30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 11 – Gaming System of Choice

I’ve always had three consoles that I had difficulty discerning between as my “system of choice.” When it comes to the most time I’ve ever spent, it’s definitely the NES. Though the system I chose to talk about today has not been booted up at home for a couple of months, it still holds a fondness that even the NES and original Sony PlayStation lacked. The one system I wished would have survived, and had a vastly underrated library to support it for a few years. The one that brought us into the 21st century:

The Sega Dreamcast was a marvel. Sure, the controller had too few buttons with its shoulder buttons doubling as triggers, the GD-Rom format was a joke and it helped lead to easy piracy and the lack of support from the likes of EA and Square hurt it in the long run. But the quality of its library still remains one of the strongest ever. Even their dream launch list of titles were a force to be reckoned with. The Dreamcast was literally a system for any kind of gamer.

One of the strongest supporters of the system had to have been Capcom. To many, the Dreamcast was basically the console to play arcade ported Capcom titles. Though Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike was a bit faster in its port, the quality of the likes of Street Fighter Alpha 3, Vampire Chronicles and Powerstone were bar none some of the best on a console, up to that point. No watered down, shells of a port like Marvel vs Capcom on the Sony PlayStation – the Dreamcast versions retained just about everything, if not everything that was featured in the arcade, and then some.

Even Sega arcade titles ported over with a commendable success, with releases such as Sega Rally and Virtual On. But Sega’s best arcade port of all had to have been Crazy Taxi which, in my opinion, is still the only proper way to play this game on a home system. Sega exclusives such as Sonic Adventure were amazing for its time, though have not aged well at all. Want a stellar RPG? Skies of Arcadia was the perfect choice. Sports were covered by the 2K franchise, and even hack and slash dungeon crawlers had representation, with underrated gems such as Record of the Lodoss Wars.

It’s a shame that the Dreamcast died the way it did. Imagine if EA decided to port a Madden title to this system….would we have witnessed a different evolution of the franchise than what we’ve seen now? What if Square came on board and released Final Fantasy X on the Dreamcast? So many possibilities, and none of them came to fruition. It might have failed in the market, but the Sega Dreamcast won my heart and I still consider it one of the best of the best.