gman bits, for me none of them come close to the day he started putting in soundbites from Tourettes Guy
Take 11:16 for example. No one on this Earth can emote cuss words with the sheer conviction of Tourettes Guy.
Man I love the Dreamcast. The sound alone of the startup screen makes me smile and brings me back to simpler times.
Considering who developed Maken X, expect nothing less of difficulty from the team behind Shin Megami Tensei. Atlus is known for their games having brutal difficulty.
Dude, another awesome video. Have to say brother you've put me onto quite lot of awesome games I've otherwise overlooked or just missed out on entirely. What a legend.
A toast to one of gaming's very last home console of the 20th century. 🥂
To many of us, Sega's departure really hit home for the loyal fanbase of all these games.
But i wonder, if rail shooters should've also been included on this list since its also in first person perspective but that's another debate for another time I guess. RIP Sega (1983-2000). 🕯💐
Its genuinely funny you bringing up the 357 sound effect, because there were more sounds from Spec Ops and Rainbow Six specifically that made shining features in Madness Combat and Thing Thing years if not decades later
Thanks for keeping the dream live. I logged probably hundreds of hours of online Quake III on Dreamcast. Such an incredible port.
I owned Quake 3 for PC, but I found out after purchase that my PC couldn't run it.
So I was quite happy with the Dreamcast port and noting that they played very similar to eachother.
There was no saving the Dreamcast. Once Sega decided not to go with a DVD drive to save money, they were doomed. The PS2 overtook the entire market because of that DVD drive.
It was a Catch 22. Sony was only able to incorporate a DVD player at a remotely affordable price because they could manufacture the parts in house and eat the cost, and co-owned the rights to DVD.
There was no viable path to success for Dreamcast. They were too small of a company to go head-to-head with the likes of Sony and Microsoft. Maybe they could have found a way to sort it out a few years earlier, but they were just out of options by the late 90's.
@@OriginalName90 Oh, i'm not denying that. The Dreamcast would have had more of a fighting chance if it had the DVD, because early in the fight it was holding its own with some respectable numbers.
SEGA's issues were always hardware related. Genesis was great, but the addon frenzy of the mid 90s really turned consumers away and cost more money than developing a whole new system. The Saturn was over-priced and lacked a broad appeal due to its, frankly, limited library of games. The Dreamcast was a major step in the right direction, with quite a capable hardware base... But without the DVD drive they had no hope in Hell of competing. Even Nintendo's excellent and underappreciated Gamecube was something of a failure. (Which is why that console is actually fairly expensive to collect for.)
I always wonder if this part about the DVD drive isn't just a barely related reason to why the PS2 became the best selling console to have ever existed (up to now, early 2024). Young teens back then were completely into the Sony PS2. People literally stormed a shopping mall in France when it released in 2000. The economy and its price allowed parents to pay for it and the DVD drive allowed for more advanced and bigger games because of the many gigabytes it provided.
Well the PS3 had a BD and the xbox 360 didn't, so I wouldn't say that's the main reason, console launch timing, price of the console and exclusive launch title's IMO play a much bigger part, also proper marketing in the case of the WIIU
I loved playing quake 3, Soldier of Fortune, and Psycho Circus on the Dreamcast as a kid. Such great memories… that DC intro is forever engraved into my mind!
Maken X is so good! You have to make a video on it. I would also recommend PetRock's video, as he explains all the Chinese I-Ching and how it ties into all the characters and their motivations. This game is a gem. Peak Atlus.
The only Dreamcast FPS games I had back in the day were KISS Psycho Circus and Unreal Tournament. So many hours spent playing that Unreal Tournament on our first dial up internet connection. It worked better than you would think too.
That outro video vibe man.
Kiss Psycho circus would probably kick ass if it was based on a good band
First time I ever beat Half Life was on Dreamcast. I was 12 and pirates in my country were very proficient, they released this version WITH TRANSLATION. With its broken framerate, Dreamcast controller and my lack of gaming skills it was quite an achievement.
Wasn't expecting to see a peek of Hydro Thunder in a Gman video, but I'll gladly take it.
Nice video as always ! Pretty sure Maken X was an inspiration for Metroid Prime... 18:20 Nice typo from Atlus (anymore*, not any more)
I had Quake on PC back in the day. I used to put the disc in my cd player and rock out to the Soundtrack.
Before we had a PC up to snuff for gaming, we had quake 3 arena and the modem. I was too young to really comprehend how ahead of it's time the Dreamcast was when I was playing death matches with my friends who lived 25 mins away by bike
Legend has it Soldier of Fortune is still Loading.
To be fair with Half-Life, even though version leaked was the "Gold" version that would supposedly be sent to the factory for pressing, the developers came out years later and said that the last few weeks before release were going to be spent optimizing the game better for the Dreamcast, and fix the ever growing save file bug on the VMU (at the beginning of the game a save would be around 32 blocks, but near the end it would balloon to over 100 blocks).
Still can't believe it was cancelled a mere month before release date.
I also remember them developing a second version that was multiplayer only which included Deathmatch and Team Fortress Classic.
I owned Quake 3 Arena for the Sega Dreamcast, and the Dreamcast release of Soul Calibur was the best version of that game on ANY platform. I'd seen Unreal Tournament and Half Life for the Dreamcast but only played them on PC through gog (UT) and Steam (HL).
3:42 - I always loved how the Bull Squid's death sounds like The Undertaker's manager, Pall Bearer.
