SEGA

Developer GyroVorbis' retro-styled RPG Elysian Shadows raised a number of eyebrows when the company announced it was to be released on the now-defunct Dreamcast. For those of us still mourning the loss of one of gaming's greatest underachievers, it came as welcome news.

There's a hint of irony to GyroVorbis' decision; whilst Elysian Shadows is a game with one eye very much on the past, the Dreamcast was a console whose ethos firmly looked to the future. The whole philosophy of the machine was to take the industry into new and exciting realms. Some of them were online. Others were on fishing boats. It promised everything, and more.

Sega sold their seductively-sleek console on the back of its heightened capabilities, but unfortunately, people just weren't prepared for the majority of its pioneering ideas.

The Dreamcast jumped the gun on the other fifth-generation consoles, and ultimately Sega's impatience was the console's downfall. But its death was not in vain. When the precocious white-box fell by the wayside, the blueprints for the entire future of the industry were left in its wake.

Sega's last console was ahead of its time in so many ways, one needs their fingers to count them. Now, I only have ten, so that's as far as I got. See if you can read through them all whilst fighting the urge to dig out your VMUs and GD-ROM.