When we talk about Dreamcast curiosities, people tend to think about its accessories, cancelled games or its still healthy indie game community. But how about the curiosities that nobody talks about?

Here’s a list of some the fun tidbits in the Dreamcast’s past that we think deserve more attention.

1) SEGA made fun of Sony

SEGA has always been addicted to controversial advertisements, and it was no different with Dreamcast. When the PlayStation 2 was released, Sony’s device suffered huge distribution problems in the US, disappearing from stores and being resold at exorbitant prices to those willing to fork over the cash.

SEGA did not miss a good opportunity to poke their rival, as you can see in this image:

2) SEGA created an online war in Europe

SEGA from Europe ended up creating one of the weirdest but coolest Dreamcast advertisements: Every European Union country was teasing and then challenging others to “sort out the differences” in online matches. Here are three examples:

3) Square had a Dreamcast development kit

In a Gamespot article from 2000, we can find the following text: “Dreams of Namco putting full support into Dreamcast are pretty well gone, and Square, while reportedly it does have Dreamcast development kits, will probably also make the jump right into PlayStation 2 as its ‘Emotion Engine’ is exactly what Square has been fiending for since Final Fantasy VII was first in development.”

4) The Dreamcast’s graphics could go ‘twice the level of Shenmue 1’

In an interview for IGN in 2000, when asked about how much further Yu Suzuki thought the system could go graphically, he replied:

“It depends on software technology, but there’s still a lot of space left. Probably, easily, twice the level of Shenmue 1.”

5) The Dreamcast can run Nintendo 64 games

In 2007, a programmer with the nickname Simpson474 ported a Nintendo 64 emulator, called Daedalus-N64, to the Dreamcast. The emulator can handle Mario 64, Mario Kart and Zelda and other games with 5 FPS what is really impressive for consoles with just one generation of difference.

The programmer abandoned the project and said it was just a test. He left the code for anyone who wants to try to improve it.

Here is a link if you want to try it.

6) Dreamcast is one of the consoles that most emulates other machines

Still talking about emulators, did you know the Dreamcast is one of the rare consoles that can emulate emulate other video game machines? The list is huge:

Video game systems

Atari 800

Atari 2600

Atari 7800

Colecovision

Magnovox Odyssey

Mattel Intellivision

Milton Bradley Vectrex

NEC TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine

Nintendo 64

Nintendo NES/Famicom

Nintendo SNES/Super Famicom

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive

Sega CD/Mega CD

Sega Master System

Sega Saturn

Sega SG-1000/SC-3000

SNK NeoGeo

SNK NeoGeo CD

Sony PlayStation

VTech CreatiVision

Arcade systems

Mame

Midway Z80

NeoGeo MVS

Sega System 16

Portable systems

Atari Lynx

Bandai WonderSwan

Nintendo Game Boy Advance

Nintendo Game Boy (Color)

Pokemon Mini

Sega Dreamcast VMU

Sega Game Gear

SNK NeoGeo Pocket Color

Watara Supervision



Computer systems

386/DOS

Amstrad CPC

Amiga 500

Apple II

Atari 800

Atari ST

Commodore 64

CHIP-8

Dragon 32/64

MicroBee

Microsoft MSX

NEC PC-9801

Sinclair Spectrum

Thomson TO 7 and TO 8

For more details check a complete list with all the emulators here.

7) SEGA had its own video format for the Dreamcast

Everyone knows Dreamcast didn’t have support for the DVD format. Instead, SEGA established its own video standard called the DcVD (Dreamcast Video Disc). This format was based on the MPEG SOFDEC, which was similar to standards set for DVD video, VCD, etc.

Source: The Dreamcast Junkyard

Do you remember more forgotten curiosities about the Dreamcast? Let us know in the comments!