The Sega Black Belt! The Lost Dreamcast You Can Actually Kind of Play

The Sega Black Belt...also sometimes written as the Sega Blackbelt...is a lost Sega console that was in development to become the Sega Dreamcast. Sega of America was designing the Sega Blackbelt with a PowerPC CPU and a 3DFX chip that was a custom version of the Voodoo 3 / Avenger...where Sega of Japan had the Sega Dural, which is the Hitachi SH-4 and PowerVR Dreamcast we all have today that went on to get the codename Sega Katana...which became Sega Dreamcast and Sega NAOMI. But what happened to this Lost Dreamcast console? A PowerPC chipset with a custom Voodoo3...I know that! Konami released it as an arcade board...just like they did with the cancelled 3DO M2 console and the Konami 3DO M2 arcade board!
The Sega Dreamcast console is one of my favorite retro gaming pieces of hardware around filled with some of my favorite retro games of all time...so of course if I love the Sega Dreamcast you know I have at least one (ok more than one) Sega NAOMI boards in my collection! Because for as many best Dreamcast games of all time that are on the home console...the arcade counterpart has just as many awesome arcade games to play!
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[@nuclearmuffingames8322]

You know what? This theory actually seems pretty sound. Konami WERE known for taking designs from cancelled consoles (see their M2-based arcade board), and I could absolutely buy the idea of 3DFX shopping around their hardware design that they had already dumped millions into before being rejected by SEGA (a rejection that they actually ended up suing SEGA for breech of contract over, and winning an undisclosed court settlement that probably granted 3DFX the rights to the hardware design). I reckon you may well be spot on in this case :)

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s very in Konami’s DNA to take console designs and use them for arcades for sure

[@DehnusNorder]

Yup, Always found it funny when SEGA fans call out the black belt as "superior" everybody who knew a bit about the hardware that would have used would know: It simply wasn't comparable to the far more modern design of the PowerVR (which added a ton of capabilities) and the SH4 (which had some very interesting SIMD instructions). Thanks for making this :) .

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Happy to make it

[@shadowopsairman1583]

It would be awesome if Imagination Technologies would dev a discreet gpu to shake up the gpu market, they have a better chance at it than intel arc.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s all boring now. Intel or AMD for CPU. Intel or NVIDIA for GPU. Nothing unique really

[@dtester]

Yes. A lot of people buy into the hearsay. Maybe people get sucked into the idea that something even more awesome then the Dreamcast we got could have been possible.

[@somegit7113]

It sadly fits into the “Sega Japan wanted absolute control and were jealous of Sega of America” narrative we had for years. I doubt they would have rejected an outright superior design unless there were some big caveats to it, like high price or unreasonable requirements from 3dfx.

[@uncletom1971]

SEGA had previous deals with Martin Marietta already supplying the PowerVR chips for earlier systems like the Model2. And Dreamcast was infact just a trimmed down Naomi arcade system. I'm sure SEGA spent some time testing other less optimal 3D-chips, understanding that SEGA always used the best, most powerful technology available at the time reflected the quality of their games, their only limit would be that hardware couldn't be manufactured fast enough.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Sega loved playing with tech that’s for sure

[@Soonjai]

It´s honestly a really good thing they decided against a 3DFX chip. Many people have very rose tinted glasses about these cards, but the reality of it is that even back in the day other cards had either more features and / or a better image quality. Like PowerVR where basically the only cards that could pump out detailed shadows without breaking too much of a sweat, Matrox had Bump Mapping feautres (just look up how the water in the game "Expandable" is on Matrox compared to other cards), S3 introduced a very impressive Texture Compression System that IMO still holds up. Plus the Performance of Voodoo Cards relied heavily on games supporting their Glide API, outside of that the competition was at least as fast, if not better as them. I owned both a Voodoo 5 5500 and PwerVR PC-X 1 for a while a couple of years ago in a Windows 98 build, and while the PowerVR was pretty useless outside of the handful of games that specifically support it, that card still managed to have the better looking Version of Tomb Raider 1 while allowing for a higher resolution (The V5 could support higher ones, TR was just limited by what the Voodoo 1 could do) and the V5 had very washed out looking colors in basically any game that used the Glide API.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

3DFX has a certain look and vibe to it. It’s iconic but not for being the best looking of its era that’s for sure

[@chrismyco7950]

i can't disagree more. the benefit of the 3dfx was everyone know how to program for it. it would have guaranteed the one thing the Dreamcast needed, third party publisher support.

