Remembering Five Dreamcast Classics To Honor SEGA Pioneer Hideki Sato's Passing
Bust out your Offspring CD and pour a glass of Surge, because we are talking about the Dreamcast.
SEGA console designer Hideki Sato, a man affectionately referred to as "The Father of SEGA Hardware," passed away on Friday at the age of 77.
While the gaming community mourns one of the titans of their industry, I decided to contribute to his memory in the best way I know how.
As a child of the 90s, SEGA and Sato's finest hour, in my opinion, was the creation of the Dreamcast.
READ: With 'Legend of Zelda' Destined to Flop, My Top 10 Video Games of the '90s
Often seen as "ahead of its time," the Dreamcast ushered in the sixth generation of home consoles with things like high-tech graphics and online capabilities a year before the next sixth gen system, the PlayStation 2, was even available.
While it never lived up to the expectations placed on it — both internally and externally — the Dreamcast is revered by Millennials all over the world.
To honor the legacy of Sato and his greatest contribution to the gaming world, I wanted to look at five of my favorite SEGA Dreamcast games.
If you have any you think I missed, you know the drill. Just email me and let me know what an idiot I am.
So, bust out your Offspring CD and pour a glass of Surge, because we are talking about the Dreamcast!
5. Skies of Arcadia (2000)
When people think of what the Dreamcast did well, their minds rarely drift towards the RPG genre, but between games like Phantasy Star Online and a game further down this list, there were some strong candidates to choose from in the role-playing realm.
Skies of Arcadia might be one of the best hidden gem RPGs of them all, though.
The game features a group of air-pirates called the Blue Rogues, led by the main playable character, Vyse, as they traverse the world of Arcadia and explore dungeons while engaging in turn-based combat.
Skies of Arcadia has a great cast of characters and a supremely memorable world, and the graphics are timeless and vibrant.
It wasn't a commercial success, but Skies of Arcadia is still considered a cult classic and a favorite among many RPG and Dreamcast fans.
4. NFL 2K (1999)
Released as a launch title for the North American rollout of the Dreamcast, NFL 2K ushered in the next generation of sports games with a bang.
Before the 2K series, football games were either cartoon-y (NFL Blitz, Tecmo Bowl) or behind the times and rudimentary (Madden).
NFL 2K was seen as the realistic answer to football games, and for 1999, it was borderline revolutionary.
The game featured realistic collision physics, a full-season dynasty mode, advanced playcalling, accurate representations of every NFL team, and, most importantly, online capabilities.
That's right! In 1999, you could play football against friends in another state thanks to the online features of the Dreamcast.
With all sports games these days being cheap, slap-dash updates of the entries that came before them, NFL 2K's release is a reminder of how good we used to have it.
3. Crazy Taxi (2000)
Okay, hear me out.
I know this game came out in arcades a full year before it was released on the Dreamcast, but that's kind of my point.
Before the Dreamcast, to play an arcade-quality game, you had to actually go to the arcade.
Thanks to SEGA's sixth-gen masterpiece, you could bring the arcade to you, and nowhere was that more evident than with Crazy Taxi.
You could make the case that games like Crazy Taxi singlehandledly brought about the demise of the arcade in the early 2000s.
In reality, I could have picked from any number of arcade ports on the Dreamcast (namely Soul Calibur), but Crazy Taxi was such a perfect blend of wacky and unique gameplay and a super memorable soundtrack that it rightly earns its place on my list.
You will never listen to The Offspring again without thinking of this gem of an arcade racer.
2. Shenmue (1999)
If you want a concrete example to back up the claims that the Dreamcast was "ahead of its time," look no further than 1999's Shenmue.
Open world action-adventure games are an ambitious concept even nowadays, but in 1999, this was about as groundbreaking as it got.
The story follows a martial artist by the name of Ryo Hazuki in 1980s Japan as he seeks revenge for the death of his father.
The gameplay was revolutionary — and that's putting it lightly — featuring a day-and-night cycle, weather effects, NPCs with daily schedules, and more.
It basically offered players a living world to explore, and was one of the most expensive games to make at the time of its release, costing a whopping $70 million to create and market.
Sadly, the game didn't sell enough to cover the exorbitant production costs, and its relative commercial failure may have been one of the dominoes in the early death of the Dreamcast.
With all that said, Shenmue is a legendary title in the video game world and still has a robust following more than a quarter-century later.
1. Sonic Adventure 2 (2001)
I'll admit this one is a bit of a homer pick on my part, as Sonic Adventure 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and one that I have more memories tied to than almost any piece of media in existence, but the merits of the game still hold up without the aid of my own nostalgia tinted views.
After Sonic The Hedgehog made the jump to 3D with Sonic Adventure, the 2001 follow-up expanded upon its predecessor's successes in every way possible.
The graphics were more finely tuned, the gameplay was tighter and more responsive, the glitches were (mostly) fixed, and the soundtrack is one of the most memorable in Sonic's expansive catalog.
This is viewed as the best 3D Sonic game of the series, and the fact that this was only their second try is particularly impressive.
The Sonic and Shadow levels in particular are weaponized fun, and the introduction of an expanded Chao Garden (virtual creatures you can level up and raise their stats to compete in races and fights against other Chao) gave the game incredible replay value.
I still revisit this game when I'm feeling nostalgic, so I'm definitely biased, but ask anyone who was around for it and they'll tell you that Sonic Adventure 2 was one of SEGA's finest hours as a game developer.