Sega Dreamcast

The Dreamcast was the first entry in the sixth generation of video game consoles and was released in late 1998, before its contemporaries — Sony’s PlayStation 2, Microsoft’s Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube. Sega discontinued the Dreamcast in North America in March 2001 and withdrew entirely from the console hardware business, making it the company’s final console. However, support of the system continued in Europe and Oceania until the end of 2002, as well as in Japan, where consoles were still sold until 2006 and new licensed games continued to be released. According to Bernie Stolar, former President and CEO of Sega of America, the Dreamcast was discontinued because the new chairman of Sega wanted the company to focus on software.

The Sega Dreamcast was way ahead of it’s time. It was released before the Playstation 2 and Xbox and yet was the first to go online. Dreamcast had a built in modem, an internet browser, and online gameplay; the first to do any of these. There were even mouses and keyboards available for the internet browsing. Sega also did something noone else had done before or since, make playable memory cards. Meaning that they sported a screen and a few buttons to support minigames, some of which would tranfer over to the main game. My most memorable is raising babies for Sonic Adventure.