Sonic Adventure 2

Ten years ago today, the Dreamcast stormed onto US shelves in one of the most explosive console launches of all time… and then suffered a premature death less than two years later. Now, however, the internets are buzzing with retrospectives, histories, love letters and lamentations as every major game site lines up to pay its respects to gaming’s most brilliant failed system.

More than just a memory card, but not quite a TI-89 - the Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit is an icon of Sega’s marvelous creative peak. Sure they’re a little bulkier than your average memory device, and they devour batteries like starving robotic beggars, but damn if they aren’t cool - being able to see your saved games right on your memory device in 1999, well, that was like, the future and stuff.

This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the launch of Sega’s Dreamcast, possibly the most beloved failed console of all time. Following a thunderous, record-breaking launch on Sept. 9, 1999, the Dreamcast died a quiet death less than two years later, when Sega opted to pull the plug rather than compete head-on with Sony’s PlayStation 2 juggernaut. In that time, however, it built up an impressive library that included some of

Since time immemorial, mankind has gazed upon missiles and secretly thought, “Hey, that’d be fun to ride.” For whatever perverse reason, the idea of straddling or surfing on what amounts to a blazing rocket engine packed with deadly explosives is wildly fascinating to just about everyone, particularly if someone else does it.

This is really weird, so brace yourself. Many years ago, while toiling away in the Toys "R" Us salt mines, I was in charge of the electronics department. This included the glut of cheapo PC software the company carries, from seven-year-old games that will never sell to brand new, hardware-crunching titles that no one shopping in that store could ever install. The amount of unsold software was so choking that some