@@heilong79 Absolutely, people who weren’t around before Dreamcast don’t understand how big a deal those 60Hz modes were. For years we’d imported NTSC consoles or added 60Hz mods to our PAL consoles. It’s a shame that VF3tb and Sega Rally 2 had their 60Hz options hidden within VGA mode and weren’t able to be toggled on/off at boot up like most games, but yeah … 60Hz mode was a huge deal for Dreamcast and European gamers. Thanks for watching! - James.
@@SEGAGuys The same DC games looked horrible at 50 hz. The 60 hz mode slightly offset the picture to the right on my set though. But at least it used all the screen.
At last a channel that focuses on uk realises unlike other channels that focus on north America or japan we seem to get forgotten. I appreciate your content 😊
My girlfriend at the time bought me this on launch day for my birthday (October 16), along with an extra controller, two VMUs, Sonic Adventure, and Ready to Rumble. Best birthday gift ever - though I think she regretted it, as she didn't see me for the rest of that day... 🤣 To this day, this remains my all-time favourite console, and I don't think it will ever be beat for the sheer number of quality games to time on market ratio.
@@gedamanspeaking about girlfriends, back in october of 2000 i was for in love with a girlfriend for months but once it was late march 2001, that love was over. My life was gonna had a bad impact over the course of years because of this to become never the same again. Same with sega, once we reached late march 2001, sega was gonna never be the same again once the dreamcast did fall down to it’s doom against the ps2. What a coicidance that those dreacast days just ended pretty much the same time just once my love with my girlfriended that time. So in short those dreamcast days were just a waaay better time then the time we life now🥲
PS2 is probably the greatest console ever made. At the very least it remains the best selling of all time. Dreamcast is very good but no, it never stood a chance against a machine with such massive developer support and enormous depth of games collection. That appealed to far more people than Sega's arcade focused portfolio which everyone could see were going out of fashion as arcades died. No need to run down PS2's obviously unquestionably stellar credentials to show you like the Dreamcast. I had both.
I also had both The PS2 and The DC and yes, SEGA's reliance on recreating the "arcade experience" was, at that point, questionable. So, how come I've literally owned every major console since the Megadrive, but the most fun I have ever had was on the DC? There was just something about it. On paper, the PS2 whipped it's ass. On paper, I play hangman, not video games. The race to create the world's most powerful console is a race to the bottom, not the top. Nintendo know this and will happily watch Microsoft and Sony paint themselves into a corner, with lots of letters (FPS, CPU, GPU) lots of numbers, and less-and-less enthusiasm from the public.
Accept none of those things were true of the PS2 at the time, it wasn't available. The Dreamcast was up against a brand at the time, and a lot of spin from Sony with regards to what the PS2 could do. There was just an assumption that the PS2 would be better, in addition to no FIFA which really did hurt PAL territories.@@pgr3290
I got mine that first Christmas having had a PS1. I have a full PAL Dreamcast collection, it's by far my favourite console and holds my best gaming memories. Great video BTW.
Buongiorno Sega Guys! I really appreciated this video about the European launch of the Dreamcast, because as Italian I have always suffered from the fact that video game historians focus on the Japanese and American markets, forgetting if not completely ignoring the old continent. Even though our main market is the United Kingdom, each of the remaining four most important economies in Europe (Spain, Italy, Germany and France) has its own story to tell and preserve. There are events that have affected Europe differently from the rest of the world or that have never happened, such as the 1983 crisis that only touched us lightly or the console war of the 90s, which went differently for us in some ways. Anyway, I also have to thank you for finding an answer to a dilemma that most of the Italian Dreamcast community had been asking themselves since the launch day: why, unlike what was done with Master System, Mega Drive, Game Gear and Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast didn't even benefit of a TV commercial by Giochi Preziosi (the historic Italian distributor of Sega hardware)? At the time we couldn't understand due to the lack of info and we racked our brains looking for an answer that made sense. Now we have it. A curiosity is that in Italy the Japanese Dreamcasts had already been circulating for some time and many skipped the European launch. Not me, I knew that if I wanted to make the most of the internet and play localized games in a language I understand, I would have had to get a European console and honestly, I prefer the blue spiral and the European style of the packaging and design to the Japanese and American ones. I still have my day one Dreamcast and I still play it, my launch game was Sonic Adventure and it couldn't have been otherwise, after the absence of a real Sonic for the Saturn, and it was amazing at my eyes. Anyway, thanks again for this video, I hope that in the future you will focus again on the European history of video games.
I'd given up on Sega and consoles in general by this stage - I was 21 by the UK launch and just wanted to get my end away. 😂 Not long after it was discontinued, my mate gave me a loan of his with a bunch of games and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The jump from Saturn (my previous console) to this was unbelievable. It's a shame Sega alienated so many people in the mid-90s as this deserved so much success.
An online friend put me onto Shenmue, with the words 'trust me, just get it', and I'm glad I did, got a Dreamcast and a copy of Shenmue. Really memorable
It was almost non existent here in The Netherlands. One of my friends wanted to buy one at launch, but there wasn't even one to be found in our town of Hoorn (pop. about 70 000). So he had to go all the way to Amsterdam. There wasn't any Dreamcast promotion here, not even a single advertisement outside of the ones in UK Dreamcast magazines that were for sale here too. There only were some games available outside specialty game shops here. So it only moved because of worth of mouth. More and more of my classmates would buy one. I was totally amazed by it. I bought one in early 2000. When the Dreamkey 2.0 came out, it was finally possible to game online in The Netherlands too.
That's how I remember it too. The Dreamcast had some presence in the magazines, but out on the streets, in the shops and on television, the Dreamcast was nowhere to be seen. I didn't realise Sega had intentionally de-emphasised their advertisement in smaller European countries, but it does explain a lot now. Either way, I was too focused on Final Fantasy VIII and Quake 3 Arena at the time to really take note of the Dreamcast's launch.
Quite interesting to read this. In Spain it was quite the opposite, they went all in with ads, campaigns, kiosks everywhere and even an official Spanish magazine.
I'm Dutch and I remember buying a booklet with cheats for popular games in Belgium and the Dreamcast was featured in there. I had never seen it before and only once played on a demo unit in a Free Record Shop later on. It was always this mysterious intriguing console to me and I finally bought my first Dreamcast just a month ago. I'm currently having a blast with it and it's already my most favorites console I've owned.
I got mine on launch here in the netherlands from my mom. I would soon turn 14 (october 19th). My mother also bought a new tv for me that supported 60hz. I will never forget that. I lived in a 30,000 town and I knew of 7 people personally in my town of around my age who owned one. Not as popular as ps1, but I wasn't alone either.
I was there and I remember in Italy the Dreamcast received almost no advertising. It was that obscure, fascinating and expensive console appearing in the back shelves of videogame stores. The historical SEGA distributor, Giochi Preziosi, was not on board in those critical days. It is a pity, they could have spent that marketing money for whole Europe and in Italy, rather than putting their logo on Sampdoria jerseys, they could use those 8 million pounds for improving local distribution.
I loved the Dreamcast, and although I live in the UK, I bought the Japanese console on launch with 3 games with a subscription for the Dreamcast magazine in Japan. So it cost me an arm and a leg, but it was well worth it.
I remember buying mine on launch day here in the UK. I was excitedly buying my Dreamcast in Dixons and I recall trying to make conversation with the guy I bought it from. I asked him “do you still have many left?” and he answered “Why? How many do you want to buy?”
I was saving up for a PS2 but ended up getting a Dreamcast in 2000 as I heard the PS2 would cost twice as much. I was very happy with it despite the short life. Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia alone were masterpieces that I spent so much time with.
Great video 👍. I remember pre-ordering mine from Electronics Boutique along with a VMU. Game wise, I can't fully remember, but I think I picked up Sega Rally 2, Ready to Rumble boxing and Trick Style, I remember playing all 3 a lot, so I may have picked one or two of them up just after launch. I've never been so blown away by a console launch since Dreamcast, the ads, the build up, it all felt surreal, like stepping into the future. Getting a Saturn on Xmas day just after it launched was also pretty special and sticks in the memory, so it's pretty close between the two. The other stand-out feature was the constant flow of amazing games. Thanks to Sega, I was pretty much constantly broke, lol, buying as many games as I could afford, due mainly to the fact that the quality of games was so high. I remember owning an N64 and being generally frustrated at the lack of games and quality ones at that. I still have my Saturn and Dreamcast hooked up. The legends will never die 🫡.
