#169. World Series Baseball 2K2

August 15, 2001
Visual Concepts
Sega

As with the previous WSB game, picking Pedro for the cover is the right choice. After putting up what should’ve been an MVP season in 1999, Pedro Martinez went on to have an even better 2000, which is the year this game pulls its stats from. And while 1999 was sort of the beginning of hitters realizing they didn’t need protein shakes and just needed juice (wink), 2000 was the year droves of muhfuckas showed up looking like kaijus. Also because of the way sports games craft rosters and given this late ass release date coming a month shy of the end of the 2001 season, this is likely the last game ever released where you can play as the Greatest Steroid Spokesperson of All-Time, Mark McGwire.

With Visual Concepts taking over from whatever poor souls made the previous game, WSB 2K2 is actually a significant step up. It feels just as fluid as last time, but with actual hitting and pitching mechanics that aren’t just boiled down to “go up there and pray for luck, kid.” It also still has an arcade-y feel to it, which is honestly sorely missed in today’s big baseball titles. Solid, but unspectacular to literally anyone except the poor bastards who played the previous game. And that’s clearly because there’s not even a national anthem in this one. RIP to every Godzilla-sized roidfuck in this game’s tendons, testes, and integrity. — W. Quant

#168. E.G.G. (Elemental Gimmick Gear)

December 28, 1999
Birthday
Vatical Entertainment

Hello, odd person who saw this and immediately had to know where Elemental Gimmick Gear placed on our list. I’m speaking to you directly since I have to assume you’re the only one. Congrats on remembering this game, as I’d never heard of it before this review.

But I can see why you’re here. You want to know how high it got, this old inexplicable game only you remember that you rented one weekend and fell in love with.

Well, I’m here to tell you to forget this game. Forget the weird translation issues that may have led to the apocalyptic event that kick-starts the story described as “The Breeding”. Forget the lame melee combat in the Metroidvania-esque overworld and the lamer boss fights that inexplicably change to 3D battles with awful hotboxes. Forget the story of the E.G.G., the titular robot’s owner (who has amnesia and forgot a lot of things), and bad guy Psycho Mother. Even though the game has neat anime-mixed-with-CGI cutscenes and a great ending, forget the game and the name Elemental Gimmick Gear, because honestly it’s pretty dumb. — J. Ruggiero

#167. Kao the Kangaroo

February 20, 2001
X-Ray Interactive
Titus Interactive

Kao the Kangaroo is a game that harkens back to the early days of 3D platformers only 5 years before its release. By the year 2001, developers had figured out how to make third-person controls feel fluid and satisfying. X-Ray Interactive decided that it would be more fun to add some jank, making it frustrating to move your character and control the camera. I understand there’s some level of revisionist nostalgia for this game in 2023. I get it, your grandma got you the cute kangaroo game for Christmas and you played it straight through, like, 30 times until your mom finally let you get Grand Theft Auto. I’m not disparaging the pleasant memories you have of the slow moving platformer with blocky graphics that look like they belong on the N64. Those are yours to treasure. The game, however, is mediocre at best. — K. Duggan

#166. Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire?

2000 (no one knows)
Hypnotix
Simon & Schuster

For anyone who avoided games that never scored above a 5/10 in any magazine (the highest being from IGN, which is slightly lower than the 6/10 a reviewer gave to the experience of being drowned), let me give you a rundown of what this is: Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire? is a punch-for-punch parody of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, except the host is a smart-ass quip machine named Egregious Philin, the questions are snarkier, and after every round you get right, you get to beat the living shit out of a rich guy of your choice.

The biggest piece of gameplay is choosing one of the five options you have for rich guys you get to punch between rounds. You got Sheik Abdul Chickpea (racist parody of a Middle Eastern oil magnate), Daisey Mae LePlume (Anna Nicole Smith, which just feels mean at this point), Rich Littleweasel III (random trust fund college kid), Melvin Dotcom (Bill Gates, but more Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg than anyone else), and of course, Ronald Hump (future god-president of the worst people in our country).

