Happy 10th Anniversary Sega Dreamcast

SEGA
21

I agree , I love my DC , but its Online modes is nothing to that of the X-Box , never mind the 360 and PSN , though to fair the phone network , ISP was also all over the place in those days (more so for the UK) with high costs of local calls , never mind steep charges for ISP ECT. Also I really would have like the DC , to have had a 5.1 Digital Out .

That said it was amazing back in the day to play Daytona USA 2001 and PSO online . Yes I know , it was nothing to what PC users were use , and the Saturn was on-line its self’s .

That said , tt truly was amazing playing PSO online for the 1st week . One of the few games , where you look at the clock and think … MY GOD!, its 10Pm , and I was meant to have been out at 7PM, and think so what , and keep playing the game until the wee small hrs … Sonic Team really were on fire inthe DC , days , so was WOW/AM#1- Who never seem to get any credit for it .
Thier NAM@I and DC production pipeline were insane , with a high number of great games , coming out all the time . Rikiya Nakagawa leaving seem to me , was a massive loss .

And was I the only one , not to like Ch Ch Rocket ???

22

Eh, it was enjoyable and challenging. I found it didn’t keep my attention that long though, because of the repetitive nature of the game.

23

Chu Chu was one of those games where it was mediocre until you sat in a room with 3 other guys, each with drinks in hand and tried to play the game while progressively getting drunker. Would usually end up with people grabbing controllers, punching each other, and viciously taunting one another. Good times :slight_smile:

(Oh, and the puzzle mode in the GBA version was pretty satisfying, too.)

24

Abadd, notice how I did not say the DC had a “better” library for online games? This is one of those circumstances where I chose my words quite deliberately so… :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :b and q:

PSO is really what breaks it though, no one’s even come close to a really compelling community action-RPG since then, it’s getting pathetic. (The lone exception being Champions of Norrath, though it almost doesn’t qualify, somehow crossing a line into more simplistic beat-em-up territory.)

I’m also still pining for AFO and Ooga Booga for Arcade or PSN. :anjou_sad:

That said, playing Gears 2 horde mode was fantastic. And I’m really hoping the hints that GoW3 may be going full on RPG style turn out to be legit.

25

If I misinterpreted your intention, then my sincere apologies. But you did say that they didn’t have as cool an online library… I take that to mean something quite similar.

PSO did break new ground on console, but it was fairly old hat to anyone who’d ever played a little game known as Diablo :slight_smile: Granted, playing on console is a vastly different experience. The only game that has done better has been Monster Hunter. Too Human was supposed to be the next best thing, but we all know how that one turned out.

If you want AFO-style fun, I highly recommend Battlefield 1943. It doesn’t have the same dynamic as the differing sides did in AFO, but it has that same sort of jump-in-and-kick-arse feel to it. Extremely streamlined and a wonderful game.

What I’d love to see are more crazy board games: Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica (the board game for this is really entertaining, if you enjoy the series at all), etc. Anything by Fantasy Flight, basically. The biggest problem with those games is the set up time and remembering all the damn rules. But as an XBLA title, no set up, and the program remembers all the rules for you. It’s that sort of thing that’s gotten me back into Magic the Gathering. Too bad it’d be pretty difficult to make money of those sorts of niche titles.

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[quote=“Abadd”]If I misinterpreted your intention, then my sincere apologies. But you did say that they didn’t have as cool an online library… I take that to mean something quite similar.

PSO did break new ground on console, but it was fairly old hat to anyone who’d ever played a little game known as Diablo :slight_smile: Granted, playing on console is a vastly different experience. The only game that has done better has been Monster Hunter. Too Human was supposed to be the next best thing, but we all know how that one turned out.

If you want AFO-style fun, I highly recommend Battlefield 1943. It doesn’t have the same dynamic as the differing sides did in AFO, but it has that same sort of jump-in-and-kick-arse feel to it. Extremely streamlined and a wonderful game.