I was a Nintendo fan at the time but the Dreamcast sounded and looked so awesome that I was hyped for it. Everything about it sounded like the perfect console to me. I had turned 18 that year and started my first job and I had saved my first few paychecks to buy the console on day one and I remember waking up early morning and going to my local Gamestation to buy it along with Sonic Adventure and a VMU. The Dreamcast was such a great console and I had so much fun with the it in its short life, I was genuinely gutted when it was announced Sega were pulling the plug. To this day I don't think I have had as much fun gaming as I did in that era. Very nice video btw, i still remember watching that episode of Watchdog at the time lol
I remember the Dreamcast UK release party. (Actually I can’t remember where it was) we got so drunk and stole one of the transparent blue futuristic looking inflatable chairs that was in the venue and then we tried to deflate it while roaming around the nearby London streets. Good memories. Good drinks. Good times. I miss them 😢😊
As an upper school student, I saved up money from my part-time job for weeks and paid over the odds for an imported Dreamcast from one of those ads in Sega Saturn Magazine. I sold it to Computer Exchange just before the UK release of the Dreamcast so I wouldn’t have to mess around with importing games all the time. I remember the look of awe from people witnessing the Dreamcast being tested before my sale was approved in Computer Exchange. Even though it was outputting in black and white on the TV in store, people couldn’t stop staring at it. Eventually ended up importing Japanese Dreamcast games anyway so should never have sold it 😂 As a Gooner, having Sega / Dreamcast on the Arsenal shirt was a match made in heaven (excuse the pun), I couldn’t believe that my two favourite things - Sega and Arsenal, had come together. But, as you stated in the vid, it was probably a big waste of the marketing resources.
Bought my Dreamcast from Whatvis now known as Westfield Stratford in east London, Sonic Adventure and Powerstone! Had my first job and cash burning a hole in my pocket. Great times nothing beats buying a new SEGA console.
Fantastic video James! It’s great to see the Euro launch get a look in, it was a pretty exciting time so this vid was really awesome. The hype for the launch felt huge and it was a big build up even months beforehand. I think I mentioned to you before that I remember driving to Lakeside shopping centre in Thurrock just to see a Dreamcast they had displayed in a case like it was the Crown Jewels! There was also an import shop in there too at the time so I made sure to pick up a few Japanese imports for the Saturn, good times! I got a Japanese Dreamcast on import so I could play early, but I did also pick up a PAL console on launch day to be part of the festivities. It was such a fun time and they did a great job of having a decent batch of games ready to go so I had a blast picking up a few more games too and thoroughly enjoyed that launch time. Really awesome video dude, it’s fantastically made and was a real joy to watch and remember that great time in gaming, nice one mate!
I remember being in Dixons which was in a shopping centre on the outskirts of Belfast called Forestside. I just remember being mesmerised by the graphics though I never got one I did get a dreamcast a few years later when they were essentially being give away. Great system.
Amazing video mate, this was really great insight into the launch time, as I had no idea about the events in west London .. I bought the Dreamcast around launch but in a much less glamorous TEMPO store "for those that remember" in Dalston, but i was 14 and didn't really go westend by myself then anyways!. I'm still playing and collecting till this day.
Pretty fun reading all the comments of fellow europeans. The conversation online is always dominated by NTSC markets. Here in Spain SEGA was quite the household name during the 8 and 16 bit era. Mega Drive outsold Super Nintendo comfortably. Saturn was a disaster, but the first year of the Dreamcast SEGA Spain went all in: you had TV ads, print ads, the official spanish magazine, kiosks in every retailer, etc. As someone mentioned in another comment: 60hz support for mostly all titles was a godsend, plus, as a graphic designer, I must say that the whole Euro branding and packaging was top notch. Back then I eagerly awaited every monthly issue of the official magazine; still remember vividly the day I opened what eventually was the last issue to read that SEGA pulled the plug on console manufacturing. I was shocked, in complete disbelief. Still remember running downstairs to tell my mother, as if she gave two f*cks 😂 Such a special little machine it was! Arguably the most creative period at SEGA. They were fearless with the releases. We got the most wonderfully wierd and artsy games.
Experiencing the Japanese version of Sonic Adventure at Babbages in 1998 was an experience I’ll never forget. The controller was so weird but I loved it.
I remember getting a Dreamcast shortly after launch, just to play Crazy Taxi. Ya ya ya ya ya! Eventually I got very invested in Shenmue and I was convinced that kind of scope and gameplay were the future of videogames.
I worked for a little independent game store t the time of the launch, we got invited to Highbury, Arsenals home ground at the time as Sega ( well, "Dreamcast" ) was the fornt sponsor of the club. We'd already been playing import machiens for quite a while at this point, but it was a fun event to go to, got some swag, a mini tour around the stadium and got to see the nice Blue swirl, good times :) :)
Hello from the UK also! My gaming journey started very briefly with the C64 and then what felt like a huge jump up to the Mega Drive in around 92. Great times ensued for the next few years with my younger brother picking up a SNES during this period. I was only ever interested in playing DK Country really. Nintendo, aside from the GB, haven’t ever really hit the spot for me (despite owning all of their consoles over the years). 94/95 The Saturn hype was SIGNIFICANT after having seen Virtua Fighter and Virtua Cop in arcades (namely P&O ferries to France, who’d have thought??) so it was all systems go to nab one as soon as it launched in the UK in 95. However, on yet another P&O ferry trip to France (!)…they had Tekken in the arcade. I was blown away by this and couldn’t believe what I’d seen. So on my next trip to Comet to gawp at the Saturn test units and Virtua Fighter, I was left in total shock at seeing Tekken running on a home console! I’d never heard of the PS until this point, coupled with Ridge Racer, I was torn…my brand loyalties completely rocked. Parents gave me the worst decision 10 year old me had ever had to make…I chose PS. Even though I was DESPERATE to be able to have Virtua Cop at home (when it released) I told myself there’d be a PS equivalent (there wasn’t - Die Hard Trilogy did NOT count Xmas 96, that and the trash Predator light gun was a slap in the face for not making the right choice that gen). I’d read C&VG mags monthly and get envious at all of the amazing arcade conversions coming out: Sega Rally, Daytona, Die Hard Arcade and eventually House of the Dead… But life wasn’t too terrible: the PS had a whole host of classics as we all know. I actually caved when the N64 was released in March 97 and sold the PS to fund it and Mario 64. Only to be left with massive gaps with hardly any releases with months dragging on. Let’s not forget Turok releasing for £70 either!! Madness. In 1997!? That was a huge amount of money for then. But the allure of Lylat Wars (ahem Star Fox 64) was too great so I held out for that. Then I completed it and was like ok now what? The N64 was then traded BACK for a PS as we then the autumn releases of 1997 to appreciate. Fast forward to 1998 and the first sight of the DC was again in C&VG magazine, where screens for Sonic Adventure and Shenmue were shown. Like many of us here, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Following its launch in Japan and reading with the highest degree of jealousy Japanese gamers getting their hands on the console at the end of 1998, 1999 couldn’t come soon enough when the rest of the world would get this beauty. Summer 1999 was a constant cock tease of playing the newest Model 3 and Naomi games in the arcades: HotD2, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Striker 2 KNOWING that they would all SURELY come to the DC. And boy did they. My local import shop got one that summer and me and a mate spent so many £1 coins rinsing the time slots available in the shop. We also had early exposure to Soul Calibur too which was just wild. In short (!) the DC was AND STILL IS and I’m certain will always be, my childhood/early adolescent total dream of a piece of hardware and software collection. Nothing else has ever come close to giving me personally the joy associated with the DC and living at such an important time of video game history, where firsts where happening non-stop; each month there was a new experience which blew everything else away. I’m saddened by the PS2 having destroyed its chances of a fruitful long term existence, I really am. Surely there was room on the market for both… Let’s hope that one day Sega does something proper and decent to truly commemorate this period of software design. Nowadays I have my steam deck set up with Batocera and EVERY Sega system including model 1, 2 and 3; all the boards pre the 90s and all the boards post model 3 (apart from Chihiro as Demul isn’t supported anymore) and honestly, it’s a joy to have the entire history of Sega right there, all playable either with a wheel, arcade stick or Sinden. I think 10 year old me would have had a heart attack thinking about this set up if I’m honest… Long live the DC!!!!!!!!
I remember playing this console at a summer camp that my school organize centered on Basket but it was like 2008-2009. The console blew ne out and I was always waiting for the free time because I went and played Dreamcast for like and a hour and a half
You've earnt yourselves a subscriber. I was there on launch day, got mine with Virtua Fighter 3tb. How awful the Dreamcast pad was for fighting games, though, especially after the Saturn's. The arcade stick fixed all that.
