Sega Dreamcast

What it is: Dreamcast was Sega’s home console swan song, launched September 9, 1999 in United States for around $200, games such as NFL 2k forced people to do a double take to see if it was actually a game or a broadcast they were watching, and introduced incredible games such as the fully 3D Resident Evil Code: Veronica, Sonic Adventure, the highly addictive and one of the highest regarded fighters of all time, Soul Calibur, and was a culmination of some incredibly niche games and genre reinventing and inventing from Sega. This was Sega in their stride. After a strong launch, sales of the system quickly waned and the threat of the impending DVD-enabled PS2 didn’t help them out either. Since Dreamcast, Sega has merged with gaming company Sammy and is mostly just a shell of its former self.

How It Was Influential: The Dreamcast offered several advancements that were just a little to early for prime time. Most significantly was their service “Sega Net”. While we can’t imagine a world before Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, before the market for online was a novelty, not made any better by  incredibly high prices, slow adoption, and being a huge financial risk. Of course, Sega was all about risk. Games such as the Sega Sports NFL 2K series and Quake III Arena fully utilized the built-in 56k modem for online play.

While it can be argued either way if the Dreamcast controller design was great due to it’s unique design, it took the N64 trigger concept to a whole new ergonomically-comfortable level. The basis of the design was adopted by both Xbox consoles as well as PlayStation 3 years later.

The console introduced many technological innovations and helped get Microsoft’s foot in the door for developing consoles with the inclusion of Windows CE software inside the machine. Microsoft and Sega’s partnership was so closely tied, original early plans for the Xbox called for compatibility with Dreamcast games, a space for Dreamcast’s visual memory unit in the original “Duke” Xbox controller, explaining the giant space and two ports in the middle, and several exclusives to the Xbox originally intended for Dreamcast most notably for Shenmue II. Sega of America’s president, Peter Moore would eventually go to work for Microsoft and be key to launching the Xbox 360 and help give the system the mass appeal it enjoys today.

Phillips CD-i

What it is: The straight forward name of CD-i (literally meaning Compact Disc interactive) was designed with the intention of fully utilizing the format that Phillips co-created with future rival Sony Corp.  I remember when I was eight going to my friends house and being amazed by this strange device using discs, this being the first time I had ever seen a compact disc. Not only that it played video games! The only thing is the Zelda game wasn’t that great and you somehow died after moving half way across the screen and while the graphics were pretty slick it wasn’t fun. There were several versions of the CD-i produced and I just happened to be playing one that features a strange wireless remote control with a stick in the middle of it. It also probably didn’t help that the system typically went for $700-800, a $500+ premium over the typical prices for game systems at the time. In a nutshell, CD-i was a perfect example of how to not create a gaming system.

How It Was Influential: The compact disc format was a product of a partnership between Phillips and Sony back in the mid-80’s. Both had aspirations for creating some kind of platform for use on television sets, and Sony first approached Nintendo at the dawn of Super Nintendo in the early 90’s to create a CD add-on to compete against Sega CD dubbed Play Station. At the last minute, Phillips gave Nintendo a more attractive offer than Sony along with what was perceived as better technology. Ultimately, Nintendo decided to go with neither companies designs, but Sony took the knowledge they gained about the video game market and went on to create the highly successful PlayStation brand as we know it today, outselling all the competition for quite sometime and of course still going strong with PlayStation 3 today.

CD-i also helped put the final nail in the coffin of full-motion video games; an alternative to emerging 3D graphic technologies that was seen as being cheaper and as the future of gaming from several gaming companies, including notably Sega, and the novelty to of the technology quickly wore off when the quality of the video and the “pick and choose” nature of these games was revealed, as you were essentially just skipping chapters on a disc most of the time.

It is most importantly, the precursor of the “digital media hub” as we know it right now. While it was made poorly with several poorly developed titles to match the lackluster quality it was marketed to be a music and video CD watching machine, fun for the entire family including have “edutainment” titles, as well as their previous deal with Nintendo allowing them to create titles using Nintendo’s Zelda and Mario properties which have become synonymous with horrible design and ridiculous Internet memes that regularly pop up on YouTube. While it can’t be proven, since their partnership with Phillips, Nintendo has typically tried to work closer to Asian suppliers, and has since had a notorious strangle hold on their properties and shortly after their partnership with Phillips had soured relationships with other 3rd party companies for some time.

Whether they created the industry, saved the industry, made the industry truly mainstream, introduced online gaming to the industry, or helped teach the industry a lot of important lessons, these are indeed some of the most if not the most influential consoles ever created. What do you think? If you have any questions or comments, leave them down below.