This feature was originally published September 2010. It has been updated and expanded as of September 2014.

Where were you on September 9, 1999? For as much as the NES changed the face of the industry, few can say they lined up on day one to get theirs. Even the original PlayStation's launch was lukewarm by today's standards. But 9/9/99 is a date that will live on, not just because of its mnemonic repetition, but because it started the trend of carefully orchestrated hype and anticipation culminating in an epic launch the likes of which the industry had never seen before.It's been 15 years since then, and to many of us it still feels like yesterday. Maybe that's because the Dreamcast was the first console of the sixth generation of consoles, when 3D gaming finally reached maturity, and technical limitations no longer oppressed the ambitions of game designers in the same way they once did. It was followed by the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox, a generation that felt a lot like an uglier version of today's gaming landscape.More importantly, Dreamcast was the last stand of a once mighty hardware giant; the company that came from behind and toppled Nintendo's near-monopoly. After a crushing defeat in the 32-bit marketplace, SEGA underwent one of the most dramatic reinventions the gaming world has ever seen to the delight of newcomers and their loyal fans. It may not have been enough to turn the tides and escape the inevitable, but it was a brief moment of remarkable creativity that hasn't been recaptured since.The Dreamcast didn't even last for half of a generation, but it left a legacy most systems would be proud of. Even a decade later, few systems can stir up emotions in their fans like SEGA's little white wonder.

IGN remembers the Dreamcast

When Bernie Stolar took over as CEO of SEGA of America in 1996, the company's outlook was grim. The PlayStation had quickly managed to devour a huge chunk of SEGA's core; the older, seasoned gamers that rejected Nintendo as "kiddie," and the sports fans that once bickered about Madden versus Montana. Meanwhile, Nintendo was arriving fashionably late to scoop up their fans with a dazzling new Mario game. SEGA had managed to hold on to hardcore arcade fans, but this audience was rapidly shrinking as the arcade market entered a tailspin from which it has never recovered."I thought the Saturn was a mistake as far as hardware was concerned," remarked an unrepentant Stolar. "The games were obviously terrific, but the hardware just wasn't there." It's true that the Saturn was a needlessly complex piece of kit that lacked the ingenuity that made SEGA such a leader in arcade hardware. During the move to CD-based media and 3D environments, development costs were already rising sharply, and the thought of programming for a system with two CPUs and two graphics processors was not an appealing prospect.While some would have chosen to fight the uphill battle, Stolar was far more concerned with the big picture. He truly did want to see SEGA rise again, but he knew the future wouldn't be Saturn. "I was one of the individuals who fought to discontinue Saturn as a platform," he admits. That decision was a heartbreaking one for Saturn fans, and it effectively left the western console markets without any SEGA games for over a year.But fans couldn't see what was growing inside the cocoon. Stolar's decision wasn't made because he resented the Saturn, it was because he knew that the next system would have to hit the ground running. Rather than divide their development teams up between a lost cause and their last chance, he put all of the chips on Dreamcast.Stolar claims that this was also the intent of SEGA of Japan CEO Hayao Nakayama . "We spoke about building a new hardware platform that I would be very, very involved with," he remembers. "I would shape the direction of this platform and hire a new team of people and restructure Sega." Mr. Stolar says software was his first priority, but as an outspoken critic of the Saturn, he knew the hardware and the games needed to go hand-in-hand.It's no secret that SEGA of Japan let their pride interfere with their judgment in the 32-bit era. They passed on deals that could have landed them some version of the hardware behind both the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64, but instead went with a Frankenstein machine of mostly stock chips that was ugly to program for. They had ignored the urgings of SoA CEO Tom Kalinske and the American head of R&D Joe Miller, and they paid dearly for it.This time, they established two separate teams to develop their next machine. IBM's Tatsuo Yamamoto led the American project, codenamed Katana, which featured the American-made 3Dfx Voodoo chipset that had revolutionized the PC gaming market. In Japan, a team headed by Genesis designer Hideki Sato worked diligently on Dural, with parts supplied by Japanese giants Hitachi and NEC. NEC's PowerVR hadn't quite taken over the desktop market like 3Dfx had, but both systems proved to be worthy adversaries.The Japanese system won out, but this time it was a righteous victory. While some claim this was a result of a tiff with 3Dfx over publicly announcing the collaboration before the ink was dry, that incident was just one more nail in the coffin. Executives on both sides of the Pacific were convinced that Dural was the better system. While the Saturn lagged behind the older Model 2 arcade hardware, this new system was truly top of the line, easily capable of outpacing the once-mighty Model 3. To capitalize on this, they created the NAOMI board, an arcade version of the new system that packed economy, power, and interchangeable games. This meant, for the first time, Sega's system would be able to deliver a true arcade-at-home experience virtually indistinguishable from their most popular arcade board.Stolar also wanted to make the Dreamcast the first console ever to be online-ready out of the box, but this was a vision not shared by the execs in Japan. Online gaming was rapidly rising in importance in America. Ultima Online took massively multiplayer gaming to a new level of commercial success, and 1999 would see the release of online breakthroughs like EverQuest Quake III: Arena , and Unreal Tournament . The timing was perfect for SEGA to be on the cutting edge. Stolar persuaded the powers at SEGA of Japan to not only support online gaming, but include a modem with each and every system. It had never been done before, and it would be quite a while before the competition would catch up.Of course, the software was just as important, and this is where Stolar's diligence would pay off. It was heartbreaking to see resources diverted away from the Saturn, but this is because we couldn't see where they were going at the time. Yuji Naka's Sonic Team reclaimed SEGA's mascot, rescuing him from the limbo he had been trapped in at Sega's American studio STI. Naka had never been happy about losing the blue blur while he pursued other projects, and imagined an ambitious return to grace for the series that would finally give SEGA their long overdue answer to Mario 64.SEGA also diverted one of their most ambitious projects to their new hardware. Virtua Fighter architect Yu Suzuki had been working on an epic action-adventure initially planned as a spin-off of his famous fighting game. Shenmue quickly blossomed into something far greater, and it soon became apparent that it wouldn't arrive in time for the 32-bit generation. They started over, but the new hardware made the project that much more exciting. It wouldn't arrive in time for launch, however, so SEGA also contracted Genki to port Virtua Fighter 3 to their latest system.The Dreamcast's Japanese launch was unspectacular. Arriving in the final weeks of fall, 1998, the release was plagued by shortages of NEC chipsets that limited systems to a trickle. The launch lineup left something to be desired as well. Virtua Fighter 3tb didn't look quite as good as its arcade counterpart, which was already a couple years old and never as popular as its predecessors. Godzilla Generations and Pen Pen Tri-Icelon both received poor marks, and hardly showcased the new system. Within a month, Sonic Adventure arrived to save Christmas for early adopters in Japan, but some of the damage had already been done. Fans and third parties alike resented SEGA for abandoning the Saturn while it still held a respectable chunk of the market, and the weak launch did little to change their minds.The following summer, while Americans were still anxiously waiting for the next generation, the Dreamcast finally landed a surprise hit in Japan. Yoot Saito, best known for the cult classic Sim Tower, decided to capitalize on the still-recent virtual pet craze with a unique "life sim" called Seaman . Saito went against the grain of everything the genre stood for, and that somehow made it all the more appealing. Seaman was not cute – in fact, he was a grotesque chimera of man and fish – and he was anything but charming, but with the help of a microphone accessory and impressive speech recognition, the caustic critter could hold some pretty entertaining conversations. Although Seaman could barely be called a "game" in the usual sense, it proved to be Japan's first must-have title on the struggling system.