By John Flickinger
Staff Writer, Coffee Fiend

Innovative games tend to come in two varieties: hardware based games like Trauma Center and Wii Bowling that use elements like touch screens and motion controls to do things that had previously never been done, and games that are just plain clever and different unlike most of what is available.

Indie games like Crayon Physics and World of Goo fall into this category. One of the things that defined the Sega Dreamcast was having a catalog that included a lot of those “clever and different” titles that were innovative, in many cases ahead of their time, and for some, just plain weird. In any case they were loads of fun, and very memorable. This year marks the Dreamcast’s 12-year anniversary, it seems like a good time to reflect on some of the more innovative titles available for the Dreamcast.

Before delving into games, let’s take a look at the system itself, especially for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t seen one. The Dreamcast was released on 9/9/99,  which was pretty cool, or at least about as cool as a release date can be anyway. It was the first major 128-bit console, which means that at the time it had graphics unlike anything we had ever seen and was capable of things that no current generation console could do, like connect to the internet. In the late 1990s all that was available for most people was dial-up, and the Dreamcast’s built in 56k modem allowed for online play and it wasn’t anywhere near as robust as services like XBox Live and Playstation Network, but many games could be played online.

The Dreamcast also had connectivity with the Neo Geo Pocket Color through a link cable. Most of the games that supported this were SNK games, and the features were very limited, but it was an interesting idea.

Finally there’s the Dreamcast’s memory card. The “Visual Memory Unit” or VMU,  plugged into the controller. It had an LCD screen which was viewable through the controller and displayed graphics, animations, and helpful info while you played. When the Dreamcast was off the VMU could be used for other things. It had a D-Pad and two buttons which could play games downloaded onto it from Dreamcast titles. VMUs could also connect to other VMUs to copy save files which was useful if you needed to save but didn’t have enough free blocks on the card you wanted to use. Some games even had little apps the VMU could run, for example Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 let you use in-game points to purchase characters which would be unlocked the next time you played.

All these features are great, but hardware means nothing without a great line up to play on it, so let’s take a look at some titles.

Jet Grind Radio / Jet Set Radio Future
This was a game where graffiti taggers on roller blades skated around a fictional Japanese town spraying their tags on walls over their rivals’ graphics while avoiding the police all set to the soundtrack of a pirate radio station. Saying that it was “different” might be an understatement, but it was a lot of fun. It was one of the first cel-shaded games which gave it a very cartoony feel, and the only thing that came close to it’s gameplay style was it’s sequel Jet Set Radio Future. There were many playable characters and you had to prove your worth by doing some fancy skating to win challenges to impress these potential allies in order for them to join you and become playable. The rival gangs weren’t violent street gangs, but rather cartoony caricatures. The police used rubber bullets and tear gas, but were never out to kill, so it was pretty non-violent given the subject matter. Jet Grind Radio is without a doubt one of the most unique games released for the Dreamcast.

Shenmue
This was originally going to be a trilogy, but the third game was never released. When it came out it was one of the most detailed games ever made. Shenmue is a sandbox style RPG that takes place in 1980s Japan. You play the role of a teenager named Ryo who is on a mission to avenge his father’s death. Time passes, and days go on, but what you choose to do with those days is completely up to you. The weather changed with each day, and the game developers went out of their way to match the game’s weather with the actual forecast for that day in the 1980s. Day gradually turned into night and you could watch the whole transition take place which added to the realism.

On a given day Ryo could play with a kitten, talk to townspeople, play real emulated 1980s Sega arcade games, buy a soda, collect figurines, train to become a better fighter, or actually play detective and advance the plot. The fighting was very similar to Virtua Fighter, and whether you wanted to train or not was up to you. In fact whether you did anything or not was up to you, and the freedom was a fairly new experience given the lack of sandbox games at the time, let alone one where every detail was carefully created. You would reap the benefits or consequences of your actions and overall it was a very immersive experience.

Phantasy Star Online
PSO was a great departure from the rest of the Phantasy Star series, and it’s a lot of fun but quite honestly it’s bland by today’s standards, especially when compared to the newer games in the series. However being one of the first online RPGs for a console it’s pretty impressive. It has various classes and follows the standard hunter/gatherer “kill things to collect things so that you can kill more things” model which can be addictive albeit a little repetitive. It also had a single player campaign which consisted mostly of fetch quests and other tasks that have you going from point A to point B. In a nutshell this game is what the Phantasy Star Universe, and Phantasy Star Portable games were in their infancy.

Illbleed
This is a very different take on survival horror. You rely on your senses and use a set of goggles referred to as a “horror monitor” to find items and mark traps to disarm them. You need to take your time marking the traps so you don’t fall victim to them, and watch your adrenaline levels. As the name implies, you will bleed when you fail to avoid a trap, and the more you bleed the slower you can move. The items you collect are things like relaxation CDs to bring your adrenaline down, and health items to stop your bleeding. You also avoid enemies which is very common in survival horror games, but this is one of the few where the environments are just as scary as the enemies, if not scarier.

