• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

I'm crazy. I miss the "Dreamcast Look"

JordanN said:
Yup.

Dreamcast = shit textures galore and blocky fists.
Click to expand...
Hey! Sonic Adventure 2 was the first game with fingers!

PC had the same look at the time and never had a PS2 to ruin everything. Very clean though not very realistic. I also wonder why they later had to force shadows made from ten pixels when flat ones looked better 90% of the time. Uncharted Vita is a huge offender.
 
Ty4on said:
Hey! Sonic Adventure 2 was the first game with fingers!

PC had the same look at the time and never had a PS2 to ruin everything. Very clean though not very realistic. I also wonder why they later had to force shadows made from ten pixels when flat ones looked better 90% of the time. Uncharted Vita is a huge offender.
Click to expand...
The shadows you refer to were faked.

Uncharted Vita uses proper shadows in that characters and world geometry project shadows across all objects.

It creates a much more cohesive world but obviously has drawbacks on slower systems.
 
I still have a Dreamcast hooked up to a CRT VGA monitor. Most of the screenshots in this thread don't even do the look justice.
 
dark10x said:
Frame-rates are still bad? No. Let's not pretend that 60 fps was standard on Dreamcast. A majority of games were actually 30 or less. The 60 fps games were mostly limited to arcade style titles.
Click to expand...

I realise 60 fps was limited to arcade titles most of the time, but since there were so many and most of them were so good, it certainly felt like framerates were better then overall. I mean it really is mainly the colouring that I miss from that era of gaming rather than the framerates since I've been a PC gamer primarily since I was about 5 and PC games have mostly always had good framerates if your hardware is good enough.

When I look back at the 360 especially and look at the exclusives and even third party games a lot of them were very grey/brown and although that was fine for some titles, for others it felt like it was detracting from the experience. I mean I can't say otherwise because one of my favourite games (R02) is pretty much based around being grey and drab.
 
Bought a VGA adapter for my DC a year ago but all my games looked more jagged than I remember. I thought soul caliber had anti aliasing, on my set it was very aliased.
 
some really great examples showed up here, as well as a few in a similar vein on other systems. again i play a lotta DC these days, and the lack of 2nd analog is what ages it, not the graphics (when over VGA & properly upscaled).

NeoNess said:
I miss Sega in general.
Click to expand...

ajim said:
I miss Sega Dreamcast Sega.

Best days of gaming ever.
Click to expand...

NXdMx9v.png


SniperHunter said:
nostalgia lol

the games today look way better
Click to expand...

didn't read the OP lol
added nothing at all to the conversation

kuroshiki said:
.... you are really crazy. those screenshots of DC look like shit.
Click to expand...

cannot be serious, but then again this is GAF

Sixfortyfive said:
I still have a Dreamcast hooked up to a CRT VGA monitor. Most of the screenshots in this thread don't even do the look justice.
Click to expand...

seriously, i was just thinking that as well
 
I mean it really is mainly the colouring that I miss from that era of gaming rather than the framerates since I've been a PC gamer primarily since I was about 5 and PC games have mostly always had good framerates if your hardware is good enough.
Click to expand...
Not true. PC games typically ran slower than console and arcade games until 3d cards started to mature.
 
Winterfang said:
It looks very similar, though Yakuza is pretty much Shenmue but good.
Click to expand...

Michael-Scott-Closes-The-Door-Awkwardly-On-The-Office.gif



And I'm totally with you OP. You still have Nintendo (to some degree) but yeah I would love to see that arcadey look with current technical possibilities. Could you imagine a new Outrun that takes full advantage of the PS4s potential? Or a new Afterburner?
 
I know how you feel, OP.

I love how AM2's post-Dreamcast output retained the classic SEGA-look.

jlxofdojfqtk5.png


jbmdOa9ZaFFweI.png


jv4O3vMRhWLKC.png



Also, the graphics in Border Break give me some strong Dreamcast vibes.
jbqqU6ZNFsrBt0.jpg
 
I think most of Dreamcast's graphics are outdated but some key games, most of which were already mentioned have aged tremendously well thanks to a colorful and brilliant art direction that took advantage of the hardware's potential.

Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio and other similar titles have aged very well and still look good today whereas titles that tried to be more realistic aesthetically look immensely dated today, like Shenmue.

I don't miss Dreamcast's graphics, but I miss the aesthetic direction that most titles used to have back in those days. I wish those types of graphics sold better so we'd have an industry more concentrated on building something unique rather than one trying to converge genres into a non-offending, non-creative grey slush. I hate the fact that the successors or spiritual successors to most of the games I love either don't exist or have to be boostrapped by fans/developers with limited resources and experience.

We're "breeding" a generation of gamers whose idea of best games are extremely linear and simplified corridor shooters with small nuances and the few original titles we had either didn't have enough marketing or market strategy put behind them.

While I'm all for better performance and nicer graphics I hate that up until very recently most consoles were about pushing performance at the expense of ease-of-development. I want gaming consoles and technology to reach a level in which we can see small and medium-sized developers thrive once again and while I think, or hope, that this will happen during the current console life-cycle, I feel like it will still be a few years before we see the fruits of what Sony, and other companies, planted in terms of easing the development/publishing process.
 
