September seems to have a lot of birthdays doesn’t it? Today, September 9th, 2009 marks the ten year anniversary of the release of the SEGA Dreamcast.

Widely considered SEGA’s best console after the legendary Genesis/Mega Drive and arguably the most underrated home console of all time. The SEGA Dreamcast was home to many memorable games like Soul Caliber, Sonic Adventure, Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia (AKA Castle in the Sky: The video game!), among others.

Released on 9/9/99 (in North America), the Dreamcast was a system ahead of its time. You know how you play console games online all the time now? Yeah, Xbox didn’t start that. It was Dreamcast! You remember how you could plug Gameboy Advances into your Gamecube  in certain games and it would do/unlock stuff in said games? Yeah that was borrowed from Dreamcasts cool little ‘controller memory card things.’ This thing was darned innovative!

Unfortunately, the magic of the Dreamcast (and SEGA in general) was not to last, and in just a few short years it was discontinued and SEGA was forced to become a third party company, and they have yet to reclaim their former glory…. But how did a system so great fall so quickly? Well, I guess a lot of the blame goes to the Sony Playstation and the (at the time) forthcoming Playstation 2. I don’t mean to sound biased against any console but let’s face it, when the Playstation (which was a fantastic system itself) was released in 1995, it slowly but surely began the downward spiral of the video game world. Now once again, I’m not saying Playstation itself is what killed gaming, but let’s face it, Nintendo and SEGA had been at it for years and video games had never been better, but along comes the new kid on the block which of course was a primed opportunity for certain developers to start making more juvenile “mature” games that the more “family friendly” big two wouldn’t allow (one may argue that Mortal Combat was extremely violent, and it was, but it was almost so ridiculously violent it couldn’t be taken seriously).

Nintendo would go on to take second place to the newer, “cooler” Playstation, while the SEGA Saturn barely had a leg to stand on. SEGA knew they needed to do something different, something new, in order to keep the house that Sonic built from falling into obscurity. Thus the Dreamcast was born. Tragically (and indeed it was a tragedy) it was too late. Despite the innovations, the awesome games, and the cool swirly icon, the Dreamcast couldn’t stay afloat in the (then) modern gaming world. The world of gaming is indeed a fickle one, and in a world of realistic car racing, silver-haired swordsmen and tactical espionage action, Sonic no longer seemed as cool as he once did to the masses (and I’m sure Shadow the hedgehog and Big the cat didn’t help). Gamers were far more interested in the upcoming Playstation 2 (and to a slightly lesser extent, that new Xbox machine) then they were in a new SEGA console. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast didn’t stand a chance.

And it is a darned shame, because (as previously stated) the Dreamcast was home to many great games, especially given the relatively short time it was on the market. In that short time it gave us a whole lot of good memories. One’s that, to this day, still have gamers’ jaws on the floor from their sheer brilliance.

Let us reflect on this wonderful little machine. The swansong of  SEGA consoles. The little console that could. One of the greatest gaming systems of all time.

Happy tenth birthday SEGA Dreamcast!