Consoles: The Dreamcast's Life After Death

Gaming consoles are pioneering machines. The Dreamcast pushed the limits of what even consoles could do. But that wasn’t enough to guarantee commercial success. Despite that failure, fans say no other console has accomplished so much. 

 The Dreamcast was meant to restore Sega to its glory days. After the disappointing Saturn, Sega pitted two teams against each other to build a new console. Andrew Borman describes the Dreamcast as a generational leap in hardware. Jeremy Parish explains how big a departure its production was from Sega’s usual processes. Mineko Okamura provides an insider’s insight on developing the Dreamcast. Brian Bacino recounts the console’s massive U.S. launch. But despite record U.S. sales, Sega had to pull the plug on the Dreamcast. Too good to let die, homebrewers like Luke Benstead plugged it back in.

  If you want to read up on some of our research on the Dreamcast, you can check out all our bonus material over at redhat.com/commandlineheroes. You’ll find extra content for every episode.  

 Slight correction: While the Dreamcast did have a keyboard and mouse available, it did not have a full keyboard controller. 

  Follow along with the episode transcript.