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WiiU vs. Dreamcast. Which one do you have a softer spot for?

The Dreamcast by a huge margin.

The hardware was a massive leap beyond the consoles that came before it.
We went from low-res glitchy polygons and no texture filtering on the PSX, and super low-res, muddy, low-poly, and low framerate 3D on the N64, to high poly, high detail games running at a high resolution - often at 60 FPS. In PAL regions, it was the first time for 60 FPS on a console at all. (outside of mods) It even did progressive video with the VGA box.
It was a leap in performance like nothing before or since.
And on top of that, the console was tiny! It was a real technical marvel.

It was released at a time in my life where I'd be playing local multiplayer with friends every weekend.
When I didn't care about setting money aside for the future, and all of my income after covering that month's bills was seen as disposable.
The import scene was huge back then too, with all these obscure and interesting games coming over from Japan.
I had something in the region of 100-150 games for the system, four controllers, a pair of light guns, a pair of arcade sticks, and a keyboard & mouse.
It was the best local multiplayer system of all time, and the single player experiences were great too.
There was a massive variety of games in its library, and it was the best time for arcade-style games that there ever was.
Phantasy Star Online was just magical, and nothing will be able to recreate that experience again. Online gaming like that for the first time on a console was just amazing.
I can see why people might look back on it now and say that they don't want to play many of the games now - or that there might be a better version on other platforms today - but that ignores how big a deal the Dreamcast was at the time.


The Wii U is almost the opposite of the Dreamcast for me.
It was a technically inferior system when it launched and many of the games rely on gimmicks.
It's no fault of the system, but nowadays, local multiplayer rarely happens. People are too busy with their families to meet up for local multiplayer - even online multiplayer is difficult to set up with more than one person at a time now.
The controllers severely limit the types of game that you can play on it in multiplayer anyway, and the multiplayer is often asymmetrical with one player on the gamepad and the others with Wii Remotes.
If anything, the Wii U is at the top of the list of most disappointing consoles for me. There are probably fewer than ten games that I care about for that system, and many of them were disappointments due to stupid design decisions from Nintendo - like how poorly the online component of Mario Maker is handled.
It's full of safe and lazy sequels from Nintendo. Sure, they might be good games, but that's also really boring. There's very little from third parties at all.


Pie and Beans said:
Extra context: Dreamcast for its era was ahead of even PC gaming for a period.
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Yeah... I don't know about that.
I had a GeForce back then which was a lot more powerful than the Dreamcast, running games like Quake 3 at smooth framerates and much higher resolutions.
The Dreamcast versions of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament were pretty rough.
As a console experience, it was a massive technical leap though.
 
Zero83 said:
Sorry if I misunderstood your post, but you listed Soul Calibur, Spiderman, RE, Hydro Thunder and Power Stone when arguing that Sega's own games on DC were better than Nintendo's offerings on Wii U.

I mean, I get what you're saying now, but it wasn't what you said in the post I commented.
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I was responding to LewierP who said I mentioned 2k series as a third party which they weren't at the time. And even in my original post I said best versions of games like Spiderman, which implied third party for those.
 
Wii U. It actually did something different and unique, I liked the gamepad a lot. The Dreamcast experience could be had anywhere really at this point. Unless you really want to take care of your pet in Sonic Adventure.

Build quality is basically even, although the Wii U console unit looks a lot nicer.

Would argue the Wii U had better games. Dreamcast was just the end of an era, so I think it's put it on a bit of a pedestal--but it did have a great library, nonetheless. Shenmue, for example, doesn't get enough credit when it comes to how much it did for the industry, in my opinion.
 
Can I just say the Dreamcast has one of the best game libraries after a short 2 1/2 years possibly ever and it took some of my other favorite consoles (PS1, PS2, PS4, X360, etc) about that long to really accumulate a stellar library?