Now, let me be clear: no one would ever say that Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire? is a good video #166game, and don’t worry, I’m not going to say that it is. But from Donald Trump becoming president to income inequality reaching heights even greater than that of pre-revolutionary France, who could have guessed, when this was released in the year 2000 for the Sega Dreamcast, that this would have aged so goddamn well? Cynics, I suppose.

The gameplay itself is, of course, pretty terrible. Beating the crap out of a rich child is always fun, but the boxing segments are pretty much nothing and the rest of the game is just answering questions while a Mad-Magazine-style parody of Regis Philbin yells at you. You can finish a round in like 10 minutes.

But my final verdict? I would do literally anything in the world to get to make an official modern remake of this game. — Jeremy Kaplowitz

#165. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear

November 20, 2000
Red Storm Entertainment
Pipe Dream Interactive

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, so named because, while it was in development, Mr. Clancy’s spear collection gained sentience and was growing increasingly unruly, is much, much more of the same from the series. I wrote the other Tom Clancy’s review for this ranking further up the list as well, and if you like what I wrote about that game then just apply it to this one too when you get to it. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear is doing that same thing.

— J. Knapp

#164. SnoCross Championship Racing

November 29, 2000
UDS
Crave Entertainment

SnoCross Championship Racing takes the racing craze that had infected the Dreamcast and adds a new dash of flavor with the inclusion of snowmobiles. Growing up in the Midwest, I was curious to see how Swedish developers handled all of the drinking and redneck shenanigans associated with the hobby. Much to my dismay or relief, I’m not quite sure, Swedes apparently tackle snowmobiles differently than the flyover states. Players zip across snowy mountaintops and through rustic villages on licensed vehicles. When not racing, players can upgrade their sleds and even construct their own tracks, which adds replayability. Steering the snowmobiles takes a little bit of learning, especially when it comes to efficient turning. It adds a little bit of challenge and is satisfying to slide through a turn and overtake another racer. Otherwise, there’s not really anything of note.

I feel like I say this a lot about the Dreamcast library where the game in question isn’t bad, nor is it good. It simply is. If you’re going to emulate it or you manage to get a copy on the cheap, it’s not bad. Otherwise, it’s not worth the hassle. — C. Dawson

#163. Tomb Raider: Chronicles

November 22, 2000
Core Design
Eidos Interactive

Tomb Raider Chronicles is the epitome of a publisher wanting to milk a series for all it’s worth and then some. Chronicles is the last entry in the series to operate on its original engine, and by that time, it had really started to show its age. The story picks up after the previous game where Lara is presumed dead and her friends gather to share tales of her exploits. As such, the game functions as an anthology with no real overarching story connecting the various levels. It feels very much like these ideas were the scraps from previous titles.

Mechanically, it’s not a bad Tomb Raider game. In fact, it’s one of the best for the engine. However, at the time, gaming was in a transition period. It was moving from side-scrollers and traditional 2D games where rules were clearly established into grander 3D adventures. Studios were trying new things with each game and the Dreamcast library really shows this off. In that regard, Chronicles is like the guy in his 20s still trying to pick up teenagers at The Emporium. It’s time to put away the old tricks and grow up. Those looking for a bit of old-school Tomb Raider nostalgia are much better served by playing one of the original trilogy and skipping this entry entirely. — C. Dawson

#162. Evil Dead: Hail to the King

December 18, 2000
THQ
Heavy Iron Studios

My experience with Evil Dead: Hail to the King was sort of like an escape room: I didn’t understand the rules, I had a tenuous grasp on the story, and it took me about an hour to figure out how to open the door.

This survival horror game came to be when the good folks at Heavy Iron Studios decided to develop their first game. I like to think that fateful meeting included a whiteboard with the phrase “Resident Evil Dead” underlined a few times. Plot-wise, the game serves as a sequel to the trilogy, with the events taking place eight years after Army of Darkness.

