Dreamcast

The Dreamcast was a sixth generation video game console produced by Sega. It was the last console Sega would produce. It was the succesor to the Sega Saturn, which had limited success in sales in both Japan and in the United States. It was released sixteen months before the PlayStation 2 (PS2) and three years before the Nintendo GameCube and the Xbox, and widely hailed as ahead of its time. It was one of the first consoles to participate in the pioneering of online console gaming.

Sega officially discontinued in the Dreamcast in 2001, however the console's following is still maintained by occasional game releases from Japan and from the homebrew community. By the end of its lifespan, the console sold over 10 million units breaking various sales records set by past consoles.

History

The prior console from Sega, the Sega Saturn, struggled in sales inside North America. Then president of Sega of America, Bernie Stolar, pressured Sega of Japan to develop a succesor. At E3 of 1997 Bernie told the public that the Saturn was "not our future" and referred to the ill fated console as a "still born".

Hardware

The power light, like the Dreamcast logo in NTSC regions, was orange (this color was chosen because the Japanese consider it to be lucky). Games were sold in jewel cases. In North America, these initially had the Dreamcast name and logo on a white background, but later games used a black background, similar to the PlayStation's. Japanese games used an orange-and-white scheme, and European and Australian games used blue.

The unit was packaged with a video cable which supported composite video and stereo sound. Available separately were an RGB SCART cable, an S-Video cable, an RF connector (included as standard in the UK, Germany and Portugal), and a VGA adapter (see accessories below).

Although there was no reset button on the Dreamcast system itself, there was a way to reset a game during play. If the player wanted to reset a game, they would have to press the A, B, X, and Y buttons all together and then press the start button. This would then take them to the game's main menu. If repeated, it would take players to the Dreamcast menu.

In North America, a black Dreamcast was released in limited numbers with a sports pack which included two Sega Sports titles. This was the same as other models except for the black casing and the Sega Sports logo located directly below the Dreamcast logo on the lid. Electronics Boutique offered a blue Dreamcast through its website. Similar offerings were sold through the Lik Sang website. Cases of different colors like blue, red, orange, and green were sold for replacements of the original casing. In Japan, Sega released many varieties of the system, including a limited edition Sonic anniversary version, a pink Sakura Taisen version, and a Hello Kitty version released in 2000 in Japan which, due to its limited production, has become an extremely rare collector's piece. The package contains a keyboard, controller, VMU, mouse, and a Hello Kitty trivia game. The console and accessories came in both translucent pink and blue in color with some printed designs.

The Brazilian version, manufactured by Tec Toy under license, was essentially the same as the North American version, but its video output was converted to the PAL-M standard and did not come with the modem, which was available separately.

Dreamcast in Europe had a blue spiral logo, similar to the logo on earlier Sega systems. This change is thought to have been for copyright reasons: German company Tivola Publishing[1] had been using a similar swirl logo years before Sega branded Dreamcast with the orange swirl.

As well as the VGA mode to connect to a PC monitor (again using an adapter), the European Dreamcast supported PAL video, in both 50 Hz and 60 Hz modes. This was a first for game consoles, as no previous PAL console had offered the option to play games at full speed, using the ability of many PAL televisions to operate at 60 Hz. This feature was exploited in previous consoles but only by modifying the console with a chip to allow it to run NTSC games (e.g., Sony's PlayStation), or by adding switches to the internal circuitry to manually select between 50 Hz and 60 Hz (e.g., SEGA's Master System, Mega Drive or Saturn). Although the 60 Hz code had to be enabled on the disc, doing so was a simple matter, and only a small number of games lacked it. The 60 Hz feature has become standard on all major consoles released since.

Games in Europe were sold in jewel cases exactly twice as thick as their North American counterparts, possibly to enable the inclusion of thick instruction booklets containing instructions in multiple languages.