[@Soonjai]

@@chrismyco7950 That´s where you are entirely wrong. The choice of Hardware isn´t what made anyone not support the Dreamcast, it was Sega itself. Unless I´m missing something during the 90´s Sega released the Game Gear, Mega CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast, that´s 5 Systems and Add-Ons in just 9 years (1990-1998, Japanese release dates). And that´s without the confusing mess of portable Variants of the Mega Drive, design revisions and Systems that combined some of the features. Consumers had a hard time keeping up with which Sega System could play what games and neither Publishers nor Consumers could trust Sega that they where committed to their own System to begin with.

[@chrismyco7950]

@@Soonjai it was hardware. Sega of America already had EA and all the publishers on board with the 3DFX. Sega of Japan got upset at the leak and changed the hardware specs, which infuriated all the western publishers the system needed. nearly every game released on at the time had a glide patch, everyone knew how to program for the 3DFX chip. very few developers outside of Japan knew how to use the nec chip.

[@Soonjai]

@@chrismyco7950 No. EA wanted exclusivity for Sports games on the Dreamcast. Sega however refused to agree to this because they had just bought Visual Concepts for the purpose of having their own Studio for exactly that genre. Without Sports exclusivity EA was never on board. The most complete list for Glide games I can find has ~370 Titles that support the API, with 37 of these using MiniGL, so those aren´t even Glide games to begin with. And that isn´t anywhere close to being nearly every game that was released at the time. Glide is merely the most supported vendor specific API from that time, nothing more, nothing less. In addition, since DirectX 6.0 vendor specific API´s like Glide became less relevant anyway. If Developers opted to make use of the WindowsCE implementation on the Dreamcast they had access to DirectX 6.0 removing the need to program specifically for the NEC Chip.

[@Galgomite]

I was devastated that Sega's next console wasn't named either "Black Belt" or "Katana" but the Dreamcast hardware we got totally nailed Sega's arcade aesthetic. To my eye, Black Belt looks like PS1 with a few enhancements.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Dreamcast is such an odd name compared to the code names. Total pivot

[@BFKAnthony817]

@@VideoGameEsoterica But it casted dreams. I think like a fisherman casting his fishing rod, or broadcasting dreams. That was always what I thought of since I first heard the name.

[@sppspharmdude]

Despite the power we have access to today the chips of the past still impress me. Fond memories of that 3dfx splash screen when starting PC NFL blitz that looked nearly like the Arcade machine.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

3DFX was a specific vibe for sure

[@retroarcadefan]

Great video! Very informative and you also discuss my favorite console of all time. :)

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The trifecta of fun lol

[@Grobisnten]

I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that the naming of the early PowerPC chips were a bit funky in that the 603e chips were budget processors that had the caches disabled. Being that they use RISC architecture, crippling the L2 cache caused them to perform worse than the 602.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

603 was a budget part but the E variant increased clocks and bumped it up a notch

[@LobotomyDC]

6:10 No, that wasn't "something like SLI", that was REAL, ACTUAL SLI. As in, more truly SLI than anything nVidia attempted. 3Dfx is the reason why that term exists, and the Voodoo2 is the first commercial GPU to use that tech.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Something like SLI = it’s not really interleaving or alternating anything like you normally think with SLI. Its rendering two distinct images

[@carl_84]

Impressive, it makes sense that they reused the Black Belt for an arcade. Thanks for the vid!!!!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes. Recoup some investment

[@ThomasSerruques]

i love the color texture rendering of powervr2. in a game like grandia II for instance. the best design won.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It has those classic “Sega” colors we all know and love

[@Retro_Royal]

The Dreamcast GPU was also kinda a PC Design which got recycled. (Kyro 1 or 2, can´t really remember). Hitachi and Sega have been best buddies at this time, the move to SH4 was likely based on that "friendship". Nice Video again! :)

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes lotta back room deals on DC between decision makers that had friend preferences

[@dkrbk]

It's not. It has been made for the Dreamcast and only then, it has been released as a graphics card called Neon 250. The Kyro (including the first Kyro) was a PowerVR3. It's interesting to check reviews of the Neon 250 : it's on par with a Voodoo 3 for Quake III. The Voodoo 3 is twice as fast as the Voodoo 2, which is very close to the BB hardware.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

All very close in performance and look

[@Retro_Royal]

@@dkrbk Kyro is indeed the wrong reference since it came the generation after the Series 2 with DC GPW and Neon250. It is still part of the whole PowerVR Family which was by intention a PC GPU.