Yeah, that''s not crazy at all. The other day I was thinking about Cool Cool Toon and how awesome it looked. Same with Samba de Amigo and all the crazy shit flying all over the place and the awesome start to Sonic Adventure (both! first with the whale, then city escape).

Nostalgia talking or not, those were better days.
 
I didn't like the Dreamcast much at the time and until recently rolled my eyes whenever I read that the console was the pinnacle of videogames (being a Vita owner has now made me empathise) but I had the same feeling playing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, the feeling of "why don't more games look like this?",
 
Sunset Overdrive was the first thing I thought of.

Also, I really wish they would re-release a version of Sonic Adventure that looks like the dream cast version, and not the Game Cube version.
 
dark10x said:
Man, in small shots, those look pretty awesome but most of those games are mediocre to terrible. :\

Not really Dreamcast quality games here.
Click to expand...

Speak for yourself. There's not a single terrible game there, but a couple are mediocre, that's true. Still pretty good overall, and a colorful sight for sore eyes.
 
dark10x said:
Not true. PC games typically ran slower than console and arcade games until 3d cards started to mature.
Click to expand...

Didn't 3d cards started to mature around the time dreamcast was out? I remember playing need for speed 4 at 1280x768 and quake 3 which came out in 1999 at pretty high framerate and resolution, sega rally 2 also ran at a higher framerate than the dreamcast version which I remember either was capped at 30fps or rarely reaches 60fps. (although I remember Sega Rally might've had a resolution cap)

It was just harder to compare because a huge amount of arcade titles that came out on the dreamcast never made it to the PC.
 
REMEMBER CITADEL said:
Speak for yourself. There's not a single terrible game there, but a couple are mediocre, that's true. Still pretty good overall, and a colorful sight for sore eyes.
Click to expand...
Spartan Assault was awful and Crimson Dragon was ruined by the awful progression system. Max could have been good but fails to deliver good core jumping mechanics which is ruinous for a platformer. Zoo Tycoon is good but runs poorly and certainly doesn't look like all that nice.

Kinect Sports is neat, I suppose.

The golf one is the only one I haven't played so it could be great. I don't know as I dislike golf games.
 
Anteater said:
Didn't 3d cards started to mature around the time dreamcast was out? I remember playing need for speed 4 at 1280x768 and quake 3 which came out in 1999 at pretty high framerate and resolution, sega rally 2 also ran at a higher framerate than the dreamcast version which I remember either was capped at 30fps or rarely reaches 60fps.

It was just harder to compare because a huge amount of arcade titles that came out on the dreamcast never made it to the PC.
Click to expand...
Indeed they did and there were games you could run at 60 fps, no doubt, but hitting a consistent 60 without skips and stutters from HDD access was rare. Games that were really well optimized, like Quake 3, could do it.

Need for Speed from that era had a frame-rate cap and doesn't run at 60 fps. Sega Rally 2 on the PC was also visually behind the other versions despite the higher possible frame-rate. It was a BAD Dreamcast port, though, no doubt due to the use of Windows CE framework.

People forget how PC games from that era ran, I think. If you go back and build a high-end PC by 2000 standards I think you'd be surprised as what we had to put up with.

It's what made PS2 seem like a revelation to me. While image quality was worse, everything else it was doing placed it far beyond the PC of that era. Seeing games like MGS2 at 60 fps was stunning. PC games were still very low poly in comparison and lacked all of the post processing options.
 
dark10x said:
Spartan Assault was awful and Crimson Dragon was ruined by the awful progression system. Max could have been good but fails to deliver good core jumping mechanics which is ruinous for a platformer. Zoo Tycoon is good but runs poorly and certainly doesn't look like all that nice.

Kinect Sports is neat, I suppose.

The golf one is the only one I haven't played so it could be great. I don't know as I dislike golf games.
Click to expand...


Hmmm...I disagree on Crimson Dragon. I thought the progression and item system was nicely set up to encourage repeat playthroughs of the levels. Since the levels were relatively short, I found it fun to try and perfect a run.
 
dark10x said:
Indeed they did and there were games you could run at 60 fps, no doubt, but hitting a consistent 60 without skips and stutters from HDD access was rare. Games that were really well optimized, like Quake 3, could do it.

Need for Speed from that era had a frame-rate cap and doesn't run at 60 fps. Sega Rally 2 on the PC was also visually behind the other versions despite the higher possible frame-rate. It was a BAD Dreamcast port, though, no doubt due to the use of Windows CE framework.
Click to expand...

hmm could be, I actually don't remember what framerate nfs ran at, I remember slowdowns with some of the EA titles I played, even though I was pretty sure SR2 was 60fps because of the dreamcast version being a lower framrate, but didn't know it was actually inferior to the arcade version until recently, in that era I think I played a lot of quake 3 and unreal tournament, but other than that I mostly played console games.