In that small spread of time, my favorites were:

PowerStone 1/2
Shenmue
Jet Set Radio
Soul Calibur
Dead or Alive 2
Cannon Spike
4-player Marvel vs Capcom 1
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
Best Street Fighter Alpha 3 until PSP version
Capcom vs SNK 2
My first time playing Last Blade 2 and Garou legally
First Guilty Gear home version that looked decent and played smoothly
All the King of Fighters 98/99 through 2001
Super Magnetic Neo
Zombie's Revenge
Resident Evil Code Veronica
480p versions or Resident Evil 1-3 and Dino Crisis
Skies of Arcadia
Phantasy Star Online
Grandia 2
Crazy Taxi
Virtua Tennis
Virtua Fighter 3TB
Rival Schools
Bomberman Online
ChuChu Rocket
Mr Driller
Seaman
Sega Swirl
Toy Commander
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Party
Daytona
Dynamite Cop
Virtua Cop Spinoff game I am blanking on
House of the Dead 2
MDK2
Quake 3 Arena

And I basically went over 3/4ths of the library of interesting titles as I'm not too heavy into 2D platformers and racers, but man, what a list. Although it may not completely hold up now since many of those titles have had sequels or have been ported, they were first and best available at home on Dreamcast exclusively for a long while (not including PC versions) which is crazy considering it only really lived 9/9/99 to mid 2001/early 2002 in the US.
 
dragonyeuw said:
10/25 is still a substantial number when the meat of your opinion was centered around the Dreamcast losing games to other consoles.


Hyrule Warriors( 3ds got a port)
Bayonetta ( originally a xbox and ps3 game)
Twilight Princess( originally a gamecube game)
Wind Waker ( originally a gamecube game)
Arkham City( on 360, ps3, steam, and remastered for ps4/XB1)
Human Revolution ( on xbox 360 and ps3)
Steamworld Dig( available on numerous platforms)
Shovel Knight( available on numerous platforms)
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate ( on 3ds)
Axiom Verge ( available on numerous platforms)
NES Remix 1 & 2 ( available on 3ds as Ultimate remix)
Breath of the Wild (we all know it's going to be amazing) -( Launch title for Switch)

I count 12/25, and that's removing things like Lego City which are announced for other systems, or Smash Bros which we all know is coming, but I'll play along with your 'it hasn't been announced yet' game. The thing with padding the list with stuff like Batman Arkham City,Steamworld, Axiom, Deus Ex is that no-one associates these games specifically with Wii U. Stuff like Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, Skies of Arcadia, Jet Set Radio will always be acknowledged as Dreamcast games even though they were latter ported after the Dreamcast was cancelled. So what's the lesser evil in this instance, having your games ported over ( Sonic Adventure, Skies of Arcadia, Jet Set) after you're off the market, or receiving ports to pad out the library because of droughts( Twilight Princess, Windwaker) or a year after everyone else has gotten it ( Batman Arkham City) in which case whoopty-do? These aren't apples to apples comparisons when throwing around lists of ports to denigrate the other console.

Furthermore, a game running worse than the Wii U version doesn't invalidate its inclusion on the list of ports. That same port you mention also has extra out of the box content, which may make it viable on its own merits even if it plays/looks worse. Shall we invalidate Mario Kart 8 or Breath of the Wild on the Wii U when their likely superior Switch versions come out? How about Smash 'when it gets announced' and winds up looking/playing better with more content included? Can we nix the Wii U version off the list?
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I feel you. But fine take out those multiplats for both. The Wii U lineup is substantially better.

The point is that people look back on the Dreamcast with rose colored glasses. Like I said in my original post, nostalgia will get people to say Dreamcast. Objectively it didn't have enough time to accumulate enough games to top the Wii U lineup.

And people mentioning Sonic Adventure? Stop. That game was and always will be absolute trash.
 
Papacheeks said:
The reason Wii U may seem more compelling is because it's not from 18 years ago it's still somewhat current.
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Hum... I don't care about being "somewhat current". If i cared about such thing, i would not talk about the Saturn.

But yes, only when we will be able to see if all Wii U games will be ported will we be able to put those two against each other.
 
Dreamcast was a beast in 1998.

9h8QVgt.jpg


The Wii U was lamb in 2012.
 
I mean the Dreamcast came out almost two decades ago and the Wii U is only now being replaced. There's a major nostalgia factor associated with the Dreamcast that the Wii U doesn't have. I'd give it 5 or 10 years to make this comparison again.
 
AcademicSaucer said:
People like the console they had when they were kids more.
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I was 19 when the Dreamcast launched, so that doesn't apply to me.

I want to say Dreamcast, and it's going to be difficult for the Wii U to top it, but I've barely scratched the surface of the Wii U's best games. I haven't yet made the time to finish SM3W or Captain Toad, and I just started NSMBU and Rainbow Curse. Haven't even touched Pikmin 3, Woolly World, or Bayo 2 yet.

