Page Location: Home > Past Online Games > Topic
josh221
rank 3
Posted:
Thu Aug 18, 2005 7:29 pm
quote : #1
profile : pm
Posts: 10
How big the online DC thing was?

When I think about it, I just can't see it being big, but then again, I'm posting on a website about bringing it back to life.

What was the most popular game (aside from PSO)?

What was some of your favorite memories?

What was your favorite online game?

I had DC back then, but no internet, but there is always alittle piece inside me that makes me read the manuals to these once online games and make me wish I could go back in time.
 
lordnikon
rank 87
Posted:
Thu Aug 18, 2005 8:27 pm
quote : #2
profile : pm
Posts: 5902
Type: NTSC-U/C
(hehe no idea why i decided to write this much but I felt like putting my experience into perspective)

Some other people here will be able to give you some more accurate numbers on the player counts when the Dreamcast was at its peak. I wish I could, it might seem wierd since I started and run this website, but I didn't get online with my Dreamcast for the first time until January of 2003. I remember talking to my mom or something at one point saying how you could surf the internet with the Dreamcast way back when I first came out. However I went off to school, had a Pentium 166mhz, and my Nintendo 64 which I brought along with me. I was hardcore into video games up until I turned 17. During the 16-bit era all me and my brother did was playing Genesis and SNES like madmen. Then I got into Djing and music, and in late highschool and through college gaming really escaped me. I had hardly any money, had gotten a girlfriend for 3 years, and was knee deep in college courses.

Then after 4 years of school and getting near the end of my rope with the girlfriend thing, I just freaked out. I left school with 3 courses still yet to be completed. Headed home, scored a job late that July in downtown chicago, and started to rediscover myself all over again. Having a girlfriend and the school experience was a good thing for me, but at the same time I felt I had lost who I was. (When I was younger I was always busy on some project, or working on some art or learning about technology. I was cooped up in my room 24/7).

So then once I paid some bills, and scored some cash, I went bananas, in 1 week I snatched up a bunch of consoles that had been out and I had been meaning to buy. At college all I had with me was my trusty N64. I just had no money to get anything else. On the weekends I got to play my brothers Dreamcast, PS2 and GameCube. So I wasn't completly out of the loop.

The funny thing was, during that entire time, none of Sega's marketing hit me at all. Zero. For 2 whole years my roomate had a DC. He would play NBA 2k1 (offline of course as our phone system there was all stupid where you have to enter a passcode for long distance charges). But honestly this is all I knew at the time. I just played some PC FPS's in my spare time, and would rock out some super monkey ball and gta3 on the weekends when I went home to visit. However in that entire time I didn't know that the Dreamcast had an online gaming network, or had any games playable online. I didn't even know the Dreamcast was an arcade gamers wildest Dream. All I knew was that it had stuff like Sonic, 2K sports games, and Jet Grind Radio. No information got through to me at all. It was like I was off on some secluded island or something.

The past 2 years have been awsome I would just like to say. Myself going back to how I was when I was younger. I feel like my old self again.

I really wish I could go back in time as well and get to play a lot of games that I never got to experience. Like Alien Front Online and Daytona USA.

I was fortunate enough to play most of the Dreamcast Online games.

The funny thing is you will find that most of the people currently involved with Dreamcast online are gamers that also were entirely new to this experience. It just goes to show you exactly how far ahead of their time sega was with the DC. I think a lot of it has to do with the internet just barely getting its wheels spinning heading into 2000. Another crazy thing is, Sega told everyone that at the end of 2002 they would be killing off support for all the online games. This means in early 2002 you have the online circuit slowly depleating. In 2003 everyone assumed the DC was already offline, and you can look up many posts on the net in Febuary of 2003 or so, of gamers saying "wow the dc is still online?"

I can tell you that when Sega started pulling game support in June of 2003, Speed Devils Online would have a peak player count of 60 players on average. Nobody could understand why that game was taken offline so promptly when it still had such a huge following.

