Aww, I missed the Dreamcastfest. The last good console ever released (Yeah, I know. But I sincerely believe it. PC basically took over everything after DC died and consoles really didn't have anything special to me.). Bought it on its 9/9/99 release date here in the US. Had several peripherals like the mouse+keyboard, the fishing controller, and the broadband adapter. Oh yeah, and there were 3rd party homebrew stuff, including Playstation 1 emulation (Bleem!, which was just for certain games, but a universal emulation disk that let you play more things was leaked as well), Linux, emulation of old systems, and many other things. Yes, there was piracy. How else was I going to play Japanese-only games, though?
Regardless, the highlights of the system to me were:
ChuChu Rocket
Crazy Taxi 1/2
Daytona USA
Hydro Thunder
Ikaruga
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Metropolis Street Racer
Phantasy Star Online
Power Stone 1/2
Quake 3 Arena (mouse+keyboard best)
Rez
Sega Bass Fishing (yep, it's fun, more fun if you had its fishing controller like I did for the original system)
Sega GT
Sega Rally 2
Soulcalibur
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
The Typing of the Dead (get a keyboard, obviously)
Unreal Tournament (mouse+keyboard best)
2k Sports games (better than EA's dreck at the time and probably even now)
I was never a fan of the 3d Sonic games for the same reasons I disliked Mario 64 (controls and camera in 3d platforming suck and I will defend that position forever, I'm sorry). Shenmue got old quickly to me, but I can sort of see the appeal.
All in all, I enjoyed far more games on the DC than I enjoyed on the XBox, Gamecube, and PS2 put together. All hail Dreamcast.
I couldn't stand it. It was as excruciating as watching Saturday Night Live. I don't think Americans should be allowed to do "humor"
To be fair, SNL hasn't been funny since the late 80s/early 90s even to us. Regardless, I'll take British humor (sorry, "humour") over ours any day.
WLK also has the absolute best song (Everlasting Love).
I still say KD and WLK are the two best games for the PS2 and nothing else on the console comes close. Hot take?
Steam's Proton layer actually does this (chooses a correct version depending on the game) with the vanilla Linux Steam installation. This isn't exclusive to HandheldSteam or ConsoleSteam. It truly is install and run with zero worry. Most of the simple Linux distributions really are dead goddamn simple to install and use for anyone. The installer just asks simple questions, chooses the best defaults, and off it goes. Installing things in Linux is as easy as opening an appstore-like application and hitting Download on everything you want. No fiddling around with the commandline, no advanced knowledge, nothing.
Linux isn't like it was 25 years ago when I had to manually select and specify modules for all my devices, edit a file just to get a GUI up and running, do an archaic demonic ritual to get sound working, and be content with Tux Racer being the peak of Linux gaming ability. (Okay, fine, we had Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, and a few other games, but we didn't have much was the point.) Linux is damn easy now.
Hell, I feel "rest of the owl" vibes anytime someone wants me to use WINDOWS. Yeah, enjoy taking 10 hours to update everything, go into regedit and powershell to disable as much of the Windows laughable crap that's installed by default (like the horrible AI trash it comes with), and it's still at the point where even Microsoft admits it's pretty much trash.
UE5 is the worst performing engine out there, and that's saying something given that Unity exists. If the freaking Unreal Engine logo pops up when a game starts – even dead simple, casual games with low end graphics – I might as well just go ahead and refund that game because it's going to run like ass on everything but $4000+ systems.
Honestly, if you have a PC, you already have a ValveCube. Install Linux, install Steam, configure it to start when your desktop starts, and configure it to open in Big Picture Mode. Bam, you have a ValveCube. You can even hook it up to your TV. And you can use the Playstation and XBox (and others, most likely) controllers you already have, you don't necessarily need their fancy ValveControllers. Sure, ValveCube is pretty cool, it's just… a PC. With Linux. And Steam. At least with the ValveHandheld, you have the small portable advantage of it. There's no real advantage here that I see. Maybe that it's a way to dodge Microsoft's garbage OS without having to actually install Linux and getting it by default, but installing Linux on an existing PC – by itself or dual booting – is dead simple these days with good starter distros.
d0k