GoKawiilThe Dreamcast was Sega's attempt to bring the arcade experience to players' living rooms in the late '90s with a lineup of fighting games, 3D graphics capabilities and online play, plus a controller with a modular secondary display. It came out in Japan in late 1998 and hit the global market one year later, introducing pivotal titles like ChuChu Rocket!, SoulCalibur, Sonic Adventure, Phantasy Star Online, Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio, Shenmue and Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. The Dreamcast was the first console to include a modem, enabling online services including live worldwide leaderboards and multiplayer experiences.
It was also Sega's final console. Sega discontinued the Dreamcast in March 2001, one year after Sony's launch of the PlayStation 2 in Japan. Gun-shy from the bungled and ultimately failed release of the Saturn in the mid-90s, Sega decided to bow out of the console game entirely when it saw the runaway success of the PS2.
However, the Dreamcast games kept coming. Hackers discovered that the console provided an ideal platform for homebrew experiences, thanks to its rudimentary online capabilities and reliance on a GD-ROM disc format that was quickly bypassed to allow tinkerers to boot from standard CDs, no hardware adjustments required. As the first console with built-in online functions, Sega hadn't tied any critical capabilities to its network, so the company wasn't able to remotely shut players out of its systems, as is routinely the case nowadays.