Your Story of Getting Your First Dreamcast

Jigen

Jigen

Man Mo Journeyman
Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Location
United States
Favourite title
Shenmue II
Currently playing
Persona 5
Tell the story of how/when you got your Dreamcast, did you get it at launch or at some other time?

I got mine in 2014 when a friend in college said he found one for $20 at a local store. I gave him the money and a week later he gave it to me.
 
I got mine for Xmas in 2000 with Sonic Adventure, UEFA Striker, Tomb Raider Revelations, Crazy Taxi and Virtua Tennis. Not a bad little package there. As my birthday isn't that far after Xmas I also got Shenmue 1 very shortly after Xmas which blew me away.

Then about 3 months later they discontinued the DC argh! I'm onto my 3rd DC now after 2 failures with the GD-rom Drive. I've not got a GDEMU which preserves the DC and eventually I will get the DC HDMI and change the power supply too.
 
I got mine in July 2000 together with Resident Code Veronica. That is the only Dreamcast I have and it is still working properly.
 
Christmas 2000 - I had the choice of a freshly launched PS2...and I went with the Dreamcast instead...and I don't regret it in the slightest!

I eventually did buy a PS2 after GTA 3, MGS2 and THPS3 launched, but at the time, the Dreamcast just seemed far more compelling. I was already a Sega fanboy and Virtua Fighter 3 was a must given my complete hard on for Virtua Fighter 2. Soul Calibur looked amazing. Shenmue was promising Virtua Fighter RPG (and ended up giving us something way more than that.) I loved Crazy Taxi at the arcade, so having a home version seemed like a no brainer. Jet Set Radio looked really cool from the magazine previews I was reading. There was the promise of Bleem for Dreamcast.

There were just SO many compelling things about that console...and it was the cheaper of the two. I felt guilty about my parents spending $700 (Australian dollar) on a PS2 whereas the Dreamcast was down to $250 at that point (should have been the first sign of troubles to come.) I knew I would probably get a PS2 later on in its lifespan and the Dreamcast library was just so damn compelling for its time.

For a console that only lasted three years or so, it did burn bright and fast. Like I said above, don't regret my choice for a Dreamcast one little bit. You compare the 2000 Dreamcast line up to the PS2 launch line up and it was an absolute no brainer.

The only thing of interest for me on the PS2 side was Tekken Tag Tournament...and I already had Tekken 3 on the PSone and Tag Tournament didn't seem that great a leap forward. Felt like Tekken 3 running in High Res mode. Oh and DVD playback was a compelling feature too...but the Dreamcast lineup was just downright killer and trounced it in every way.
 
I was only 6 years old in 2000... Yeesh it must've been amazing as a gamer then.
 
I was really happy when I heard that the launch of the Dreamcast had set entertainment industry records. I wasn't really following the game industry closely, so in my mind I had the idea that Sega was back on top and all was well, and I really took my time in getting my own Dreamcast. I finally did so in late summer or fall of 2000. I got a black Sega Sports edition (because I felt black was the proper color of a Sega console) from Circuit City, and then over the next several months I amassed quite a nice little collection of games that I bought at a locally-owned, independent game shop... Seaman, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Re-Volt, Space Channel 5, Shenmue, Ecco the Dolphin, Trickstyle, Vigilante 8. Everything was humming along and I was having a great time, and since I still wasn't reading much gaming news at the time, I was absolutely blindsided on "that day" when the announcement was made.
 
Christmas 1999, I was 14 going on 15. Still my favourite christmas to this day. My mom and stepdad put together and bought it as a special present - up until this point I always got consoles years after they came out so it was a real thrill to get new hardware so close to launch.(Though I'm sure my stepdad being a gamer too helped) It came with Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur and Worms Armageddon. The Playstation was removed from the TV so quick it got carpet burn. We put on Sonic Adventure and our eyes melted at how much of a jump it was from the PS1 and N64. We played a few games of Worms together, then on the evening put on the little heard of Soul Calibur and this would be the best of the bunch! Couldn't believe the quality of the graphics we were seeing. Even in crusty RF-vision it looked incredible and the 60hz toggle, something i'd read only read about in Sega Saturn Magazine for years, was a real game changer. No more PAL borders!

