10 Best Sega Dreamcast Games

Capcom's no stranger to making fun fighting games, but with Power Stone they broke the mold by creating the biggest multiplayer melee mayhem you'll find this side of Super Smash Bros. Power Stone offered four-player combat, a rarity at the time. Players had special attacks, could utilize weapons found within each level, and the Power Stones themselves. These stones let players essentially go Super Saiyan, offering increased combat abilities and devastating super moves. Power Stone hit the perfect balance for a party game with an even mix of substance, accessibility, and flashiness. It truly deserves to be on our list of the 10 Best Sega Dreamcast Games.

You'd only find a brilliantly bizarre title like Typing of the Dead on the Dreamcast. It took the same frantic, zombie-shooting gameplay of the House of the Dead series and combined it with... typing, of all things. Not only did Typing of the Dead offer fun gameplay, but it enhanced your typing skills, which is always a bonus.

Making use of the Dreamcast's online capabilities, PSO was an online action/RPG in the vein of Monster Hunter, Diablo, or Guild Wars, allowing you to pair up with some of your pals and go exploring. It offered incredible amounts of gameplay, with tons of missions to complete, monsters to slay, equipment to collect and skills to learn. Its graphics were a huge selling point as well. The sharp visuals hold up nicely even by today's standards, and given the sharpness of modern TVs, that's saying something.

Cats and mice don't like each other. You know it, we know it, wee little kiddies know it. Chu Chu Rocket! takes this well-known fact and uses it to build a quick-moving single/multiplayer puzzle game. It moves at a breakneck pace, requiring lightning-fast thinking and moving, but the feeling of perfectly corralling those mice to where you needed them to be is hard to match (even if their endless squeaks did drive you a little mad sometimes). Sega also offered a level editor to allow players to make their own stages, which was a nice bonus on top of everything else.

People often lament the Sonic franchise, saying that it eventually went off the wheels by obsessing over poorly-written storylines, side characters, and moving fast to the detriment of everything else. One thing most Sonic fans, lapsed or otherwise, do agree on is that Sonic Adventure is one of the great Sonic games. This 3D title managed to take what was fun about the original Sonic games and port them onto a new system while adding on some slick graphics and a ton of non-platforming activities.

Soul Edge broke away from most fighters at the time by offering flexible, 3D movement and by putting weapons in the hands of its characters. Under the name of Soul Calibur, this franchise has had many iterations since this freshman outing, but most Soulwhatever enthusiasts think fondly back to Soul Edge as one of the series' best entries. The Guard Impact system, allowing for an offensive type of defense, gave a unique rhythm to Soul Edge's fights while simultaneously rewarding highly skilled players. And its wide variety of characters, costumes, and stages ensured that things never got repetitive. It didn't take much for this game to edge its way onto our list of the 10 Best Sega Dreamcast Games.

You might not think that a game about rollerskating graffiti artists would be awesome, but you'd be wrong. Few games find that funky rhythm that Jet Set Radio does, letting the player slide into the fun zone and keep on sliding. Appropriately, a major part of the appeal of Jet Set Radio is its upbeat soundtrack. Tunes like BB Rights' Funky Radio, Humming the Bassline, and Guitar Vader's Super Brothers kept things groovy while infecting your brain with their musical mastery.

"All right all right, it's time to play some Craaaazy Taxi!" Arcade-style games were built to be fleeting bits of fun, designed with the goal of getting you to pump quarter after quarter into the machine. When Crazy Taxi hit consoles, gamers everywhere rejoiced, because its addictive gameplay sucked away at the allowances of countless kids across the planet. Crazy Taxi has elements in common with racing games and, oddly enough, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. Players are rewarded for getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and for doing so with as much crazy style as possible. Drive on the wrong side of the road? Extra points. Nearly hit a car? Extra points. Hit a ramp while going so fast you're approaching the speed of light? Extra points, bra!

Shenmue might be the poster child for the underappreciated brilliance of the Dreamcast. It and its sequel were incredibly pricey games that dreamt big and delivered. Open world games hadn't hit it big yet, but Shenmue allowed the players to roam all across Yokusuka, Japan on a journey to deal with the fallout of protagonist Ryo's father's murder. NPCs all had voice acting, and were hungry to spill their backstories to you. Plus, you could ask about sailors and drive a forklift! Who doesn't love that?

Few fighting games boast such a large cast of characters, let alone recognizable characters, but Marvel Vs Capcom 2 made full use of both Capcom and Marvel's historic rosters, offering up dream battles few players dared hope for. This three-on-three tag-team fighter is a wild, chaotic affair, and can be hugely imbalanced depending on which characters you're choosing. On paper, MvC2 seems like it shouldn't work. The cast is so large it's almost overwhelming. The soft jazz soundtrack is... odd, to say the least. Plus, there are a small number of characters who are incredibly overpowered. But they are so overpowered they actually even each other out, which is part of why MvC2 became such a competitive fighting game darling at tournaments. Players hung onto the game for years, battling it out at Evo after Evo. Some even prefer it to its sequel and still play it competitively to this day. Congrats, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, you fought your way to #1 on our list of the 10 Best Sega Dreamcast Games.