Despite being a coward who is bad at video games, I was excited to play this one. You hear Bruce Campbell’s voice almost immediately, and that’s always a delight. But then Ash’s survival is directly correlated to your ability to navigate this godforsaken, fixed-angle platform. Suffice it to say that I died several times in quick succession, and I never did figure out how to use the chainsaw. But there is a button that makes Bruce Campbell talk, so that’s pretty cool. — Taylor Roebuck

#161. Monaco Grand Prix

September 9th, 1999
Ubisoft
Ubisoft

On the N64 Monaco passed for realistic, but here on the Dreamcast, it actually feels a bit bare bones. There might be some extra bells and whistles to this one in the admittedly robust “simulation mode”, but overall, it looks and feels very cheap compared to some of the other launch titles for the Dreamcast. It’s a lazy port with graphics that are not a noticeable step up in any regard from the N64 version. It uses the same flat 2D trees and cheap-looking backgrounds, with crowds that look like cardboard cutouts propped up to cheer you on, along with boxy polygonal models of vehicles and courses that are so last gen. Other ports of Nintendo 64 games on the Dreamcast utilize the system’s potential more than Monaco Grand Prix does, so at the end of the day, I actually prefer the version on the N64. — K. Podas

#160. WWF Royal Rumble

August 14, 2000
Yuke’s/Sega
THQ

It wasn’t that long ago that pro wrestling and cocaine were the bestest of buds much to the chagrin of the bodies of said wrestlers. Thankfully, the locker room culture of wrestling has evolved leaps and bounds since then and performers are much more into comics, video games, and D&D than trying to score some blow. If you would like a great simulation of what it’d be like to fight while on cocaine in the old days, you can play WWF Royal Rumble.

This game was intended to be an arcade title and it shows in spades, as the gameplay is extremely fast, chaotic, and clearly not intended to play more than a few minutes at a time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as there isn’t another wrestling game quite like that out there (other than maybe the Ultimate Muscle video games). It just caught me completely off guard and it took me several matches to not only get used to the pace, but also the fact that no match really seems to have any rules. You have to bring a buddy to the ring with you and they can attack your opponent with whatever whenever you tell them to with no penalty.

The actual Royal Rumble mode, the only other mode in the game, is peak chaos as guys just pour into the ring waiting for you to eliminate them battle royale style. Fun fact – the Royal Rumble match consists of 30 entrants and this game’s roster is so shallow, it doesn’t even have enough wrestlers to fill the match it’s named after, so hope you like fighting the same dudes over and over. — W. Quant

#159. Coaster Works

April 3, 2001
Bimboosoft
Xicat Interactive

It’s easy to forget that there was an entire era where “pretend to ride a roller coaster on your computer” was a legitimate marketing angle. If that feature had been paired with an actual game, then I would probably really like this title. As it exists, it’s more of a baby’s-first-CAD than anything. The visuals aren’t anything to write home about, which is kind of a sticking point when it comes to roller coaster sims. If you’re an absolute roller coaster design fanatic, and you love 2000s-era graphics, then Coaster Works is exactly what you’re looking for. Otherwise, it’s a mediocre tech-demo that was almost immediately outclassed by its many peers. — K. Duggan

#158. SEGA Smash Pack, Vol. 1

January 31, 2001
Sega

Eight games for the price of one, this pack with a kinda-cool title screen and miserable sound emulation doesn’t have Gain Ground, Kid Chameleon, or Virtua Fighter but does contain:

• Altered Beast: Rise from your grave to battle mythological beasts in this bad brawler with awful audio.
• Columns: Sega’s attempt to beat Tetris is great and worthy of more than the few titles it got.
• Golden Axe: Fantastic fantasy brawler that introduced the genre to many.
• Phantasy Star II: Epic turn-based RPG that can call itself one of the best of the generation.
• The Revenge of Shinobi: Great ninja-jumping and shuriken-throwing action.
• Sega Swirl: You’ll see our thoughts on this one later.
• Shining Force: Tip top tactical action a ‘la Fire Emblem.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: It’s Sonic the Hedgehog. It should be Sonic 2.
• Streets of Rage 2: Pure fantastic side-scrolling brawling action, and Skate is in it! He rules!
• Vectorman: Best Genesis platformer without Sonic, with a basic Nier: Automata-esque story that deserves a modern update.
• Virtua Cop 2: …why is Saturn’s only representative in this pack a light gun game?
• Wrestle War: A bog-standard wrestling title I never heard of before this collection. — J. Ruggiero

#157. TNN Motorsports Hardcore Heat

September 7, 1999
CRI
ASC Games

Let’s address the elephant in the room. The only tie-in The Nashville Network has in TNN Motorsports Hardcore Heat is the name alone. This off-road racer was otherwise known as Buggy Heat in Europe and Japan. So, don’t go expecting a lick of TNN’s style of country stardom, music, or culture here. Which, let’s be honest, thank fucking god.