Last edited by lordnikon on Sat Aug 20, 2005 2:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
  _________________
I'm already numero uno on Dark Helmet's hit list...
dwachill
rank 18
Posted:
Fri Aug 19, 2005 6:49 am
quote : #3
profile : pm
Posts: 345
I didnt start "really" into Dreamcast Online untill 2004, but i had played a few games back in 02. Dont really remember that well, but it seemed to be REALLY active. My guess is, its the equilivent of PS2 Online today.
  _________________
Sega Surge
Sega Surge Fourms
ultrapro
unknown
Posted:
Fri Aug 19, 2005 7:46 am
quote : #4
profile : pm
Posts: 1674
well i have no real excuse for missing out on the dreamcast online experience. i was a dreamcast nut from the moment sega saturn magazine broke the news back in 98. i waited and waited for it to come out for over a year and loved every minute of my time with it when it was new and the thing to own and it had high sales and was winning awards and the future looked sooo bright.

the only online game i really got into was pso. and i got into that really quickly. it was 2001 and the news had gone out that sega would no longer make the dc hardware. but pso was going really strong having come out the previous xmas or even early 01. anyway at its peak when i was online pso ver 1 would see close to a thousand players across the 3 regions and sometimes more than that so i am told. the busiest lobby i ever went to had nearly 40 people just standing there chatting while about 20 games were being hosted on that same lobby!! it was insane. i had never seen anything like it. wonderful, but insane.

other games i tried online i didnt enjoy that much, simply because either i was rubbish at them or people were cheating. but i digress. the games i did try were fairly busy. one of the busiest was speed devils online. i must say i regret not working harder at that game online but i kept loosing the connection and the actuall game itself wouldnt always work properly. i also tried quake 3 arena several times but couldnt get very far. i was, for lack of a better word, shit. and the connection problems i suffered were stopping me from even seening my oponents let alone killing them. so i didnt really get hooked by that either.

the only online dreamcast games i had for my region or any for that matter back in 2001 were, f355, pso, starlancer, speed devils online, q3a, pod 2, toy racer, chu chu rocket and a few others with ghost races. most of the time i didnt know how they worked and ended up back on pso for hours at a time. i got worms world party sometime in 2002 and assumed its online had gone.

unfortunately i only found out that i could import online games from other countries in late 2002/early 2003 and by then the games i was getting were not working. either i couldnt figure out how to access their online functions, or they just no longer worked. the first one i got was afo, which wouldnt work for me online, and ooga booga.

i had missed my opportunity because i had no idea how easy it was to aquire the games that the eu had been deprived of either totally or had simply lost the online functions. i only became aware of the fact that it was stupidly easy to import and play dc online games when i began using the internet to search for tips for capcom vs snk. it took me ages to find the answers i wanted from a forum called capcomsnk.com. it wasnt dreamcast based and so there was a lot of conflict and arguement going on whenever dc was mentioned. eventually i found a small dreamcast dedicated forum and was directed here where all my misconceptions about dreamcast online were washed away.

unfortunately i had found the knowledge too late and by the time i had discovered the wonders of ebay, amazon and buying video games from other regions, the games i wanted were all offline except for a select few i had never heard of.

i still dont know much about the more technical side of dreamcast online such as web browsers, server hosting, and all the other programming stuff and neat little things that the dreamcast can do and i probably never will. but at least i can still play possibly the one game i have played the most in my life online as well as about 7 other excellent titles.

