The Japanese Launch - November 27th, 1998
Japanese Launch Lineup
The Japanese launch lineup was fairly lackluster with only 4 titles being available and only one in particular being of interest to Japanese gamers: Virtua Fighter 3TB. July was a visual novel, Pen Pen Tricelon was an odd sort of party/racing game that is best with multiple players and Godzilla Generations was a 3D Godzilla game. All in all, a fairly weak launch for Sega's new console. The ongoing chip shortage which hampered Sega's ability to sell more Dreamcast consoles did not help them! Famously, the Blue Blur was notably absent at this launch, with Sonic Adventure releasing in Japan on December 23rd, 1998. Almost a whole month later. The launch lineup is listed below:
The American Launch - September 9th, 1999
North American Launch Lineup
In contrast with the meager offerings that the Japanese launch had with only 4 titles for the entire launch of the Dreamcast, North America saw the Dreamcast launch with a whopping 19 titles. Key "heavy hitter" titles included games like Sonic Adventure, Sonic's much anticipated 3D game and Soul Caliber, a game praised for its amazing visuals on the Dreamcast. Three of these launch titles (Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur and NFL 2K) respectively occupy the number 1, number 2 and number 5 best selling Dreamcast game of all time slots, selling (worldwide that is) 2.5 million copies (1.27 million in the US, 440'000 in Japan and the other 790'000 likely in Europe and Canada), 1.3 million and 1.13 million respectively. Blue Stinger was supposedly available for purchase the day before the September 9th launch. While not a launch title, every Dreamcast console came with the first version of the Web Browser disc. The complete list of North American Launch titles is as follows:
