@AlteredBeast: It is available for Wii now. The Dreamcast's purpose-built Maraca controllers are a little better than Wiimotes even with maraca attachments, but it is still a blast to play.

@Outrun1986: As others have said, most people didn't have the means to download ISOs back when the Dreamcast should have gotten it's foot hold in the gaming market.

BUT, I think that the fact that it can play homebrew and backups without being modified is what kept it so popular with gamers through today.

I mean, so many of us are like "OMG we love DC too!", does anyone here only have legit copies of games? I'm talking about even those hard to find, import only shooters that make the system great.

@lannister80: Isn't the PSP doing pretty badly, with not many publishers wanting to invest in an original game that will be pirated with ease?

@Cyberxion101: Good point.

If the customer pays extra for shipping, extra for tracking, extra for gift wrapping, extra for a rose scented packing invoice...that shouldn't be included in the cost of the product when discussing if it was worth the price.

@Outrun1986:

I have a Jaguar with no power brick!

I also have an Atari 800XL with no power or video cables, a Commodore 128 with no power brick, and a Saturn with a dead optical drive.

One of these days...

@animatedantmo: I'm sure these things have been sitting in a warehouse somewhere for years. You gotta wonder if that might have anything to do with the seemingly less-than-new condition it finally arrived to his home in.

That said, in a total reversal of character, I find the OP's claim that he paid 200 for it a little hard to swallow, unless of course he paid for like, overnight shipping or something. Even so, the guy paid 100 bucks for the system, so the extra cash he dropped to have it shipped to him faster has no relevance whatsoever to the story. You find me one store that doesn't charge an arm and a leg for overnight shipping, and I'll start shopping there. :P

And yeah, I figured it'd have to be a mistake for the reason you mentioned. Kudos on the quick response anyway.

@Troy F.: I NEVER played Samba De Amigo, and I still kick myself for not buying it when it first came out.

The PS2 broadband adapter wasn't even that great IMO, and only a few games supported it. Dreamcast had Phantasy Star Online which was really, really popular back in the day.

I lost my beloved black one to my ex in a stupid breakup. :(

I think more than anything the lack of EA Sports games dealt a serious blow to the Dreamcast's success in the U.S. The PS2 came out my freshmen year in college and EVERYONE ditched the DC for the PS2 because of Madden (even though NFL 2k was a far better product).

That's the way to buy old consoles.

@Outrun1986:
i remember the nail in the coffin was a hardwar issue. they had updated the laser that read information off the disc, and due to that some early gen consoles couldnt read new material. i never saw any actual news article off of it, so i may be wrong.

Those are the kind of response we need here at the Konsumerist..quick, witty & to the point.

Keep up the Good work HOORAy!

You know, it's weird, but I always say the opposite: Lack of piracy seems to kill systems.

Piracy shows a system's popularity, and gives poorer people a reason to buy into it. The more systems sold, the more likely games are to be developed for it.

Since piracy normally has absolutely no effect on sales whatsoever (prove it does!) there is a net benefit from it that increases a console's popularity.

Amazon or Amazon sellers?

All the other many many things I've ordered have come as described without any problem.

You guys have been top notch in the customer service arena, and I'm glad the situation got cleared up!

Just let me know if you happen upon any magical stashes of original NES consoles ;) (I know you've got a nice remake or two on the site, but nostalgia and all that...)

@Outrun1986: Most people in 1999 had dial-up connections and no easy access to information or ISO files. The few that did did not kill off the console. Like was mentioned, the DS and GBA were easily made into pirate devices for less than the price of a game. The PSP has been made into one as well. DS is still selling like crazy, consoles and games. PSP, not so much. A sytem can kill itself.

I don't see in that sentence any statement that the PS2 offered online play at all, much less at launch.

Reading. It's what's for breakfast!

Lets not rewrite history Consumerist. Playstation 2 did NOT offer online play when it was released, it didn't do that until the broadband assult of the Xbox forced them to, and the Dreamcast didn't die because of the Xbox but because of the Sony Hype machine and it's lies it offered to the public about how much better the PS2 was. The Xbox is actually the spiritual successor of the Dreamcast, which included the former Dreamcast and Sega head Peter Moore taking over the Xbox division. Dreamcast was the best console to never reach it's true greatness. What a shame.

@GrandizerGo:

Skies of Arcadia was amazing. They came out with a GameCube version which didn't have so many random battles which made it even better.

Anyway, other than that I love you guys.

I have no idea how they have any repeat customers. I saw that same notice on Kotaku about new Dreamcasts at Think Geek and immediately said to myself "I'm not falling for THIS one again."