I got my VMU (Wales) first due to the delay and I couldn't wait to get my Dreamcast - I got it a day after launch with Sonic Adventure I was blown away how good it was as I sold my Saturn a year or so before - I got an N64 to fill the gap and I remember unplugging it to make way for my Dreamcast and I loved it I think I dint really starting to enjoy it till later months when Resident Evil CV came out and then Jet Set Radio last years I remember going to GAME and picking load of games for £20 (Street Fighter 3 etc.) one wired thing I remember how impressed I was with Incoming and its lighting effects. Dead or Alive 2 - despite how good Soul Calbur was - was another game that really impressed me ... got loads of good stories / memories (taking my DC over my mates house to play 4-player Virtua Tennis)
My mate got his Dreamcast day one, but after about a year he was fed up with the lack of good football games so I did a trade with him. I traded my PlayStation and a new copy of whatever the latest Pro Evo game was for his Dreamcast. I did regret some of the PS1 games I ended up missing out on but Dreamcast is still one of my favorite consoles ever. Thanks for the reminder of how insane the promotion of video games was back in the day.
Remember playing the DC and Sonic Adventure on an instore kiosk and i was blown away. The football shirt sponsorship figures for that time period is eyewatering 😮
I started out late on the Master System and proceded to Megadrive when it had already peaked. When it was time to upgrade again the Saturn had more or less disappeared from the Swedish market so I opted for the Playstation instead. When the buzz started that Sega was preparing a new machine to take revenge on the console market I saved up my salary from working the summer between 9th and 10th grade and preordered. When I received the package there was a note from the shop notifiying me that there was a very limited supply of Dreamcasts in the country for the release and I was part of the first lucky wave to receive a console. The WMU was put och backorder though, and arrived a month or so later. Still have the console and the letter.
I remember when the Dreamcast first came out in the USA because my friend got it at launch. Let me tell you, it was clearly better than any other console in the market. I had never seen such high definition sports games, for example, on a big screen TV. I still don’t know why it didn’t capture a majority of the console market.
I bought mine when they were struggling to shift the machines and just before it was announced that Sega were leaving the hardware market, for £99. I only really purchased one for Resident Evil: Code Veronica and the fact that games were being heavily discounted. It also helped that I was working in a video and games rental store at the time and our branch was supplied with boxes of Dreamcast games and peripherals to sell. With my staff discount I managed to pick up games for as little as £10, including Shenmue and the fishing rod accessory! Very happy days of gaming and I still have my original Dreamcast and games from this time! 😁👍
I had the chance to play Sega Rally 2 on the Dreamcast in July 1999 on the HMV Dreamcast Preview Tour. I was confused as to why the logo on the console was blue! I preordered my Dreamcast that day. I got a video as a pre order gift which I wish I'd held onto. When 14th October finally rolled around and I had my very own Dreamcast I was overjoyed. Owning a Dreamcast and being able to go online in Dream Arena made me feel like I was living in the future. Despite it's short life, it makes me happy that the Dreamcast is so fondly remembered by so many.
Back in the day I was 13 and, in my hometown (Málaga), not many people bought it on the release date...but boy, we couldn't take our eyes out of those graphics when we saw all those amazing games. When we saw that amazing Sonic in 3D, that Soul Calibur...gosh, that was absolutely mindblowing. When I managed to get it as a present, I was OVER THE MOON. The best bit was when I started playing online with the likes of Quake III and the most important one, PHANTASY STAR ONLINE. It was amazing, something I cannot put into words. It was a console too good to be true, a console that was way ahead of its time but, at the same time, it managed to stick to what videogames should be. Alongside with Shenmue (which is the best videogame ever), it's just a legend, something that will never be forgotten and shaped the future of videogames way ahead of its time.
SEGA España surely burnt some cash in marketing. Not sure about Málaga, but here in Las Palmas there were kiosks everywhere. It was a pitty that everyone here in Spain was waiting for the PS2. I have to agree there about Shenmue. Most special game I’ve ever played.
@@TronicGames There were plenty of kiosks in Málaga too. I remember that I even got mindblowed when playing in one of them by Incoming 🤣 But yeah, it was a real pity that no matter how good the Dreamcast was, that most of the people were waiting for the PS2. Those 2 are my fondest memories from Dreamcast; playing Shenmue for the first time and when I discovered online gaming by playing alongside others in Phantasy Star Online.
Amazing video. I bought my Dreamcast on the summer of 2021 and it's an amazing console. My favorite game so far is MDK 2. I haven't played as much as i want because i have a large backlog but i will soon.
I remember (fondly) going to Toys R Us,and buying a Dreamcast on sale for £99. I got a steering wheel with pedals, 2 controllers,a VMU, Virtua Fighter 3,MSR, and 2 other games i can't remember. Best £99 i ever spent! I ended up with 56 games over the years,and traded it all in for the then new GameCube. Still regret it to this day :( Although the GameCube gave me lots of great memories as well. Metroid Prime,Zelda WW etc.
The DC was a pure gaming machine, so well engineered, from the beautiful RGB 240p and VGA 480p outputs, the immaculate Yamaha Super Intelligent Sound Processor which has full XG MIDI support and 64 3D channel sound, the hall-effect analogue, the dope little VMU, and so many good games, so many games that were looking to be amazing titles were cancelled, the DC could have been home to so many perfect arcade ports, some of the best versions of multiplat games are on the system too, including updated PS1 ports, there could have eventually even been some updated Saturn ports playable in 480p, as well as more of the really high-quality PC game ports, we did get Half-Life 1 & Blue Streak, Quake 3 Arena, Rainbow Six, Soldier of Fortune, Nomad Soul, H&D, Star Lancer, a direct PC port of Resident Evil 2 (making it by far the best version of the game), they were already porting Max Payne to the DC, which would have been awsome with the DC KB&M and VGA 480p, but it got cancelled, so did a System Shock 2 port, which also would have worked with the KB&M, the Dreamcast version of Black & White was almost complete when abandoned, which is so sad, would have been amazing to have it on DC, Commandos 2 port was almost finished bar the last two maps, we did recently get a DC port of Postal, which is dope.
I didn't realize how much quid Sega blew on those football team sponsorships, without there being any killer app football games at launch for the European market (unless I'm off base in thinking that Virtua Striker wasn't a big hit) I can't imagine that deal did Sega any good. Great video and storytime, James, the Dreamcast had such a vivid series of launches and it's great to see it told from someone who was there on the ground at the time.
Cheers, Jessica. I think with the European Dreamcast marketing it really did show that SEGA had hired someone totally new to the gaming industry, and most of all someone who didn’t know them or their history. To spend £32m (approx) of the £60m budget on sponsorship of football teams when two thirds of Europe didn’t get enough consoles or even an official marketing campaign is madness. What’s crazier is that Arsenal were promoting Dreamcast on their shirts for an entire season (01/02) after the console was discontinued and SEGA bowed out of hardware. Why was money spent sponsoring Deportivo for that same season? Good old SEGA! New management, same silly decisions. Glad you enjoyed the video, thanks as always for tuning in and getting involved in the comments. - James.
@@SEGAGuys Absolutely James, yours and Dan's videos are an absolute treasure to the community. And yeah that's yet another tally on the checklist of "ways SEGA defeated themselves." I think would-be historians give Sony and the PS2 too much credit for ending Dreamcast, that was done well enough in house. Some of the management decisions made by SEGA's different branches absolutely baffle me to this day.
I live in the uk and It took me some time to finally get a Sega Dreamcast Console i was late to the party and bought one in January 2001 a month before they announced sega was going to discontinue it . But i don't regret buying one the had Exellent games on it .I still have my boxed Sega Dreamcast and boxed Sega Saturn with games and magazines. As a PS5 Gamer i still dig out my Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast and have a good play on some classic games By the way great video
I wrote Windows device drivers for embedded devices for a living when this console was launched. They had a bunch of them to play with at a Microsoft event which I went to in the UK at which they were pushing Windows CE for embedded computers. I'd read all the documentation and didn't have much to learn from the presentations so I spent much of the time playing with the Dreamcast instead. Of course in the end most Dreamcast games didn't use CE. But it worked reasonably well for some of our customers.
Amazing video - where have 25 years gone eh? I remember getting my DC in Wood Green London, shortly after the European release armed with £200 from my fresh student loan! My main motivator was cheap internet access back then and the games were just a bonus. What a bonus they were, as I’m still playing Dreamcast today after all these years! Thanks for a great video as the European DC scene seems to have been completely forgotten about in the mists of time…
I had to wait until the summer of 2000 before I got my Dreamcast - I won one in a competition, can't remember where. It came with _Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000 Euro Edition._ Of the PAL launch line-up I only had _Sonic Adventure_ and _TrickStyle._
I asked my mother to buy the Dreamcast and she said that I must succeed my last year in high school… which I failed.. nevertheless I managed to get one a few months later. Great memories especially with this graphic gap ( even my father was amazed by soulcalibur and he hates video games 😅)
Also, it's interesting that the console price only lowered to 99 pounds after the discontinuation there, by the time March came around Because in Amercia, right when the announcement was made to discontinue in early Feb. of 2001, i saw Dreamcast consoles going for $50 in America, and soon after, $25 in some stores before March. And some stores were including a game as well
Aye, I remember it dropping to £50 in Electronics Boutique and Dixons over here pretty soon after the official discontinuation … possibly around the summer months. I also remember it dropping to £25 later again just to try and clear stock, with a lot of games dropped to £5/10. Total fire sale to get out of the hardware game and recoup whatever they could.
