Dreamcast Marathon: Final Update

Thank you, Power Stone 2. In the darkest moments of this ordeal, you infused me with a brand new enthusiasm that just didn’t seem to fade. As soon as I finished the last update, I got started on a new game of Shenmue. It’s three hours later, I’m wide awake and raring for even more. Well, maybe not more, but I’m definitely feeling satisfied.

Shenmue feels like the perfect game to use to end this crazy day. To me, Shenmue represented the pinnacle of the Dreamcast and the daring decisions that Sega made in its hardware days. Playing it again reveals some pretty dated problems (namely the realistically “bustling” towns that now pale in comparison to modern sandbox titles), but I still find myself so sucked into this fully realized alternate reality. It was a ballsy, ballsy move that deserves all the recognition it gets.

So, there you have it. Twenty four hours of Dreamcast gaming (really 20 for me, if you subtract the hours I was at work in the middle). To anyone who has been reading John and my ramblings for the past several hours, I really appreciate you seeing it through with us.  I also want to thank John for covering for me while I was at work, and for giving me some company on another one of these masochistic things we insist on calling “marathons.” I’m glad you dozed off during Grandia II as well.  It’s not that the game is bad (quite the contrary). I think we both just learned that playing the openings of epic RPGs is probably a bad idea on 0 hours of sleep.

 

Here’s a full list of all the games we played:

The Dreamcast Pack-In Demo

Charge N’ Blast

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

Crazy Taxi

Sonic Adventure

Space Channel 5 (twice!)

Ikaruga

Jet Set Radio

Chu Chu Rocket

Cannon Spike

The Typing of the Dead

Seaman

Power Stone

Grandia II (WE BOTH FELL ASLEEP)

Sega Bass Fishing

Soul Calibur (with the Sega Bass Fishing Rod)

Blue Stinger

Carrier

Sonic Adventure 2

Resident Evil Code: Veronica

Ecco The Dolphin

Power Stone 2

Shenmue

 

Holy crap.  I’m going to bed.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DREAMCAST!

Readers Comments (4)

  1. great job josh!!

  2. It’s a shame that you didn’t fit any Illbleed game play in there, but still, great job on the feature. I do feel that most games that were originally designed with Dreamcast in mind have aged very well in comparison to most 3D games on consoles released prior to Dreamcast. Sure, they could certainly do with some tweaks, but I’m sure the same could be said of all great games.

  3. @ninjajosh
    Thank you very much, sir. It was a bit more of a challenge this time, partially due to poor planning on my part, but I’m glad I was able to stay for the whole excursion

    @kevinski
    Yeah, there’s a handful of really great games that I wanted to get to, but just didn’t have the time. Illbleed, MDK 2, Virtua Tennis, Sword of the Berserk and Toy Commander all come to mind immediately. It’s weird when I compare this one to the Sonic marathon. Since most Sonic games are pretty conducive to quick playthroughs, a marathon fit nicely. With most of the Dreamcast games, I wanted to play for two hours or more, which hurt the ending roster of games played.

  4. Yeah, it’s very easy to get completely sucked into certain Dreamcast games. Shenmue was pretty much the first and only game that I literally played for eight hours straight (without breaks). I decided that I wanted to play a bit before going to bed. That was at around 11 p.m. The next time I looked at the clock, it was around 7 a.m.

    By the way, even though it’s a cool game, Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage was probably best left unplayed in this feature. For starters, the game is very, very short if you don’t watch the cinematics. Furthermore, unless you’re playing on Easy, it’s likely that you’d hit a brick wall once you got to Zod (most difficult boss in video game history, in my opinion), so I doubt that playing this game would’ve left a good impression on you. Not to mention how frustrating it can be not being able to use your sword in many areas…

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