Y2K. If you were alive for it, you remember the hysteria it produced. Technology was slated to take over the world, and civilization wasn’t prepared for it. For me, however, the turn of the millennium meant something totally different. Video games.
The video gaming concept was pioneered many decades before I was born, and truly started to come alive about the same time I did, with the hugely popular Nintendo NES. The past 25 years have been a constant evolution for personal video gaming, and upon closer investigation, so much more. From Super Nintendo to PS3, and every place in between, we have seen wild advancements that frankly even the deepest of dreamers in the early days of gaming never would have fathomed.
But obviously, everyone knows that. Why were video games so important to me that fateful night when 1999 struck 2000? Not a week earlier, Christmas morning had taken my life and turned it upside down. In the best way possible… with a Dreamcast. The Sega Dreamcast. The best video gaming system of all time. Did I care if the Dell in my living room was going to blow up because it thought it was owned by Henry Ford himself? Of course not, I was throwing a Hail Mary from Randall Cunningham to Randy Moss. Again, and again, and again. And unless the occasional halfback toss to Robert Smith was in order, nothing else mattered to me.
Dreamcast was a piece of machinery from the future. It allowed you to play online, its graphics were way ahead of its time, and its controller even had some goofy port that was so advanced I still doubt I could figure it out (in reality, a slot for a rumble pack and memory card with actual animations on the controller)!
This article, though, remains personal, and the truth of the matter is: Dreamcast molded who I am today. For that, I will always regard it so highly. NBA 2K1, Sega Bass Fishing, Sonic Adventure, Cool Boarders, and the aforementioned NFL2K, not only the games I played over a decade ago so religiously, but the activities I still enjoy so thoroughly to this day.
Dreamcast clearly did not shape only my adult self, but also the modern gaming world. Who knows where Microsoft would be without Xbox LIVE. Who knows where EA Sports would be had it not signed an exclusive player rights deal with the 4 major sports. Who knows where the industry would be without the graphics cards developed by Sega. All of these items and more were either directly or indirectly caused by Sega’s top-notch performance with Dreamcast. It’s a shame it wasn’t available for a longer period of time. It truly is the best video game console ever.