It's weird that the UK side of Dreamcast's story is so rarely brought up, considering how big even the Master System and Saturn were over there. The DVD player bundle was especially a good idea since so many people were buying a PS2 for its DVD player capability, I'm surprised that had no impact on sales.
As someone that was working for BT (British Telecom) at the time the Dreamcast Launched, I can tell you the reason you couldn't get online for the first month or so was entirely BTs fault as they underestimated how many people were going to buy the console and didn't supply anywhere near enough infastructure/avalible connections for it.
I still remember the days I read about the Dreamcast in magazines, how great it was gonna be. I cannot even remember it in stores, only vaguely, but that is just a maybe vaguely. SEGA made so many strange decisions, and the money seemed to sit loose and ready to be poured out on all kind of strange stuff, it was always new ideas instead trying to improve the stuff that already worked, or fix what could have been. Like you said in the video, wasting money on soccer teams, but NOT having a soccer game.. If SEGA was a beer brand they may have gotten more out of the soccer campaigns.. But then they should have had special edition Soccer games and Dreamcasts with the different teams or something availabel for sale at stadiums and such, but probably best to not waste the money on soccer at all. One thing I have always wondered about was the SEGA Worlds, how much money did they cost? It must have been a serious money pit I would think, but I do not know. I think it was a company that had surprise succes with the Mega Drive and suddenly swimmed in money they had no idea where to put, so they just blew it in all directions and mismanaged their succes. They had too much stuff going on at the same time without anyone in charge to reel them in, like a classroom with a substitute teacher without control. Or like a moron winning the Jackpot..
Great video, James. I like your ranking of the 12 launch titles, but I'd swap Trickstyle with Incoming because I could never get used to the handling in the former, which ruined the game for me. I brought the system with the two best selling UK games - SEGA Rally and Sonic Adventure - in May 2000 about six months after the system launched in Australia.
Sampdoria Genua was only in Serie B (!) and finished on 5th place in 2000 and 2001! Why on earth did they pay them 8 Mio pound??? Deportivo and Arsenal, ok, that's a lot of money, but good teams at that time. Dreamcast was one of my favourite consoles. It brought 480p VGA output that I used on my monitor and 60 Hz. This was amazing and a lot of games worked in 60 FPS mode as well. But the marketing in Germany was week and the PS2 crashed every effort easily. Sad, but true.
Man they shouldve not only done that PAL DVD bundle earlier, but they should've done that in America too! (No such bundle happened in America as far as i know) I think its fair to say, that with PS2's extremely lackluster launch lineup, and even after their first year, still hardly any games worth getting a new console for.. the PS2 sales were almost entirely due to it being the cheapest DVD on the market at the time
Mate, that DVD player was £229 on its own! 🤯 It was really capable too, one of the old “enter a code on the remote” to unblock multi region playback. As a standalone player its playback quality was far better than PS2’s, which I always felt had a horrible green tint compared to the Region 1 Panasonic A120 I had imported over a year before PS2 even launched here. How much money did SEGA pay Encore per unit to get the player in that bundle? Crazy.
I remember in uk when ps2 came out they released a very limited dc console game package and also packed in a dvd player all in one box. Years later can i find even one google image of theat dreamcast pack hell no. Must have been a really limited im guessing would be worth a pretty penny now adays to collectors. ( Yes the same one in the video hadnt got to this part of video when i wrote this ) I will add i got my first dc console with marvel vs capcom. Been waiting for that games for years for a home port. The psx port was nothing compared to the dc edition. Just like they did for the Saturn before it Dreamcast got loads of quality 2d fighting game home ports as for 3d fighters dead or alive never disappointed
Yeah the marketing choices definitely don't seem to have been the smartest. Despite being in the States, I did buy a Dreamcast Arsenal jersey off eBay about 20 years ago, and I still have it despite not being an Arsenal supporter!
I loved the DC but I always though they should have waited a bit longer and launched it with the Naiomi 2 hardware Inside, that way it would have blown the PS2 out the water and be able to keep up with GC and Xbox, the DC was a great machine with smooth vibrant graphics, when the PS2 launched I couldn't get over how jaggy and lifeless/muted the graphics looked in comparison. The DC for me was just better in my eyes.
I remember Soul Calibur launched one or two weeks after the console launch, right? I bought the console here in Spain on release day, October 14, with Sonic Adventure, and then Soul Calibur a little later.
Yeah, Soulcalibur came out on November 26th in PAL regions, so about 6 weeks after launch. Weird one given it was a launch title in the US, so all the localisation had been done.
It's a shame that the Sega Dreamcast was Sega's last dreams and hopes of making video consoles, and the console was defeated by PS2, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. It had excellent videogames from Capcom
Doubt it. Piracy was absolutely rampant on the PS1 and it didn't exactly prevent the machine from being a resounding success. Not to mention that piracy on the Dreamcast wasn't THAT easy. On the one hand, yes, it didn't require a modchip which was a big deal. On the other hand, you couldn't burn your friend's legit game. You had to find and download an ISO on some shady website, at a time where the average download speed was 3.5 Kilobytes/second. Downloading a 700MB game meant using up nearly 57 hours of Internet connection (IF the download went smoothly and without interruption), at a time when you generally paid each minute online or had a limited amount of hours per month. What forced Sega to discontinue manufacturing the machine is that it had warehouses full of consoles that they simply didn't find anyone to sell to. Sega had such a hard time selling Dreamcasts, even at a discount, that it ended up recycling quite a few units into arcade cabinets (the Atomiswave) which it kept selling for the better part of the 2000s. Piracy had little to do with that.
I will say in US it felt like the Dreamcast replaced the N64 while PS2 replaced the Playstation. What I mean is everyone loved the Dreamcast as a multi-player system and as such only one person in your friend group had to have one and every one else just needed a controller
Brought on day 1 with Sonic and rally 2. As u say big push in the uk advertising wise , think the 32 million on footie sponsorships was a huge waste . It should of been spent on promoting the dc in other European markets
Second comment...... My ex girlfriend loved Crazy Taxi 2 so much she was actually better at it than i was lol! I would have to sit there watching her play it for like an Hour and a Half before she either gave up through boredom,or just ran out of time. I remember she would score like 12 million or around that much. She was really dedicated lol.
As a PAL user I was happy it was the first EU console to finally support 60hz. A really big deal.
@@heilong79 Absolutely, people who weren’t around before Dreamcast don’t understand how big a deal those 60Hz modes were. For years we’d imported NTSC consoles or added 60Hz mods to our PAL consoles.
It’s a shame that VF3tb and Sega Rally 2 had their 60Hz options hidden within VGA mode and weren’t able to be toggled on/off at boot up like most games, but yeah … 60Hz mode was a huge deal for Dreamcast and European gamers. Thanks for watching! - James.
I agree this was a big deal. Also 60fps that worked with an RF cable and still had colour onscreen. Normally have to buy an RGB scart lead for that
Jaguar and CD32 did it first, but DC perfected it.
@@SEGAGuys The same DC games looked horrible at 50 hz. The 60 hz mode slightly offset the picture to the right on my set though. But at least it used all the screen.
@@Nekodaisuki88 that's on your screen, it wasn't the machine's fault. 50 Hz on Dreamcast produced brighter colours than 60 Hz as well.
At last a channel that focuses on uk realises unlike other channels that focus on north America or japan we seem to get forgotten. I appreciate your content 😊
My girlfriend at the time bought me this on launch day for my birthday (October 16), along with an extra controller, two VMUs, Sonic Adventure, and Ready to Rumble. Best birthday gift ever - though I think she regretted it, as she didn't see me for the rest of that day... 🤣
To this day, this remains my all-time favourite console, and I don't think it will ever be beat for the sheer number of quality games to time on market ratio.
You should have married that girl! WOW 🤩! What a birthday gift!!!
Sir, I envy you… I had to buy my own! 😂
@@gedamanspeaking about girlfriends, back in october of 2000 i was for in love with a girlfriend for months but once it was late march 2001, that love was over.
My life was gonna had a bad impact over the course of years because of this to become never the same again.
Same with sega, once we reached late march 2001, sega was gonna never be the same again once the dreamcast did fall down to it’s doom against the ps2.
What a coicidance that those dreacast days just ended pretty much the same time just once my love with my girlfriended that time.
So in short those dreamcast days were just a waaay better time then the time we life now🥲
Sega didn't stand a chance against the murky-looking sequel machine that was the PS2, but The DC was still the most fun I've had on a console.
