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Please check the other forums in the Dreamcast section before posting here to see if your topic would fit better in those categories. Example: A new game/homebrew release would go in the New Releases/Homebrew/Emulation section: http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5 or if you're having an issue with getting your Dreamcast to work or a game to boot it would go in the Support section: http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=42
this is a place to suggest and talk about your all time favorite Dreamcast games whether they're super common and most people know about them, or obscure games that not too many people know of. ill start off with my 2 favorite games on the Dreamcast:
Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 its a super fun, well, im not even sure what you could call it, MMORPG, just RPG, Action/Adventure, or D. All of the Above? either way, its a super fun game! and as the name implies, it has online the community is kinda small, yeah, but if more people played it, then it wouldn't be so small, right? even so, the single player is still just as fun if you arent able to play online, but i bet most of you know all this stuff since a lot of people play this game, but i hope you people who have NEVER played it, are at least interested in it now, its really fun and cool!
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Oh man, this game its my all time favorite fighting game, super solid, lots of easy combos that arent hard to understand, and a good selection of characters. (for the time at least) it was based off the manga of the same name, and a port of the arcade game called "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future". it focuses on the series 3rd arc, Stardust Crusaders and has a single player mode, arcade mode, training, and a few others. its a really good fighting game for the system, and if id recommend any, it'd be this, and its made by Capcom, so you KNOW its gonna be good.
well, those are my 2 favorite games, and why i like them. feel free to share yours down below, id love to hear about them!
I'm gonna get out of the way the obvious; Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Shenmue, Shenmue II, Phantasy Star Online, Jet Set Radio. These are all highlight titles that really make the DC memorable, but they are also titles everyone is aware of or owns. So I'll try to include a few oddities instead that are worth a good go.
Dynamite Cop/Dynamite Deka 2 Sure it's super cheesy and not the longest game in the world. But grab a mate and this is a hilarious time. Anyone familiar with Die Hard Arcade on the Saturn (Or Arcade "Sega Titan ST-V" system) knows what to expect here. Great stuff.
WWF Royal Rumble Again, for it's multiplayer value. Extra bonus hilarity if you play a 4 player on the Royal Rumble mode (Up to 8 wrestlers in the ring at a time) with the Widescreen 16:9 Codebreaker code turned on. It starts out fine, but the game loses track of where wrestlers are meant to be placed and they start morphing and glitching like mad! I'll leave a video link to my video showing this; https://youtu.be/WBictFiFonk
Re-Volt This was an excellent and underrated game with some amazing tracks and the ability to build your own. This meant you could build some evil race courses and play 4-way multiplayers to offend your mates. Great stuff.
Metropolis Street Racer The only downside I have to this game, and it's completely attributed to my lack of skill at it, is that it's VERY tough. I've still yet to complete the first set of races in single player. Insane. However this is the first ever title to include photo-realistic and mapped cityscapes to race around in. Race circuits had been mapped for title before, but not the cities of London, Tokyo and San Francisco (Unsurprisingly, the cities SEGA Japan, Sega America and Sega Europe all resided in). The team that made this went on to make the excellent Project Gotham Racing series - in fact MSR is the originator of many staples of modern racing games. It introduced the Kudos system. Prior to this, the only element of racing was finishing first. Now style, control and damage all attributed to your overall victory. This would continue under the same name in the PGR series. In fact, it could be argued "PGR" was 5 games long, despite ending at PGR 4, due to this predecessor. First game with an in-built radio system for music too, albeit all pre-recorded radio DJs. Music rocks too, it's all by Richard Jacques.
Soul Calibur The definitive version of this game is a DC exclusive. Yes it's been re-released on Xbox 360 (And likely can be played on Xbox One by now) as a downloadable title, and the graphics there will be a little cleaner. However the DC version still outputs a slick 480p at 60fps via VGA, and upscaled that's pretty darn good. But this version is the definitive version not because of graphics (which were exceptional for the time) but because of the story mode added exclusively to it. The X360 rerelease was an arcade port so missed this crucial feature. In it, you travel across a vast map on your quest to find the Soul Edge. You play as multiple characters across multiple challenges, with special event conditions etc, earning money to unlock special features. Basically, the Dreamcast version includes everything in the X360 arcade port and adds to it. I was so disappointed that Namco didn't transfer this version, but I guess that keeps the DC version special.
Sonic Shuffle The last remaining Sonic exclusive on the system, Shuffle was SEGA's attempt to take on the Mario Party series head-on. It certainly looked nicer, employing the cel-shaded graphics that were first realised in Jet Set Radio. It also replaced the dice-roll with a card mechanic, requiring a VMU in the front slot of the controller to see what moves you actually had available. What was interesting is you could pick one of your numbered cards, or if you didn't have the number you wanted you could steal someone else's card instead, but you'd have to choose without knowing what they had, meaning you basically took a chance at picking the right card from your opponents. This made 4-way multiplayers more treacherous and fun. The mini-games were generally excellent too, with only a few fluffers. The ones of random chance or 3vs1/1vs3 tended to last the best once you were used to the game. In fact the mini-games were often more fun to return to than the levels themselves. Which leads me to the few downsides Shuffle has. The boards are quite dull and not coherent with the Sonic universe, which is a big shame. The other is the loading times. To be fair, I never had an issue with the loading times, they aren't THAT long, but it seems to be a bone of contention for many so I may as well mention it.