All those Roadhouse mentions and not a single clip of Peter Griffen saying "Rrrroadhouse!"
The soundtrack to Quake 3 slaps so hard. Fun fact though, Front Line Assembly did some of the tracks as did Sonic Mayhem.
I remember playing Kiss pycho circus on pc like 20+ years ago
"Lady, you're scaring us" 😆
ah man, just hearing the Dreamcast start up put a smile on my face, i needed that today.
A fun thing to keep in mind for Maken X in the future is that it also has a PS2 version, Maken Shao, which puts the game in third person and reworks a lot of elements even if it's still the same core game beneath it all.
8:00 bro, I remember seeing carnEvil at the movie theater once and it stuck with me for life.
Damn, I had repressed the mouseball cleaning. Thanks for reminding me.
I came here because you include the 1st R6 and Rogue Spear. Ty for uploading this.
Rogue spear was half my childhood ❤
Virtuacop was a game me and my brother always played on the Dreamcast. I never knew it was based off an Arcade game until we didn't have the console anymore
41:45 the Redeemer in UT puts the Slayer in Perfect Dark to shame! I used to have this on the PS2, never played on the Dreamcast
I don't know if a billion people told you this already but I'll mention it anyway. You aren't actually playing as Kay in Maken X but the sword. The sword is sentient.
Yeah, the manga shows that in a better way
Damn that intro brings back many of memories most of these kids will never know the struggle of memory cards
Ah, Outrigger, Maken X, Rainbow Six, and Soldier of Fortune, my childhoods...
Yes, do a retrospective on Maken X, please!
Never in my life did I think GmanLives would review MakenX
Tourettes Guy, GOT'EEEEMM guy, couple of mom jokes and the reverb fart....that's all that's really necessary...instant like!
The seventh seal is broken, the gman acknowledged the existence of the Dreamcast
Quick man wake up Gman's back!
9:48 I remember one day my dad came home with brand new boxes copies of KISS Psycho Circus, Heavy Metal F.A.K.K 2, 4x4 evo, Blair Witch vol. 1, and Rune. He got them from a promo that was being run at the radio station he worked at. I wonder if that's any connection to what you were talking about?
My bowling alley had Carn-Evil and i used to just dump quarters into it every Sunday.
Love that game to death and was always surprised as Midways most successful light gun game they didnt do more with it.
The Dreamcast era… what a time to be alive, almost every game released was good. Power Stone, MvC2, MK Gold, Phantasy Star Online, Soul Caliber…
Some of my go to shooters on the Dreamcast back then were sof 2 and slave zero, while not the best ports still fun games. Also Ding Chavez is forever a legend : )
The transition of Half Life to Kiss psycho Circus was Whiplash inducing
For some reason, that picture of smiling Gordon Freeman sends me rolling every time I see it
I remember getting a used Dreamcast as my next console after the N64. I was blown away by how good the games looked.
The loading times on Soldier of Fortune where hilarious, I could even take a bath or cook while the game was loading.
27:40
The memories this unlocked, my god
Tbh I didn't even know that the Dreamcast had fps games
I loved mine as a kid, until it stopped working one day for whatever reason, I still play Jet Set Radio, and Sega GT 2002 started my love of racing sims/games
Maken X looks so cool. Honestly looks like it's pretty decent first person melee, which is still a rarity. The enemy feedback and depth perception looked pretty good!
You’re the first person outside of Megaten fans that I’ve seen review Makken X. It’s enough for me to give it a a chance now.
I really liked the PS2 version of Maken X, renamed Maken Shao. Funny, they switched it from first person to third person but kept the tank controls. At least it's easier to parry enemy projectiles in third person. PS2 version also uses the uncensored character designs. Namely the Indian guy at the bottom left at 19:22 looks totally different, he's supposed to have four robot arms on his shoulders instead of floating hands.
For over a decade, I played first person shooters in Windows using a wireless PS/2 ball mouse. Yes, it needed to be cleaned occasionally, but it was never a big problem. It was also quite accurate and I never had any problems aiming at even small targets in the distance with precision. Unfortunately, that's not something I can say about any laser mouse I've ever used. Maybe it's because they're too sensitive, but I find it almost completely impossible to aim at small targets with any degree of accuracy. If I get the horizontal aim just right, the vertical aim will be off. So I move the mouse up slightly and it jitters to the side a couple pixels. So I nudge it back the other way and now it's a couple pixels too low. Move it up a tiny amount and it jumps a few pixels to the other side! ARGH!!!
Here's a test I like to do: When you move the pointer over text, it changes to a vertical line with little cross pieces at the top and bottom. Pick a symmetrical letter like A, H, X, etc, and try to center the pointer on that letter perfectly, both horizontally and vertically, and then take your hand off the mouse so that it stays there. How long does it take and how much trouble is it to get it to stay centered?
For me, it's an exercise in frustration.
Or load up a good drawing program (MS Paint doesn't qualify), load a B/W drawing and try to follow some of the lines in the image with the mouse while drawing in some color. How closely were you able to follow the lines? My ball mouse used to be pretty accurate, but with laser mice, it goes all over, no matter how slowly I go.
Note: No cheating by lowering the DPI on the mouse, or adjusting the mouse speed in windows. Perform these tests with the mouse set the way you normally use it.
One of the most underrated consoles ever.
1:20 no, it was totally because Japan wasn't really a fan of fps games. It's one of the reasons why Xbox didn't really hit it off in Japan until fromsoft came along (with the other reasons being console aesthetic and import stuff)