Same only thing that comes close to capturing the Dreamcast feel was the 360
Dreamcast was the peak of fun in gaming for me
PS2 is probably the greatest console ever made. At the very least it remains the best selling of all time. Dreamcast is very good but no, it never stood a chance against a machine with such massive developer support and enormous depth of games collection. That appealed to far more people than Sega's arcade focused portfolio which everyone could see were going out of fashion as arcades died. No need to run down PS2's obviously unquestionably stellar credentials to show you like the Dreamcast. I had both.
It could have stood a chance it was a better console other than the dvd player
I also had both The PS2 and The DC and yes, SEGA's reliance on recreating the "arcade experience" was, at that point, questionable. So, how come I've literally owned every major console since the Megadrive, but the most fun I have ever had was on the DC? There was just something about it. On paper, the PS2 whipped it's ass. On paper, I play hangman, not video games.
The race to create the world's most powerful console is a race to the bottom, not the top. Nintendo know this and will happily watch Microsoft and Sony paint themselves into a corner, with lots of letters (FPS, CPU, GPU) lots of numbers, and less-and-less enthusiasm from the public.
Accept none of those things were true of the PS2 at the time, it wasn't available. The Dreamcast was up against a brand at the time, and a lot of spin from Sony with regards to what the PS2 could do. There was just an assumption that the PS2 would be better, in addition to no FIFA which really did hurt PAL territories.@@pgr3290
I got mine that first Christmas having had a PS1. I have a full PAL Dreamcast collection, it's by far my favourite console and holds my best gaming memories.
Great video BTW.
Buongiorno Sega Guys! I really appreciated this video about the European launch of the Dreamcast, because as Italian I have always suffered from the fact that video game historians focus on the Japanese and American markets, forgetting if not completely ignoring the old continent. Even though our main market is the United Kingdom, each of the remaining four most important economies in Europe (Spain, Italy, Germany and France) has its own story to tell and preserve. There are events that have affected Europe differently from the rest of the world or that have never happened, such as the 1983 crisis that only touched us lightly or the console war of the 90s, which went differently for us in some ways. Anyway, I also have to thank you for finding an answer to a dilemma that most of the Italian Dreamcast community had been asking themselves since the launch day: why, unlike what was done with Master System, Mega Drive, Game Gear and Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast didn't even benefit of a TV commercial by Giochi Preziosi (the historic Italian distributor of Sega hardware)? At the time we couldn't understand due to the lack of info and we racked our brains looking for an answer that made sense. Now we have it.
A curiosity is that in Italy the Japanese Dreamcasts had already been circulating for some time and many skipped the European launch. Not me, I knew that if I wanted to make the most of the internet and play localized games in a language I understand, I would have had to get a European console and honestly, I prefer the blue spiral and the European style of the packaging and design to the Japanese and American ones. I still have my day one Dreamcast and I still play it, my launch game was Sonic Adventure and it couldn't have been otherwise, after the absence of a real Sonic for the Saturn, and it was amazing at my eyes. Anyway, thanks again for this video, I hope that in the future you will focus again on the European history of video games.
YES, proper coverage of the PAL Dreamcast launch!
I'd given up on Sega and consoles in general by this stage - I was 21 by the UK launch and just wanted to get my end away. 😂 Not long after it was discontinued, my mate gave me a loan of his with a bunch of games and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The jump from Saturn (my previous console) to this was unbelievable. It's a shame Sega alienated so many people in the mid-90s as this deserved so much success.
enjoyed that overview and seeing the launch lineup. I'll never forget playing sonic Adventure (my first DC game) and being utterly wowed by it!
An online friend put me onto Shenmue, with the words 'trust me, just get it', and I'm glad I did, got a Dreamcast and a copy of Shenmue. Really memorable
Here in Australia we had to wait till the new millennium to get this great machine.
You guys got it on November 30th, 1999 from what I've seen.
It was almost non existent here in The Netherlands. One of my friends wanted to buy one at launch, but there wasn't even one to be found in our town of Hoorn (pop. about 70 000). So he had to go all the way to Amsterdam. There wasn't any Dreamcast promotion here, not even a single advertisement outside of the ones in UK Dreamcast magazines that were for sale here too. There only were some games available outside specialty game shops here. So it only moved because of worth of mouth. More and more of my classmates would buy one. I was totally amazed by it.
I bought one in early 2000. When the Dreamkey 2.0 came out, it was finally possible to game online in The Netherlands too.
That's how I remember it too. The Dreamcast had some presence in the magazines, but out on the streets, in the shops and on television, the Dreamcast was nowhere to be seen. I didn't realise Sega had intentionally de-emphasised their advertisement in smaller European countries, but it does explain a lot now. Either way, I was too focused on Final Fantasy VIII and Quake 3 Arena at the time to really take note of the Dreamcast's launch.
Quite interesting to read this. In Spain it was quite the opposite, they went all in with ads, campaigns, kiosks everywhere and even an official Spanish magazine.
I'm Dutch and I remember buying a booklet with cheats for popular games in Belgium and the Dreamcast was featured in there. I had never seen it before and only once played on a demo unit in a Free Record Shop later on. It was always this mysterious intriguing console to me and I finally bought my first Dreamcast just a month ago. I'm currently having a blast with it and it's already my most favorites console I've owned.
I got mine on launch here in the netherlands from my mom. I would soon turn 14 (october 19th). My mother also bought a new tv for me that supported 60hz. I will never forget that.
I lived in a 30,000 town and I knew of 7 people personally in my town of around my age who owned one. Not as popular as ps1, but I wasn't alone either.
I was there and I remember in Italy the Dreamcast received almost no advertising. It was that obscure, fascinating and expensive console appearing in the back shelves of videogame stores. The historical SEGA distributor, Giochi Preziosi, was not on board in those critical days. It is a pity, they could have spent that marketing money for whole Europe and in Italy, rather than putting their logo on Sampdoria jerseys, they could use those 8 million pounds for improving local distribution.
I can only agree with you.
I loved the Dreamcast, and although I live in the UK, I bought the Japanese console on launch with 3 games with a subscription for the Dreamcast magazine in Japan.
So it cost me an arm and a leg, but it was well worth it.
I've bought the Dreamcast just because of two games Shen Mue and Soul Calibur. And to be honest, it was worth it.
I remember getting my one at midnight and coming home with it from game
I remember buying mine on launch day here in the UK. I was excitedly buying my Dreamcast in Dixons and I recall trying to make conversation with the guy I bought it from. I asked him “do you still have many left?” and he answered “Why? How many do you want to buy?”
Lol. What a Dick.
Me and my parents went to Dixon's that day to get one and apparently there were only 2 left. Lucky me 😄
I was saving up for a PS2 but ended up getting a Dreamcast in 2000 as I heard the PS2 would cost twice as much. I was very happy with it despite the short life. Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia alone were masterpieces that I spent so much time with.
Great video 👍. I remember pre-ordering mine from Electronics Boutique along with a VMU. Game wise, I can't fully remember, but I think I picked up Sega Rally 2, Ready to Rumble boxing and Trick Style, I remember playing all 3 a lot, so I may have picked one or two of them up just after launch. I've never been so blown away by a console launch since Dreamcast, the ads, the build up, it all felt surreal, like stepping into the future. Getting a Saturn on Xmas day just after it launched was also pretty special and sticks in the memory, so it's pretty close between the two. The other stand-out feature was the constant flow of amazing games. Thanks to Sega, I was pretty much constantly broke, lol, buying as many games as I could afford, due mainly to the fact that the quality of games was so high. I remember owning an N64 and being generally frustrated at the lack of games and quality ones at that. I still have my Saturn and Dreamcast hooked up. The legends will never die 🫡.
I was a Nintendo fan at the time but the Dreamcast sounded and looked so awesome that I was hyped for it. Everything about it sounded like the perfect console to me. I had turned 18 that year and started my first job and I had saved my first few paychecks to buy the console on day one and I remember waking up early morning and going to my local Gamestation to buy it along with Sonic Adventure and a VMU. The Dreamcast was such a great console and I had so much fun with the it in its short life, I was genuinely gutted when it was announced Sega were pulling the plug. To this day I don't think I have had as much fun gaming as I did in that era.
Very nice video btw, i still remember watching that episode of Watchdog at the time lol
I remember the Dreamcast UK release party. (Actually I can’t remember where it was) we got so drunk and stole one of the transparent blue futuristic looking inflatable chairs that was in the venue and then we tried to deflate it while roaming around the nearby London streets. Good memories. Good drinks. Good times. I miss them 😢😊
As an upper school student, I saved up money from my part-time job for weeks and paid over the odds for an imported Dreamcast from one of those ads in Sega Saturn Magazine. I sold it to Computer Exchange just before the UK release of the Dreamcast so I wouldn’t have to mess around with importing games all the time. I remember the look of awe from people witnessing the Dreamcast being tested before my sale was approved in Computer Exchange. Even though it was outputting in black and white on the TV in store, people couldn’t stop staring at it. Eventually ended up importing Japanese Dreamcast games anyway so should never have sold it 😂
As a Gooner, having Sega / Dreamcast on the Arsenal shirt was a match made in heaven (excuse the pun), I couldn’t believe that my two favourite things - Sega and Arsenal, had come together. But, as you stated in the vid, it was probably a big waste of the marketing resources.