Power Stone 2 Capcom's Power Stone is a great game in it's own right, and as a 1vs1 game it's actually a bit better than Power Stone 2. However Power Stone 2 wrecked the 4-way multiplayer in a way that even rivalled Smash Bros. Both still practically DC exclusives, I'd recommend both but Power Stone 2 is definitely my favourite of the two, with it's constantly changing playing fields adding more suspense to every match. I actually don't have a copy of this anymore, and desperately want to grab a new copy - however I hear there are differences between the regions. The JP copy runs 60hz but has lots more glitches and issues. The US copy runs 60hz but demands a high price. The PAL copy may run 60hz (reports conflict) but is about the same price as the JP copy. Choose wisely. Definitely get the US copy if you can find it cheap.
Evolution Last one for today, but Evolution was a great RPG. Had great memories of this game, which I again don't own anymore (When I left the family home in 2010, my brother kept most of the DC games and I had to rebuild my library). This game has charm, great battle mechanics and a large explorable world with a great story. The only thing is you sometimes get annoyed with how frequently you run into random battles, but it's a small irritation overall. There is Evolution 2 on the Dreamcast, but I've not yet had a chance to play it.
Hope those are a few interesting choices for some people anyway A few games I played and loved demos of but haven't owned the full game; Super Runabout Street Fighter Alpha 3/Street Fighter Zero 3 (In Japan) Slave Zero Rayman 2 Speed Devils Online (Especially when it's back online!) Tokyo Highway Challenge 2/Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2
MY top 2, Capcom vs SNK 2 - simply one of the finest, funnest and most balanced 2D fighters there are.
Crazy Taxi - My favourite Dreamcast title to play in quick spurts, almost 20 years on and its still fun trying to beat your high score and go through the mini games.
Absolute favorite is definitely Mars Matrix: Hyper Solid Shooting. It's really quite amazing how simple and yet deep this game is to play for score, and it's just about the only game that I really enjoy playing for score beyond just scratching the surface. I also keep coming back to it more than any other game. I recently recorded a 1.84 trillion point run of it: https://goo.gl/jzZrfV
The basics of how scoring works is that you collect gold cubes to increase a multiplier that is applied to all of the points that you get in the game (from killing enemies, bosses, time bonuses, hits on enemies and bosses, etc). If you can keep the length of time between cubes that you collect short, the value of each new cube is added to the value of each cube you get (probably not the best explanation of that, but if you watch the video it should be pretty easy to understand).
Though these days I pretty much exclusively play STGs, there are a few games that I have especially fond memories of from the past.
Power Stone & Power Stone 2: played a ton of this as a preteen with my friends. Seriously fun multiplayer.
Grandia II: I suppose that if I had been more experienced with RPGs, the plot wouldn't have seemed quite so original to me, but this game had a huge impact on me, also as a preteen, and was probably my favorite game at the time. The battle system was also undeniably really interesting and fun, I only wish the difficulty had been a little higher to make it more necessary to take advantage of how tactical and complex it was. I played through this game 2 or 3 times in its entirety I think.
Jet Grind Radio: My bro had actually unlocked what seemed like everything before I started playing this game, but I had a ton of fun exploring the detailed cityscapes, trying to find secrets, spraying graffiti, listening to funky music. The characters, soundtrack, and graphics were also just really cool in this game, for lack of a better word.
@roareye: interesting to choose Evolution of all the RPGs on the DC. I remember it being fun, but never actually finished it, unlike Grandia II and Skies of Arcadia. I'll bet it was better than I realized at the time.
One of the best RPGs I've ever played is Skies of Arcadia, and it's all thanks to the Dreamcast. Excellent gameplay, a wonderful cast of characters and so much to do makes this a RPG that'll keep you occupied and one that you can't put down.
Looney Tunes Space Race and Jet Grind Radio are still incredibly fun and graphically still hold up in this day and age.
And of course, Dead Or Alive 2: Limited Edition is one of my favorite fighting games- its fast pace, hundreds of moves and interactive backgrounds provide a lot of replayability. I love it so much that I modded it with new costumes, new dialogue, new music, rearranged stages etc. So I guess you could say Dead Or Alive 2: Final Edition is now one of my favorite fighting games and is preferred over Limited Edition.
mistamontiel wrote:Green Ranger!! I remember! So, what did limited offer over the base game? Like two chars?
Over the base game, Limited Edition has-
1) Two new characters 2) Two new stages 3) Four extra modes: Sparring Mode for Tag Battle, Watch Mode, the User Profile System and an Online Mode 4) More costumes to unlock 5) CG Gallery with character renders 6) New cut-scene animations
There are more differences, but those mentioned above immediately come to mind.
Shenmue/II (I consider it one game) is tops for me. It's my all-time favorite game, not just Dreamcast game. I can't wait to play it on PS4 later this year.