[@athos5359]

@@Retro_Royal dreamcast gpu had more power than the Neon250 also drivers back then where not as good as today,even the voodoo 3 was never puched to the limit.

[@TheKayliedGamerChannel-YouTube]

Never knew Konami used the same set up as Black belt in a few of it's coin ops. Nice 😊

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I don’t think anyone did. Til now. But yes it’s just Black Belt design down to the last detail…released by Konami

[@shb489]

Great video it's very interesting, hey i remember about 2 years ago the shenmue website shenmue dojo did a interview with yu suzuki about the early development of shenmue and in that interview he said that after the virtua fighter rpg akiras quest was cancelled for Sega Saturn his Am2 team was told to develop the game with the black belt capabilities in mind, the game was then renamed to shenmue with no connection to virtua fighter, yu suzuki also said that some of the early promotional footage of land di attacking ryu and his dad in the dojo is actual footage of shenmue when it was intended for the black belt but of course it was then moved to dreamcast, looking at that footage it looks a bit blurred compared to the final dreamcast version but who knows how it might have looked had it come out for black belt

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

A good lead. I’ll look into it. 3DFX textures were always blurrier than what we got on DC

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

You have a link to that vid? Having trouble finding it

[@Jabjabs]

Interesting. I thought Shenmue was focused on the Saturn then Dreamcast. Maybe there was an intermediate stage of it not considered.

[@shb489]

i tried to leave the link but youtube keeps deleting it so just type "early shenmue" and you can watch it the one with that techno drum beat music on it, i think the footage that was intended for black belt is near the end where lan di is in the dojo, please check with Matt from shenmue dojo as he put the interview on the shenmue dojo website, if i remember correctly i think the interview is called shenmue 3 retrospective

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Ugh I hate that it deletes all links. Thanks!

[@chazmaru9583]

Never made the connection between the two hardware, interesting theory. There are many known stories of hardware and technologies being considered by a hardware maker (often Nintendo) and ultimately rejected, only to be adopted by a competitor later, so this theory makes sense.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I still need to do a video on how GameCube was almost a 3DO design too

[@zenbyo]

I wonder if the black belt ever got around the 16 bit color limitation of the 3dfx chip. In the PC space they didnt get 32 bit color until the Voodoo5. I wish they would have just gotten on the same page as Japan when it came to the dreamcast.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

My guess would be it was still 16 but

[@MegaManNeo]

I never played it because arcades were banned in Germany from the early 90's up to this year probably but it sounds cool that we still got Black Belt in some shape and form.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

That’s so odd they just banned arcades

[@MegaManNeo]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Yea, politicians here aren't exactly up to date with technology, even nowadays. They considered arcade style videogames as gambling, it's so stupid but at long last we have arcades again.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Gambling 🤣 the hell you winning? Arcade cabinets tossing cash your way (yes politicians are idiots)

[@MegaManNeo]

@@VideoGameEsoterica German politicians in a nutshell. You'd be surprised if you'd hear what they have to say about IT security.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Typical. Our politicians here are idiots too. Both sides

[@Kap0wn3D711]

Cool hardware, Konami used a lot of PowerPC processors in their games

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

They loved that chip more than anyone

[@HunterTinsley]

Oh man I loved Mocap boxing, and that mocap light gun game as well. Is there any way to emulate those with a wii mote, or something else? Would be cool to see them get VR ports.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Viper emulation is not solid enough yet. Real hardware is needed still

[@METR0lD]

Ironic that the Black Belt is the one that got knocked out! 😎

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Dad joke for the win

[@dtester]

It's possible that the lower fidelity of the graphics was due to a lessor video ram which would force low quality textures. Do we know any specific specs for the Konami board?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s more like Konami never got a great handle on 3D graphics in arcades. They made games fast

[@dtester]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Interesting. Then it could also be a quick and dirty way for them to get more performance.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The games ran fast so it was probably just a “keep development cheap, make it run well and ship it” situation

[@TheSpeedway99]

Is it possible to cannibalize the Viper Arcade board and rework it into one of known Black Belt console designs seen in images?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

No. You’d need whatever OS it ran, bios, etc etc.

