Come 9/28, Sega will end repair support for the Saturn and Dreamcast in Japan This isn’t so newsworthy here in the US or here on this blog… However, there’s a special place in my heart for the Sega Dreamcast.
I worked for a small company back during the Internet boom and a few of us pushed for (and were granted) a gameroom in the office. We painted it ourselves, assembled the foosball table, and stuck a few beanbag chairs in front of a TV with a Dreamcast. I spent countless hours kicking butt as Afro Thunder in Ready 2 Rumble and sliding around corners in Crazy Taxi… probably while billing our clients.
I also had a Dreamcast at home and the hardware was ahead of its time — Using the builtin modem, I was able to race my buddies Matt and Paul (hundreds of miles away) in Daytona or fire up a web browser. Heck, I even ran Linux off CD though I never could enable that soft modem (and I didn’t care enough to purchase the broadband adapter).
Too bad Sega couldn’t execute, from a business perspective, in the hardware market as they produced the best platforms of the time. Now all we have to look forward to are crappy Sonic remixes.