Wow. I’m on Reddit?

Yeah. Even though I never thought this blog would be noticed, it somehow hit Reddit. Well, the “interwebz” are kind of a small place. The article in question is “10 fun facts about the Dreamcast for new and casual gamers”. The bad thing, the article turned out to have many inaccuracies. The good thing, some interesting stuff was said at the comments from really descent readers.

So, Those guys deserve a blog post.

So, The first thing I got wrong was the Pocket Station fact. Yeah, the Poket Station was Sony’s “me too” answer to VMU. Checking back my old pile of shitty translated PlayStation Magazine, the rumor and the “news” about the PlayStation Pocket started by the end of 1997. In the PlayStation Power GR it was featured in almost every issue until it’s launch and the realization that hyping it in the West was a waste of pages. Hence, I mixed that up. I tried not to look at Wikipedia but that’s not a good thing to do.

Another thing that I wanted to focus on is that the VMU was standard as a memory card and was supported by many-many games.

The second thing mentioned, about he double standard about the camera and the Pocket Station, is that the camera was a bit more of merging two technologies that by the time, they looked worlds apart. That’s why  left the bitter stuff out. Still bitter if you ask me. I really wanted that camera.

The second thing mentioned is “touting the motion controls”. Okay I know about the Power Glove, the Activator and such, but how many games used those peripherals were servicable and how many games actually benefitted from motion controls? The Samba De Amigo maracas and Rapala Fishing Rods appeared when those technologies were almost perfected and the programmers were mature enough to manage this input method. Thus, the motion controls of the Dreamcast were actually fun to use and the games responded to them properly.

The third thing is the fact that the GD-Roms COULD be compatible depending the drive. Yes, that’s true because besides the format, the data were in their own strange format. But some games did have some awesome bits and bites hidden for the brave who slew them into a computer drive. This is not the first console to do that though. NiGHTS into Dreams offered some neat wallpapers in the disk.

The forth thing, about the Dreamcast being a pinnacle for the Xbox, it’s not my claim guys. This article in Kotaku kind of clarifies some intentions of the original Xbox playing Dreamcast games. Also, there’s this article.

Now let’s go to the big one

About console MMO’s. Yes I’m aware there are a plethora of them and I might forgot some words on that phrase. Yes, Phantasy Star Online was a console MMO but probably the only that did it right. My further experiences with later attempts to MMO on a console resulted in a bitter “don’t mix those two things” feeling. Like it or not, the MMO is a PC thing and a console might not be so good to implement it. BUT, Phantasy Star Online was different. It was a blast to play and it was made having in mind that it was running off of consoles. So, my apologies. Wrong choice of words or, better yet, wrong choice of leaving out words. 

Thanks for reading my article guys. I apologise and I promise from now on to be more accurate, careful and more enjoyable writer.