If you’ve played one middle-of-the-road racer on the Dreamcast, you’ve essentially played them all. The only real difference here is the focus on off-road tracks. There are a little more than a handful of vehicles and courses to choose from with the former having a litany of customization options. Each vehicle is tied to a driver, who will not shut the fuck up. The only way to get some semblance of quiet is to pull ahead and keep the lead. The vehicles handle well enough and there’s a good amount of track diversity despite the limited number of tracks. It’s all about quality over quantity. It’s not awful nor is it great. It’s a good way to kill an afternoon and not much more. — C. Dawson

#156. The Last Blade 2: Heart of the Samurai

August 7, 2001
SNK
Agetec

While many critics at the time were jumping down Capcom’s throat about the rampant outbreak of Street Fighter titles on the Dreamcast (there were only three), games like The Last Blade 2: Heart of the Samurai escaped similar judgement, perhaps by being a different take on the fighting game formula. I’m all for trying something different, but being different can’t come at the expense of good core gameplay. The Last Blade 2 is a 2D fighter with a focus on the samurai warriors of a fictional past and as such, has a heavy emphasis on sword play.

It’s not a bad game, but it’s not great. It’s a middle of the road fighter that feels like the characters are moving underwater. Sword strikes must be intentional and precise as their animation frames for sheathing and unsheating can create large openings that can be punished. I normally wouldn’t fault something like this if the game was striving for a realistic approach but since opponents can use things like fire attacks and summon spectral weapons, I have to ding it.

It’s one of those games that holds its own but wasn’t quite good enough to secure a future for the franchise. It’s worth checking out if you’re a fighting game enthusiast but that’s about it. — C. Dawson

#155. 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker

May 22, 2001
Sega AM2
Sega

There are so many racing games on the Dreamcast, and this one is sort of fun, but it really doesn’t do enough to stand out ultimately. Sort of like American Truck Simulator if you could go from Key West to New York City in two minutes flat, this arcade racer has you driving big rigs across America’s highways, and that’s actually a pretty damn fun hook for a game if you ask me. Rivals taunt you on the CB radio like they’re professional wrestlers cutting promos, and the whole thing looks great and controls well. It’s just that this is a very short arcade game that was ported to the Dreamcast with minimal effort. Also, I hate when they still have a countdown to pick my guy in a console game. What’s the hurry? I spent plenty of hard earned tokens to own this thing, pal. Quit riding my ass and give me more than 15 seconds to choose between the redneck and the black guy with the large afro. There’s a few other modes here, but nothing to write home about. Namely, the Dreamcast’s only parking minigame (I think) and a ‘money mode’ that lets you race on an oval and run cars over for money. Sounds fun until you realize you make 100 bucks for each successful one and they dock you 500 for each thing you hit on accident that you weren’t supposed to. I ended up in the hole a few thousand dollars and now my Dreamcast is convinced I owe it money. The VMU keeps waking me up to threaten me. What a great system. — Mark Roebuck

#154. Caesars Palace 2000: Millennium Gold Edition

September 24, 2000
Runecraft
Interplay Entertainment

I bemoaned the lack of a solid casino game on the N64, with the bare bones Golden Nugget 64 being the system’s lone offering. The Dreamcast doubles that amount, and CP2MGE is a game that does include the motivations to keep playing that I felt GN64 lacked, but its held back by a bizarre cultivation of games. It’s cool having to level up at each particular game, playing each at their cheapest level to begin, and unlocking higher stakes as you go. Sadly, this game is about three years ahead of the big poker boom, and so the poker options are very limited, and Texas Hold ‘Em is reserved for video poker games, convoluted digital orgies where you select one group of whole cards from several offered and see how it plays out. Casino games have always offered depth in the sense that if you were so inclined, you could teach yourself a game like Craps or Baccarat, real grown up shit. Caesar’s offers that and also services the other end of that spectrum, and includes casino versions of games like War and In-Between, for the compulsive gambling kid inside all of us. All in all, uh, I guess it’s fine.  — M. Roebuck

#153. Centipede

November 23rd, 1999
Leaping Lizard Software
Hasbro Interactive

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the arcade classic Centipede had a backstory and semi-involved lore? No? Oh, well, this is kind of awkward, then. Centipede on Dreamcast opens with a FMV cinematic that feels like it’s ripped right out of a Primus music video. But, man, it is fucking horrible. The art style in this game is truly painful to look at, and the voice actors sound like they were speaking into the wrong side of the mic while recording dialogue.