[@TheSpeedway99]

@@VideoGameEsoterica I’m assuming it won’t be possible to obtain those for a custom job?.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

@TheSpeedway99 depends. You’d need a Mission Impossible style raid of the offices and hope they kept it

[@TheSpeedway99]

@@VideoGameEsoterica well, we can still dream then.

[@simon41978]

I can't fault the Dreamcast aside from the vulnerability of the hardware that all 6th gen systems have. After fixing my Dreamcast, or getting a new one, I'm no longer going to do that anymore; I'll wait for FPGA. My PS2 is broken. It was stored vertically in a closed cabinet. So, I'll be waiting for FPGA for that, too. I know it'll be a long wait but I have other options for that one.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Weird I consider Dreamcast to be one of the most reliable consoles

[@simon41978]

@@VideoGameEsoterica I've been through about 6 of them. Most were PAL region. Controller ports fail, lenses get dirty, disc drives fail, the DNAC chip blows. It's a minefield. The one I like to use is a Japanese one. I've had good performance from it but the video and audio suddenly failed. Still waiting for a reply from the repairman for more info.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Six? Damn

[@Jabjabs]

I only ever had the one unit between 1999-2002 and towards the end it was having an issue with the display port and the disc drive was almost toasted. I have found it is easier to find good condition Saturns than Dreamcasts. But the Saturn was the tank of Disc based consoles. Everyone mileage will vary.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Weird. I must be lucky

[@SamMcDonald83]

Umm so we would definitely have got MGS2 on the Dreamcast if Sega had used the Blackbelt architecture .. Right? Right?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Haha the world may never know

[@mehere3013]

wonder how much work it would take to port the viper games to naomi ?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

An insane amount of work

[@qwaH]

kind of a 32X v Saturn vibe I guess, seems Sega of America hadnt leant from the magic mushroom after all

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I feel like they had. They ditched SH based CPUs and went for PowerPC

[@BestGirlsBiggestFan]

@@VideoGameEsoterica But then they gave Bleem! dev kits for it despite their questionable relationship with the law, Sony and Apple, and unlearned everything, only to relearn the hard way. They either never learned at all or a very quick to forget.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Little bit of both i think

[@Liam3072]

The Blackbelt architecture was severely underpowered but still sounder than the 32X architecture. The 32X architecture relies ENTIRELY on the CPUs. There's no GPU, just a framebuffer, and no real sound processor either, just two channels (for stereo) of PWM audio. EVERYTHING had to be done in software, from 3D computing to audio mixing, from scrolling to sprite scaling... it was a mess.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

32x was def a messy band aid of a platform

[@RyRyTheBassGuy]

I was rooting for Videologic when they launched the Kyro series. But they made the dumb decision to not have hardware support for T&L. I think I speak for us all when i say, I miss the late 90s/early 2000s hardware race.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Hardware is boring these days. What flavor APU do you want? PS5 vs Series X is just boring

[@RyRyTheBassGuy]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Preach!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s a bummer. No advantage hardware wise over your mid tier pc. Hardware is just boring

[@valentine_puppy]

I am so glad my comment from before could help with this video. While you said you don't think you agree with what I said. At least I wasn't lying when it comes to my theory crafting. That said, let's be real. The 603e is far superior to the SH-4 in clock rates I think which would have made blackbelt stronger in certain ways. Now, clearly the way they designed the Voodoo 3 custom SOC it would not have beaten the Dreamcast's Custom PowerVR CLX2 Chip. Which has never been duplicated into anything else. After the Dreamcast Imagination or the then I believe it was called Videologic went into the mobile phone business. Cards I think were still made for PC after Dreamcast but for the most part it's phones after that. I have designed custom Voodoo 3 concepts which would have made it as good if not better than the PowerVR in Dreamcast. But, everyone will have to wait for my book as I am writing it. If anyone is interested in it, that is.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes videologic never really did much else interesting

[@dkrbk]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Videologic made Kyro II, which were as fast as a Geforce 2 GTS for the price of a Geforce 2 MX. And they did this without T&L and with SD-RAM instead of DDR-RAM. I'd call it "interesting". They made the Naomi 2's hardware, which brings the DC's/Naomi architecture to the Xbox level. The original PowerVR for PC was interesting too. On some games it was on part or even better than the 3Dfx Voodoo 1 (in Unreal, Tomb Raider, Mechwarrior 2 and some others) and had interesting exclusive games or exclusive versions (like VirtualOn, Resident Evil).

