Choosing which was the most advanced console of its generation is a difficult decision, there is no doubt about that, especially since over the last four decades there have been important leaps that have gone beyond the powerand that they have changed the way we play the game and the way we interact with other players.
It is not a question of power, and we should not fall into the error of limiting ourselves to assessing performance, since this would lead us to choose the most powerful console of its generation, and this does not necessarily imply that we can therefore consider it as the more advanced. They are different concepts, and in the second case we must take other things into account.
With this in mind, I am the first to get wet and I tell you that, in my humble opinion, The Dreamcast was by far the most advanced console of its generation., and probably the most innovative in the entire history of video consoles. I know that Nintendo 64 introduced vibration in the controller and was the first to bet on integrating an analog stick, I am also aware that Xbox innovated with the integration of a hard drive and that it marked a turning point with the Xbox Live service, but the truth is that in the end Dreamcast marked a much bigger turning point within its generation.
Before the Dreamcast, 3D games were very crude and simple, they had to resort to techniques like fog or pre-rendered environments to avoid performance issues and texturing was terrible. The SEGA console marked a huge graphic leap, I still remember my first contact with games like Resident Evil Code Veronica or Metropolis Street Racer, it was simply impressive.
But the jump in graphics power is just the tip of the iceberg. The Dreamcast was, in my opinion, the most advanced console of its generation because it introduced such important advances as the visual memory, it enhanced the gaming experience and was almost a miniature console, and also because it came with a huge amount of peripherals, including from a gun to a keyboard and mouseand because he had a modem and all the software we needed to connect to the Internet and play online.
Today it will seem ridiculous to us, but we are talking about a console that arrived in Japan in 1998 (to Europe in 1999) and offered fantastic value for money (39,999 pesetas in Spain, 240 euros to change). Dreamcast took a huge leap in power, was the first to start blurring the barrier between a console and a PC, and laid the foundation for the consoles we use today, with which we can surf the Internet and play games online. Now it’s your turn, we read in the comments.
