Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Sega was by far the most innovative gaming company and history has validated them at every turn.
In the early 90s, they were the first company to realize they needed to develop a mascot to rival Mario. They proceeded to create Sonic the Hedgehog, a character that has stood the test of time as one of the most popular video game characters of all time.
No company could ever match arcade games like Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, Sega Rally or Virtua Fighter. They were truly ahead of their time and provided Sega with a healthy base of titles to bring to their home consoles. While almost every single company failed to come up with a title to rival Street Fighter II, Sega managed to produce Virtua Fighter, a true competitor to rival SFII in Japan. The Saturn was massively successful in their home market due to this one franchise, while almost every other company failed with their attempts to capture the SFII magic.
Sega was the first company to realize online gaming was the future, and they were the first one to bring it to consoles with the Saturn Netlink service.
The Dreamcast was also a console truly ahead of its time with its built in modem that made it the first system with the capability to download content off the internet. Whatever you think of DLC, you have to admit Sega had the right idea there.
Sega was also ahead of the curve when it came to releasing titles outside of its own consoles: many Saturn and Dreamcast exclusives got PC releases. You might think this was a bad thing considering the feasibility of Sega’s own systems, but in the end this was the right way to go all along, as in 2025 console exclusives outside of a handful of Nintendo titles are essentially dead.
Dreamcast is such an amazing console and I have wonderful memories of it. I remember booting up Sonic Adventure and my face getting blown off by the intro. Downloading the christmas dlc for the game on the holiday season and playing PSO. I still regularly come back to both those games now, just on the PC which were really decent ports that got a lot of fan love.
I remember wanting a Dreamcast so bad. My friend had one and wouod come back and regale us with stories of Sonic Adventure every day, show us pictures in some booklet (don’t remember if it was a manual or strategy guide). Not to mention the advances I saw in video games that blew my mind, like online play in Phantasy Star Online before I knew that was even possible.