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I mean not much else interesting after their relationship with Sega

[@x7heDeviLx]

6:10 was it two gpus in a solo config or just the 3d gpu and the 2d gpu because voodoo 2 only came in a card that was supposed to be used in tandem with your 2d card

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s two GPUs. But it’s not so much working in tandem as one GPU board is drawing X and the other is drawing Y. In Silent Scope for instance the master board is drawing the game and the sub board is drawing a second instance of the game via the scope screen.

[@gravious]

just another reason to love Thrill Drive 2 :) I wonder.. was Konami's OverDrive built on repurposed hardware?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

No that was just dual Motorola 68000s so that’s a very common design

[@gravious]

@@VideoGameEsoterica ahh.. i see.. still a great game though, you should cover it! :D

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

One of these days. It’s on the list. But you should see the list 🤣

[@atemporalmusic6622]

A GPU do Dreamcast codinome Holy/CLX2, é comumente confundida com a NEC Neon 250, mas na verdade a GPU, que tem os mesmos recursos da GPU do Dreamcast é a GPU KYRO, e não a Neon 250, que tinha recursos faltantes, oque faz que muito subestimem o verdadeiro poder da ClX2 do Dreamcast...

[@DeanError]

i would throw in that naomi was more than just a dreamcast with more memory, hence the huge cost difference. It had more in the graphics gpu clock speed and capabilities.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Clock speeds are basically par

[@DeanError]

​@@VideoGameEsoterica I think as far as clock speed on the first revision that is true for sure afterwards it was double performance, I thought those had a higher clock speed but could be my bad memory on it. Aany ways my point on Naomi and especially it revisions are a step up beyond just memory alone.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

NAOMI 2 def gets big bumps

[@Jabjabs]

A big part of the performance difference came from higher clocked RAM not the processors. But that is just splitting hairs at this point. It was well known that the Dreamcast was bandwidth limited and so essentially the SH4 vector processor was starved about 30% of the time - just couldn't get enough data to it and this slowed the polygon performance a bit. But that was because Sega was trying to keep costs down and maximize efficiency at all levels. It was a reasonable trade off. That said, look at Crazy Taxi, I don't think I could tell you were the difference is between Naomi and DC. Maybe draw distance?

[@athos5359]

@@Jabjabs thats a software problem, and al consoles are bandwitch limitted to the bar minimum,sega needed better tools to adres that.

[@robbyrobot3303]

Totally agree Sega made the right call. The Naomi/Dreamcast look was so vibrant and fun. Perfect for arcades. Taito had the Wolf board which used a vodoo 3Dfx 1, but the only game that released for it was Psychic Force 2012 in 1998. Im surprised by the visuals they achieved, doesn't really look like any pc games i remember from that era.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

You been looking over my shoulder? A Wolf board arrived last week

[@robbyrobot3303]

@@VideoGameEsoterica awesome! Look forward to the eventual coverage.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Should be fun!

[@shadowopsairman1583]

Compare SA on DC to the DX version, the dx version is inferior graphically because the gc, ps2 and xb were hardware inferior. it wasn't until a few years ago a fix was made for the pc version to restore the DCs HiFi Graphics

[@TimmiTimmiT]

[Relevant anecdote]

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

🤣 relevant indeed

[@drewba7741]

Konami Viper = a Vic Viper reference?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Maybe but Konami named boards after bugs and snakes. Cobra, Viper, Tarantula, Hornet

[@pcdoodle1]

I think their are more viewers than youtube shows. Look at comment ratio. This is cool shit.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I wish 🤣 getting views is always a battle

[@carl_84]

PowerPC + PowerVR 2 would have been the best option, but I guess that was not in the cards

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Seems like Sega really didn’t want to use PowerPC. But that makes sense as internal developers at Sega had been on Hitachi instruction sets since 32X. It was familiar to them

[@carl_84]

@@VideoGameEsoterica also Hitachi was selling the SH4 cheaper than IBM / Motorola. And SEGA even got to add instructions in SH4, which in a PowerPC architecture I think it would be more difficult. Good relation between SEGA and Hitachi definitely influenced 🙂

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes hitachi was doing a lot of business with Sega so they were way more amenable to doing what Sega wanted

[@dan_perry]

Sega's AM teams were quite familiar with the PPC arch, having powered the Model 3 rev boards. The 'real' (pun intended) workhorse on that hardware was the Real3D GPU's.