at least now when i play these games i can enjoy them with other like minded people and not worry soo much about connection loss or abusive users or any other factors that stopped me from enjoying them before, when i was naive to the wonders of the internet and dreamcast worldwide.
  _________________
Catch me on XBOX LIVE as Ultrapro
nintendo_DS
rank 21
Posted:
Fri Aug 19, 2005 10:00 am
quote : #5
profile : pm
Posts: 422
Type: NTSC-U/C
I played it ONCE in my cousins house prolly around 2000 to 2001. I remember it because we were playing sonic adventure. I loved the dreamcast because it had these awesome controllers that had the memory card right in them. No more getting up to switch mem cards. But as I was a 10 year old kid at that time, I wasnt able to go out and buy a 200 dollar system. Anyways, I didnt really get into the dreamcast until late 2004 Laughing I saw at Eb games and was wondering if I could get one as it was only 20 bucks and the games like 5. I asked my Grandma for it and an imported PSO V2 that I learned I would need from this site.

I got it, as you could see from the thread i posted a while back. Now I have spend over 200 hours on PSO alone. At the peak times you can see about 70 people. I have spent prolly 20-30 hours on 4x4 Evo. The peak for that game is prolly 10 people, but they are all fun.

That is my experierience for dreamcast at it's peak in MY time. I just wish I could have all I do in 2000 that I do now.

Hearing about games like Planet Ring makes me pretty sad that I could not expeirience them.
  _________________
...look around and ask yourself if there's anyone better qualified...at that point in time. If...'yes,' ask them to accept command, and do everything you can... If...'no,' ...then take your best shot. That's all any of us can do.
helga
rank 3
Posted:
Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:08 pm
quote : #6
profile : pm
Posts: 13
I was online with my DC from day one, using it for the web. Which back then was the first time that I had used the internet.

I didn't really get into the online gaming side of things until F355 and PSO v1 came out. On F355 you could try and find an online game anytime day or night and you would always find full grids to race against.

For me (and the DC) PSO v1 was it real online peak I remember getting that game on it's release date, not really knowing what it would be like.

Little did I know that I would send over 2500 hours on it and over the first 1 year that I played it for an average 4 hours every day!!

At it's peak their were 40000 to 50000 people online at the same time. Sometime the Japanese ships had 20000 people online at the same time.

I consider myself lucky to have been part of it and still lucky to be playing games like F355, PSO and Starlancer online even today. Which I find amazing considering that the DC hasn't been on sale for over 2 years.
 
lordnikon
rank 87
Posted:
Sat Aug 20, 2005 2:17 pm
quote : #7
profile : pm
Posts: 5902
Type: NTSC-U/C
helga wrote:
At it's peak their were 40000 to 50000 people online at the same time. Sometime the Japanese ships had 20000 people online at the same time.

Actually thats not accurate at all. GC PSO got more populated than DC PSO and its numbers were up to about 6-8 thousand at its very peak hours. Dreamcast was at that or less.
  _________________
I'm already numero uno on Dark Helmet's hit list...
nintendo_DS
rank 21
Posted:
Sat Aug 20, 2005 2:57 pm
quote : #8
profile : pm
Posts: 422
Type: NTSC-U/C
maybe they accidently added an extra 0 at the end of the numbers...three times... Neutral
  _________________
...look around and ask yourself if there's anyone better qualified...at that point in time. If...'yes,' ask them to accept command, and do everything you can... If...'no,' ...then take your best shot. That's all any of us can do.
gRimGrAvY014
rank 27
Posted:
Sat Aug 20, 2005 3:24 pm
quote : #9
profile : pm
Posts: 551
Type: NTSC-U/C
It seems like alot of people got into the dc around 2004 one of them being me.I first got into it when I went over to a friends house in 2004 and he had a dc.At that time I had never even played a dc and was excited to play one.He had Soul Calibur and a few others but none were online.When I got home I went straight down to my stack of gamepros to look up any info I could about the dc and found plenty of info.But with me not having a computer at the time limited my resources to find out info about the dc.At the end of summer 2004 I finally picked up a dc for $12.50 with the game D2 but the pawn shop were I bought it couldn't find the rf adapter so thats why I got it for 12.50 Smile . When my family got a computer last christmas the first thing I looked up was "dreamcast" and found plenty results. One of them was "dreamcast- scene" and I spent a couple of days finding out that the dc was not a forgetten system there was still a big following behind it. In about april I found this site and learned that some dc games were still online. But to my dissapointment Unrealt Tournament was not one of them ( I think that was my first thread asking if ut was stil online). And this is basically where I am today slowing scraping some money up, buying a dreamcast game then doing it again trying to get more online game or just games to play on my good old dc.I don't think I'll be selling my dc anytime soon either Laughing
 
