LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Dreamcast: Sega Dreamcast
built 140 days ago
Dreamcast was the first system to have online functionality in this generation. It was composed of online servers run by SegaNet, Dreamarena, and GameSpy networks. Online servers were sustained by the lifespan of the system although in Japan it was generally considered as a more popular online system because of its superior arcade game play. Hence more available network modes in games such as Frame Gride, Tech Romancer, and Project Justice. Dreamcast was previously online before the emergence of online play upon its release. Browser technology was made by independent companies such as Planetweb in order to customize the Dreamcast web service into standard HTML coding.
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Hitachi SH-4 CPU: Specifically developed for Sega for use in the Dreamcast console, the SH-4 is a superscalar CPU that can execute multiple tasks in the same clock cycle. Highly proficient in Floating Point calculations (the calculations necessary for fast 3D), the Dreamcast can produce 7 Floating point operations per cycle, for a total performance of 1400 Million Floating point operations per second (FLOPS). In comparison with a Pentium II 450 CPU, which can generate 450 Million FLOPS, the SH-4 is over 3 times more powerful and represents state-of-the-art hardware at an incredibly affordable price. The SH-4 ... has the ability to handle modem communications at no performance cost to the CPU, which makes the chip perfect for a console with Internet browsing, mail and gaming in mind.
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Dreamcast in Europe had a blue spiral logo, similar to the logo on earlier Sega systems. This change is thought to have been for copyright reasons: German company Tivola Publishing[1] had been using a similar swirl logo years before Sega branded Dreamcast with the orange swirl.
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On February 16, 2006, Sega once again began selling Dreamcast consoles through its online store, Sega Direct of Japan. The package deal included a refurbished Dreamcast, a cell phone card, and Radilgy — a new 2D shooter game by developer Milestone. A short time later, developer G.rev followed that game with a second new 2D shooter game called Under Defeat in March. Both releases were for the Japanese market alone. While the refurbished package has been discontinued, Sega Direct does still sell several Dreamcast software titles.[6]
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REDMOND, Wash., March 16, 1999 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that the Microsoft® Windows® CE Toolkit for the Sega Dreamcast home video game system is now available to licensed Dreamcast developers. The Windows CE Toolkit for Dreamcast provides a full-featured development environment including optimized DirectX® libraries for 3-D graphics, sound and input, as well as built-in communications support designed to provide Internet access and networked multiplayer gaming. The flexible development environment of the Windows CE operating system ... maximizes programming productivity by delivering for the first time the benefits of the Microsoft Visual C++® development system to the world of console development.
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Dreamcast was first launched in Japan at the end of 1998 and was the first console to offer connection to the Internet. However, it immediately suffered from a lack of software - the games console curse time immemorial - and the Internet aspect needed more work. So it cut prices and offered all kinds of deals to tie people in with its Net portal SegaNet. This cost it a truckload of money and then PlayStation et al arrived and shat on it from high. And so it had to go.
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Sega Dreamcast