It’s been well documented and argued for years and years that perhaps the Dreamcast never had the chance to fully mature and show a next level to it’s software output, I find this an interesting topic in various forums with users often stating the PS2 was weaker than the DC in some aspects, and Dreamcast games look and run better than later ports to other systems, one thing is for certain here, any hardware released after the Dreamcast is naturally a more powerful system with a greater depth of handling the type of story driven games that were popular from 2001 onwards, we only have to look at Gran Turismo 3, Metal Gear Solid 3 and God of War to see the PS2 was not lacking in raw power, the Gamecube was a step up again and the Xbox was miles ahead in terms of throwing around flashy graphics (look at Half Life 2..) Of course we are talking about graphical processes that may or may not have been around whilst the Sega console was on the market, again, it comes down to maturity of software development, later revision dev kits and familiarity of the hardware in question.
Nothing is an exact science with how to place the Dreamcast’s top end when it comes to visual fidelity and scope of game worlds, there was talk of GTA III for the console as we’ve learnt from Bernie Stolar, so expansive playing fields were not out of the question, games like Max Payne were planned which were story heavy – again not cancelled due to impossible tasks, just timing on the market and lacking of vital funds to continue let the Dreamcast down here.
What I am proposing, is realistically, the PSP, a console released in 2004 by Sony is perhaps the best yard stick to look at when trying to look at how the Dreamcast may have been around this time, think about this, the PSP has one analogue stick along with a D-pad and four face button and two trigger buttons, it’s media allows for 1.8GB of storage on a proprietary disc format (the GD discs are 1.2GB) and although the PSP can throw around far more polygons and has a faster clock speed, it’s maximum resolution naturally isn’t as high as the Dreamcast being a handheld. The Dreamcast’s card up it’s sleeve was always said to be it’s video ram allowing for some nicer texture work, so I firmly believe that the PSP as a product with the selection of games could have run on the Dreamcast with slight tweaks here and there, the strengths and weaknesses of each machine perhaps balances out in a strange way. This is all hypothetical in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a real shame that we will never truly know where our little white 128-bit box was taking us next.
What would be nice on a footnote, is seeing a few more lesser known PSP games jump over to the Dreamcast, Josh Prod have managed it once with 4X4 Jam, perhaps one day we may see other games locked away on Sony’s portable wonder make the jump, one can hope.
Dreamcast Today 