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eyeangle
Registered
12/06/2003
Points
1683
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17th January, 2004 at 07:13:05 -
They never took off. What could they do? Did they have any good games on them? What other consoles didn't hit the high market?
theonecardgame.com
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Klikmaster
Master of all things Klik
Registered
08/07/2002
Points
2599
   
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17th January, 2004 at 07:40:21 -
Its Dreamcast not dream caster. I don't know about sega saturn, but dreamcast was beaten by PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube
n/a
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Ashman
Possibly Insane 
Registered
12/06/2002
Points
3974
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17th January, 2004 at 07:45:47 -
Sega Saturn was uber lame, that's about all I remember. It was a disgrace to the SEGA name and all the Mega Drives and Genesis's out there were bowing their heads in shame.
Show me the power child,
I'd like to say,
That I'm down on my knees today,
Gives me the butterflies,
Gives me away,
'Til I'm up on my feet again,
I'm feeling outshined.
"Outshined" - SoundGarden
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Smeggy
The Smegster
Registered
08/01/2003
Points
1062
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17th January, 2004 at 08:18:45 -
I've owned both over the years, the Saturn was major crud, honestly, it had similar power and games to that of the playstation (1), but because of the lack of anything good it failed horribly.
The Dreamcast was actually quite cool at the time, especially as it had awesome games such as Shenmue 1 and 2, but as soon as the ps2 arrived it started going downhill, like the Gamecube is now..
http://www.klik-union.com
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The Chris Street
Administrator
Unspeakably Lazy Admin
Registered
14/05/2002
Points
48488
      
 
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17th January, 2004 at 08:27:17 -
The Dreamcast failed because everything was usually so expensive, and that Sega very rarely bothered to advertise its games, so no-one knew about them.
When the N64 was launched, there were loads of magazines and stuff that went with it. But I never bothered to read them, until one day I saw an advert on TV for Mario Kart 64. Then I badly wanted one.
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Keatonian
Registered
15/07/2002
Points
571
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17th January, 2004 at 09:51:20 -
I got Gamecube just for Smash Brothers Melee, but as
our edition 1 PS2 dies out it has become more and
more handy.
THPS Underground on Gamecube was hard to get used
to but I can get 200,000 points in one move on the
spot and 950,000 was the highest I got in one move.
-Above post is ancient and probably irrelevant-
An old account of mine, recently cleared out. It's a blast to the past, the age was marked as 14 when I found it.  If you know where to look, you can track me. Au revoir.
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Pete Nattress
Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered
23/09/2002
Points
4811
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17th January, 2004 at 13:48:50 -
dreamcast is in my guiness book of records 2000 for being the most advanced games console ever. it had a 33.6k modem! how could that handle the bandwidth any game requires? i do remember when dreamcast took off, and everyone being very excited, but it was too gimmicky and too shallow to have been any good. PS2 and Xbox get my vote any day.
www.thenatflap.co.uk
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Muffin Batel [neonair games]
Registered
09/08/2002
Points
900
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17th January, 2004 at 15:42:36 -
the xbox is cheap. everytime i get around one i feel like i have to be careful areound it or it would break. ehehe i like gamecube and ps2
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Cazra
Crazy?
Registered
24/07/2002
Points
4472
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17th January, 2004 at 15:54:34 -
Microsoft made the Xbox so I wouldn't be surprised if it crashes a lot.
Sega Saturn didn't really have many games to advertise with. About all they had wqas Knights into Dreams. When I played a demo of it at a game store once, I couldn't really figure out the point of it. I think it had something to do with turning into this flying jester guy and then avoiding this big clock before it got you.
Dreamcast was better, but not quite as good as PS2.
n/a
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RapidFlash
Savior of the Universe
Registered
14/05/2002
Points
2712
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17th January, 2004 at 17:20:38 -
Sega Saturn was... ugh.
Dreamcast is awesome, it just died because of Sega's marketing team. There are some really good games on there, and with all the emulators you can get its still worth buying.
http://www.klik-me.com
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defenestrator
Old
Registered
12/07/2003
Points
724
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17th January, 2004 at 22:22:26 -
Well, the Dreamcast had a couple of major problems.
First of all, it didn't have a lot of third-party support. Capcom made a lot of games for it, and Namco made Soul Calibur, but Sega made most of its games itself. EA didn't make any games for it, and regardless of how you feel about EA's sports games, a lot of people won't buy a system if they can't get Madden on it.
Also, I think the thing was simply too Japanese for its own good. A lot of games were put out in the states with only the original Japanese audio, which a lot of anime dorks thought was really cool, and a lot of non-dorks thought was really gay. To that end, Capcom put out about 500,000 2d fighting games, which stopped being cool around about the same time Street Fighter II: Turbo came out on the SNES. There just wasn't a lot of effort put into appealing to people in markets outside of Japan, and thus, it should come as no great surprise that it failed in markets outside of Japan.
As for the Saturn, yes, I think a lack of good third-party games was probably a big factor, but I remember that Sega had been making a lot of add-ons for the Genesis at the time, like the 32X and the Sega CD. They didn't support these add-ons very well, and I think the Saturn was looked on very dubiously by a lot of people.
At any rate, Sega has always made the best games for its systems, which is why it's a lot better of just making those games for other systems. This is also why people speculate that Nintendo will do the same thing, but I would be kind of sad to see it happen. After all, Nintendo brought video games back from the dead after Atari bit the dust.
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Airflow
imafirinmahlazr
Registered
24/09/2003
Points
-197
  
