Starlancer is so Elite Dangerous.

Edit: Elite

AJ wrote:

I've always found the level of love the Dreamcast gets bewildering.

If someone was to ask why I like it so much I couldn't definitively say why.

There are a lot of things wrong with it - the noisy drive, the reset problem, the iffy controller, the VMUs with their small capacity, the bare bones arcade ports at full price - all reasons to dislike it.

It was the Sega factor. Proper arcade at home experience - the visuals of the DC leap off the screen - those Sega Blue Skies in the likes of Daytona.  It feels like an indulgent console - all about games - no DVD player - or masked agenda. Just pure gameplaying. It also got great support from arcade-meisters such as Capcom and Namco. The arcade stick is a joy.

It was just so much fun.

I've played doubles 2v2 with 4 sticks and a projector with VGA in an office competition. All that was missing was a decent set of speakers instead of using the projector's but - as you say - peerless.

Let's do hidden gems.

Kazuo wrote:

I'd forgotten to mention Skies of Arcadia, Jet Set Radio, Cannon Spike, Shenmue... the console had so much to offer. Wonderful machine.

Edit: a fine 10,000th post for the thread.

I completed SoA on DC and GC. They never did do a sequel.

So.
In 1999 I had moved to America and as such sold my N64 and SNES collections, something worth bothering about in the future. But at the time, I had around $400 to splunk on what was the most advanced system of all time, the Dreamcast.
Therefore, on 9/9/99 when I was at high school, my mum, bless her, went out and grabbed me a Dreamcast as well as Sonic Adventure and Blue Stinger. Yes, Blue Stinger. It was shortly replaced with Power Stone.
I got into the console hard, and grabbed 4 controllers and VMUs in order to make friends and invite them over. The key target games were NFL and NHL. I had people over playing them regularly.
Then SegaNet happened and God bless him, my dad switched to Compuserve to ensure I could access the internet. This meant I had a keyboard. Now, whilst the most gamey thing meant I had access to Quake 3 (although I preferred it on PC) my young self also had a good old porn device in his bedroom. Long live the Dreamcast.
We moved house at the start of 2001 because we had been robbed. Whilst my pc had been kept because of the mad chaos of wires (when you build your own pc) the dreamcast was gone. Heartbroken, I could not bring myself to get another, and went back to the N64 (Mario party was a thing in our community). But that halcyon 6 months was something else. Therefore last year in Japan, I went Dreamcast nuts and have grabbed around 40 games. It's an incredible machine.

Hidden Gems:
Le Mans 24hrs beautiful game at the time and probably my favourite racer on the system. Top tier lighting effects at night too

Virtua Striker 2001 A terrible football game but a wonderful game of pinball with an addictive system that scores the beauty of each goal you score...'Rainbow'. One of the DC's best looking too.

Garou Mark of the Wolves: SNKs best fighter in my opinion beautiful to look at, top animation as you'd expect and great fighting mechanics.

Borderdown: only played through emulation due to the shear expense of it but this is a beautiful shmup but very tough.

NFL2K1 and NFL Blitz Both American footy games at opposing ends of the spectrum. NFL2K1 ( which may have been bettered by its sequel but I never got to play it) was a technical masterpiece and shat all over the Madden's released at the time. Blitz looked awful but played really well although random fumbles were frustrating!

My hidden gems:

4 Wheel Thunder - 4x4 followup to Hydro Thunder. Not as good but plenty of fun. A mix of indoor and outdoor tracks and some fun multi-player modes.
Cannon Spike - not sure if it's considered hidden - a lovely arena shooter with a forced perspective look featuring lots of attacks including melee ones. Levels are short but sweet and it's a Capcom fan service showcase. Not many levels but made for its replay value with plenty of characters to use and a pile of difficulty levels.
Charge n Blast - Daft over-the-shoulder on-rails style shooter.
Pro Pinball Trilogy - Better than the oldbox version by all accounts. Just 3 lovely tables from the highly rated series beautifully presented.
Suzuki Alstare Racing Arcade motobike racer with daft collision physics and bare bones presentation but great controls (steering with the shoulder triggers) and ragdoll effects.

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Did DC have widescreen? I'm sure I played F355 in widescreen.

I can't remember, but the F355 arcade machine was a thing of beauty, talking of "screens" and "wide".



Triple CRT goodness. I had one go, many moons ago, and I think it cost me £2. This was when games were 20p or 50p for a credit, maybe a quid if it was super-special-brand-spanking-new. I remember being utterly hopeless at F355, but still utterly enthralled by it.

I thought so.

Reg had a dreamcast with the orange/red logo.  Am jealous.

le mans was really hard iirc

afgavinstan wrote:

Virtua Striker was the boss. What a game. Chucking NBA 2K w/Allen Iverson on the cover in here too. Me and my also-DC-owning best mate hammered it for months and months. An immensely playable game.

Have the Gamecube version of that - still looks pretty solid in that arcade style.

mk64 wrote:

le mans was really hard iirc

It was but as it was only one track you just had to persist and it opened up. Possibly my most played game. Never did the 24hr sitting though!