A few weeks later I got an RGB Scart Cable and i'll be damned if that isn't the best image quality on a CRT possible to this day. Unbelievably sharp!
 
Already covered mine in another thread:

Mittens2317 said:
[...] I was hyped to fuck for Sonic Adventure. I read the comics and had a few of the games on Master System, with every pre-birthday or advent period being dedicated to asking my mam n dad for a Mega Drive. I was proper into it at the time and started to jump on the "I'm a SEGA kid, fuck Nintendo n your shit Mario game" type thing.

In [a video game] magazine though was something that I didn't believe the look of. I had a PC so also had a few PC game mags. Plenty had great looking screenshots, but the best were always from pre-rendered cut-scenes. This unbelievable-looking game though [Shenmue, obviously] was apparently coming to Dreamcast, this future game tech that I thought I'd only ever get to catch a glimpse of as we passed by the video game shop whilst we were dragged into WHSmith or Wilkinsons or some other boring shop that adults go to.

Fast-forward a few years and I'd got a Mega Drive, but I wasn't really interested in expanding my number of games beyond the main Sonic entries and Super Kick Off (I already had shitloada Master System games as they used to go for 50p each at Grey Mare Lane market) Instead I started to save up for the fabled Dreamcast.

Even our kid wanted in on it, and we managed to raise about £60 between us (which was the equivalent of making us millionaires back then!) We showed my mam n dad the listing for a Dreamcast with three games (Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, UEFA Striker, and oh yes: Sonic Adventure!) If anyone remembers it, there was a shop on Sky Interactive called either Gameplay or Gamestation or summat. The logo looked like a yellow ladder with a blue ring around it within a black box. When it launched, one of the main advertising features was that they sold Dreamcasts. Anyway, we begged em to chip the rest of the money towards it and we wouldn't have to get any presents for Christmas or our next birthdays. Somehow... they actually agreed! (You have no idea just how rare this kinda shit happened!)
Click to expand...
 
I think it was 2003. I was at uni, and bought one through eBay for £30 with Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, which I didn't want and didn't like, but it was still the best price for the console.

The games I did buy through choice were Shenmue, which I'd wanted to play since first hearing you could "go anywhere, do anything," The Nomad Soul (a/k/a Omikron, which I'd already played on PC a few years ago but hoped a console set-up might help me finally beat the boss - it did), Sonic Adventure (which I completed but didn't enjoy even remotely as much as my old favorites), and Jet Set Radio (which was alright but not really my thing).

Being a student on a budget, when I was done with those games it all went back on eBay, £30 for the lot, so I didn't recoup what I'd spent separately on the games, but my short time with them had been worth it.

(I didn't even know Shenmue II had been released in the West until years later, when it became a factor in buying my Xbox 360 in 2008, thanks to a guy I sorta knew online offering $1000 to write a few WWE wrestler profiles on his website. So in a roundabout way I owe the longevity of my Shenmue interest to The Undertaker and Chris Jericho.)
 
I got my Genesis (from my uncle) in 1999 (which came with the Sega CD), My Saturn in 2001 (paid for it myself) for $45.00 (came with VF, VC and Daytona USA; imagine getting all THAT for $45.00 nowadays lol), thus the DC purchase was inevitable.

Fast Forward to 2005, my next-door neighbor hadn't used his launch DC since he got a PS2 in 2001, so it had been collecting dust for a while. He asked if I wanted it (at a few games, demos and 2 controllers) for $50.00. Bought it, played the shit out of THPS's, Fur Fighters' and UFC's demos, NFL 2K and (stupidly, in CM's case) sold off NHL 2K, Ready 2 Rumble and Confidential Mission.

Then I started purchasing games the next few months which got a ton of playtime (Shenmue came in on New Year's Eve and I was glued to it for a good 2 weeks) and all was good in the world :D

That one I got painted and it lasted until December 2011. Got a sealed DC, which lasted until January 2017. On my third now and I'm thinking about getting a replacement GD-Rom to put back in, so I can play the painted one again...
 
I got Dreamcast in November 2001 with only two games: Dynamite cop and Soldier of Fortune. Then my parents bought me some games as New Year gifts and there were a magazine and demo disc with some trailers where was an epic trailer of Shenmue.

