Dreamcast 20 #13: Power Stone

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

Most fighting games tend to follow the same basic design: a one-on-one martial arts battle between two characters that follow along a one-dimensional plane. They move back and forth, with any two-dimensional side-step simply acting to re-align that linear plane. Fighting games that attempt more complex ranges of movement often struggle because they are more complicated to control. The first one that I ever played that successfully negotiated a fully three-dimensional range of movement was Power Stone, a Capcom fighter exclusively for Sega's arcade platform and the Dreamcast. It's a fantastic, frantic gem.

Dreamcast 20 #14: Skies of Arcadia

27 November 2018 marked the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games. This project's running behind, like much of this website, since we're at the actual anniversary and we're only up to game #14 in the countdown. Never mind - happy birthday to the Dreamcast.

No games console survives for long in Japan without some role-playing games (RPGs). Starting with Dragon Warriors and Final Fantasy on the Nintendo Famicom, they have always been a key part of a console's success - guaranteeing it hardware sales purely on the back of one or two key breakout titles. The Dreamcast didn't fare outrageously well when it came to RPGs, but it did manage a couple of highlights. One of them was definitely Skies of Arcadia.

Dreamcast 20 #15: Samba de Amigo

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

As I noted in an earlier review of Sega Bass Fishing 2, the Dreamcast was a console big on peripherals, with multiple titles making use of their own dedicated controllers. Samba de Amigo is another one. A charming rhythm action game, it's core appeal came in its own special extras: a pair of maracas.

Seriously, who doesn't want to play a smiling monkey shaking a pair of maracas in time with the music?

Dreamcast20 #16: Sonic Adventure

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

Sonic the Hedgehog is Sega' most famous and popular mascot character, so it's no surprise that one of the Dreamcast's first major releases would be a new Sonic videogame. Sonic Adventure was a bold attempt to advance the Sonic franchise in much the same way that Nintendo had transformed and updated Super Mario Bros with the 3D action-adventure title Super Mario 64. To be honest, Sega's attempt was only a partial success - but those bits that did succeed were a lot of fun to play.

Dreamcast20 #17: Sega Bass Fishing 2

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

I am not usually a fan of sports games, but in the case of Sega Bass Fishing and its sequel I found myself making a surprised exception. The first game was entertaining enough, but as is often the case the 2001 sequel added an impressive list of additional features that made it a richer and more appealing game. There was an expected tournament mode, but also a more relaxing free fishing mode that simply let the player go fishing in the location and style of their choice.

Dreamcast20 #18: Ikaruga

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

I am a huge fan of scrolling shoot-em-up games, in which the player controls a little spaceship shooting at a relentless swarm of enemy spaceships. I say this despite being absolutely terrible at playing them; once they get more frenzied than Galaga or Dragon Spirit (which swapped spaceships out for dragons), I am floundering. That aside, one of my absolute favourites is Ikaruga: an innovative shoot-em-up for arcades and the Dreamcast produced by the Japanese developer Treasure.

Dreamcast20 #19: Chu Chu Rocket

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

Some times the best videogames are the simple ones, and they often don't come simpler that puzzle games. Chu Chu Rocket. Conceptually it's pretty easy: there's a grid upon which a train of mice are walking in a straight direction. Also roaming the board are cats looking to eat the mice. The player can drop arrows onto the grid to change the direction of the mice and guide them into a rocket that allows them to safely escape. If they get on the rocket, the player wins. If they get eaten by cats, the player loses.

It's a simple enough concept, but it's all playing just a little too fast to handle. It rapidly becomes a frantic combination of strategy and twitch gaming as the player starts having to lay down paths in faster and faster ways and in more and more complex set-ups.

Dreamcast20 #20: Omikron: The Nomad Soul

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

In the alien city of Omikron, the player assumes the role of a police detective investigating a string of serial killings. When that detective is killed, however, the player begins a string of reincarnations from body to body while uncovering a supernatural war running out of sight for thousands of years.

Released in 2000 to decidedly mixed reviews, Omikron: The Nomad Soul was an adventure game with varied gameplay - some action, some puzzle-solving - with the original wrinkle of reincarnating the player's character as a different person each time they die. The universe created for the game is imaginative, and for 2000 it seemed like a pretty imaginative one.