What I’d love to see are more crazy board games: Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica (the board game for this is really entertaining, if you enjoy the series at all), etc. Anything by Fantasy Flight, basically. The biggest problem with those games is the set up time and remembering all the damn rules. But as an XBLA title, no set up, and the program remembers all the rules for you. It’s that sort of thing that’s gotten me back into Magic the Gathering. Too bad it’d be pretty difficult to make money of those sorts of niche titles.[/quote]

Anything I’ve said is shamelessly subjective (goes without saying). And of course PSO borrowed massively from Diablo 2, but aside from this being entirely in the context of consoles, I think it actually has a better intrinsic team play reinforcement than D2. Setting aside the fact it was completely without character balance at first; it’s noteworthy that PSO pretty much set the now contemporary standard for the realtime healing/support role and rhythm.

I completely forgot about Monster Hunter though, and that’s the closest thing to a regret I may have about not having a PS2 at the time. Though when it was first released I would have been too distracted with other things anyway.

BF1943 tempted me, but in the end I just don’t get into FPS’s competitively very often. Even Halo 3, though I played a couple weeks and was in the groove enough to give better than I got most of the time, was just impossible to get back into after I’d taken a week off. :anjou_sigh:

And I could SO get into MtG, but that’s part of why I can’t even start. Plus the plodding animations and BS really turned me off anyway. Wizards of the Coast have gotten enough money out of me as it is…

I’ll try to check those other games out sometime though Abadd, and have you played 360’s Culdcept Saga? It’s a somewhat tragic design in the end, since it’s far too complicated to really be a casual game, yet far too random to be entirely “serious” about either. Still a lot to love there for me.

27

Actually, I believe Everquest is the game that set the standard for healing/support roles in that context. That was mid to late 90s :slight_smile:

As for BF1943, it’s actually not that competitive. I’ve never been amazingly good at FPSes, and yet I am able to hold my own in 1943. I think partly because there are multiple objectives and the action is constantly flowing.

And with MtG: DotPW, yeah… the animations were bothersome at first, but you get fairly good at learning when you can skip stuff and zooming through. My biggest gripe is actually the lack of customizable decks, so once you learn the nuances of each deck, it changes the feel of the game. And when you try to play “regular” MtG, it requires you to completely change your mindset again.

I never could get into Culdcept Saga. I know it’s got a good, core following, but it just had too much stuff going on for me to have the patience to sit down and learn :stuck_out_tongue:

A quick note about the BSG board game - it’s meant to be played with 4-6 people or so. Basically, the goal is to reach New Caprica. You have to “jump” 10 times, but you can only jump after your FTL drives has spooled up to a certain point. The group has a number of resources - fuel, food, people. If you jump early, you run the risk of losing 25-50% of your population, etc. During each player’s turn, a crisis can happen. You all get to “vote” on how to handle the crisis (anonymously). Depending on the result, you lessen the impact of the crisis… or make it worse. How does it get worse? Well, at least one of the people in the group is a Cylon (but nobody else knows it). Halfway through the game, everyone draws a card. There’s a large chance that another person was a Cylon but didn’t know it until that point. Makes for interesting group dynamics. I had our entire group convinced that my fiancee was a Cylon, when in fact I was the Cylon. They threw her in the brig, which threw the balance of power in my direction just enough for me to take over the government (I was the acting admiral in the game, and took over the presidency - each role has certain priveledges), then revealed myself as a Cylon, which causes a super crisis.

Oh, fun times :smiley:

28

:anjou_wow: That BSG scenario sounds bad ass, though I’ve never been into the show, I know the pop cliches well enough to understand the inspiration.

I’ll just have to take your word about EQ; but since D2 was my main contrast - and the discussion on the table was about PSO not being so novel to someone who’s played Diablo - it’s yet a very distinct experience, to me. At it’s best, PSO more defined that zone of being seconds from death at any moment. And not only because you failed to herd the enemy appropriately, or are just too underpowered, but because you’re more genuinely in a fight.

And I understand exactly what you mean about Culdcept, believe me. It strictly fails to take a key lesson from MtG: the fundamentals are simple, the depth and complexity is emergent. CS has WAY too many variables in play as a constant.

And again, FPS’s are just not my genre as a rule, it’s not about objective quality, it’s very much about their subjective qualities.

29

I’m not one to generally get into “PC games are better than console games durr!!!” debates, but in the case of multiplayer RPGs with group dynamics, MMOs on PC have console beaten by a long shot. The sheer variety of situations (and resolutions) you can encounter in EQ or WoW is/was amazing. PSO provided a glimpse into that sort of dynamic in console and was the first to do so, but I’m also sad that nobody has taken that much further.

