10 Best Dreamcast Games

Sonic Adventure was the first main Sonic game with 3D gameplay. Sonic Team started it in 1997, after the Saturn's Sonic X-treme was cancelled, and director Takashi Iizuka and producer Yuji Naka set out to reinvent Sonic for the 3D era. It came out in Japan in December 1998 and in North America in September 1999. Jun Senoue wrote most of the music, and he liked rock better than the electropop of the older games. That is why the blue hedgehog suddenly sounded like a guitar shop.

Critics called it a major technical advancement. They also noted glitches and camera problems, which anyone who has watched the camera hide behind a wall will confirm. It became the Dreamcast's bestseller, with 2.5 million copies sold by August 2006. Critics felt the later ports had not aged well, so the Dreamcast disc is the one to play.

Crazy Taxi was an arcade game first, in 1999, and the Dreamcast got the first home version in 2000. You pick a driver and a cab, each with slightly different attributes, and drive customers around town for money. A large green arrow at the top of the screen points to the destination. It does not care what is in the way, so a good run means learning the city well enough to ignore it. Near misses with other cars earn extra money.

The Dreamcast port got critical acclaim, and critics praised the gameplay as "addictive". The PC version had frame rate issues, and reviewers recommended the Dreamcast version instead. Ask players about it and the Dreamcast is the console they tie it to. Crazy Taxi 2 followed in 2001, but the first one is the one people remember.

Game Arts released Grandia II in Japan in August 2000, and Ubi Soft brought it to North America that December. It was meant to be more mature than the first Grandia, and it was the first in the series with fully 3D graphics. The battles are why it lasts. Every fighter moves along the IP gauge toward their turn. Land a critical while an enemy is in its action phase and you cancel its move and push it back down the gauge.

The Dreamcast version got a largely positive response in Japan and the West. The later PlayStation 2 and PC ports were usually seen as inferior. The 2015 Anniversary Edition on Steam and GOG is based on the Dreamcast version, which says a lot. Players who played it on the Dreamcast still count it among their favourites.

Seaman is a pet game, and the pet is a fish with a human face that insults you. It came out on the Dreamcast in Japan on July 29, 1999, and in North America the following year, bundled with the Dreamcast microphone. You start with an unhatched egg, control the heat in the tank and clean out the filthy water. Then you talk to it. At first it can only repeat your words back as gibberish. Later it asks your birthday and tells you what happened on that date.

Leonard Nimoy narrates, the most serious voice ever hired to describe a fish that grows frog-like legs. Seaman became the third best-selling Dreamcast game in Japan, and overseas it got a cult following for its dark humor. When players list what the Dreamcast could do that other consoles could not, Seaman comes up.

Code: Veronica was the first Resident Evil game to debut on a platform other than PlayStation. It began when Shinji Mikami's team learned they could not port Resident Evil 2 to the Saturn and started an original game instead. Capcom released it in February 2000 after delays. The American horror of the earlier games gives way to European gothic. Claire wakes up a prisoner to find an outbreak of the T-virus has occurred, and the trip ends at an Umbrella facility in Antarctica.

Sales were weak for a Resident Evil and strong for a Dreamcast game. It has been considered among the best Resident Evil games and the best Dreamcast games. Code: Veronica X, with new cutscenes, followed in 2001. Players who came to it from the PlayStation games remember it as a big step up.

Project Justice is Capcom's sequel to Rival Schools: United By Fate, a 3D fighter about rival schools. It hit Japanese arcades in December 2000 on the Naomi board, with a Dreamcast port at the same time, and the rest of the world got it in 2001. The Team-Up still costs two levels of the vigor meter. The new Party-Up is a three-person attack that takes all five, and it changes with the school of whoever starts it.

You can also cancel an opponent's Team-Up with one of your own, which turns a big cinematic moment into a race to land the first hit. English players lost the board game mode, which would have taken too long to translate. Unlockable characters built from the Japanese creation parts take its place. It is one of the most fun fighters Capcom made that decade.

Shenmue starts in 1986 Yokosuka. Ryo Hazuki, a teenage martial artist, comes home to the family dojo in time to see his father, Iwao, confronted by a Chinese man named Lan Di. The rest of the game is Ryo chasing his father's killer. Sega AM2 made it for the Dreamcast, and it was the most expensive video game ever developed at the time, at an estimated US$47 to $70 million. Some of that money also paid for Shenmue II.

Critics praised how it looked and sounded and how much it tried to do. The controls and the slow pace got the complaints, and the focus on mundane detail divided players. Shenmue III finally arrived in 2019 after a successful crowdfunding campaign. Players still name Shenmue when they talk about what the Dreamcast brought that nothing before it had.

Skies of Arcadia uses turn-based battles and experience points, then puts the focus on exploring, with an airship you fly in 3D space. The team included staff from the Panzer Dragoon and Sakura Wars games. Once production moved to the Dreamcast, the theme of travelling the skies was set, inspired by the Age of Discovery. Japanese RPGs of the time mostly had darker worlds. Overworks wanted an optimistic hero who explored instead.

That hero is Vyse, and his friends Aika and Fina stand on equal footing with him instead of waiting to be saved. One reviewer said the composer was obviously overdosing on 1930s adventure serials, and that is a compliment. A GameCube port, Skies of Arcadia Legends, came out in 2002. Players who recommend it name the Dreamcast as its home.

Soulcalibur came out in arcades on July 30, 1998, on Namco's System 12 board, which was based on the PlayStation. The Dreamcast port arrived in 1999 with new features and improved graphics, and it is one of the few home ports that outdid its arcade parent. In North America it was a Dreamcast launch game. Earlier 3D fighters only let you sidestep or roll. Here you hold a direction and your fighter moves that way.

It holds a 98 on Metacritic and won the majority of Game of the Year awards that year. It is still widely regarded as one of the greatest games ever made. Ivy's style was the only original one it added, and it was enough. Players still hold it up as proof of how far ahead of the PlayStation the Dreamcast was.

Soul Reaver is the second Legacy of Kain game and the sequel to Blood Omen. You play Raziel, a disfigured and ghostly vampire, hunting the brothers who have each grown different powers. Kill one and devour his soul and Raziel gains part of that power. A fifth brother, Turel, was cut for time. Nixxes Software made the Dreamcast port in 2000, as its first project. Under Amy Hennig's direction, Harland programmed the music to change with what you are doing, like fighting or swimming.

Critics praised the gothic story and the graphics and criticized the repetitive gameplay and an unsatisfying climax. Material planned for it was pushed into later games, and Soul Reaver 2 is a direct sequel. It sold 1.5 million copies by 2001. A lot of players met Raziel on the Dreamcast. Players recommend it more than any other Dreamcast game.