A third-party company from China named Treamcast released a portable modified Dreamcast which used the original first-party Dreamcast components with a custom made plastic casing. This small system with its fold-down display resembled the later PS One. Many companies included software and a remote with the unit that enabled it to play MP3s and Video CDs. When the Internet import video game store Lik Sang contacted Sega to ask permission to sell a modified version of the system with Sega trademarks on the system, they were told that Sega did not approve of the unit, and felt that it violated their trademarks. In reality, this system is no different from a Dreamcast pre-modified with a third party shell, as the system's internals still use first party hardware, and the only modifications are the outside casing and internal sound and video adjustments.

In 2005, the internet import store Lan-Kwei started selling a "Treamcast" portable modified Dreamcast with a 16:9 widescreen LCD. Aside from the cosmetic differences in the case to accommodate the larger screen, there are no differences between the original Treamcast and the newer widescreen model.

Technical specifications

Internal view of a Dreamcast console.

The mainboard of the Sega Dreamcast.

Processor

• SH-4 RISC CPU with 32-bit Instruction Set and 128-bit FPU functions (operating frequency: 200 MHz, 360 MIPS, 1.4 GFLOPS)

Graphics Engine

• PowerVR2

• CLX2, 7.0 Mil polygons/second peak performance, supports Trilinear filtering. Actual maximum in game performance (with full textures, lighting, gameplay, etc.) of over 5 Mil polygons/second.
• Tile Based Deferred Rendering eliminates overdraw by only drawing visible fragments. This makes required fillrate almost independent from scene depth complexity, thus making up for a low, compared to other 6th generation consoles, nominal fillrate of 100 MPixels/s as effective fillrate can be triple that amount.
• Graphics hardware effects include gouraud shading, z-buffering, anti-aliasing and bump mapping.

Memory

• Main RAM: 16 MB 64 Bit 100 MHz
• Video RAM: 8 MB 4x16 Bit 100 MHz
• Sound RAM: 2 MB 16 Bit 66 MHz
• VQ Texture Compression (5:1 texture compression)

Sound Engine

• Yamaha AICA Sound Processor: 22.5 MHz 32-Bit ARM7 RISC CPU: 45 MHz, 64 channel PCM/ADPCM sampler (4:1 compression), XG MIDI support, 128 step DSP

Storage

• Yamaha GD-ROM Drive: 12x maximum speed (Constant Angular Velocity)
• GD-ROM: Holds up to 1.2 GB
• Visual Memory Unit ("VMU") 1 Mbit (128 KB) removable storage device and 4x memory cards that hold four times as much data.

Input/Output

• Inputs: USB-like "Maple Bus". Four ports support devices such as digital and analog controllers, steering wheels, joysticks, keyboards, mice, and more.
• Color Output: Approx. 16.78 million colors (24-bit)
• Video resolution: 640x480 interlaced or progressive scan

Dimensions

• 189 mm × 195 mm × 76 mm (7 7/16in × 7 11/16in × 3in)
• Weight: 1.9 kg (4.2 lb)
• Color: Majority are white.

• Japan: Various limited edition designs and colored consoles were produced
• North America: Only a black "Sega Sports"-labeled model and a blue model from Electronics Boutique were officially available
• PAL: No known alternate designs or colors

Networking

A black 56k Dreamcast modem.

• Modem: Removable; speed varied among regions:

• Original Asia/Japan model had a 33.6 kbit/s; consoles sold after September 9, 1999 had a 56 kbit/s modem
• All American models had a 56 kbit/s
• All PAL models had a 33.6 kbit/s

• Broadband: these adapters are available separately and replace the removable modem

• HIT-401 "Broadband Adapter", the more common model, this used a Realtek 8139 chip and supported 10 and 100 Mbit speeds, this device was released in Japan.
• HIT-400: "Broadband Adapter", the more common model, this used a Realtek 8139 chip and supported 10 and 100 Mbit speeds, this device was released in US.
• HIT-300: "Lan Adapter", this version used a Fujitsu MB86967 chip and supported only 10 Mbit speed.