Bought my Dreamcast from Whatvis now known as Westfield Stratford in east London, Sonic Adventure and Powerstone! Had my first job and cash burning a hole in my pocket. Great times nothing beats buying a new SEGA console.
Fantastic video James! It’s great to see the Euro launch get a look in, it was a pretty exciting time so this vid was really awesome.
The hype for the launch felt huge and it was a big build up even months beforehand. I think I mentioned to you before that I remember driving to Lakeside shopping centre in Thurrock just to see a Dreamcast they had displayed in a case like it was the Crown Jewels! There was also an import shop in there too at the time so I made sure to pick up a few Japanese imports for the Saturn, good times!
I got a Japanese Dreamcast on import so I could play early, but I did also pick up a PAL console on launch day to be part of the festivities. It was such a fun time and they did a great job of having a decent batch of games ready to go so I had a blast picking up a few more games too and thoroughly enjoyed that launch time.
Really awesome video dude, it’s fantastically made and was a real joy to watch and remember that great time in gaming, nice one mate!
I love videos like this because as someone living in USA it's always interesting to see how it was marketed in UK
I remember being in Dixons which was in a shopping centre on the outskirts of Belfast called Forestside. I just remember being mesmerised by the graphics though I never got one I did get a dreamcast a few years later when they were essentially being give away. Great system.
Hello fellow Northern Irish SEGA fan.
Glad that Forestside is still here.
@@paulbell3682yeah Forestside is still there and surprisingly still busy.
Amazing video mate, this was really great insight into the launch time, as I had no idea about the events in west London .. I bought the Dreamcast around launch but in a much less glamorous TEMPO store "for those that remember" in Dalston, but i was 14 and didn't really go westend by myself then anyways!. I'm still playing and collecting till this day.
The best video on the channel yet! A uniquely authentic UK perspective full of rare archive footage! A similar video for Saturn’s UK 30th next year?
Pretty fun reading all the comments of fellow europeans. The conversation online is always dominated by NTSC markets. Here in Spain SEGA was quite the household name during the 8 and 16 bit era. Mega Drive outsold Super Nintendo comfortably. Saturn was a disaster, but the first year of the Dreamcast SEGA Spain went all in: you had TV ads, print ads, the official spanish magazine, kiosks in every retailer, etc.
As someone mentioned in another comment: 60hz support for mostly all titles was a godsend, plus, as a graphic designer, I must say that the whole Euro branding and packaging was top notch. Back then I eagerly awaited every monthly issue of the official magazine; still remember vividly the day I opened what eventually was the last issue to read that SEGA pulled the plug on console manufacturing. I was shocked, in complete disbelief. Still remember running downstairs to tell my mother, as if she gave two f*cks 😂 Such a special little machine it was! Arguably the most creative period at SEGA. They were fearless with the releases. We got the most wonderfully wierd and artsy games.
Experiencing the Japanese version of Sonic Adventure at Babbages in 1998 was an experience I’ll never forget. The controller was so weird but I loved it.
I remember getting a Dreamcast shortly after launch, just to play Crazy Taxi. Ya ya ya ya ya! Eventually I got very invested in Shenmue and I was convinced that kind of scope and gameplay were the future of videogames.
I worked for a little independent game store t the time of the launch, we got invited to Highbury, Arsenals home ground at the time as Sega ( well, "Dreamcast" ) was the fornt sponsor of the club.
We'd already been playing import machiens for quite a while at this point, but it was a fun event to go to, got some swag, a mini tour around the stadium and got to see the nice Blue swirl, good times :) :)
Hello from the UK also!
My gaming journey started very briefly with the C64 and then what felt like a huge jump up to the Mega Drive in around 92. Great times ensued for the next few years with my younger brother picking up a SNES during this period. I was only ever interested in playing DK Country really. Nintendo, aside from the GB, haven’t ever really hit the spot for me (despite owning all of their consoles over the years).
94/95 The Saturn hype was SIGNIFICANT after having seen Virtua Fighter and Virtua Cop in arcades (namely P&O ferries to France, who’d have thought??) so it was all systems go to nab one as soon as it launched in the UK in 95. However, on yet another P&O ferry trip to France (!)…they had Tekken in the arcade. I was blown away by this and couldn’t believe what I’d seen.
So on my next trip to Comet to gawp at the Saturn test units and Virtua Fighter, I was left in total shock at seeing Tekken running on a home console! I’d never heard of the PS until this point, coupled with Ridge Racer, I was torn…my brand loyalties completely rocked. Parents gave me the worst decision 10 year old me had ever had to make…I chose PS. Even though I was DESPERATE to be able to have Virtua Cop at home (when it released) I told myself there’d be a PS equivalent (there wasn’t - Die Hard Trilogy did NOT count Xmas 96, that and the trash Predator light gun was a slap in the face for not making the right choice that gen). I’d read C&VG mags monthly and get envious at all of the amazing arcade conversions coming out: Sega Rally, Daytona, Die Hard Arcade and eventually House of the Dead…
But life wasn’t too terrible: the PS had a whole host of classics as we all know. I actually caved when the N64 was released in March 97 and sold the PS to fund it and Mario 64. Only to be left with massive gaps with hardly any releases with months dragging on. Let’s not forget Turok releasing for £70 either!! Madness. In 1997!? That was a huge amount of money for then. But the allure of Lylat Wars (ahem Star Fox 64) was too great so I held out for that. Then I completed it and was like ok now what? The N64 was then traded BACK for a PS as we then the autumn releases of 1997 to appreciate.
Fast forward to 1998 and the first sight of the DC was again in C&VG magazine, where screens for Sonic Adventure and Shenmue were shown. Like many of us here, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Following its launch in Japan and reading with the highest degree of jealousy Japanese gamers getting their hands on the console at the end of 1998, 1999 couldn’t come soon enough when the rest of the world would get this beauty.
Summer 1999 was a constant cock tease of playing the newest Model 3 and Naomi games in the arcades: HotD2, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Striker 2 KNOWING that they would all SURELY come to the DC.
And boy did they. My local import shop got one that summer and me and a mate spent so many £1 coins rinsing the time slots available in the shop. We also had early exposure to Soul Calibur too which was just wild.
In short (!) the DC was AND STILL IS and I’m certain will always be, my childhood/early adolescent total dream of a piece of hardware and software collection. Nothing else has ever come close to giving me personally the joy associated with the DC and living at such an important time of video game history, where firsts where happening non-stop; each month there was a new experience which blew everything else away.
I’m saddened by the PS2 having destroyed its chances of a fruitful long term existence, I really am. Surely there was room on the market for both…
Let’s hope that one day Sega does something proper and decent to truly commemorate this period of software design.
Nowadays I have my steam deck set up with Batocera and EVERY Sega system including model 1, 2 and 3; all the boards pre the 90s and all the boards post model 3 (apart from Chihiro as Demul isn’t supported anymore) and honestly, it’s a joy to have the entire history of Sega right there, all playable either with a wheel, arcade stick or Sinden. I think 10 year old me would have had a heart attack thinking about this set up if I’m honest…
Long live the DC!!!!!!!!
As I'm from the US, it's really cool to hear about the launch of the Dreamcast in the UK and Europe! Thanks for the great video.
I remember playing this console at a summer camp that my school organize centered on Basket but it was like 2008-2009. The console blew ne out and I was always waiting for the free time because I went and played Dreamcast for like and a hour and a half
You've earnt yourselves a subscriber. I was there on launch day, got mine with Virtua Fighter 3tb. How awful the Dreamcast pad was for fighting games, though, especially after the Saturn's. The arcade stick fixed all that.
I got my VMU (Wales) first due to the delay and I couldn't wait to get my Dreamcast - I got it a day after launch with Sonic Adventure I was blown away how good it was as I sold my Saturn a year or so before - I got an N64 to fill the gap and I remember unplugging it to make way for my Dreamcast and I loved it I think I dint really starting to enjoy it till later months when Resident Evil CV came out and then Jet Set Radio last years I remember going to GAME and picking load of games for £20 (Street Fighter 3 etc.) one wired thing I remember how impressed I was with Incoming and its lighting effects. Dead or Alive 2 - despite how good Soul Calbur was - was another game that really impressed me ... got loads of good stories / memories (taking my DC over my mates house to play 4-player Virtua Tennis)
My mate got his Dreamcast day one, but after about a year he was fed up with the lack of good football games so I did a trade with him. I traded my PlayStation and a new copy of whatever the latest Pro Evo game was for his Dreamcast. I did regret some of the PS1 games I ended up missing out on but Dreamcast is still one of my favorite consoles ever.
