What does a dreamcast game look like?

gyozaleaf

I need to think about this! Maybe play some Dreamcast games while I am at it!

The questions “how do you identify a Dreamcast game” and “what defines the look of a Dreamcast game” are quite different when you come down to it, and I think probably you are more interested in getting at the aesthetic mood (created, as it often is with video games, by technical constraints)!

exodus

Yeah, I’m more talking about the look - for example if I say nes or genesis graphics, you have a good idea what I mean. If I say Xbox 360 graphics I’m sure stuff comes to mind. But dreamcast exists in such a small space that, while I get the feeling from looking at certain stuff, defining it is difficult!

gyozaleaf

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think that’s exactly when games started to become somewhat indistinguishable, and it was sort of a happy accident that for the PS2 and to a lesser extent PS3, Sony kept making bizarre hardware that actually helped keep on defining a look!

exodus

Check out how dreamcast this game looks! ミステリ－や

captain

exodus This looks and also sounds hugely Dreamcast-y. Those chunky, high-energy piano chords are not a musical flavor you hear a lot of in games these days. (Or maybe it’s just a Sega thing… it does show up in Outrun 2.)

gyozaleaf

Yeah boy howdy does that look like a Dreamcast game.

Speaking of Dreamcast games I once owned, hoped I’d like but didn’t, and sure do look like Dreamcast games… Napple Tale:

docky

gyozaleaf Napple Tale was the first non-Sega game I thought of with a Dreamcast aesthetic.

gyozaleaf

I think on reflection part of what makes a Dreamcast game look like a Dreamcast game might be in the textures. Like, naive texture mapping techniques: we’re not really sure how this all works together yet.

exodus

Yeah, I mentioned at the top of the thread something like “textures/texture detail over polygons,” whereas Ps2 was the opposite. And it makes a lot of sense in terms of Sega as a company, whose console staff would have been very 2D focused after the Saturn, and with the contemporary arcade boards they had, which had lots of texture memory. Kind of tough to place one’s finger on that though, and the Ps2 did soooort of catch up through clever techniques??

gyozaleaf

I think the PS2 caught up in terms of innovative art direction that played to the system’s strengths while mitigating its weaknesses.

In fact, I think not only does it have amazing games but they suffer visually when ported to platforms that don’t share the issues the system has! But that’s another topic.

gyozaleaf

When I thought about this topic again, Time Stalkers/Climax Landers came to mind. It does look very Dreamcasty. I haven’t played it since shortly after it came out but I remember it fondly.

fortninety

Here’s another “this looks like the quintessential Dreamcast game” to add to the pile, especially when one compares it to the arcade original: Daytona USA 2001

meric_meektrick

This thread has made me realize that while i had always considered the dreamcast the start of the ps2/xbox/gamecube era, it is maybe better thought of as the swan song of the ps/saturn/n64 period.

◉◉maru

meric_meektrick This thread has made me realize that while i had always considered the dreamcast the start of the ps2/xbox/gamecube era, it is maybe better thought of as the swan song of the ps/saturn/n64 period.

I am not even sure whether I am bringing up a good argument, but I believe many more Dreamcast games where ported to the PS2/Xbox/GC generation than PS1/N64/SS games being ported to the Dreamcast.

Also, well, the SegaSaturn existed. Then again, I have always advocated that the Saturn itself makes more sense if you consider it the swan song of the MD/SFC/PCE/Neo Geo generation, so… You might have a point?

The truth is that Dreamcast conveniently sits in between both generations, and the late surge and long life of the PS1 certainly hurt the Dreamcast as much as the PS2 nailed the coffin, but I’d still nudge its hardware, library and even overall design philosophy towards the PS2 era.

meric_meektrick

(I hope this isn’t considered a knock, i quite missed my dreamcast when it was stolen) the textures are hi res but not that large so you still have a lot of repetition, there’s a gnarled tessallation throughout. Normal mapping isn’t a thing yet so while they’re sharp enough to look like photographs they just look cut out and pasted on, there’s a kind of 3 dimensional pastiche to everything. Figures mostly stick to solid colors so the lighting is all ombre gouraud gradience. Its everything of that era just sharper and clearer and more intense, which is where the “blue blue skies” stuff comes in, i think. there’s no fancy lighting on the maps themselves to diffuse and dampen everything, just primary colors.

sorry i’m not being very succinct here.

gyozaleaf

◉◉maru The truth is that Dreamcast conveniently sits in between both generations

Yeah, this is the point. I think “generational” thinking has its limitations. The fact of the matter is that while the industry DID think this way, individual decisions made when designing hardware were also made by companies facing a lot of pressures either technological or commercial, and things don’t slot neatly into place, most notably at that era:

What generation are the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO?
The CD-ROM was the defining medium of the generation, but then look at the N64…
The Dreamcast shipped in late ’98 in JP and the PS2 shipped in early ’00. That’s quite a time lag.
The Saturn had a second Hitachi processor added late in development because word came down that the PS1 would excel at 3D.

