I was still back in England when Sega released the Dreamcast in Japan on November 27th, 1998, but I can remember (a remotely experienced version of) the launch quite clearly. I spent most of the day on the phone to my favorite London-based importer, nervously assessing the situation and being updated on the whereabouts of my machine. A few days later, a package turned up and -- lo! -- it contained my launch-day Japanese Dreamcast. The early games that landed on my doorstep in subsequent weeks were, for the time, phenomenal achievements; the likes of Power Stone, Sonic Adventure and Virtua Fighter 3tb were so far ahead of contemporary titles that the little white box seemed capable of magic. Gaming had changed forever, as far as I could see.

But of course no amount of magic could prevent the Dreamcast slipping away, and in the end Sega gave up its console business because the Dreamcast -- the company's finest effort, and still a strong contender for the title of Best Console Ever -- just didn't perform very well at retail. In one sense, it's a tragedy; but in other ways, especially in light of how strong Sega has become since retiring from the hardware race, the Dreamcast's demise was perhaps for the best.

Ten years on, the Dreamcast in Japan maintains a small but loyal following (of 2D shoot "em up fans, mostly) but the majority of gamers here have moved on. So, to be fair, has Sega. Hangers-on can complete their Dreamcast collections for surprisingly reasonable sums, mind, as the value of used DC games has plummeted over the past few years. The more common games -- Sega Rally 2, Pen Pen Tri-Ice-Lon, Ferrari F355 Challenge, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, and so on -- can be had for as little as 100 yen (U.S. $1) apiece, whether via Yahoo! Auctions or in bricks-and-mortar used game shops around Japan.

My trusty old Japanese launch day Dreamcast

It's weird, though, that while the Dreamcast left a legacy of great games and second-hand bargains, the console seems to have had very little impact on Japanese culture. If anything, the Saturn, led by its cultural icon Segata Sanshiro, left a far greater mark on Japan than its successor did. The reasons? Timing and branding.

The PS2 appeared in Japan just five months after the Dreamcast. In spite of an initially inferior line-up of games, the PS2's DVD playback features, its association with the phenomenally successful original PlayStation, as well as support from Namco and Square Enix ultimately led to it outperforming the Dreamcast. Unlike Sega's long-forgotten Dreamcast, the PS2 is still alive and selling in considerable volume nearly ten years after it debuted in Tokyo. That's timing.

The other factor -- branding -- is significant because the Japanese like to understand the companies behind the products they buy. Every Japanese company carries some historical meaning. When you get a new cell phone here, your friends will ask, "Doko no?" In other words, "Which firm produced it?" If no company association is apparent, there's a tendency to be sceptical about a product or -- worse -- show no interest in it. Sega's deliberate move to disassociate its own name from what it saw as the Dreamcast "brand" probably had an adverse effect on the public's perception of the format, because the Dreamcast of itself had no history to speak of.

Anyway, these things will ultimately be recorded only in the margins: The really important thing is that Sega's post-Dreamcast reinvention has been a success. Sega the games company lives on, while the Dreamcast rests in peace.