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Dreamcast: Ahead of its Time

Author	Stuart Andrews
Published	27th Apr 2008

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Which brings us neatly to the most revolutionary thing about Dreamcast. This was the first console that came purpose built for online play, with a built-in dial-up modem and the option of a broadband adaptor for those who lived in the more advanced territories. This could - and should - have been the console's killer feature: ‘Up to 6 billion players' Sega's marketing rather optimistically promised. Instead, it never quite worked. Rather than develop its own network, as Microsoft was to do with Xbox Live, Sega partnered with a number of companies in the US, Europe and Japan. In Europe, we had Dreamarena - a partnership between Sega Europe, ICL, BT and a range of ISPs - that offered online gaming, email, chat and content downloads.

Tragically, Dreamarena didn't launch until six months after the console, and when it did it arrived with a bit of a whimper - a fun puzzle game called ChuChu Rocket, but nothing you could call a killer app. That would arrive with the release of Quake III Arena, but by this point the fate of Dreamcast was already in doubt.

Quake III Arena was totally playable on the Dreamcast, even online.

All the same, Dreamcast has its share of online achievements. Quake III Arena played as smoothly as the PC version and came complete with a working clan system. Starlancer brought the space combat sim online. Daytona USA had four player racing, while Ferrari F355 Challenge had an option to download and race other players' ghosts. The US got Unreal Tournament, while Japan got a series of excellent fighting games with online play.

The high-point, however, was Phantasy Star Online - the first online RPG to be playable on a console, and still one of the most successful efforts in this regard. From the simple structure to the ingenious symbol-based chat system (enabling players without a common language to work together towards the common goal) it was a huge time sink for lucky Dreamcast owners, even if it does seem antiquated in comparison to World of Warcraft and the like.

PhantasyStar Online paved the way for the MMORPGs we know and love today.

Maybe the infrastructure wasn't there, and maybe Dreamarena wasn't perfect, but Sega managed to make online gaming as seamless and easy to set up as it could be in the dodgy days of dial-up. How many years would it be before anyone else could say the same thing? See what I mean about vision?

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