Crazy Taxi / Crazy Taxi 2
These were fairly popular arcade titles, and they have been re-released several times. For anyone unfamiliar with them, the Crazy Taxi games let you pick a cab driver, then pick up fares and drive them to their destination. By itself that may sound a little boring, but the faster you get them to their destinations the higher your fare will be, your taxi is completely indestructible, you can use speed boosts, “jump” high with hydraulics, and the city has things you can plow through with your taxi. Fueling the driving mayhem was a soundtrack with bands like The Offspring and Bad Religion that the re-releases don’t have, possibly due to licensing restrictions. There were also challenge modes and mini games to added to the replay value.

Typing of the Dead
One of the accessories the Dreamcast had was a keyboard which seemed like it was mainly used to aid communication in Phantasy Star Online. Typing of the Dead uses this keyboard, and the game is based off of the rail shooter House of the Dead 2. The difference is that instead of using a light gun to shoot at the zombies and other creatures that are trying to attack you, each enemy has a word over their head, and typing the word fires at them. Type correctly and you hit with every shot, but make a typo and you miss. Bosses have goofy words like “yummyumyuumyummyummy” or whole sentences full of puns and Sega references. This might be the only “M” rated typing tutor ever made.

Seaman
In 1998 Nintendo released Hey You Pikachu! a game where you use a microphone to interact with a Pikachu on the screen. Then a year later Seaman was released on the Dreamcast. You use a microphone to interact with a sea creature that has a creepy human face. Over time your creature evolves into something new. This really needs to be seen in order to be believed, but I must warn you, if you are inebriated in any way, please refrain from watching this video. It is the Japanese commercial, and it’s some serious nightmare fuel that cannot be unseen. Consider yourself warned.

ChuChu Rocket!
This was a puzzle game that didn’t use blocks, gems, crystals, interconnecting pieces, or any kind of pattern matching. Now there are loads of Flash puzzle games, tons of puzzle games for cell phones, and a massive casual games genre, which wasn’t the case in the 1990s. This game was about “ChuChus” or space mice, and as the name implies, you need to get the ChuChus to a rocket by placing arrow tiles down. You set your tiles then the ChuChus march in a line. When they hit a wall they turn right, when they hit an arrow they turn in the direction of the arrow, when they hit KapuKapus (space cats) or pits they die, and when they hit a rocket they win the stage. That’s about it, and it’s a very simplistic but enjoyable game. It also had an online mode and great multiplayer where a flood of ChuChus are released and up to 4 people place tiles down, with each player trying to lead the mice into their own rocket while preventing the other 3 players from doing so. There was a puzzle mode level editor, and Sega saved all of the levels that were uploaded online. Later on when ChuChu Rocket! was re-released for the Gameboy Advanced they included 2,500 user created levels. Talk about replay value.

The 2K Sports Games
EA didn’t support the Dreamcast with sports titles. That would have been a major blow for Sega had it not been for the first ever 2K games in the year 2000. Back then EA didn’t have exclusive rights to every sports license under the sun, and the 2K games would attempt to make a series of games that would directly compete with EA. The ambition was outrageous, but the fact that these games were actually able to hold up to franchises like Madden and NBA Live was very impressive. The graphics were more realistic due to the Dreamcast’s hardware, and the gameplay was solid. Some people would even go so far as to say that they surpassed their EA counterparts of the same year. They weren’t innovative in the sense that they were new types of games, but in a genre dominated by one company, they were certainly a breath of fresh air. One more thing worth noting was that these were some of the earliest sports games to be played online on a console thanks to the Dreamcast’s modem.

Space Channel 5
The rhythm genre was just starting to take off with games like Dance Dance Revolution, but this was before Frequency which also means that it was before Guitar Hero and Rock Band. There weren’t a lot of games being played with instruments, although the Dreamcast did have Samba de Amigo: a rhythm game played with a special set of maracas. Space Channel 5 was a different kind of rhythm game featuring Ulala, a space reporter who uses dance to mesmerize aliens, then shoots them in rythm. You mimic steps after you see them, and an example set would go something like “left, right, chu, chu, chu” where you hit the directions in rhythm, then “chu” shoots in time to zap the aliens. Ulala frees, and is accompanied by other characters including Space Michael who is based upon, and voiced by, Michael Jackson. It was another very unique Dreamcast title.

The Dreamcast was a great system, but unfortunately it didn’t last very long. The PS2, XBox, and Gamecube buried it in the marketplace. Nonetheless it had a lot of great games, far more than I could ever list here. That isn’t to say that it didn’t have shovelware titles, but the games that Sega published along with third party games like SoulCalibur and Street Fighter III were classics. Most of these games still hold up since the graphics are comparable to the Wii, and believe it or not you can still buy brand new VMUs on ebay. Really, if you love video games, do yourself a favor and hit ebay to pick up a Dreamcast if you don’t already own one. The games and accessories are fairly cheap, and there’s something for everybody. Just about everything listed here are family friendly without feeling like “kiddie” games. Despite the “M” rating, even Typing of the Dead and Illbleed are and closer to modern “T” rated games given the new level of realism that modern games have. It’s exciting when a new generation of consoles comes out because of the potential for new and innovative titles. Most of the time there are a few competing systems that each have unique titles on them, but for at least a little while the Dreamcast was the only system of it’s generation, and instead of just making sequels of successful Saturn games they came out with these incredibly unique games which is pretty amazing if you think about it.

Front page image from uni.edu. Image 1 from world-of-games.co.uk