People forget how PC games from that era ran, I think. If you go back and build a high-end PC by 2000 standards I think you'd be surprised as what we had to put up with.

It's what made PS2 seem like a revelation to me. While image quality was worse, everything else it was doing placed it far beyond the PC of that era. Seeing games like MGS2 at 60 fps was stunning. PC games were still very low poly in comparison and lacked all of the post processing options.
Click to expand...

Yea, the graphical jump was pretty huge at the time on console titles, especially the character models, things like Shenmue came out in like in 1999 lol
 
Wonko_C said:
While playing the demo of Ryu Ga Gotoku Ishin on PS4, I was marveled at how smooth, clean-looking it was. It reminded me of the Dreamcast days (except with billions more polygons), of games like Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, SoulCalibur, House of the Dead 2, Charge 'n Blast, Outtrigger, Daytona USA 2001... you get the idea. The combination of a smooth 60fps with solid colors, skies that weren't afraid of being blue, and nice shadows that weren't a pixelated mess really made me feel like I finally had arcade-quality games at home. It was like a breath of fresh air.

I'm looking for more current-gen (or last gen) games that are like this, some games get close, but they have one or two effects that betray it, be it pixellated shadows, post-processing shit, piss filters, vignettes, dirty lenses, motion blur, depth of field, or the overall lighting composition. Apart from Nintendo games like SM3DW and the upcoming Mario Kart 8, I've had a hard time finding games with the "Dreamcast Look".

So far I've got Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed but it has messy shadows (Even when maxed out on PC), Ridge Racer 7 totally gets it, and Narco Terror kind of has that vibe. Let's find more!
Click to expand...

I miss Dreamcast
 
The DC was the first console that really pushed PC style image quality. It's PowerVR GPU that gave it nicely filtered textures and anti-aliased polygons. It's many arcade conversions ran at 60fps which is probably where this whole fps obession originated. If Im not mistaken most games ran at a nice 640x480 and anyone who had a VGA output box and was able to plug it into a monitor would tell you how crisp games looked at 800x600 before 16:9 and HD took off. The PS2 lagged in the image quality department even though a lot of the games had better textures, higher polys and better lighting. The Xbox was a step back in the right direction.

I guess coming off the back of the N64's low res textures and the PSone's jag city games, the DC was a monumental improvement in it's day.
 
henhowc said:
Think it's nostalgia. Most of the older 3d stuff looks really bad now. Maybe with an emulator with aa turned up some of them might look good.
Click to expand...

You will be surprised with how good DC games look via VGA @ 480p, the IQ is the best I've seen from an SD system by far on my 40" LCD. It looks so much cleaner than the PS2,Wii & Xbox for example while the colors are on a whole other level, it really looks amazing considering the hardware.
 
Paz said:
Yep I Love the "Dreamcast Look" too, it's just so nice! I'm hoping more indie games adopt this style as it can look so great, that's what we're doing anyway.

Still amazes me how awesome the Dreamcast was for its time and how many great games they released in its short life, makes me really miss the arcade golden ages :( So many of my favorite Dreamcast games are arcade style or arcade ports with near perfect conversions.
Click to expand...
Speaking of "Dreamcast-look" games:
Assault Android Cactus (OT)
filament.gif

aac_repeater.gif

aac_shiitake.gif

(because I know you can't really do it yourself, Paz ;) )
 
Ty4on said:
I also wonder why they later had to force shadows made from ten pixels when flat ones looked better 90% of the time.
Click to expand...
Volume shadows were often made out of 10polys instead of 10pixels - and that was just one of the tradeoffs - shadowmaps simply scale better - to large environments, number of lights, geometry-detail, as well as soft-shadow approximations.
PS2 was the fastest shadow-volume renderer of its era (and in terms of relative performance, probably the best one in history) - and even on it - shadowmaps were still the faster method in most cases(with no special hw-support to boot).

Not that I disagree - image-quality sacrifices that shadowmapping brought were awful, and it's probably the reason hacks like SSAO are considered acceptable as well.
 
Floex said:
Genki Rockets destroyed this game for me, such trash.
Click to expand...

Granted, Genki Rockets' music is sort of cheesy, but on the other hand I find the wide-eyed naïveté quite fitting to a game where you're flying through space blasting parasites off of a neon glowing blue whale :)
 
Ol No Bones said:
I loved the dreamcast. It seems like something that's been talked about quite a bit on here but for an ignorant guy like me would someone answer the question, "why did the dreamcast suffer the fate it did?". Awesome console.
Click to expand...

Because the world is cruel and unjust.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

I miss Destiny 2
2 3 4
180
815
Bondo replied
How can I get the most of a Dreamcast in 2026?
35
1K
Solarstrike replied
Shadow Warrior 2, maybe I'm crazy
45
1K
peek replied
Ocarina of Time is now on the Sega Dreamcast
12
506
NeoIkaruGAF replied
Resident Evil 4 Tech Demo for the Dreamcast
Trailer Hardware Indie 
2
173
diffusionx replied
Top Bottom