When i saw it I was so impressed but I could not get Shenmue cause it was the most expensive game in the local games shop. Like they said the reason is the game have three discs. :LOL:

Not so many time passed and i got Shenmue copy on my Birthday :)

Epic trailer here
 
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It was May 1999, 4 months before the North American release. I was living in Gilbert, AZ, and just a mile away from where I was living, was a video game store that specialized in selling imports. It was thanks to that store that I learned about the awesomeness of Saturn’s Japanese library. When the Dreamcast launched in Nov 1998, that very store were selling them the following weeks. They didn’t bother displaying them for customers to play until Sonic came out, and I actually enjoyed it.

Like the Saturn, I felt that the Dreamcast probably didn’t have a chance in the US so my brothers and I begged our parents to give us a Japanese Dreamcast as an end of the school year present. So on the last day of school (I was finishing 9th grade, and one of my younger brothers was graduating jr high and another was graduating elementary), my parents got us a Japanese Dreamcast at $250. We also got Sonic Adventure and Marvel Vs Capcom. It was awesome. The following month, it was my birthday, and I got Virtua Fighter 3TB, King of Fighters 98, and Godzilla Generations (yes, I like that game!)

Then by Dec 31, 1999, I got my copy of Shenmue, which was also posted.
 
Christmas of 99 I got a Dreamcast with Sonic Adventure, presumably because my mom knew i liked Sonic growing up. My first console was a SNES and second was an N64, yet somehow I ended up with a Sonic piggybank, back pack, always watched the cartoon when it was on, and thought Mario was mad lame (he is).

Adventure gets a lot of shit now days, but let me tell you, everything I saw in the first 5 minutes of that game just didn't even seem possible. Never in my life have I been more blown away by a game, or entertainment period. My first exposure to 3D gaming was the N64, and as a result, I thought I had just hated 3D gaming in general until that moment.

Also it was several months until I was able to get a VMU, so I just left the dang thing on for days at a time... ?
 
The Dreamcast was the first console I ever got that was close to launch. Growing up I was the kid that always got consoles when they were at the end of their lifecycle so had dropped significantly in price.

At the time I was 19 years old and I'd moved out of my parents house and was actually on unemployment benefits. During the summer I'd had my playstation stolen and loads of games with it (all copied, I was the first person I knew to have a modded or 'chipped' Playstation).

My dad and younger brother arrived some time in November with a Dreamcast, a copy of Sonic Adventure and Psychic Force 2012. My Dad explained that he had just bought my brother the Dreamcast as a Christmas present and wanted me to show them how to set it up. I was not impressed at all as my brother is definitely not a gamer, but I just kept my shut, and showed them how to set it.

Once I'd set it up my Dad asked me what I thought of the console. I could feel my blood beginning to boil, because he had a history of being a cunt and trying to wind people up. So I was sure that he was just trying to push my buttons. I kept my cool and said that it was a good console, and that was when he told me it was mine.

I still can't believe that I didn't realise that it was going to be my console. But until my Dad said it was mine, I literally had no idea. Thinking about it this console was the one time my Dad was super cool with. Every once in a while he would come round and have bought me Dreamcast magazines to read and stuff like.

Like Dietsoap though I couldn't afford a VMU to start with, so my Dreamcast was on a LOT of the time. In fact I ended up completing Sonic Adventure before I eventually got the VMU, which was at Christmas.
 
After playing Shenmue II a million times on Xbox as a kid. When I was around 14, 15 years old, I decided to get one off eBay and I never bought a retro console before and thought RF was the only video mode it offered and used that the first time I played Shenmue I, this was when HDMI was a thing btw, I'm 23 now. It was ugly af to say the least.
 
as a kid, i got my dreamcast for christmas. either in 1999 or 2000.. i cant remember now lol. i got it with a copy of shenmue 1 and a few other terrible games.

i got it a 1 week before christmas and i wasn't meant to open it - but every day when my family went out, i opened it up, played it then put it back lol.. getting a new games console as a kid was awesome.. it was like getting a ferrari ?

but saying that, ive never been sentimental about consoles. for me, its all about the games. ( the only games ive ever cared about on the dreamcast were shenmue 1, s2 and jet set radio)
 
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