Stonefreeze
unknown
Posted:
Sat Aug 20, 2005 9:06 pm
quote : #10
profile : pm
Posts: 204
The whole online thing with the Dreamcast is one of the defining moments of the Sega Dreamcast. I purchased my first Dreamcast when I came out back in 1999. It was such a great investment, one that I still am thankful for (with the only sin being that I sold off my first Dreamcast, which in turn lead to be buying a system off eBay. Smile) Regardless, I played a lot of the Dreamcast games that were online.

The first game that I purchased that had online features was NFL2K1. I loved being able to play online with some of the friends I have to take on people. However, I feel the sports era kinda never tooked off since a lot of people played with the cheats in the game as welll as disconnecting a lot when they were losing.

NBA 2K1 I enjoyed online as well, playing the street aspect with my other two friends, but again, people would disconnect or leave a game. (I really wish there was a way that I could play NBA 2K2 and NFL2K2, since both games features stats about the user, as well as having lobbies.)
Quake 3 was awesome. I really enjoyed this game. I got killed a lot (I don't know if it's because of 1) playing on the controller instead of keyboard and mouse, 2) lack of commited playing time, or 3) I just sucked. Smile ) I believe this was a landmark title, because it showed that a great game could be played over the dial-up as well as that computer games could be done on the DC well. The only downfall with Quake is being able to play with 4 players, as compared to Unreal Tourney, which allowed 8.

PSO would be the first MMORPG that came onto a console, and gamers to this day play it over 3 systems, the DC, Gamecube, and XBox, and it's popularity lead to a translation to the PC. Phantasy Star Online, out of all the games, dominated my life, caused my mom to miss several phone calls, and made me want to experince more Dreamcast games. Phantasy Star Online greatest achievement over other online games was the ability to play for free, especially when considered that games on the PC had monthly charges. A note on PSO: Version One was free to play, while all other verisons outside of the PAL version required a fee. The popularity of PSO lead to Version 2, which had more features and modes to offer.

4x4 Evolution was pretty sweet. I liked playing this game, since a two people could race online from the same console (at least you could on the demo, I'm not sure of the official release. ) The physics were great for the time. If you like to explore and do the Dukes of Hazzard jumps, this game would be your fancy.

Daytona USA was a good game, but one that I feel could've been better. The steering was extremely sensitive, which lead to a lot of overturning and powersliding for no specified reason. Other online driver's car would fade in and out of the tracks, providing the transportion or ghost effect. I purchased this game when it first came out, so I don't know if Sega cleaned out the servers.

Surfing the internet was ok with the Dreamcast, but you had to have the mouse and keyboard for the best experience.

My last Dreamcast experience ended when I learned that Sega was no longer going to support the system. Than all the third parties pretty much gave up and cancelled a lot of games that were complete or near complete. All of the games that were online for the Dreamcast provided their own little slice of heaven. The games showed the games on a console could be done over a 56k modem. The online Dreamcast thing was pretty big, especially considering the Sega had a deal that they were basically giving away Dreamcast as long as you signed up for their internet service for a two year term. All in all, as most readers would agree, the games on the Dreamcast should all be made available to come back online, but that will never be the case. You have to enjoy the games that are still online.

So many questions for the ground breaking folks at Sega. Will never know, sadly, but for what it's worth, the DC has a great online community, great emulators, a vast classic of offline games, and a great videogame loyalist knwn as lordnikon that will keep this great site up for as long as their is a strong interest in the DC.