And yeah… BSG was fantastic. My fiancee tagged along because we thought we were being invited to a friend’s place to play “regular” board games… you know, Monopoly or whatever. She gave me a really evil look when it turned out to be BSG (even though she loves the series). About 15 minutes into the game, she had forgotten her earlier doubts and was full on making speeches about why she wasn’t a Cylon and how I was going to be sleeping on the couch if I continue to spread lies… to which everyone naturally answered, “That sounds like something a Cylon would say!” It’s a genuinely awesome game and even I was surprised. Fantasy Flight Games = teh awesome!!!1!

30

strangles another WoW rant

…

regains consciousness

I could get very detailed on this subject, but I’ll make only this one point. D2 and WoW appear to be the respective archetypes for the two clear breeds of persistent multiplayer RPGs; and the Ultima Online - Everquest - World of Warcraft lineage, as in the true MMO, is obviously a very different animal from the Diablo 2 - Phantasy Star Online - Monster Hunter beasts. WoW disappointed me on a very deep level, and as a result I seem to be left with more enthusiasm for the games that aren’t shooting for grandiose ideals of immersion, that can only end up more acutely betraying how half-serious, half-hearted, and generally half-assed it all must become in practice, even in the best of examples…

To be sure there’s plenty of other realms I could perhaps find a spirit closer to my own, but since Guild Wars nothing else has made enough of an impact on me to even care to risk it. But as for the consoles, it’d just be nice to see either kind of sub-genre represented well. There’s absolutely jack all this gen.

31

I would actually argue that WoW saw a merging of the two lineages. It borrowed heavily from Diablo in its skill trees/build types/etc portion of the gameplay. EQ borrowed from Diablo (though I’m not sure if it was intentional) in its loot system, so it might just be one big messy evolutionary tree for the genre anyway.

32

Well the main differentiation is… open world / nonlinear story (perhaps more like multi-linear in some cases) / combat in vast contiguous realms - vs - rigid game progression / players per ‘game/room’ limits / repetition of levels being expected. WoW is certainly of the former, though the instanced dungeons lean to the other side. Guild Wars seems a lot more difficult to pin down, since all actual combat is always instanced, yet the “world” is still treated as open, and all meetings are still disguised as free travel in some manner. But GW does follow a single limited and linear narrative, so it really has to go in the other category.

I don’t really know how many other games mix those elements, but it seems like every game must ultimately fall to one side or the other. Either making the player follow a regimented path, of both terrain and narrative; or allowing the player to choose their own path, and follow multiple narratives of parallel importance.

33

The BSG board game sounds awesome. I love the show and wish they made an actual game with that setting (either like a free-roaming Nexus style game, looking for resources and eventually earth, while being hunted by Cylons, or a combination of multiple genres where you can be an admiral, a pilot, a marine - fps style for when they board - or whatever) but hey, that sounds like the next best thing.

We actually have a game here that I haven’t played in ages and is similar in that each player draws a card to randomly get their roles. One player is a criminal, one his sidekick, and the rest are cops. Everyone closes their eyes and looks down, the criminal and sidekick look up to know each other, then fake being with the rest again, everyone opens their eyes, and from then on it’s all mind games as the cops try to find the criminal out and the criminal and his sidekick try to slowly take out the cops by convincing the others one of them is the criminal and they vote him in jail and out of the game, where he has to reveal his role, if he’s a cop, the criminal (so the cops win) or his sidekick.

Those are the only rules, the whole game is just standard discussion. Oh, I think when we closed our eyes I heard the guy next to me move so he must be the criminal looking up to see his sidekick, oh this guy smirked when I accused the other guy of being the criminal so he must either be the criminal or the sidekick, oh, whatever etc :stuck_out_tongue:

34

Oh Don’t talk about AFO, I think I’ve done Abadd head in , by keeping on, about how brilliant that game was, and how it should be on LIVE Arcade and PSN.
There was about 4 of us, that used the same Import shop (and so we all knew each other and were good mates) and we all bought the game the same day . Then played online for the next week solid on the game , just having a ball and a laugh , really good times

Like I said AM#1/WOW were on fire on the Dreamcast .

