Many gamers are still hurting from what happened to the Dreamcast. Its specs were more than decent, and it boasted features other consoles didn’t have, but once the PlayStation 2 arrived with its DVD support, developer commitment, and PS1 backward compatibility, it was “game over” for Sega. Even so, there are still plenty of die-hards who enjoy experimenting with the console, and this time SegaDotNet decided to connect a Dreamcast to the Web using dial-up. A brave effort, without a doubt.
The only game I finished on the Sega Dreamcast was Resident Evil 2, and that was enough to make me fall completely in love with the console. But I got to the party too late, and within a few months it disappeared from the market. If I wanted to buy one today, I’d have to hand over a kidney as part of the payment, because there are plenty of online “collectors” who go crazy with their prices. In recent years, the Dreamcast has received several modifications, including a VGA output and support for hard drives or memory cards, but others enjoy it in its factory configuration. One of those is Sammy Kennedy, the person behind the SegaDotNet YouTube channel. What did he do? He connected it to the Web. Using dial-up.
Setting up the dial-up connection
The process requires a standard phone cable to connect the built-in modem to the line, one of the controllers, the Dreamcast keyboard and mouse, and a compatible browser—in this case Dreamkey 3.0 (that was the last general-availability version in Europe, but there was also a build 3.1 for Spain and Portugal). The number of free dial-up providers has dropped a lot, but a bit of Google-fu is enough to find services that are still active. Once you enter the phone number, username, and password, the rest depends on how severe the allergic reaction of the modern Web is to an outdated browser.
Obviously, the experience is disastrous. Google’s search engine barely loads in its basic version, Facebook gets lost along the way, and Wikipedia responds with an error. The only exception was the old Dreampipe portal, optimized for Dreamkey and other Dreamcast browsers. In short: the console can still connect without problems, but browsing is another story. Now, if someone took the trouble to create a more up-to-date browser...
