IGN Apresenta a História do Dreamcast

Where were you on September 9, 1999? For as much as the NES changed the face of the industry, few can say they lined up on day one to get theirs. Even the original PlayStation's launch was lukewarm by today's standards. But 9/9/99 is a date that will live on, not just because of its mnemonic repetition, but because it started the trend of carefully orchestrated hype and anticipation culminating in an epic launch the likes of which the industry had never seen before.

It's been 10 years since then, and to many of us it still feels like yesterday. Maybe that's because the Dreamcast was the first console of the sixth generation of consoles, when 3D gaming finally reached maturity, and technical limitations no longer oppressed the ambitions of game designers in the same way they once did. It was followed by the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox, a generation that felt a lot like an uglier version of today's gaming landscape.

More importantly, Dreamcast was the last stand of a once mighty hardware giant; the company that came from behind and toppled Nintendo's near-monopoly. After a crushing defeat in the 32-bit marketplace, SEGA underwent one of the most dramatic reinventions the gaming world has ever seen to the delight of newcomers and their loyal fans. It may not have been enough to turn the tides and escape the inevitable, but it was a brief moment of remarkable creativity that hasn't been recaptured since.

The Dreamcast didn't even last for half of a generation, but it left a legacy most systems would be proud of. Even a decade later, few systems can stir up emotions in their fans like SEGA's little white wonder.



From the Ground Up

When Bernie Stolar took over as CEO of SEGA of America in 1996, the company's outlook was grim. The PlayStation had quickly managed to devour a huge chunk of SEGA's core; the older, seasoned gamers that rejected Nintendo as "kiddie," and the sports fans that once bickered about Madden versus Montana. Meanwhile, Nintendo was arriving fashionably late to scoop up their fans with a dazzling new Mario game. SEGA had managed to hold on to hardcore arcade fans, but this audience was rapidly shrinking as the arcade market entered a tailspin from which it has never recovered.



"I thought the Saturn was a mistake as far as hardware was concerned," remarked an unrepentant Stolar. "The games were obviously terrific, but the hardware just wasn't there." It's true that the Saturn was a needlessly complex piece of kit that lacked the ingenuity that made SEGA such a leader in arcade hardware. During the move to CD-based media and 3D environments, development costs were already rising sharply, and the thought of programming for a system with two CPUs and two graphics processors was not an appealing prospect.

While some would have chosen to fight the uphill battle, Stolar was far more concerned with the big picture. He truly did want to see SEGA rise again, but he knew the future wouldn't be Saturn. "I was one of the individuals who fought to discontinue Saturn as a platform," he admits. That decision was a heartbreaking one for Saturn fans, and it effectively left the western console markets without any SEGA games for over a year.

But fans couldn't see what was growing inside the cocoon. Stolar's decision wasn't made because he resented the Saturn, it was because he knew that the next system would have to hit the ground running. Rather than divide their development teams up between a lost cause and their last chance, he put all of the chips on Dreamcast.

Stolar claims that this was also the intent of SEGA of Japan CEO Hayao Nakayama. "We spoke about building a new hardware platform that I would be very, very involved with," he remembers. "I would shape the direction of this platform and hire a new team of people and restructure Sega." Mr. Stolar says software was his first priority, but as an outspoken critic of the Saturn, he knew the hardware and the games needed to go hand-in-hand.

It's no secret that SEGA of Japan let their pride interfere with their judgment in the 32-bit era. They passed on deals that could have landed them some version of the hardware behind both the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64, but instead went with a Frankenstein machine of mostly stock chips that was ugly to program for. They had ignored the urgings of SoA CEO Tom Kalinske and the American head of R&D Joe Miller, and they paid dearly for it.

This time, they established two separate teams to develop their next machine. IBM's Tatsuo Yamamoto led the American project, codenamed Katana, which featured the American-made 3Dfx Voodoo chipset that had revolutionized the PC gaming market. In Japan, a team headed by Genesis designer Hideki Sato worked diligently on Dural, with parts supplied by Japanese giants Hitachi and NEC. NEC's PowerVR hadn't quite taken over the desktop market like 3Dfx had, but both systems proved to be worthy adversaries.



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