The game includes both the classic arcade version of Centipede as well as a new adventure mode, which was a poor choice on the developer’s behalf, to be honest, because the comparisons are not kind in the slightest. The clunky 3D controls are objectively worse than the tight controls in the arcade original, and the graphics look less like a Dreamcast title and more like low-rent licensed shovelware on the Nintendo 64. Thankfully this game was forgettable enough to not replace the cultural zeitgeist’s general impressions of Centipede as a video game classic, and with the conclusion of this review, let us all continue to forget it ever existed. — Kevin Podas

#152. SEGA Swirl

February 2, 2000
Tremor Entertainment
Sega

The torment knows no end. Whether I am focused on the task in front of me, listlessly staring into the distance, or passed out after imbibing too much, I see the swirls.

Nothing makes them abate. Spinning within water droplets, twirling within the irises of my lover, roiling in the black empty void of my mind, I see the swirls.

Match colors together. Eliminate long chains. Ponder the snake. See the swirls.

Will they stop? Can they ever leave me alone? Do they even want to leave me alone? Even now as I write this review, am I imagining things or am I still seeing the swirls?

The glass shatters. The balloons pop. The fireworks go off. A vague 90s hip-hop beat plays repetitively. I hear the swirls.

Though they disappear I know they will return. The evil red words tell me I met all my goals, but I feel as though I have achieved nothing. I know nothing. I only know the swirls. — J. Ruggiero

#151. Wacky Races

June 27, 2000
Infogrames Sheffield House
Infogrames

It only makes sense to turn Wacky Races into a video game. The show was crazy Vroom Vroom antics before Mario Kart was a twinkle in Nintendo’s eye. The only problem is that the game came out 30 years too late. Even the kids who saw the cartoon would mostly associate it as one of those Boomerang cartoons you see when you’re home sick from school. Sometimes it was either watch Wacky Races or see who’s confessing something to Maury.

The graphics may not be able to replicate the 2-D animation of Hannah Barbara, but the cel shading does a great job at retaining its cartoon vibes. The game gives you a choice of eight characters to choose from all which have their own unique attack options. Of course you gotta work hard for that sweet, sweet, Dick Dastardly and Muttley. Some good incentive to keep playing because Penelope Pitstop has her moments, but there’s only one cat around who looks like Waluigi with a big poofy raver hat. Overall a fun game, with more effort put into than expected. Though really, if we are going to resurrect racing franchises, Roger Corman should have pitched a hyper violent Death Race 2000 when he had the chance. — Rob Steinberg

#150. Cyber Troopers Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram M.S.B.S. Ver. 5.4

June 7, 2000
Sega AM3
Activision

“With Armored Core 6 coming, I should go back and try out previous mech games,” I thought as I chose to review this. “Maybe the game will be so good, and have a bunch of customization options, that I won’t even care about AC and just play this!”

Boy, how wrong I was. Rather than an immersive mech sim, Virtual-On: I’m Not Writing The Whole Title Again is another in the massive roster of 3D fighting games for the Dreamcast. If you look at the title of a DC game and have no idea what it is, dollars to donuts it’s some unusual fighting game.

This fighter, from a short-lived series of Sega mech fighters, lets you control Virtualoids, cool-looking mechs that beat the crap out of each other with style and flair. I feel like I’ll get yelled at by someone for this, but in 2023 the controls (move with D-pad, swivel your body with the stick) are hard to conquer and have become a barrier of entry for me. Even once I wrangled them I didn’t see the appeal in this over other better fighters on the system. But the big robots sure are pretty. — J. Ruggiero

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