Of course piracy didn't HELP the Dreamcast, but it was first out of the gate in Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/XBox times and crazy marketing by Sony tried real hard to paint it as a loser. The fact that Sega had already built a reputation for releasing and abandoning hardware quickly (32X, Sega CD, Saturn) certainly didn't help either. The price cut after only six months to compete against the PS2 and the phone-it-in approach to releasing decent games released outside of Japan? No help.

That there was easy piracy at all probably kept people buying the systems at least.

AvP was one of the craziest, mind-blowing games I'd ever played at the time.

You're right, the power in that thing was tremendous.

We emailed Destructoid's editors [where this post originated] late last night but haven't seen the posted amended, so here's our Official Apology, in blog comment form.

First, a little backstory: We came upon an amazing cache of new-in-box Dreamcasts not too long ago. We had a bunch of units shipped to us to inspect them, and indeed, though the boxes were a little worse for the wear on the outside, the consoles had nary a scratch and even the wire twists that bundled the cables had never been undone. It was like magic--magic that had been hiding in a warehouse, unknown, for years.

So we asked our source from whence these beautiful Dreamcasts came, and they didn't know--could've been a liquidator, or a Circuit City that had closed shop. (Hear that? It's the sound of a plot thickening.)

But we'd seen them with our own eyes and figured it was best to share our discovery with the world. Hundreds were snatched up quickly and squees were heard 'round the internets.

So far we've had 2 instances of not-so-new-in-box Dreamcasts. The individual who received the one reported here contacted us via email (which never appeared in our inbox, for some reason) and Twitter (through which we've taken care of the situation) has already been issued a return shipping label. We're more than happy to refund him for the Dreamcast as well as shipping.

We're very sorry about the whole thing--we never meant to ship used Dreamcasts. We know our customers are smarty pants and could tell if they'd been duped with a stale Dreamcast; we'd never get away with taking advantage of you guys, so why would we try?

And now we have 3 options: 1. Stop sharing the gift of new Dreamcasts; 2. Have them all shipped to us and inspect each one individually and then ship back to the warehouse; and 3. Continue spreading the (mostly) untainted Dreamcast love and working with the very few customers who get lemons.

We hope you'll understand why we're continuing to offer them on our site (when we get our grubby little paws on more, of course). And again, we apologize to the 2 customers who ended up with what appears to be returned merchandise.

--The ThinkGeek Monkeys

@AlteredBeast: LOL I also have 2 DC decks. I used to take one places fairly often (friends and family LOVED Samba De Amigo) and had read that they did not travel particularly well and I didn't want to be without!

I should go back and finish Shenmue2 after all these years!

Amazon has factory sealed Dreamcasts (they claim, at least) for $102.

I bought one... the outer box def. did not seem to be in new shape, but that didn't bother me... I opened it only so far as to see that it was in there, haven't unboxed yet... I'd better get crackin before the refund period is up

The one that I get misty-eyed for is the Atari Jaguar. It was way sweet hardware that Atari and it's partners totally screwed the pooch on...missed development deadlines and didn't get it out in time for Christmas shopping that year, and then there was no money left to finish the games in progress, so on and so forth.

The few games that were finished were kind of cool, and the controllers were kind of mind-blowing at the time. Great graphics etc. But they blew it, and that was the last gasp for Atari.

Nope. Ebay an old one, buy the PS2 disc with 60+ intellivision games on it. Or download the emulator and some roms.

I got the black sports ed and can't believe how clear the graphics are. Virta Tennis is addicting as well.

It could be true, we'll see, ThinkGeek not replying to this situation could be a problem, we'll see what happens.

I had a guy try to pull the same thing on me the other day at work, the SN on the back of the console was scratched off, he said it came like that (xbox 360). i asked him how we scanned the SN of the product on his recipt (he bought it brand new), and we "scanned it off the box".

Popped open the front faceplate, bam, SN did not match, I sent him away.

People will try anything to get something their way, I'm not going to point the finger at TG so quick as I was to before.

We'll see what happens by the end of the day.

@Koinu: Maybe the one the reader got was some sort of return, where ThinkGeek got scammed/screwed by another customer or the distributer.

I have two used Dreamcasts (one is a back up in case the first ever dies), as well as several controllers new in box. My favorite part of my DC collection is the official mouse and keyboard, and using them for Typing of the Dead :D

While I wouldn't spend $200, I would probably spend more than I should on a new Dreamcast.

Anybody know where I can get a "new" Intellivision console?

And of course something I would never do - but simple enough to download & burn games to normal CD's and play them.... for those that are into getting tons of games for little cost. (since it is hard to find games for purchase anymore.)

More light may have been shed onto this, other readers have said they got theirs brand new, and only cost them 10$ in shipping.