Pyramid Pick
Dreamcast
Produced by Sega
$199.00
Sonic Adventure
Produced by Sega
$49.99
Note: The prices are manufacturer's suggested retail price. You can undoubtedly find lower ones if you shop around.Sega has laid low after the 1995 release of their Saturn console was eclipsed in the minds of both players and developers by Sony's more successful Playstation. In the early '90s, they had a firm grip on what the older kids thought was cool, leaving the tot market to Nintendo. They put out the first home game console to use CDs, they were the first to nurture a reputation for bloody games -- they were the first people to crank out some really rocking ads, too. Sadly, all we got from the Saturn were the rocking ads, not the innovation or the attention to game play that made their Genesis console such a dream.
Dream no more. Sega's Dreamcast, now in North American stores, pushes the pixels that the Nintendo and Playstation originally aspired to. More importantly, it surpasses Nintendo's 3-D graphics speed and quality -- its strongest point -- while using a CD drive for delivery -- the Playstation's strongest point, which brought high-quality but inexpensive sound and video to the home.
So it's a great box. But what about the games? Without good games, a box means nothing -- Sega learned this when all their developers defected to Sony in the last go-round. So it's good to see the platform ship with some games available for it, and many more promised in the coming months. . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 24, 1999
Copyright © 1999 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.