Dreamcast

The Dreamcast was Sega's final home console, succeeding the Sega Saturn, and was the first console of the sixth generation of gaming, released in 1998 for Japan and 1999 worldwide and was discontinued in 2001, prior to the release of the Xbox and Nintendo GameCube.

The Dreamcast was the 4th strongest console of its generation, behind the PlayStation 2.

Why It's Thinking

 * 1) Many great titles, including Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, Metropolis Street Racer, Jet Set Radio, Ikaruga, Crazy Taxi, Power Stone 2, SoulCalibur.
 * 2) It was the first home console to include a modem to connect to the Internet for online play out of the box. Some online games even work to this day through homebrew servers.
 * 3) It was very powerful for the time it was released.
 * 4) Lots of high quality sports games and arcade ports. Speaking of arcade ports, the Dreamcast was based on the Naomi hardware, and thus many games for the Naomi had arcade perfect ports to the Dreamcast.
 * 5) It supports native VGA and can output a lot of its games up to 480p.
 * 6) The memory card for the Dreamcast, the VMU, not only allowed gamers to save data, but also had offered gameplay features and even acted as a handheld gaming device itself. During gameplay, it shows mini-images relevant to the game. Some games even use this feature for actual gameplay purposes. This idea would be used further for the Wii U.
 * 7) It also works as a CD player and an online browser, though browsing no longer works without a modern adapter like DreamPi.
 * 8) More than 700 games for the system, an impressive feat considering it was on the market for less than 3 years.
 * 9) There was even a cable that made it compatible with the equally underrated Neo Geo Pocket Color.
 * 10) The console supported order-independent transparency, which basically annihilated transparency issues.
 * 11) It is very durable as seen in WIRED's Console Wars, where it survived a 15ft drop and being drenched in a whole bottle of Mountain Dew.
 * 12) there was even the Jump Pack which allowed the controller to rumble, like the Nintendo 64's Rumble Pak.
 * 13) It even has it's own game disc format "GD-ROM", Which has 1GB of storage which is more compared to the PS1 and Saturn's CD's 700MB of storage.

Bad Qualities
The system was very short lived and a commercial flop, unfortunately being Sega's last console. See here for the reasons why and for bad qualities/Why It Wasn't Thinking Hard Enough, see here.

Maintenance

 * 1) The Dreamcast's AC adapter is non-proprietary, so if you break or lose yours, it'll be easy and cheap to get a replacement.
 * 2) The VMU's battery drains very quickly, however it can still keep save files with a dead battery.
 * 3) The Dreamcast has an internal battery for the clock, most of these clocks however, are no longer working. To replace the battery, the controller board has to be lifted out, and the battery stand has to be unsoldered and replaced with a new stand with a new battery. NOTE: The battery MUST be a rechargable cell battery or else it will NOT work and will cause leaking.

Reception
When first released, the Dreamcast was extremely popular and highly successful, with it breaking several records at the time. However its popularity was very short lived, as it was quickly overshadowed by the PlayStation 2. The system was discontinued less than 2 years after its North American release due to bad sales and lack of funds from Sega.

As Retro Gaming became popular, the Dreamcast became a cult classic. It is now considered a great system despite its short life and commercial failure. It is widely considered the best console Sega ever made, and is well remembered for being the final Sega console.

When James Rolfe in his Angry Video Game Nerd persona reviewed Sonic Shuffle for AVGN Wishlist Part 1, he acknowledged that the Dreamcast was a good console to go out on, after many ups and downs from the company.

Ever since the Dreamcast's discontinuation, many Sega fans remained hopeful that Sega would eventually release a new console. Over the years, there have been multiple attempts to convince Sega to return to the console market but all of them have failed, as it unlikely that Sega would have the resources or the money, plus their IPs are all third-party now.

The Dreamcast has built a very dedicated homebrew community that continues to release games to this date.

Trivia

 * As mentioned above, Microsoft helped Sega develop some of the concepts for the Dreamcast including the Internet modem. Some of these concepts would later be used on the Xbox, which created a theory that the Xbox was a successor to the Dreamcast.
 * The console's codename was Katana.
 * The swirl logo's color is blue in Europe. Rumors say it was to avoid copying the logo of a German game company called Tivola.
 * If you try to play a Dreamcast game disc in a CD player or any device capable of playing audio CDs, it will play a recorded message telling the user that the disc is for use only on a Dreamcast and to not attempt to play track 1 as it contains game data.
 * Seaman, Shenmue, and Skies of Arcadia instead have a humorous message that is voiced by the game's characters.
 * Even after it was discontinued, game releases continued to trickle in Japan (though the vast majority of them were Naomi ports) until 2007, with Karous as the very last officially released Dreamcast game.