Mr. Riley's just impatient - I was waiting for the day to close out proper before elaborating on how much I owe the little beige box!

Simply put, if it weren't for the Dreamcast I highly doubt I would be writing this right now. Thousands of dollars would probably be put towards other sundry items, perhaps some containers of a sort, or perhaps even more IDE cables. But I digress.

My first Dreamcast encounter was with Sonic Adventure, and it blew me away. (I'm sure it's no coincidence that the latest Sonic game was officially announced today.) Up until that moment, my exposure to 'next-gen' gaming was solely limited to the Playstation (which is completely overshadowing the poor Dreamcast, yet again), and those few experiences with the sluggish, underpowered machine made me want to spit. The Playstation made me hate 3D gaming, and kept me firmly in the 'piss off, no need to upgrade!' corner.

Sadly, I was a poor fresh-out-of-college boy then and barely had two Ramen packages to rub together, much less $199 for a brand new console. Luckily I found a job with an exquisite employer who bestowed a brand-new Dreamcast and copies of Soul Calibur and Crazy Taxi to me as a bonus for a 72-hour crunchtime project. Best bonus ever.

Although I was initially reluctant about Soul Calibur, I quickly changed my tune after having spending a week with it while being bedridden post-surgery and started dragging my Dreamcast to friend's houses, places where video games still had the connotation of 2600 games. Unitdaisy and I would head on over with Samba de Amigo (including the maracas, of course), Space Channel 5, Power Stone, Jet Set Radio, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and whatever else I could shove into my Dreamcast carrying case for a night full of laughs, maracas shaking and chu-chu.

Despite all the fun and the money we dropped on the system, it still failed to catch on. I'd like to blame the guy we saw selling bootleg Dreamcast games at garage sales, or those that insisted on waiting for the PS2. The Dreamcast gave be a console to rile around, its software that proved to me that gaming could evolve and still be fun and unique, and not just 'edgy' 3D claptrap stuttering away at 20 frames per second. It brought me back into the fold, video games found me again and I haven't left since - despite lacking another piece of hardware to be smitten with.

As Mr. Riley suggested, I will indeed drop another 40 for the long-gone Dreamcast, just like I did when I first heard of its demise. And maybe I'll finally order a copy of Project Justice!

P.S. I'm also still obnoxiously fond of the Dreamcast cake Unitdaisy fashioned for my birthday a few years ago: