In which we gush about the Firefly of game systems, its greatest hits and buried classics, and spend some time dispelling the myth that Piracy Killed the Dreamcast ™. Be prepared for some audio glitches & the most overly-detailed annotations yet!
Annotated Episode Guide
General mentions:
- Shovelware Diggers, a series by the Pixelmusement YT channel which also runs ADG (Ancient Dos Games), very informative and enjoyable
- Top 25 Dreamcast Games (Den of Geek)
- Best Undiscovered Dreamcast Games (Racketboy)
- DreamPi
- Schthack Phantasy Star Online server
- Ultima Blue Burst PSO server
- What we Lose When We Embrace Copyright
- A fairly conservative, techno-libertarian style piece which nonetheless rebuts many of the standard myths around copyright and specifically hones in on the claim that it protects and encourages creation.
- The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
- “Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Moreover, our estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing can explain the decline in music sales during our study period.”
- Console Wars
- Kotaku Review of Console Wars – Highlights some of the strengths (over 200 interviews conducted for the book) and weaknesses (some quotes seem made up, possibly fictional). In particular the fawning narrative of brave CEOs and their battle of greatness seems detrimental/unhelpful, and treats the corporation in a classically American way, i.e. defined by and embodied in its leader. Still, there does seem to be a lot to glean from this.
- Piracy killed the Dreamcast…or did it? – Hands down the best piece on the subject, filled with informative charts and graphs. It demonstrates that, despite the cultural ‘high note’ the system had reached as discussed, Sega was still in the red and facing impossible odds. Some great tidbits:
- “A system that experienced extreme piracy was the Playstation. It had been around since 1994 when burners were still so unbelievable expensive that producing a coaster was enough to lose the advantage of copying a game and it was still cheaper to buy multi-disc games than to burn them. In 1998 the system was old enough to be left behind in favor of a new console like the Dreamcast, but what happened? Sony experienced record sales. By that time Sony had sold 10 million units in the United States and was still going strong. In 1998 it expected sales to drop, but with the massive spreading of CD burners the easy to mod Playstation became attractive to the ones that didn’t have one so far. So a year later Sony surprised the market with still strong going sales. The games were easy to copy and the console had a lot of them including some highly anticipated game series. This fact alone was reason enough to get a Playstation. The trend went on and despite the PS2 already being on the market, Sony introduced the new and last Playstation model, the PSOne in 2001.”
- “When the first pirated Dreamcast games turned up….sales went up by 150%“, and again: “The small rise of 150% during the summer can most likely be blamed on piracy, because this event was hyped up all over the internet like never before – and never again.”
- Decline of the Dreamcast (Wikipedia) – A surprisingly thorough and well-sourced section, that deserves reading in full.
- Dreamcast: A Forensic Retrospective (Eurogamer)
- “The prospect of the successor to the world-conquering PlayStation was enough to cut the already wobbly legs off the Dreamcast in Japan, with most gamers opting to wait for the sure-to-be-awesome PS2, with its mysterious “emotion engine” and games that would literally emerge from the screen and fellate you senseless.”
- “Confidence in any new SEGA console was low, and with the PlayStation brand in the ascendancy such trepidation was enough to ensure that the Dreamcast would always struggle to maintain its early momentum in the face of stiff competition. Even if it had shipped with a champagne fountain and a nozzle that fired a constant stream of chocolate and diamonds into the player’s lap, it seems likely that many potential owners would still have adopted a “wait and see” attitude.”
- “At least SEGA the console maker went out on a high – in critical terms if not commercial. It was petite, stylish and many of the ideas it pioneered have since become standard features for the current console generation.”
- Sega Gets Hip to Reality (Newsweek, 01/30/2001) – Contemporary article celebrating Sega’s shift to software that demonstrates mindset of some at the time
- “But Sega’s decision to quit making consoles, far from being a death, is the first step the company has taken toward life in 10 years. Sega’s brand has always stood for two things. One of them is fumbled consumer hardware. The adjective “ill-fated” describes most of the consumer electronics this company has released, from Genesis hard-disk and processing add-ons to the hand-held Game Gear platform to the disastrous Sega Saturn. Dreamcast is just the latest in a long line of devices that illustrate Sega’s genetic inability to produce successful consumer boxes.”
