The Sega Dreamcast is a much beloved video game console that if you listened to people on the internet, has no bad games and is the GREATEST CONSOLE EVAR! Sure, Sega’s last little box had some great titles, but it’s from a generation that doesn’t quite hold up as well as our nostalgia ridden minds remember -no matter how much we want it to. That being said there were in fact a number of games released for the system that failed to deliver on a quality front (although less than other consoles to be sure) and those are the games we are going to be looking at today.
Spirit Of Speed 1937
Spirit Of Speed 1937 is supposed to be a racing game based on cars from the rea stated in the title. I supposed to be a racing game because the only thing it’s supposed do, it does very poorly. Car physics are buggy, and that’s putting it nicely. If you do manage to gain some speed you’ll quickly wreck thanks to the terrible controls and end up bouncing around like you’re in a pinball machine. The game was created by Acclaim, already a bad sign, but even they didn’t want anything to do with it and tacked on the LJN logo on the game five years after the company last released a game. All Spirit Of Speed 1937 was give LJN a bad… worse name than they already had.
Soul Fighter
The Dreamcast was a sort of in-between system in the console space. First-person shooters were still almost exclusively a PC thing, and open-world adventures had yet to really catch on prior to Grand Theft Auto 3. That means the Dreamcast had tons of arcade titles and ports. One genre that was still big was the beat-em-up that had now moved into the 3D space. Soul Fighter was such a game but forgot to take the cues from better games that came before it. A generic beat-em-up that seemed to forget that the Dreamcast has 4 controller ports by being a single-player only experience. Floaty controls and cheesy story done with CG rendered cut-scenes that look worse than the in-game models make for a laughable experience. Soul Fighter may have held up as a bad game if you could have a laugh playing with a friend, but alone it’s just depressing.
Nightmares Creatures II
The original Nightmare Creatures was a lot of fun on the Sony PlayStation, so when a sequel was announced fans of the monster slashing original were excited. Nightmares Creatures II hit the PlayStation and did it’s thing, but then a Dreamcast port was handed to Sega fans. While a port isn’t inherently a terrible thing as can be seen by Tony Hawk 2 on the Dreamcast, but the team behind Nightmares Creatures II figured a straight port would work just fine. Nothing was done to the graphics to take advantage of the then modern Dreamcast. The game itself is still a little fun, but it was nothing but shovelware only meant to steal money from Sega fans that were starving for Dreamcast titles.
ESPN NBA 2 Night
Konami is a shell of its former self, happy churning out Pachinko machines and mobile money sinks. But even during their heyday, the company was never really know for its sport offerings; at least not serious simulations. Sure, Winning Eleven may still be alive outside of the United States for soccer fans, the company gave up on sports a long time ago. One major factor was their stab at an NBA game in ESPN NBA 2 NIGHT. It’s not a game that’s just bad because of certain things, instead it’s bad because the entire game is broken from top to bottom. The games animations shift from laughable, to downright horrific. There are times when movement animations simply don’t work lending to playing a basketball on an ice rink. But even more disturbing is the games dunk animations that when started will let you go ghost through anyone in the way with zero collision detection. And don’t get us stared on the ball physics that have a mind of their own, causing the ball to “bamf” around the court at will during passes. Add to that the creepy factor of players having arms that end at stumps and you have possibly the worst basketball game every made, or the best horror game ever released…
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
Lara Croft was one of the biggest things in gaming during the 90s. Tomb Raider one and two helped define how to do a 3d action game. Her… assets also helped ingrain her in the memories of many impressionable young gamers. But instead of trying to innovate on the core mechanics of the game, making things better and better, they instead chose to market Lara instead of creating a solid port for the Dreamcast. While Angel of Darkness may be the breaking point that killed the series until the recent reboot, it all really began falling apart with The Last Revelation. Tired gameplay and an annoying item combination mechanic that could have you replaying levels you beat hours ago made for a lackluster game. The developers also seemed to forget that the Dreamcast had an analog stick, so you were left with a clunky experience that already was showing its age. The old joke is that the large Lara’s boobs got the worse the games became.
The Ring: Terror’s Realm
Move based games on the Dreamcast were few and far between, but The Ring: Terror’s Realm is here to fill that void. While technically not a movie tie-in, the game does exist in the films universe, so one may think we’ve escaped a terrible game. But then you load up the game and the first thing you get is a cartoon “splooch” sound and immediately you know this is neither a horror game, nor one that is going to be good in any way shape or form. The game has something to do with a haunted program on a floppy disc or something silly like that. Who really knows because the game makes little sense as you wander around for hours doing nothing. At least the terrible audio mixing will wake you up with it’s random nature and audio spikes. Stilted voice acting and some terrible VR world that fits on a 3.5 inch floppy makes for a poor Resident Evil knockoff on the Dreamcast. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to put some healing jelly on my toast.
Who Wants To Beat Up A Millionaire?
Parody games just don’t work. Do any of you remember Pyst? How about WinBlows 98? That’s right, none of you. In the case of this abysmal Dreamcast title “Who Wants To Beat Up A Millionaire?” you answer trivia questions to earn the right to “beat up” a selected millionaire. It’s utterly stupid and a game that wears out its welcome after the first question gets answered. In between the lame questions and stupid punching you have to sit through the terrible comedy styling of host Egregious Philin. Yeah, he’s as terrible as his name is bad.
And that’s our list. Did we miss a game, or include one that you think was actually pretty good? Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to visit us on YouTube for more.
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