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by phren0logy 2583 days ago
If you like that, then you need to check out SeaMan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman_(video_game)

"The narration is voiced by Toshiyuki Hosokawa in the original Japanese-language version and by Leonard Nimoy in the English-language version. ...

The 'Seaman' is a form of freshwater fish (the color and shape of the fins suggest that it is a Carp) with a very lifelike human face. It possesses human mannerisms and behavior with which the player interacts. ...

Seaman is considered a unique video game in that it presents limited action. The player's role is to feed and care for Seaman, while providing him with the company that he needs. In fact, the player is required to check on the Seaman every day of real time, or he could die. A portion of Seaman's knowledge is random trivia. When he asks what the player's birthday is (and the player responds via the microphone input), Seaman will then share significant events which happened on that date."

It's like a super weird Tamagochi.

5 comments

If you want to see seaman in action with some humorous commentary: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IV8hCvsXy0
oh man I remember the hype around this game in magazines back then! It's AI would "adapt" to your inputs and that was a 'wow' in my mind back then.

all in all Dreamcast, imho, was the perfect console. You could emulate PSX games at higher, smoother res and sharper textures, there are emulators for various games now.

I wonder how much it costs to pick one up now...

The Dreamcast had an incredible array of quality software, and ran at a beautiful full 640x480 while other consoles were for the most part stuck at 320.
Yeah but SEGA had already lost way too much money by then to be able to recover its hardware branch. The Saturn utter failure hit them very very hard.
Yeah I've always thought it was sad. I love SEGA games, they have that signature, clean, fast, simple feel across their characters to game design.

Sega SATURN was a major flop, even though it is an interesting system none the less. See shenmue running on Saturn vs Dreamcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-YxOpZ7mDo

So the SATURN was more than capable of outputting even PSP level graphics for the mid 90s!, but seemed to have poor developer experience overall.

Similarly, they went all in on Dreamcast and the console was perfect and overshadowed by PS2 and entrance of XBOX. Sony had a near monopoly hold on gaming console market with the success of their PSX variants but failed to keep Microsoft out while successfully doing it to other Japanese console manufacturers, testament to the sign of a truly, cutthroat environment, for example Nintendo's "backstabbing" that made Sony lose face and release PlayStation as revenge.

XBOX roughly has 1/4 of the US console market, that's either something that should've gone to Sony had they've been able to keep their market leader position, something that traditionally has been a Japanese dominant one.

Now Google is entering the game industry with a Stream game approach but its already questionable, because I've used it before on PS Now and the experience has been terrible, it would intermittently degrade in visual and audio quality, and with a poor quality Canadian ISP with a capped upload speed, the reaction times were absolutely horrid.

I'd imagine in 20 years when Canadian ISP gets cheaper and faster with 5G (after the world has been running on 6G), this might make sense.

Perhaps its a totally different experience if you live in a country with cheap and super fast internet like South Korea

My humble opinion is that Dreamcast failed because Electron Arts did not support the platform. As to exactly how Sony got EA to wait for the PS2, especially given how easy it was to develop for the Dreamcast, I would be curious to know.
The official history says EA and Sega were negotiating over EA getting sole publishing for sports game. Eventually, EA didn't get sole publishing and opted not to do any publishing. The 2k sports games were pretty decent, but EA ended up negotiating exclusive rights for both teams and players; and the market wasn't there for made up teams with made up players.
Bought one for $40 around 2011. I used either Amazon or eBay, and I remember it being a standard price—ie, I didn't do much shopping around beforehand.

No idea if they're more or less expensive now.

is that USD? seems to be around that range still for a high quality one.

yeah I might pick one up....I always wanted a Dreamcast.....and I still do I realized!

Give me Shenmue 1&2, Phantasy Star Online, Omikron + Bleemcast + Gran Turismo 2 Simulation Disc and I'll play the shit out of it.

Yep, USD!

I'll note I believe I ended up spending significantly more on a VGA adapter because I got frustrated with how blurry the default output looked on an LCD screen.

> You probably know this, but you can burn CD-Roms of most games and play them in the Dreamcast, super easily

Guards! Guards! /s

I will be sure to agree to play ONLY the games I own as back-up...in my imaginary jury panel.

I wonder whether the AI was as good as it looked in his video.
Thank you, that game looks extremely weird and interesting. I really dislike his "shouting" shtick, though, I think it makes for really cheap humor.
That's a pretty significant part of the character- most of AVGN's older material is about pointing out the frustration of playing games with incredibly bad controls or non-obvious puzzles.

My bigger complaint with AVGN is the toilet humor, but I still think he does an awesome job of curating awful video games.

What was up with the Dreamcast and fish? Fish Life, Seaman, plus that game with the fishing rod controller[1]. Plus I'm pretty sure an Ecco the Dolphin game was on there too. Someone at Sega really liked the ocean.

[1] http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/ddrgame_2249_134074308.jpg

> plus that game with the fishing rod controller.

Soul Calibur [1]? You could play it with the keyboard too, if you didn't have the fishing controller.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmCZ669Od4

A debate partner of mine told me a story about Seaman where a guy at a debate camp would call home every day to someone who he had arranged to take care of his Seaman for him while he was gone and he had the Seaman sitter hold the phone up to the Dreamcast mic so he could talk to his Seaman. I think the Seaman got despressed and died anyway.
Actually, the technology for voice recognition used on the Fish Life is very similar to the one for Seaman.
I have an original copy of this game in my garage! Including the vmu microphone.