So despite the fact that Sega and Capcom's DC outings were almost all phenomenal, and DC is one of my favorite consoles ever made, I can't write off the Wii U yet.
 
messiaen said:
Wii U. It actually did something different and unique, I liked the gamepad a lot. The Dreamcast experience could be had anywhere really at this point. Unless you really want to take care of your pet in Sonic Adventure.

Build quality is basically even, although the Wii U console unit looks a lot nicer.

Would argue the Wii U had better games. Dreamcast was just the end of an era, so I think it's put it on a bit of a pedestal--but it did have a great library, nonetheless. Shenmue, for example, doesn't get enough credit when it comes to how much it did for the industry, in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Yes you can have the Dreamcast experience now....because of dreamcast.
 
Rndom Grenadez said:
I feel you. But fine take out those multiplats for both. The Wii U lineup is substantially better.

The point is that people look back on the Dreamcast with rose colored glasses. Like I said in my original post, nostalgia will get people to say Dreamcast. Objectively it didn't have enough time to accumulate enough games to top the Wii U lineup.

And people mentioning Sonic Adventure? Stop. That game was and always will be absolute trash.
Click to expand...

Someone who has an affinity for arcade titles may say the Dreamcast has a superior library. We don't need to go down the road of subjectivity.

Personally I'm not arguing for either's library. That wasn't the purpose of my post and reply to you. I also don't think the Dreamcast is being looked at with rose-colored glasses. I mean, why? Why would people have some special affinity for this console? Usually the systems gamers tend to remember fondly ( SNES, Ps2, etc etc) have pretty good reasons as to why. The Dreamcast more or less ushered in console online gaming, at the very least it took the baton and passed it on to Microsoft. In terms of what it brought to the market in the larger picture, it's a more significant piece of gaming hardware regardless of library. The Wii U was under-powered in its time with an odd control interface that many people didn't even know was a new system. Nintendo can't wait to drop it( already have basically) to move onto Switch.
 
Dreamcast was much more magical to me at the time. The Dreamcast is probably my favorite console of all time. The design, video output, and games were fantastic.

Wii U had some great games and Bayonetta 2 was the Dreamcast game I always wanted.
 
I have a soft spot for the Dreamcast, but I haven't played mine in years, the controllers are awful, and it was quickly forgotten about once the PS2 hit the market.

Maybe in 5-10 years, people will look back on the Wii U fondly. The system does have some great games and offers a bunch of capability, and has my favorite game in Super Mario Maker. I skipped out on the Wii, so I'm also going back and playing some of those games now on the Wii U which has been a plus.
 
Paragon said:
Yeah... I don't know about that.
I had a GeForce back then which was a lot more powerful than the Dreamcast, running games like Quake 3 at smooth framerates and much higher resolutions.
The Dreamcast versions of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament were pretty rough.
As a console experience, it was a massive technical leap though.
Click to expand...

Won't argue about framerates and resolution, but Dat Shenmue leap. I remember being wowed by stuff like Outcast on PC in the summer of 1999 and then SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKER in December (for Japan).

Then playing 4 player online co-op over dial up on Phantasy Star Online the next year was real "oh this is the future, son".

Only VR just last year was matching the "oshit, TECHNOLOGY" feelings I had back in 1999-2000.
 
Dreamcast.

I picked up a Wii U on launch day and I have felt slightly stupid for doing it ever since. I mean I did get some enjoyment out of it, but nowhere near what I would have hoped.
 
I loved my dreamcast, but for Zelda alone, wiiu wins. Also donkey kong tropical is one of the greatest 2d platformers I've played.
 
Wii U has well, around 10 very good games, Dreamcast otherwise has a ton of good games, specially some arcade ones!

Sonic Adventure 1 and 2
Sonic Shuffle
Jet Set Radio
Shenmue 1 and 2 (which alone kills any wii u game, imo...)
RE Code Veronica
House of the Dead
Crazy Taxi
Guilty Gear X
Capcom vs SNK 1 and 2
Garou Mark of the Wolves
Powerstone 1 and 2
Evil Twin
Project Justice
Phantasy Star Online ep 1 and 2
Sega Rally
Skies of Arcadia
Grandia 2 (epic game)
Soul Calibur
etc, actually a ton more games, miss you, Dreamcast! >_<

I had a Wii u and I had;

SM3DW
Bayonetta 2
Captain Toad
Mario Kart 8
Wind Waker HD
Twilight Princess
and well, that's it...