Etc, etc…

exodus

At the same time I do feel like the Dreamcast was a huge graphical leap when it came out. I think that was felt by anyone who was playing games at the time. For me the jump between PS1 and Dreamcast was almost bigger than Genesis to PS1, because there was so much in between. The Sega CD had a bunch of pseudo 3D stuff. The Jaguar came out and also sort of bridged that gap between 2D and rudimentary 3D, then the 3DO was verging on actual decent-looking games. The Saturn itself eased into 3D, and while the PS1 was impressive when it came out (toshinden!) by that time we’d already seen a lot of the steps along the way.

So for me the jump even from N64 to Dreamcast was much larger, because there weren’t any console steps in between. Arcade and PC, yes, but not on console. It could be just my console focus, but this whole first stage of Sonic Adventure was just like….. whoa… we’re in a new generation now!

So I’d put it closer to PS2 than to Saturn because of that feeling of there being a leap. I don’t feel much of a graphical gap between Dreamcast and PS2 - there is one obviously, but it’s nowhere near PS1/Saturn/N64->Dreamcast.

gyozaleaf

Oh, no doubt. I played Sonic Adventure shortly after finishing Ocarina of Time (those games came out roughly simultaneously, if you go by the Japanese release dates, and I had a Japanese Dreamcast) and it felt like a tremendous leap. I think it’s both easy to forget (for those of us who were there) and hard to understand (for those of us who were not) what a huge leap simply operating at 640×480 on an SDTV felt like. Some games for the PS/SS did, of course, but the jump in resolution to pretty much everything along with the vastly increased texture memory and polygon budget really felt like a big deal. I remember when I first played Soul Calibur, as well, and it was just unreal how it instantly was without a doubt in my mind the best looking video game that had yet been released on a console by a wide margin. That day is seared into my memory.

exodus

yeah, I actually forgot about the resolution shift, it was a big deal! also, whether these animations were canned or not, the physics of the bouncing bridge and the breaking apart of the pier in that orca sequence were just like… some real next level stuff.

[edit] another thing I’m struck by when looking at this daytona video - arcades were definitely failing at the time of the dreamcast’s release, but those of us who had seen the prior generations still had the idea that arcade games were better looking than home console or even PC games. this was basically true still when the dreamcast came out, and for a few years after. But the Dreamcast was the first console where you looked at it and went damn, that is the arcade game, right there. That’s just it, there’s no caveats or sacrifices, that’s the arcade game in my house.

Of course there were some smaller caveats and whatnot, but they were small enough that we couldn’t see them at the time. it felt really big!

gyozaleaf

Yeah, and if you take Soul Calibur as a very big “for instance”, it actually looked a lot BETTER than the arcade version, since that ran on PS1-derived hardware.

VF3’s arcade version looked better, mainly because the DC port was very rushed, but only barely, realistically.

In the US, if you cared enough to play arcade games, it was tough enough to find them (I played a fair bit of VF3 in a few different places, and I played Soul Edge, but I never saw a Soul Calibur unit IRL, I don’t think, not for lack of interest.)

But as far as playing arcade games AFTER the Dreamcast, I don’t really have many memories of doing that. Just a handful (I mean, in the arcade era – not counting things like cons or barcades or any such contemporary experiences.)

Fishie

gyozaleaf I owned a VF3 arcade machine, a beta one at that where a whiffed Aoi ground grab came with no penalty.
And yes the DC port was rushed, the first pics shown to press of VF3tb for Dreamcast were actually the cancelled Saturn version.

I think I am the only person outside of Sega of Japan to have actually seen VF3 running on Saturn.

exodus

In prep for the “scary games” episode I played The Ring on my dreamcast and I realized something about it that does feel different. The high res textures meant folks would often make rounded/organic shapes (with depth!) out of textures on flat surfaces, which has this look that feels like mid-90s CG, but realtime. Especially on a CRT!! I am not sure if I’m going to be able to share this the way you see it on a CRT, but look at this area:

Aside from the character and the item box, this looks MORE like Resident Evil static CG backgrounds than it does like a realtime PS2 game… to me!? These textures feel like weird smoothed photographs more than game assets. Look for example at the “Schedule” board there. that looks like some high poly work right there, but it is of course a completely flat texture with fake shadows baked in that only looks so effective because you can’t get the camera close to it.

And yet… it somehow also kinda works in first person!?

The dreamcast remains a nazo of a puzzle of a mystery to me.

hellomrkearns

exodus not sure why but this made me think about Confidential Mission (possibly the suit?)

This one is a real dreamcasty looking game. Something about the arcade ports makes them even more dreamcasty.

« Previous Page Next Page »