I know games like PSO had been done before on the PC, but so have a lot of Genre’s . We all seem to think the musical Games , started with Konami or Harmonix, When I remember a virtual Guitar game made for the PC (complete with life size Guitar ) made for the PC in 1993 . Us console owners go on about Seaman , or Nintendodogs , when PC games had cats and Pets games years before .
So I take all those points , but PSO was unlike anything seen on a console before , and I do think its chat, symbol system was very advanced for the time, more so given it was ST 1st go at this style , and its also had the very 1st beginnings of a friends system .

I never forget , the 1st time I showed the game off to 3 mates , who came up my house for a couple of cans , before we went out .
I put it on , and usually when I’m playing a single player game , I would get the calls to knock it off , and out Rally on ECT.
But all of them were amazed by the game , and one of my mates kept on asking… is that really a person from New York ? to which I would say yes , and type in I have friends that are saying hello , and my friend in New York , would type Hi :slight_smile:
None of them could really believe it , none of them had seen everything quite like it .
It really was magical , so friendly and so very innocent . Shame the cheats had to spoil , that in part
Really good times, none the less

PC 's are always one step ahead , but for me , and most of my mates , nothing beats the easy of use of a console .

35

Whhhy? If I wanted to play an RPG, I’d buy an RPG. Don’t fix what isn’t broken imo.

36

Actually, somebody has. Square did it with Final Fantasy XI, which is approaching its seventh anniversary. I still actively play the game, in fact. Final Fantasy XI is literally a highly evolved Everquest with Square’s visual prowess, and a huge departure from anything else the company has produced. Despite being an MMO, the game has an extensive number of in-game rendered cutscenes, interweaving story pieces and details that players must put together to really understand the game world (something I loved about Shining Force 3 and the Panzer Dragoon series), and well-designed gameplay elements hindered by only one issue: the game is very grindy (though this is by design, since it was modeled after Everquest).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqdUsYOlfY)

Final Fantasy XIV is still in the alpha stages right now and is going to make its debut next year, aiming for a more casual-friendly gameplay approach and bringing yet another multi-platform MMO to the gaming community.

37

[quote=“Shadow”]

hoping the hints that GoW3 may be going full on RPG style turn out to be legit.
Whhhy? If I wanted to play an RPG, I’d buy an RPG. Don’t fix what isn’t broken imo.[/quote]

I don’t see it like that, because playing Horde with some friends actually felt like the closest thing to the zone of PSO I’ve played since then. You already pick different (looking) characters, use different weapons, and settle into team roles… why not take it a step further? People love CoD4’s advancement system, just merge that with a Team Fortress style class format, and there you are. They could still have a mainline narrative with Fenix and Dom, but imagine turning Horde into a secondary narrative element, with persistence and missions you take on all over the planet? That could only make the story feel a lot more epic, I think.

And Gears already has a better style than ANY 3D multiplayer RPG, to me. The character identification is an important element to that game, far more so than most shooters. I don’t think it’s a matter of fixing what it is, and I don’t think it’d break it either… it’d be a very natural evolution.

Since Parn brought up FFXI, I had a couple friends who were really into it for a few months, but watching them playing did nothing but turn me off. I remember thinking one huge battle looked like people standing around at a lawn party and occasionally convulsing, while some lame fireworks kept going off.

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]But all of them were amazed by the game , and one of my mates kept on asking… is that really a person from New York ? to which I would say yes , and type in I have friends that are saying hello , and my friend in New York , would type Hi :slight_smile:
None of them could really believe it , none of them had seen everything quite like it .
It really was magical , so friendly and so very innocent . Shame the cheats had to spoil , that in part
Really good times, none the less [/quote]

The text bubbles in PSO was sheer genius! It’s funny but, just the way people would run around talking in that game conveyed more personality than all the animated emotes of newer games ever has. PSO was indeed magical, I agree.

38

Three words:

Panzer Dragoon Saga.

39

Three words… and three games?

Just remember the original Corpser fight, and then tell me Cliffy B isn’t a PD fan.
Maybe he planned this all along? :wink:

40

I haven’t actually played through the Gears of War games. Decent games… got about half way through the first one, but the story, world, and characters didn’t draw me in enough to want to continue playing in the way that, say, Halo did. It didn’t help that I accidentally overwrote my save file either. :anjou_embarassed: Does Gears of War get better later on?