- Copyright/Copyleft: Myths about Copyright Law – Using examples specific to the Indian state, the authors go deep to debunk some of the foundational myths of copyright. A particularly interesting section:
- “Furthermore, piracy often acts in underdeveloped markets as the most efficient manner of creating a market or user base and also to create a lock-in period for the product. Thus Microsoft has consistently refused to enforce its intellectual property rights in markets in developing countries until a market base is created for its products. Piracy works to produce ‘network effects,’ which means that with every added user, whether legal or not, the popularity of a product increases. Network effects are important because, in terms of the total user base, the illegal users of software add value to all the users, legal and illegal, and act as agents in fostering the diffusion of the software by word-of-mouth. In this way, they indirectly generate additional positive effects for the software company.”
- EGM April 2001 Issue – Note the brief eulogy to the Dreamcast on the lead editorial page.
- Bleem! (Wikipedia)
- The history of Bleem! (Eurogamer) –
- “To the bleem! team, the format for content delivery was of relative unimportance; it was the right to play content as the owner saw fit that they were striving toward.”
- “If bleem! had survived, emulation and backwards compatibility would be a generation further ahead. It’s here, but it would be more accepted if we had been able to hold out,” he explains. “When you are deposed and you see your testimony later used in defining the DMCA, it probably has some effect. I know my favorite result was meeting [Napster founder] Shawn Fanning years later and talking about what happened with Napster and bleem!. We felt we were part of something defining for a generation of digital citizens.”
- Brazil’s Video Game Gray Markets – Great mini documentary by Cloth Map
- SteamOS “Proton” Announcement
- Why People Pirate Games (Kotaku)
- Dreamcast Now!
- Peter Moore Interview (The Guardian) – former head of Sega of America talks about what led to the failure of the Dreamcast as well as coming up with 2k1 franchise.
- The actual definition of the razor-and-blades model. Woops! This has to do more with selling the device (in this case the console) at a loss and making money mostly off of its supplement (the games/software). It is worth noting however that the metaphor still highlights the related problem of different makes, models, and shapes of devices, and their lack of interchangeability. Smart phone regulation, which happened with companies kicking and screaming, led to near-universal charge ports; universal standards in consoles are harder to come by. Here the ‘razor’ could–and perhaps should–be open platforms capable of playing any kind of game.
Video games:
Chrono Cross, Shenmue I, Shenmue II, Shenmue I & II, Power Stone, Power Stone 2, Capcom vs SNK, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Marvel vs Capcom, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Crazy Taxi, Crazy Taxi 2, Clayfighter 63 1/3, Jet Grind Radio/Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, Octopath Traveler, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Chu Chu Rocket, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Gone Home, Firewatch, Silver, Seaman, Viva Piñata, Tamagotchi, Illbleed, Virtua Tennis, Virtua Tennis 2, Mars Matrix, Ikaruga, Metropolis Street Racer, Grandia II, House of the Dead 2, Typing of the Dead, Headhunter, Samba de Amigo, Dance Dance Revolution, Gunbird 2, Zero Gunner 2, Rez, Phantasy Star Online, NFL 2k1, NBA 2k1, Final Fantasy VIII, Soul Calibur, Skies of Arcadia, Rayman 2, Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream, NiGHTS into Dreams…, Alien Front Online, Bomberman Online, Super Bomberman 2, Super Bomberman 5, Maken X, Stupid Invaders, Space Station Silicon Valley, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Wetrix, Bust-a-Move 4, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, EGG: Elemental Gimmick Gear, Cannon Spike, Gunbird 2, Gunbarich, Breakout, Arkanoid, Giga Wing, Giga Wing 2, Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic Mania
Music sample:
Dragon Quest VI – Dreamworld
Chu Chu Rocket – Theme
Play These Things 