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The Sega Dreamcast (Japanese: ドリームキャスト; code-named "Katana" and "Dural" during development) was Sega's last video game console. After the Dreamcast was discontinued, Sega withdrew from the console hardware business.

The Dreamcast was released on November 27, 1998, in Japan and on September 9, 1999 in the US—long before other consoles of its generation were available. It was also the first console that offered (built in) online play. The Dreamcast enjoyed brisk sales its first season and was one of Sega's more successful hardware units. It was an attempt to break into the console market with a next-generation system designed to supersede Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's N64, but mainly because of doubt (some Sega add-ons and consoles have been less than successful, such as the 32X and Sega CD) and anticipation of the Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Xbox, it lost a lot of steam, and Sega began to lose money once again. In January 2001, Sega announced that the Dreamcast was to be discontinued by the end of the year but that new games would still be made. This was the final blow that took Sega out of the home console business. Even though the Dreamcast was a faliure many people considered it to be "ahead of its time".

Dreamcast used a proprietary format called GD-ROM for storing games in order to foil software pirates, a strategy that ultimately backfired when the first run of discs had a high rate of defects, and pirates managed to pirate the games anyway. (In some cases, the pirated games were released before the legitimate versions.) Sega largely had themselves to blame for the high levels of Dreamcast piracy—their use of the GD-ROM format was completely undermined by the console's support for the Mil-CD format, which allowed the console to boot from a standard CD-R. Mil-CD support was removed from the final Dreamcast revisions toward the end of the console's life.

Microsoft cooperated with Sega in hopes of promoting its Windows CE operating system for video games, but Windows CE for the Dreamcast showed very limited capabilities when compared to the Dreamcast's native operating system. The libraries that Sega offered gave room for much more performance, but they were sometimes more difficult to utilize when porting over existing PC applications.

The Dreamcast has a modest hacking enthusiast community. The availability of Windows CE software development kits on the Internet—as well as ports of Linux (LinuxDC) and NetBSD/dreamcast operating systems to the Dreamcast—gave programmers a selection of familiar development tools to work with, even though they do not really support the high speed graphics. A homebrew minimal operating system called Kallistios offers support for most hardware, while not offering multi-tasking, which is superfluous for games. Many emulators and other tools (MP3, DivX players, and image viewers) have been ported to or written for the console, taking advantage of the relative ease with which a home user can write a CD which is bootable by an unmodified Dreamcast.

Sega released a board, using the same technology as the Dreamcast, called Sega NAOMI for use in arcade games. The S-H 4 Processer had the same capabilities. Some famous adages from Sega's Dreamcast were, "It's Thinking." Funny rumors believed it to be four times faster than a Pentium II. Much like Playstation's missile rumor, this could never be proven at the time.

Though the Dreamcast was officially discontinued in early 2001, commercial games were still developed for it and were released afterwards (though mostly only in Japan). On February 24, 2004, Sega released its final Dreamcast game, called Puyo Puyo Fever. A small number of third-party games are still being released. Many Japanese consumers today think Dreamcast is as popular as X-Box and much like the Saturn, it has sold very well. The massive lost of earnings in America from the previous Sega Saturn and the rising popularity from other next-generation systems forced Sega to cease Production by around 2001-2002.

Online

Dreamcast was one of the first systems to sucessfully play console games online. There was a total of around twenty-two online games. Dreamcast was always net capable and put games online in September of 2001, before sony's launch of Playstation 2, to gain the upperhand. They launched a cheap 29 dollar Dial-up service called Seganet. Some popular online games during that period were, Quake III, Phantasy Star Online, Nfl 2k1 and Nba 2k1. The ability to play online games with your own dial-up number, the Sega Broadband or Seganet gave users options to browse the web with a keyboard, and mouse. Dreamcast also had Planetweb Web browsers that went up to version 3.0.

Specifications

• CPU: SH-4 RISC CPU with 128 Bit graphic computational engine built-in (operating frequency: 206 MHz 360 MIPS/1.4 GFLOPS)
• Graphics Engine: PowerVR2 CLX2*
• Memory: Main RAM-16 MB, Video RAM-8 MB, Sound RAM-2 MB
• Sound Card: Super Intelligent (Yamaha) Sound Processor with 47MHz 32-Bit RISC ARM7 CPU core built-in (64 channel PCM/ADPCM)
• GD-ROM Drive: 12x maximum speed (when running in Constant Angular Velocity mode)
• Inputs: Four ports that can support a digital and analog controller, steering wheel, joystick, keyboard, mouse, and more
• Dimensions: 189mm x 195mm x 76mm (7 7/16" x 7 11/16" x 3")
• Weight: 1.9kg (4.4lbs)
• Color: White
• Modem: Removable; Original Asia/Japan model had a 33.6 Kbytes/s; models released after 9 September 1999 had a 56 Kbytes/s modem
• Broadband: these adapters are available separately and replace the removable modem

• HIT-400: "Broadband Adapter", the more common model, this used a RealTek 8139 chip and supported 10/100mbit
• HIT-300: "Lan Adapter", this version used a Fujitsu MB86967 chip and supported only 10mbit

• Color Output: Approx. 16.77 million simultaneous colors (24 bit)
• Storage: "Visual Memory Unit" (VMU) 128 Kb removable storage device

*It is capable of drawing around 7 million polygons per second, but the geometry data storage (the models for the polygons) would become a limiting factor, chipping away video memory for the textures.

The Dreamcast's tagline in the US was "It's thinking."

Accessories

Accessories for the Dreamcast first include a VMU. The primary function was to save games. The VMU could play mini-games that were programmed for certain online games. It could also be used as a way to hide Maps, Stats, Strategies and Scores from other players. Dreamcast also had the official Dreamcast Rumble pack, which replicated small and large vibrations flawlessly. Another item for Dreamcast is the controller with two analog buttons. At the time it seemed large, but comfortable. The popular keyboard and mouse functioned as a precurser to the Dreamcast Microphone peripheral. It only played online with Alien Front Online, and offline with Seaman. Third-party developers came out with Steering Wheels, Dancemats, and even Sambas.

See also

• List of Dreamcast games

External links

• Rage-Xtreme.de Aimbots
• Console Database – Dreamcast information
• Keeping the Dream Alive - Analysis of the later life of the Dreamcast
• Dreamcast Cheats
• PlanetDreamcast
• Dreamcast Checklist
• Dreamcast Direct-Save Downloads
• Dreamcast Emulation - Run emulators and applications on your Dreamcast
• SegaFans - Classic Sega game coverage. Movies, music, information and forums.

• Video game consoles
• Sega