Thanks for the reminder of how insane the promotion of video games was back in the day.
Remember playing the DC and Sonic Adventure on an instore kiosk and i was blown away.
The football shirt sponsorship figures for that time period is eyewatering 😮
I started out late on the Master System and proceded to Megadrive when it had already peaked. When it was time to upgrade again the Saturn had more or less disappeared
from the Swedish market so I opted for the Playstation instead. When the buzz started that Sega was preparing a new machine to take revenge on the console market I saved up
my salary from working the summer between 9th and 10th grade and preordered. When I received the package there was a note from the shop notifiying me that there was a very
limited supply of Dreamcasts in the country for the release and I was part of the first lucky wave to receive a console. The WMU was put och backorder though, and arrived a month
or so later. Still have the console and the letter.
I remember when the Dreamcast first came out in the USA because my friend got it at launch. Let me tell you, it was clearly better than any other console in the market. I had never seen such high definition sports games, for example, on a big screen TV. I still don’t know why it didn’t capture a majority of the console market.
I bought mine when they were struggling to shift the machines and just before it was announced that Sega were leaving the hardware market, for £99.
I only really purchased one for Resident Evil: Code Veronica and the fact that games were being heavily discounted.
It also helped that I was working in a video and games rental store at the time and our branch was supplied with boxes of Dreamcast games and peripherals to sell.
With my staff discount I managed to pick up games for as little as £10, including Shenmue and the fishing rod accessory!
Very happy days of gaming and I still have my original Dreamcast and games from this time! 😁👍
I had the chance to play Sega Rally 2 on the Dreamcast in July 1999 on the HMV Dreamcast Preview Tour. I was confused as to why the logo on the console was blue! I preordered my Dreamcast that day. I got a video as a pre order gift which I wish I'd held onto. When 14th October finally rolled around and I had my very own Dreamcast I was overjoyed. Owning a Dreamcast and being able to go online in Dream Arena made me feel like I was living in the future. Despite it's short life, it makes me happy that the Dreamcast is so fondly remembered by so many.
Now I finally understand why the logo was blue over there (from here in Canada), awesome vid dude!
Back in the day I was 13 and, in my hometown (Málaga), not many people bought it on the release date...but boy, we couldn't take our eyes out of those graphics when we saw all those amazing games. When we saw that amazing Sonic in 3D, that Soul Calibur...gosh, that was absolutely mindblowing.
When I managed to get it as a present, I was OVER THE MOON. The best bit was when I started playing online with the likes of Quake III and the most important one, PHANTASY STAR ONLINE. It was amazing, something I cannot put into words. It was a console too good to be true, a console that was way ahead of its time but, at the same time, it managed to stick to what videogames should be. Alongside with Shenmue (which is the best videogame ever), it's just a legend, something that will never be forgotten and shaped the future of videogames way ahead of its time.
SEGA España surely burnt some cash in marketing. Not sure about Málaga, but here in Las Palmas there were kiosks everywhere. It was a pitty that everyone here in Spain was waiting for the PS2. I have to agree there about Shenmue. Most special game I’ve ever played.
@@TronicGames There were plenty of kiosks in Málaga too. I remember that I even got mindblowed when playing in one of them by Incoming 🤣 But yeah, it was a real pity that no matter how good the Dreamcast was, that most of the people were waiting for the PS2.
Those 2 are my fondest memories from Dreamcast; playing Shenmue for the first time and when I discovered online gaming by playing alongside others in Phantasy Star Online.
To this day, Soul Caliber looks amazing and runs perfectly.
I got mine in Australia, January 2000. I was 14 then and there was only one other kid in my school that had one.
Amazing video. I bought my Dreamcast on the summer of 2021 and it's an amazing console. My favorite game so far is MDK 2. I haven't played as much as i want because i have a large backlog but i will soon.
I remember (fondly) going to Toys R Us,and buying a Dreamcast on sale for £99. I got a steering wheel with pedals, 2 controllers,a VMU, Virtua Fighter 3,MSR, and 2 other games i can't remember. Best £99 i ever spent! I ended up with 56 games over the years,and traded it all in for the then new GameCube. Still regret it to this day :( Although the GameCube gave me lots of great memories as well. Metroid Prime,Zelda WW etc.
The DC was a pure gaming machine, so well engineered, from the beautiful RGB 240p and VGA 480p outputs, the immaculate Yamaha Super Intelligent Sound Processor which has full XG MIDI support and 64 3D channel sound, the hall-effect analogue, the dope little VMU, and so many good games, so many games that were looking to be amazing titles were cancelled, the DC could have been home to so many perfect arcade ports, some of the best versions of multiplat games are on the system too, including updated PS1 ports, there could have eventually even been some updated Saturn ports playable in 480p, as well as more of the really high-quality PC game ports, we did get Half-Life 1 & Blue Streak, Quake 3 Arena, Rainbow Six, Soldier of Fortune, Nomad Soul, H&D, Star Lancer, a direct PC port of Resident Evil 2 (making it by far the best version of the game), they were already porting Max Payne to the DC, which would have been awsome with the DC KB&M and VGA 480p, but it got cancelled, so did a System Shock 2 port, which also would have worked with the KB&M, the Dreamcast version of Black & White was almost complete when abandoned, which is so sad, would have been amazing to have it on DC, Commandos 2 port was almost finished bar the last two maps, we did recently get a DC port of Postal, which is dope.
I loved the Dreamcast. It remains to date the only games console I bought on day of release… from my local independent retailer… ❤❤❤❤
Worked a lot of hours at Tesco’s to get mine. Connecting it to a vga pc monitor was a game changer
I didn't realize how much quid Sega blew on those football team sponsorships, without there being any killer app football games at launch for the European market (unless I'm off base in thinking that Virtua Striker wasn't a big hit) I can't imagine that deal did Sega any good.
Great video and storytime, James, the Dreamcast had such a vivid series of launches and it's great to see it told from someone who was there on the ground at the time.
Cheers, Jessica. I think with the European Dreamcast marketing it really did show that SEGA had hired someone totally new to the gaming industry, and most of all someone who didn’t know them or their history.
To spend £32m (approx) of the £60m budget on sponsorship of football teams when two thirds of Europe didn’t get enough consoles or even an official marketing campaign is madness.
What’s crazier is that Arsenal were promoting Dreamcast on their shirts for an entire season (01/02) after the console was discontinued and SEGA bowed out of hardware. Why was money spent sponsoring Deportivo for that same season? Good old SEGA! New management, same silly decisions.
Glad you enjoyed the video, thanks as always for tuning in and getting involved in the comments. - James.
@@SEGAGuys Absolutely James, yours and Dan's videos are an absolute treasure to the community.
And yeah that's yet another tally on the checklist of "ways SEGA defeated themselves." I think would-be historians give Sony and the PS2 too much credit for ending Dreamcast, that was done well enough in house. Some of the management decisions made by SEGA's different branches absolutely baffle me to this day.
I live in the uk and It took me some time to finally get a Sega Dreamcast Console i was late to the party and bought one in January 2001 a month before they announced sega was going to discontinue it . But i don't regret buying one the had Exellent games on it .I still have my boxed Sega Dreamcast and boxed Sega Saturn with games and magazines. As a PS5 Gamer i still dig out my Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast and have a good play on some classic games By the way great video
I wrote Windows device drivers for embedded devices for a living when this console was launched. They had a bunch of them to play with at a Microsoft event which I went to in the UK at which they were pushing Windows CE for embedded computers. I'd read all the documentation and didn't have much to learn from the presentations so I spent much of the time playing with the Dreamcast instead.
Of course in the end most Dreamcast games didn't use CE. But it worked reasonably well for some of our customers.
Cool hearing a narrator from West of Scotland
Amazing video - where have 25 years gone eh? I remember getting my DC in Wood Green London, shortly after the European release armed with £200 from my fresh student loan! My main motivator was cheap internet access back then and the games were just a bonus. What a bonus they were, as I’m still playing Dreamcast today after all these years! Thanks for a great video as the European DC scene seems to have been completely forgotten about in the mists of time…
Excellent video mate. Thank you.
Please, Sega. Come back with another console!!! With all the Sega exclusives, single player experiences, no in game lootboxes, and Half Life 3!!!
My main memory of the Dreamcast at the time was even before they announced they were going third party everything was always on discount for it.
I have found memories of getting it with sonic and Tokyo highway loved that game
I had to wait until the summer of 2000 before I got my Dreamcast - I won one in a competition, can't remember where. It came with _Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000 Euro Edition._ Of the PAL launch line-up I only had _Sonic Adventure_ and _TrickStyle._
This DC gameplay footage looks incredible on my 46” 1080 TV.
Thanks! All captured from real Dreamcast hardware too, no emulation.
Bought my Dreamcast on launch day 😍
I got mine at launch in Ireland with sonic and Power Stone.