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18th January, 2004 at 05:43:31 -
The Dreamcast had a engineering problem.
Most of the early ones sold had
a fad of melting or catching on fire if turned on for
too long.
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Kirby Smith
Resident Slacker
Registered
18/05/2003
Points
479
  
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18th January, 2004 at 10:14:28 -
The Saturn's failure was mostly the result of bad managment decisions on the part of Sega. They had burned their customers severely by providing next to no software support for the Sega CD, and the overpriced 32X add-on that the released only a year before the Saturn launch. Then, fearing Sony's entry into the market with the Playstation, Sega jumped the gun on the American release of the Saturn -- releasing it in May of 1995 instead of the original launch date of September 5, 1995, with next to no software (a crappy port of Virtua Fighter being the high point of the launch lineup). Constant delays in software releases, the lack of a true Sonic game, and Sega's stupid decision to not localize much of their quality Japanese software only worsened their situation. Also, as others have mentioned, there was very little 3rd party support as many had jumped ship to the easier to develop for Sony Playstation. Then, of course, price was an issue -- the Saturn at $400 being 1/3 more expensive than the Playstation at launch.
Finally (well, not finally, but all that I'm going to talk about anyway), there was the issue of system power. Saturn was a 2D beast, easily whooping the pants off of both Playstation and N64 in the arena of flat gaming, but sadly it's 3D couldn't quite compete. Being designed for quadralateral based engines, the Saturn's very design led to blocky looking games -- not to mention the fact that Sony's machine could render 360,000 polygons per second w/ full effects, while the Saturn could do only around 200,000. Procesor speed also showed a gap -- the Saturn using twin Hitachi SH-2's running at 12.5 MHz each, while the Playstation featured a single 33MHz chip design. There are several other differences, but those are the main ones.
The Dreamcast's failure was a result of bad timing on the part of Sega, more than anything else. It was to be the save-all system, and it almost worked (outselling the Saturn in the U.S. by 8 million units to 1.5 million). Coming in after the N64 and Playstation had peaked, it enjoyed about a year at the top of the market. It had a kick-ass launch list (the best of all time if you ask me), and a constant stream awesome software throughout it's life. The first system to succesfully go online, it led the way to the current generation's net play. Sadly though, it didn't quite make the splash it could have due to many of Sega's customers fearing it would go the way of the dodo like Sega's past 3 systems had -- which ended up being a self-fulfilling proficy. Lack of support from 3rd party giant EA Games didn't help either -- tho to be honest, Sega's internal sports games whooped the pants off of anything EA had on the market at the time. Then, of course, many people were simply waiting for the PS2 -- and later, the immensly more powerful GameCube and XBox. Dreamcast's failure is really quite sad, as it is my belief that it's game library still rivals the PS2, GameCube, and XBox combined. This is a shamless plug, but if any of you don't have one, go out and pick one up with a ton of games for really cheap and enjoy what could have been.
XBL Gamertag: Rampant Mjolnir
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ChrisB
Crazy?
Registered
16/08/2002
Points
5457
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22nd January, 2004 at 17:14:06 -
Important lessons to be learned:
1) Light consoles have potential but fail easily. (Dreamcast, possibly GameCube  )
2) Heavy consoles have potential but fail more easily, usually because people died trying to take them home. (I nearly broke a foot carrying the Saturn. That's why I haven't bought the XBox*.
3) Medium consoles will live for bloody ages even though they're usually inferior to others. (i.e. PS1, PS2)
* that's a lie, it's only because it wouldn't fit in the games cabinet
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Rik
Registered
16/10/2002
Points
433
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24th January, 2004 at 17:08:41 -
both consoles ruled. i am studying computer games programming at uni and most people i've met there agree that the saturn was superior to the playstation, so it seems to be the preferred console of people who know wtf they are talking about.
http://www23.brinkster.com/rik10k/phazer
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