I was hoping for a remaster of metroid trillogy and mario galaxy, but they never happened...

And I just bought a Wii U on pre sale cuz of that Ocarina of Time trailler...
 
That is so crazy you made this thread! I was just talking to my best friend I grew up with about the same topic a few months ago. I definitely was getting some Dreamcast vibes when I was playing my WiiU. Thats why even though it wasn't a huge success, the WiiU is still a favorite of mine. It still doesn't take my #1 spot though. That will always be the Dreamcast. Memories of playing Soul Calibur for the first time. Playing hours upon hours of VS against my best friend. Mitsurgi vs Kilik and we never changed characters. Tons of hours beating the single player objectives. Taking part in this Sonic Adventure racing challenge. I was actually in the top 10 and almost had first at one point. Discovering one of my favorite series, Soul Reaver. Taking my memory card with me and feeding those Sonic pets(forgot the names).
Kinda sucks I feel apart of its downfall, since we had figured out how to not only burn game discs but also how to setup free online.
 
The huge amount of amazing and steller 3rd parties games makes the dreamcast a clear winner for me. As some one who spent hundreds of dollars in the arcade on fighting games, being able to get that experience at home was amazing.
 
I've never really understood the comparisons between the Wii U and the Dreamcast other than their relatively short lifespans. The Dreamcast had so much more good software it's really not comparable.
 
Dreamcast , and its not even close.

WiiU had some quality exclusives , but Dreamcast at the time just had a lot more variety.

Titles like Phantasy Star Online and Shenmue were just mind blowing at the time. Dreamcast was truly ill fated. A system ahead of its time. I dont care how badly those two titles age. But nothing on the WiiU gave me anything even remotely close to the experience of playing those two titles.

I dont even get why these comparisons come up , apart from their short lifespan they dont share anything. They dont even have a similar library of games. WiiU was a generation behind in technology , and probably had comparable online service to the Dreamcast.

Also comparing a Gaming Console's library that is nearly 15 years apart seems pretty dumb. There are more games now , and the general quality of games have also improved. Not every game from the 90s is going to age as well as a 2013 game on the WiiU. The newer console will obviously have an advantage.
 
Dreamcast by a country mile. Powerstone, Sonic Adventure, Chu Chu Rocket, House of the Dead, Skies of Arcadia. Man. So many classics.
 
Dreamcast had the hands-down greater variety. Heck, its racer library alone could make many other consoles green with envy (Le Mans 24, Ferrari Testarossa, Sega Rally, Metropolis). But it had so much more than that - it had iconic shmups (Ikaruga, Day of Defeat, Mars Matrix), fighters (Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter), brawlers (Power Stone), RPGs (Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2), adventures (Shenmue I & II), rail shooters (HOTD), survival horrors (RE Coder Veronica). Last but not least, it was the home of Sonic.

WiiU was an arcades renaissance for me, and some of the top-of-the-top titles that I've played over the past two gens, but I still value the greater variety of the old 'cast.
 
Papacheeks said:
2k was sega dude?

Smilebit was under Sega as well guys who made Jet grind radio.

Sega Wow aka Skies of arcadia was also a part of sega

Do you know that alot of these early games and studios were under sega at the time?

Do you even know what your talking about?

Some of those are under just publishing and by other studios like Resdient evil, powerstone, soul caliber, but the others mentioned on top of crazi taxi, sonic, shenmue are all studios that were under sega at the time.
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Yes I am not an idiot and as I said I think Nintendo published games on the Wii U are better than Sega published titles on the DC. DC has the better library overall because of the great games from Namco, Capcom and others, but as I originally said, I'd take Nintendo's Wii U output over Sega's DC output. Both are great though.
 
If the Wii U did not have the novelty motion sensor and Wii U pad I would choose that, but since the Dreamcast is a conventional game playing console (no gimmicks), I have to go with the Dreamcast. Plus, the Dreamcast exclusives.
 
Looking at some of the list for the Dreamcast library. it seems that most of the games have aged considerably Crazy Taxi feels like an unfinished mess by today's standards. Then again some of those games were never good to begin with like Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 both witch were far below the genesis games in terms of polish and quality. Shenmue must win some sort of an award for being the most overrated and over hyped game of all time. I can appreciate the ambition but man is that game just awful to play.
 
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