[UnbreakableIdea]

Seriously. Almost a decade after it was manufactured, my Dreamcast is still my home cd player of choice. Why?

1) Reliability. Just open up the top and lock that cd in there. Perfect and skip resistant in the most simplistic way. It won't scratch your discs. And it'll play damn near anything, regaurdless of condition. There is a saying in my household: If the Dreamcast can't play a cd, nothing will. It'll read most fingerprint covered, surface scratched to hell discs without skipping, discs that other expensive CD players can't even seem to read at all. Amazing.

2) Capability. Unlike the PS1 (also top loading) and most other consoles, a stock Dreamcast will play burned cd's (even cheapo discs!) with MP3's with no swapping or other forms of hibbity skibbity. Just pop her in and play. F'ing awesome!

3) Durability. There's no complicated disc loading system to break down. Give your lens the windex (or alchohol) treatment every year or so (just open the top and wipe), and it seems like the damn thing will just run on forever. Almost a decade in and I still use it almost daily. It has outlived every other disc based piece of electronics in my house. The thing's a goddamn tank of a console. Go Sega!

4) Ease of use. Simple RCA jacks. Simple, quick loading interface. I have the video jack hooked up to the TV via one of my aux channels and run the stereo jacks to my surround sound. Start a cd, switch the TV to whatever else you want to watch or play (great for listening to your own music during games/sytems without custom soundtracks, just turn off the in game music and leave sound effects and voice on and running through the TV's speakers while the Dreamcast kicks out the jams on your surround sound). Presto.

5) Nostalgia. Because it is always still hooked up, I can relax with Sega Bass Fishing, or destroy my friends in Soul Caliber, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Bomberman or Bust-a-Move 4 whenever the mood strikes me. Score!

Anyone agree? Any reasons that I missed that you would like to add? Mistakes? Feel free to share with the rest of the class.

[dCiSo]

Oh and you can't forget this was the ONLY console ever that did not require anything at all to be done to it to play homebrew or backups. No special Modchip or flashed BIOS nothing more then some of us dC developers playing with code on a cd. The other thing to daye and I dont know why NOBODY else has ever tried to run with it was the awesome VMU just being able to play Code Veronica and have you health and ammo displayed on the controller was awesome not to mention the fact when unlocking stuff in some games you had a little LCD game to play if you really wanted to go back in time.