List Of Dreamcast Games

The is a home video game console developed and sold by Sega. The first of the sixth generation of video game consoles, it was released in Japan on November 27, 1998, in North America on September 9, 1999, and in Europe on October 14, 1999. The fifth and final home console produced by Sega, the Dreamcast is the successor to the Sega Saturn, whose commercial failure prompted the company to release it only four years after its predecessor's initial release. All licensed games for the Dreamcast were released on the GD-ROM format, a proprietary CD-based optical disc format jointly developed by Sega and Yamaha Corporation that was capable of storing up to 1 GB of data. The Dreamcast itself features regional lockout, only playing games released within its predetermined region; however, the lockout is circumventable via modchip installation, boot discs, or cheat discs such as Datel's Action Replay. However, the aforementioned circumventions will only work on a MIL-CD compatible console, and only on CD-ROM media, as the GD-ROM copy protection still work as intended in 2022 as there is no way for consumers to buy either the proprietary Sega System Disc 2 for unlocking the system to be able to run burned GD-R's and with the original optical disc drive installed, even if one was to acquire a game on a burned GD-ROM, a GD-R, it will still require the system to unlock the drive through the official aforementioned disc, the Sega System Disc 2, only given to developers for testing and development. Because of this, Dreamcast consoles which is incompatible with the MIL-CD format, will not run pirated games on CD-ROM nor any of the commercial products which used this feature, like the Action Replay CDX (Europe) or GameShark (North America), or other products like the Bleemcast discs sold to emulate certain PlayStation games. These consoles would state this on the corner of the box for customers to be aware of in case the intended purpose of a purchase was as a MIL-CD player.

Since there is no way for the console to differentiate between the pirated games and the actual media discs sold at the time, no modchip or unlicensed boot disk could circumvent this protection either, meaning that only the region lock was bypassed by the traditional modchips one would regularly see installed in some consoles on other optical-media based video game consoles, such as the Sony PlayStation or the Sega Saturn, in which the latter ironically enough had the opposite situation where a cartridge-based Action Replay or similar would bypass the region lock, while a modchip installation would be needed to run unlicensed software (specifically games), and the piracy protection mechanism was first fully understood and finally ''cracked'' 22 years later than the console's release, by ''James Laird-Wah'' in 2016.

While the higher-capacity DVD-ROM format was available during the console's development, its then-fledgling technology was deemed too expensive to implement at the time. Throughout the console's lifespan, Sega promised compatibility with DVDs in some form, even showing off a DVD player for it at E3 2000, but it never came to fruition. The non-commitment to DVDs later resulted in ramifications for Sega when competitors such as Sony's PlayStation 2 came to market; the Dreamcast was unable to offer DVD movie playback when the general public began switching from VHS to DVD, and its games were unable to take advantage of the DVD's higher storage capacity and lower cost. Furthermore, an exploit in the console's copy protection system via its support for the little-used MIL-CD format effectively allowed users to play games burned onto CD-Rs, albeit with some compromises in content due to the CD's smaller capacity of 650 MB, without any hardware modifications; Sega removed the MIL-CD compatibility in later-produced consoles in an attempt to curb the resulting piracy, but to little avail.

The Dreamcast's initial release in Japan had four launch titles, which were ''Virtua Fighter 3tb'', '' Pen Pen TriIcelon'', '' Godzilla Generations'', and ''July''. The North American debut featured 19 launch titles, which included highly anticipated ones such as ''Sonic Adventure'', ''Soulcalibur'', and ''NFL 2K''. The European introduction was originally going to feature 10 launch titles, but the list increased to 15 as its delay from the original September 23 launch date allowed the inclusion of a handful of additional titles.

Due to the similarity of the Dreamcast's hardware with Sega's own New Arcade Operation Machine Idea (NAOMI) arcade board, it saw several near-identical ports of arcade games. Plus, since the Dreamcast's hardware used parts similar to those found in personal computers (PCs) of the era, specifically ones with Pentium II and III processors, it also saw a handful of ports of PC games. American third-party publisher Electronic Arts (EA), which had extensively supported Sega's prior consoles beginning with the Sega Genesis, elected not to develop games for the Dreamcast due to a dispute with Sega over licensing.

When Sega announced on January 31, 2001, that it would discontinue the Dreamcast on March 31 that year, Sega of America's then-CEO, Peter Moore, promised that Sega would support the console as long as it could. However, the promise proved unsustainable; with sales of third-party titles in North America dwindling by that June, support for the Dreamcast rapidly decreased as numerous cancellations were made in regards to game development and multi-region game releases, with casualties such as Capcom's decision to leave '' Capcom vs. SNK 2'' as a Japanese exclusive and Sierra Studios' cancellation of the Dreamcast port of ''Half-Life'' prominent. North America received ''NHL 2K2'' as the final official game for the console there on February 14, 2002, just over a year after the announcement was made. Meanwhile, Sega hired Bigben Interactive in Europe to sell the remaining stock of consoles, software, and peripherals in that region. Europe, in particular, saw a lack of priority in receiving games released in other regions with the discontinuation; some had their online functionality stripped out before their release there, while others did not receive one at all. Europe received '' Heavy Metal: Geomatrix'', ''Cannon Spike'', ''Conflict Zone'', '' Freestyle Scooter'', and '' Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles'' on April 26, 2002, as the final games for the console in that region. However, buoyed by the success of the NAOMI board in Japanese arcades, games, peripherals and even limited edition consoles continued to trickle out for the Dreamcast in Japan until the end of March 31, 2008, over a year after the GD-ROM format was officially discontinued and which resulted in the closing of ''Sega Direct'', the Japanese official online store at the time.

The Dreamcast's final licensed game (thus, produced on ''GD-ROM'') was '' Karous'', released only in Japan on March 8, 2007, nearly coinciding with the end of GD-ROM production the previous month. The final first-party game for the Dreamcast was ''Puyo Puyo Fever'', released as a Japanese exclusive on February 24, 2004.

Meanwhile, in Japan, new and also refurbished consoles, and peripherals, especially the 'Limited Edition' variants, such as the VMU, manufactured in a variety of colors as well as the rarely seen, black version of the Dreamcast Broadband Adapter and even consoles with limited production runs, ranging from 500 like the "Maziora Dreamcast" and the 'Resident Evil' variants, to 2000 consoles like the non-pachinko Dreamcast R7 variant which differed only in its cosmetics unlike the First Print''' version which was sold exclusively as network terminals at Pachinko parlors. These were sold throughout the year of 2007, most of them only available through Sega's Direct online store, which was closed the 31st of March 2008.

This list is mainly organized by each game's English language title, with titles used in North America preferred; titles for games released in Japan are provided and organized via Hepburn romanization unless an official English title is provided. Games that are part of a series will have the series-related title take precedent over other given titles. This list does not include independently developed games that were or will be released for the system, nor does it include PlayStation titles playable on the system via the commercial Bleemcast! emulator.

Bolded dates indicate launch titles (depends by showing on which region the earliest release date the game was released along with the video game handheld-home console in whatever available region).

Games

There are games that are known to have released on the console:

See also

*List of commercially released independently developed Dreamcast games for a list of homebrew games
*List of Dreamcast online games
*List of cancelled games for Sega consoles
*Lists of video games

Notes

References

{{Video game lists by platform

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Dreamcast
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