Long live the DC

Stonefreeze
 
Blast
rank 43
Posted:
Sun Aug 21, 2005 4:44 pm
quote : #11
profile : pm
Posts: 1285
Type: Pal
Enjoyed readin the above but way too much PSO as normal Sad

Heres a copy and paste from a previous thread I made entitled Magic moments.

What are your DC magic moments. Magic moments, if your in the UK you may remember the corny Quality street adverts with the Magic monets song lol. Anyway heres mine.

1: Connecting my DC online outa nothing more than curiosity. Id never been on the web before and I got a message saying the first call was free so I had a quick look round then went to pick up the Mrs from work leaving the DC connected. I wanted to show her the magical internet but of course it auto dc'd lol.

2: My first ever online game. Connecting to the internet made me realy curious about the whole DC online stuff so a while later I tried Chu Chu online. I never became hooked on this game like others did but it opened my eyes to online gaming and I wanted more. This musta been more than 4 years ago now and I remember still to this day my first ever online game was on chu chu against leeboy 3 and I lost 2-1

3: Dreamarena. Although curiosity had been set about online games I got hooked on Dreamarena, sega europes original online dc service. I originaly posted on the messaage boards in topics such as Feugans ( he ran psoquest but had dreamarena roots like me ) amazing facts. My own best topic was Mrmimes ( my original name ) bizare deaths and accidents board. I then got into chat where I made some amazing friends most of whom have now dissapeard but I met one that IM still in contact with.

4: Planet ring. I never played this but I watched my Mrs play it. Wow voice talk via a DC I was amazed. My Mrsd and another guy called Ratpack held the highest ever score on Dreamdorobo, it was unbeaten til the sever went down.

5: Watching my Mrs play SDO online on the servers first day up ( Pal ). We had the original game and my Mrs ( Thefreek ) didnt lose a game for ages with her extra track knowledge. Seeing everyone online all with desert 55's and no cheats was a classic day. I never got into this game online til later cus I couldent wrestle the dc off her lol.

6: Q3 online. I had this game on release day but didnt go online for a few weeks. Friends I knew from Dreamarena chat also had this game and I was actulay nervous about going online in case I showed my self up lol. Discoverd they were all as bad as me this was the first game I played in any depth online.

7: PSO V1. Enought has been said about pso over the years, I'll keep this short. First day online seeing all those people was mind blowing compared to all other dc games. Hundreds of hours of fun followed.

8: Bomberman online. MY fave DC online game of all time. I played this originaly with mates who over time left and then I made new mates and then new mates and then new mates cus I just played this game forever and a day. I was even on this game at 05.30am on the day I was married. I personaly am 99% certain that I played more BMO online for DC than any one else in the world, a bit sad but probably true. Im 99% certain of this because I was on nearly everyday and I saw who else was on and also spent 20-30-40-60 mins a day waiting for people to connect. I was also on from the beggining of the server to the very end.

9: PBA bowling. Wow a new DC game and now on Pal format too. An unreleased game online too good to be true, creating a whole new dc online chapter. Realy enjoyed my online time on this game before the server went. Glad I got to experience it.

OK well those are my DC magic moments. Yes ther are game I missed such as Ooga booga, wsb2k2, WWP and AFO but I was actulay trying to think of times where I experienced something new. I had fun on all the games but above is a list of unique moments in time for me with DC online. My MRS having the highest ever score on Dreamdorobo ( Part of the planet ring game ) and myself having the most ever hours of anyone on BMO ( IMO ) makes me feel I have a part of DC online history that is unique to me , either that or Im a sad case lol.

Anyway look forward to hearing yours.

Laters
  _________________
Now have a working PC DC server courtesy of Segadreamcaster. Bring on the DC on line games yeeee haaa.
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Display:   
 
View previous topic - View next topic
Page Location: Home > Past Online Games > Topic