Saturday, April 18, 2009

Nothing lasts forever

My kids killed one of my dreamcast controllers -- the connector end looks like it was savagely beaten. I ordered another from Amazon (cheaper than eBay for most things these days, it seems). And when I tried to load up Sonic Adventure for Melissa the Dreamcast kept asking me to "please insert game disc." I ordered another copy of that from Amazon, too.

Fortunately Sonic Adventure 2 worked (the copy I ordered from eBay long ago and turned out to be a warez disc), so my promise to amuse my daughter with a good Sonic game was not in vain. But it made funny noises. I wonder if the Dreamcast itself is dying. The thought makes me sad. The games still compare well, technically, with modern Wii titles (if not 360 or ps3). And it hosted an array of category-defying titles that you can't find the like of anymore. (With the exception of a few downloadable titles from PSN.)

Even if it isn't dying this year or next (and of course there is always Amazon), the odds are good that twenty years my grandchildren won't be playing my Dreamcast collection. That's a depressing thought.

(Then again, maybe by then we will be downloading Dreamcast titles for the equivalent of 2029's Virtual Console.)

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