Well, ol' Fernando has been pushin' yours truly to scrawl up some editorial spiel for your consideration, but my big brain has been chuck outta ideas for decent, insightful commentary. As a result, I'm going to ramble at length about Sega's new system, the Dream Cast, and clarify my feelings on the subject, based on the both the facts and rumors I've heard.

First off, this machine is going to be BAD ASS. Dan Jevons wasn't being at all extreme in his perspective when he claimed this machine is going to rock our little nerd worlds seven ways to Sunday. The Dream Cast, goofy name aside, is the hardest of the hardcore hardware I've ever heard of short of a middle-to-upper range SGI or a $3000 GL board. With a powerful CPU, primed for floating point calculations, that can perform multiple matrix computations in a single pass (the key to 3D geometry processing), the days of cheesy, boxy, N64 3D figures are OVER. The custom SH-4 in this sucker screams. The PVRNG chipset, customized and tweaked to the Dream Cast's proprietary bus interface and display hardware, has been acclaimed by the industry and press alike as a powerful piece of work, as well. This chipset, like the SH-4, will perform at far superior levels to the PC home consumer version, since it has been customized and optimized to work within the Dream Cast's architecture. Performance when such a chipset is working in conjunction with the hardware, (instead of against it, as with PC AGP configurations) will be well-nigh optimal. From most developer reports, this little $250 gem kills the Model 3 and them some in overall performance; ain't technology optimization grand?

However, I have some qualms about the OS, being a version of Microsoft Windows CE 2.0. If the reason they added another 8 Meg of RAM (for a total of 24Meg, last I heard) to the DC was to fully support that piece of MS bloatware, well, I'll be mighty sore. A rather negative rumor states that the US version of the DC will have an even slower version of CE, for reasons of compatibility. I hope that's just a nasty squawk from a sore N64 developer or press person and not actuality. Still, reliance on anything but a completely minimal OS necessary for basic kernel functions seems pointless; I want a game machine, not a clunky set top box with a Windows GUI. Disgusting.

On the other hand, the developer libraries are supposed to be excellent and easy-to-use, even better than the much-acclaimed Project X libraries VM Labs has sent into circulation. Couple this with a little solid quality assurance, and you'll see some great games out within a decent time frame. Hopefully, this will pinch the N64 out of existence in Japan, duly punishing ol' Hiroshi Yamauchi for dissing RPG gamers.

Speaking of Project X, recent press hasn't been so kind to them. Outside of the "it's like 2 Saturns kludged together" comment, noise of developer dissatisfaction when it's compared to Sega's DC has been circulating, putting its performance at "less than impressive." A recent anonymous source claimed it was about as powerful as "a P233 equipped with a Voodoo 1." I guess their "single, powerful processor" paradigm isn't paying off in these days of computationally expensive graphics algorithms, eh? Of course, their Trojan Horse philosophy of embedding said chip in half of the new DVD players coming to market may surprise even dubious observers such as yours truly...

Games for the DC? VF3, probably the Team Battle version, is one of the first titles to be released at launch, along with Warp's D2. Hopefully, VF3 will be tweaked a bit to take advantage of the extra horsepower in the DC, just so we Segaphiles can really smirk at our PS buddies running Tekken 3. Other confirmed titles are a version of Rally 2, and a Sonic title, as well as an action/adventure title called "Crimson." I don't expect to be disappointed by the graphics performance of any of these titles, and I expect them to make even recent N64 offerings look clunky and boxy. We ARE talking about a system primed to deliver 2M+ polys with all features on at 60 fps in high-res, after all, as opposed to one which does, what, 120K, with LESS effects and in low-res? And remember how impressed you were the first time you saw Mario 64? You won't have dry trousers for a week.

Sega management itself seems to be on the upswing with their new in-house "Image Up!" program, designed to make a concerted push at bringing Sega's rather tarnished image back up to par. I think we count on some major media blitzes and top-quality titles, at least initially. Hopefully, they've got the art of hype and timing down better than they did during the Saturn era, and have learned from the success of PDS that Americans simply want GOOD titles and don't care about which side of the Pacific they are developed on. Sega is, to their credit, sucking down $80 US of the $280 or so cost of manufacturing for the DC, bringing the retail price down to $250 (including retailer profit margin). That's a pretty good start to getting us gamers back on their side, IMHO.

Personally, though, and I speak for myself when I say this, but I'm looking forward to the development of games by Japanese houses similar to what we've seen on the Saturn recently: glossy, polished strategy RPGs, clever role-playing titles, and great 3D combat titles, only with DC-style graphics. American crud like Quake 2 be damned; I can't wait to see what the loyal Japanese Saturn developers crank out for the DC. I think 3D graphics will, with the DC, reach a point that stylization of imagery within 3D titles will be as profound and excellent as 2D imagery was under the Saturn, without the gross limitations of low polygon counts or over-filtering/pixellation. It's gonna be a great time to own a Sega, IMHO. Whether or not the DC catches on, though, is another story altogether.

Sega definitely has the hardcore gaming audience, here and in Japan, locked up, but it won't make the DC a success until it can play to both worlds, as the Playstation did. There really has to be a game for everyone. The Playstation succeeded because the initial word from the early-adopting hardcore audience was very positive, and, as it fleshed out its library, it inveigled its way into the massive casual audience, as well. Hopefully, Sega plans to address their marketing and game development accordingly.