Reviewing The Sega Dreamcast's Retro Shooter Gems

That Dreamcast intro screen will never, ever get old.

24:05 A buddy and I were touring id about a month before Quake 3 DC was released. We were walking through and noticed Quake 3 on a TV with a Dreamcast under it. Neither of us knew it was in the works, so we grabbed Marty Stratton (he was giving us the tour since he was kinda the guy that managed Quakecon and we were there as volunteers) and said "DUDE! Is that Quake 3 running on a Dreamcast?!" He got a big grin and said "Oh yeah! You guys wanna see it?" Super fun way to find out about it. Fun fact: the PC version of Quake 3 could crossplay with the Dreamcast online. You had to patch back to version 1.16n and download a map pack that contained all the Dreamcast specific maps and you were golden. We actually ran a server for it at one of the CPL events. id's engine tech was just crazy flexible and could be made to perform on anything. I'm fully convinced John Carmack is a hyper advanced AI that aliens left on our planet just to give us amazing video game engines.

I was one of the 12 people that had the Dreamcast broadband adapter and the mouse and keyboard. Playing Quake 3 against people on dial up and on a controller with one stick... good times. The Dreamcast really was so ahead of its time.

Man, that Dreamcast intro is so calming. Almost like it has a zen type of feel.

I lived in Japan when this went obsolete and I grabbed every game in their catalogue at cents on the dollar (well yen). A year later I gave it to my young cousins. 25 years later they still talk about how fun that console was.

Learning there is a Dreamcast FPS with brain jacking and a villain named Geist really takes the only wind out of the GameCube game Geist's unique feature lol.

I know it's weird, but I miss the "Shwacked!" running joke. Something about it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Dreamcast was a gem. The fact that one could use the memory card as a tamagotchi and even play games on it, shows that the console was too far ahead of the curve.

Unreal Tournament gets a nice framerate boost if you plug in a keyboard, open up the command command line and type in a command which disables decals. This will disable decals left from bullet holes and fragged players, and it'll make the game perform better.

I love kaneko's artstyle in Maken X. I have a collection of most of the games he's worked on, and have the PS2 version of the game called Maken Shao

There's also an Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Its not exactly a FPS, but it has FPS elements. Its a 3D open-world adventure fighting FPS game made by Quantic Dream

Man, never expected you to cover something like Maken X. That is a game where Kazuma Kaneko really went wild with the art. So sad that he doesn't get the recognizition he rigjtfully deserves.

QUAKE III: I beat Xero on the highest difficulty mode by hiding behind a pillar and railgunning him to death. He couldn’t see me and had no path tracking to me. There’s no other way to win that match!

The Dreamcast start-up screen gives me goosebumps every time.

There is something incredibly beautiful about the way the Dreamcast renders. I don't know what it is, but nearly every game on the console somehow looks good in a way I can't describe.

Maken X is such a great game. I love the lore, the character design, the gameplay--for me, that's almost exactly how I play Oblivion. It's all just so unique. That first playthrough was such a trip because of how interesting the worldbuilding and the aesthetics and design were. The soundtrack is utterly phenomenal. Shoji Meguro did such a great job with the soundtrack and it's such a shame people don't acknowledge it as much as they should. It also has just an incredible amount of replayability given the 6 endings the game has. That game makes me wish they did a proper remaster of Maken X just because theres so much character lore and worldbuilding lore to be expanded upon. It has so much potential for a good modern remake. I have Maken X on my top 10 Dreamcast games of all time and I stand by it. Its still just so good.

9/9/99, the greatest release date a console ever had and ever will, also that VMU, man was that a fun system.

Steam Deck has been an amazing way to re-experience Dreamcast games, especially shooters. Why? Because once you have EmuDeck set up, you can easily remap shooter controls to be much more intuitive. So for example, because the DC lacked 2 analog sticks, typically the face buttons would be for movement while the analog stick would be for aiming, which was awkward. But on Deck, you can instead map the left stick to the face buttons for movement and the right stick for aiming. But here's where things get wild and what sets the Steam Deck above the other handhelds... You can then do gyro aiming in Dreamcast games! So that when the right stick or right trackpad is merely being touched (as in the gyro is only activated when they're touched and isn't active all the time), the gyro can act as the Dreamcast's left stick, so you now have full on gyro aiming acting as the left stick in Dreamcast shooters. Or you can map the right trackpad to emulate the Dreamcast's left stick, and have trackpad + gyro aiming, which feels even more accurate. And speaking of the trackpad - Silent Scope on Dreamcast feels insanely good to play using the Steam Deck's trackpad, way more intuitive and faster than using an analog stick, so the trackpads are fantastic for on rails shooters, which the DC had a lot of. If you're an old school Dreamcast fan, get yourself a Steam Deck. Once you have EmuDeck set up, no other device on the market does a better job at placing your Dreamcast games directly on the main UI in such an elegant fashion. And then there's the added layer of being able to easily customise the controls or the frame rate - on a per game basis.

God that DOA2 intro with the bomb factory song “exciter” really is the best intro I’ve ever heard!

GMan, if youre gonna tease our tips by playing Dreamcast games. Then you'll need to play Illbleed