03/19/00

I Am A Big Fat Hypocrite…

…And I don’t mean to usurp on the territory of the one and only Fat by saying that; it’s just a figure of speech. No, what I mean to say is that despite the fact that I have put forth some rather scathing criticism of Sega’s handling of the Dreamcast, opinions that I will stand by to this very day, I find myself in a very awkward position. You see, my friends, due to certain circumstances, I recently found myself in need of a Dreamcast. If not for the aforementioned special circumstances, which involve me spending some considerable amount of time in the world of survival horror, I would never have considered purchasing a Dreamcast. Even the fact that I was to be one of a small handful of people to be playing the finalized American version of Resident Evil: Code Veronica, it was with some amount of disgust that I plunked down 220 bucks for Sega’s newest console (and an S-Video cable) at my friendly neighborhood Best Buy. I grumbled about it to my wife and friends. I swore that I still hated the Dreamcast; I was buying one because my boss made me do it. Really.

Then I played Dead or Alive 2. And Power Stone. And Crazy Taxi. And damn you, Sega, I am once again your slave. For the past week, I have had an extremely hard time finishing my work on Front Mission 3 because I felt the cursed Dreamcast calling me from the other room. I answered the call, and still managed to finish both scenarios of FM3 within my deadline (with the help of many a late night of gaming). I haven’t even begun to play ChuChu Rocket yet, although I picked up a used copy days ago.

Sure, the Dreamcast controller may sucketh the big one if I try to play Marvel vs. Capcom with it, but then again, if I want to play pure Capcom fighting madness, I should probably just stick to my copy of Street Fighter Zero 3 for Saturn. The DC controller feels great and works fine with games like Power Stone, DoA2 and Crazy Taxi. And more importantly, they look incredible.

I am not a shallow gamer. Playability and fun always take precedent over eye candy in my book, but I have to admit that these DC games have best looking graphics I have ever seen. And they are darn fun to play as well.

So where do I stand on the Dreamcast now? Well, I am still upset that in order to play the awesome Capcom fighters still to come I’ll need to buy a couple of those Ascii 6-button pads. I still hate Sega’s ad campaigns to the bottom of my jaded professional gamers heart. I am still P.O.’d that Sega botched up the conversion of Virtua Fighter 3. But I have to admit that, with the right games, the system is, as of right now, absolutely unbeatable and incredibly cool.

But excuse me please; I have to go play some more Crazy Taxi now.

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