Great times. And I definitely prefer the blue swirl!
Superb video as ever guys!
The 25th anniversary of an dream console european launch 😎
First console I had an arcade stick for! Chuchu rocket was a great pack in game
I asked my mother to buy the Dreamcast and she said that I must succeed my last year in high school… which I failed.. nevertheless I managed to get one a few months later. Great memories especially with this graphic gap ( even my father was amazed by soulcalibur and he hates video games 😅)
*I loved Dream Arena & playing Quake with some kid in USA!*
Also, it's interesting that the console price only lowered to 99 pounds after the discontinuation there, by the time March came around
Because in Amercia, right when the announcement was made to discontinue in early Feb. of 2001, i saw Dreamcast consoles going for $50 in America, and soon after, $25 in some stores before March. And some stores were including a game as well
Aye, I remember it dropping to £50 in Electronics Boutique and Dixons over here pretty soon after the official discontinuation … possibly around the summer months.
I also remember it dropping to £25 later again just to try and clear stock, with a lot of games dropped to £5/10. Total fire sale to get out of the hardware game and recoup whatever they could.
It's weird that the UK side of Dreamcast's story is so rarely brought up, considering how big even the Master System and Saturn were over there. The DVD player bundle was especially a good idea since so many people were buying a PS2 for its DVD player capability, I'm surprised that had no impact on sales.
A lot of people don't know about Europe or Australia's gaming history because of how American-oriented the Internet is.
As someone that was working for BT (British Telecom) at the time the Dreamcast Launched, I can tell you the reason you couldn't get online for the first month or so was entirely BTs fault as they underestimated how many people were going to buy the console and didn't supply anywhere near enough infastructure/avalible connections for it.
"Console wars are all about [parting fools from their money]."
Best Game at launch for me, no doubt, an unexpected surprise, Toy Commander ❤❤❤❤
Toy Commander was released a week after launch (October 22nd) which is why it wasn’t featured in the video, but yeah it’s a great little game.
@segadreamer Fun fact: Toy Commander was made by the creator of Alone in the Dark, Fredrick Reynall.
I missed out on the dreamcast. But played it at my friend's place. Very fun console which died quickly due to sega reckless past.
I still remember the days I read about the Dreamcast in magazines, how great it was gonna be. I cannot even remember it in stores, only vaguely, but that is just a maybe vaguely.
SEGA made so many strange decisions, and the money seemed to sit loose and ready to be poured out on all kind of strange stuff, it was always new ideas instead trying to improve the stuff that already worked, or fix what could have been.
Like you said in the video, wasting money on soccer teams, but NOT having a soccer game.. If SEGA was a beer brand they may have gotten more out of the soccer campaigns.. But then they should have had special edition Soccer games and Dreamcasts with the different teams or something availabel for sale at stadiums and such, but probably best to not waste the money on soccer at all.
One thing I have always wondered about was the SEGA Worlds, how much money did they cost? It must have been a serious money pit I would think, but I do not know.
I think it was a company that had surprise succes with the Mega Drive and suddenly swimmed in money they had no idea where to put, so they just blew it in all directions and mismanaged their succes.
They had too much stuff going on at the same time without anyone in charge to reel them in, like a classroom with a substitute teacher without control.
Or like a moron winning the Jackpot..
So much nostalgia here
Would have love to have been able to appreciate this console at it's launch. And maybe getting Skies for 30 quid near the end haha 😅
Great video, James. I like your ranking of the 12 launch titles, but I'd swap Trickstyle with Incoming because I could never get used to the handling in the former, which ruined the game for me.
I brought the system with the two best selling UK games - SEGA Rally and Sonic Adventure - in May 2000 about six months after the system launched in Australia.
Sampdoria Genua was only in Serie B (!) and finished on 5th place in 2000 and 2001! Why on earth did they pay them 8 Mio pound??? Deportivo and Arsenal, ok, that's a lot of money, but good teams at that time.
Dreamcast was one of my favourite consoles. It brought 480p VGA output that I used on my monitor and 60 Hz. This was amazing and a lot of games worked in 60 FPS mode as well. But the marketing in Germany was week and the PS2 crashed every effort easily. Sad, but true.
Man they shouldve not only done that PAL DVD bundle earlier, but they should've done that in America too! (No such bundle happened in America as far as i know)
I think its fair to say, that with PS2's extremely lackluster launch lineup, and even after their first year, still hardly any games worth getting a new console for.. the PS2 sales were almost entirely due to it being the cheapest DVD on the market at the time
Mate, that DVD player was £229 on its own! 🤯
It was really capable too, one of the old “enter a code on the remote” to unblock multi region playback. As a standalone player its playback quality was far better than PS2’s, which I always felt had a horrible green tint compared to the Region 1 Panasonic A120 I had imported over a year before PS2 even launched here.
How much money did SEGA pay Encore per unit to get the player in that bundle? Crazy.
Dreamcast was only console i bought at launch 👌
I had 2. First the japanese one, then got the uk on launch. Such a shame it barely lasted.
I remember in uk when ps2 came out they released a very limited dc console game package and also packed in a dvd player all in one box. Years later can i find even one google image of theat dreamcast pack hell no. Must have been a really limited im guessing would be worth a pretty penny now adays to collectors. ( Yes the same one in the video hadnt got to this part of video when i wrote this )
I will add i got my first dc console with marvel vs capcom. Been waiting for that games for years for a home port. The psx port was nothing compared to the dc edition. Just like they did for the Saturn before it Dreamcast got loads of quality 2d fighting game home ports as for 3d fighters dead or alive never disappointed
Yeah the marketing choices definitely don't seem to have been the smartest. Despite being in the States, I did buy a Dreamcast Arsenal jersey off eBay about 20 years ago, and I still have it despite not being an Arsenal supporter!
I loved the DC but I always though they should have waited a bit longer and launched it with the Naiomi 2 hardware Inside, that way it would have blown the PS2 out the water and be able to keep up with GC and Xbox, the DC was a great machine with smooth vibrant graphics, when the PS2 launched I couldn't get over how jaggy and lifeless/muted the graphics looked in comparison. The DC for me was just better in my eyes.
Cool video. Hard disagree with the ordering of the launch titles though!
I remember Soul Calibur launched one or two weeks after the console launch, right? I bought the console here in Spain on release day, October 14, with Sonic Adventure, and then Soul Calibur a little later.
Yeah, Soulcalibur came out on November 26th in PAL regions, so about 6 weeks after launch. Weird one given it was a launch title in the US, so all the localisation had been done.
It's a shame that the Sega Dreamcast was Sega's last dreams and hopes of making video consoles, and the console was defeated by PS2, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. It had excellent videogames from Capcom
The Dreamcast would have lasted a bit longer if it was not really easy to play pirated games on. That killed it off.
Doubt it. Piracy was absolutely rampant on the PS1 and it didn't exactly prevent the machine from being a resounding success. Not to mention that piracy on the Dreamcast wasn't THAT easy. On the one hand, yes, it didn't require a modchip which was a big deal. On the other hand, you couldn't burn your friend's legit game. You had to find and download an ISO on some shady website, at a time where the average download speed was 3.5 Kilobytes/second. Downloading a 700MB game meant using up nearly 57 hours of Internet connection (IF the download went smoothly and without interruption), at a time when you generally paid each minute online or had a limited amount of hours per month.
What forced Sega to discontinue manufacturing the machine is that it had warehouses full of consoles that they simply didn't find anyone to sell to. Sega had such a hard time selling Dreamcasts, even at a discount, that it ended up recycling quite a few units into arcade cabinets (the Atomiswave) which it kept selling for the better part of the 2000s. Piracy had little to do with that.
People failed the Dreamcast.
I will say in US it felt like the Dreamcast replaced the N64 while PS2 replaced the Playstation.
What I mean is everyone loved the Dreamcast as a multi-player system and as such only one person in your friend group had to have one and every one else just needed a controller
Got my dreamcast the day before release dropped off by the catalogue could not believe my luck
Great Stuff!
Brought on day 1 with Sonic and rally 2. As u say big push in the uk advertising wise , think the 32 million on footie sponsorships was a huge waste . It should of been spent on promoting the dc in other European markets
Arsenal if I remember was who they sponsored.
Them and the other 3 teams mentioned in the video.
Second comment......
My ex girlfriend loved Crazy Taxi 2 so much she was actually better at it than i was lol! I would have to sit there watching her play it for like an Hour and a Half before she either gave up through boredom,or just ran out of time. I remember she would score like 12 million or around that much. She was really dedicated lol.
what was EA thinking not even porting the pc versions of fifa soccer games too the dc,that would have helped to sell more systems in the eu.
Still today the dreamcast can output 480p With a VGA lead so much colour for a 26 year old console
I remember these French adverts focused on multiplayer online instead of showing some gameplay footage. That was really not exciting at all 😮💨