[@carl_84]

@@dan_perry IIRC Sega Rally 2 was made for Model 3 (PPC), and the Dreamcast port was made in a rush, so they used PC version of SR2 and ported it to the Dragon SDK (Windows CE + DirectX) and that's why it's not that great on the Dreamcast.

[@fizzyfuzz5878]

Yes the Japanese version was graphically superior, but EA themselves have stated a reason they didn't support Dreamcast is they went with the unfamiliar chips as opposed to 3Dfx. Also the Japanese chips malfunctioned before the Japanese launch, causing Sega to have much less stock than expected. Pre orders were cancelled and customers were turned away. Sega couldn't afford anymore mistakes like that and their choice backfired there.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Def a more unproven manufacturer and chipset vs 3DFX at that point in time

[@dan_perry]

Team Sato!👍

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

👍

[@BubblegumCrash332]

The Blackbelt totally has PS2 looking graphics

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes. Lacks that Dreamcast vibe

[@MarginalSC]

Looks more like ps1 with texture filtering and a z buffer.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I dunno if I’d say that

[@MarginalSC]

@VideoGameEsoterica Lower poly count heavy filtering. It's better than the M2, but not ps2 level.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

M2 was the best 3D ever made. I am biased 🤣

[@InputArchive]

I had a fun time, don't you worry.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Haha good

[@lex_4242]

Iirc if the black belt concept had been released it would’ve been vastly inferior to the katana design mainly the cpu

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

PowerPC was no slouch back then

[@souLmauri]

❤

[@shadowopsairman1583]

Just find Naomi, Also the DC did what the PS2, XB and GC couldn't, Sonic Adventure is the example of it being a superior product.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Dreamcast could outshine PS2 in a lot of instances

[@moot6794]

How did you figure this out 😂

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Because arcades is what I know :)

[@IronTiger]

We would have gotten Madden, but every game would have looked terrible. I’m glad the jocks lost in the end.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The thing is you can’t compare Konami’s dev team to Sega. Don’t get me wrong I love Konami but they were not on Sega’s level technically nor did they dedicate the time and budget to development like Sega did

[@IronTiger]

@@VideoGameEsoterica I’m just going off what arcade and PC games with 3dfx graphics looked like at the time. I tended to feel their competitors had better textures and image quality. Rush 2049 and Hydro Thunder probably would have looked the same, but I don’t think they hold a candle to native DC/Naomi/Atomiswave games.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

3DFX textures always had a certain look that could be described a bit as muddy

[@athos5359]

dreamcast gpu looks abnormal big for it s time,most have been really costly for sega on a 250nm proces back in 1998,maybe that s why the system flopped.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Def not why the system flopped. Sega just ran out of money

[@athos5359]

​@@VideoGameEsoterica yes selling the dreamcast for 200 bucks in the usa is the reason for losing money.

[@robertpeacock894]

I’d be curious to know if the American hardware was cheaper. As Sega brought themselves to financial ruin developing the Dreamcast.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

A very good question. That I don’t know. But then competing against themselves blowing resources on two competing consoles def didn’t help

[@Ashitaka0815]

Most likely not, neither 3Dfx nor IBM were known for generosity🤣

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Then or now (IBM at least

[@Liam3072]

It's unlikely to be the case. The Voodoo 3 in particular was very expensive when it was released.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes but don’t forget console makers sell at a loss

[@SharifSourour]

It looks like PS2!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Very similar vibes visually for sure

[@SharifSourour]

@@VideoGameEsoterica yes, worse than the Dreamcast! LOL

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Haha nice

[@pinkjoys1127]

😭😢😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

lol sad?

[@ВадимБеляев-щ3д]

sega всегда преследовала шизофрения

[@CCCP-sr9ou]

Очень интересно и познавательно SUPER !!