This collection - perhaps a big word for a bundle of only four games - is a weird one. I am sure that the Dreamcast console had more games, which begs the question how these four were selected. The inclusion of Sonic Adventure seems perfectly logical, since this type of platformer is pretty typical for this generation of consoles, and Sonic, of course, was the mascot not only of the series, but in many ways of the console itself. Crazy Taxi also fits well, it's an arcade style driving game where you, well, drive people around in a cab. I have no problems believing these were games that sold well and in a way defined the console.
No, it's the two other games that I can't quite wrap my head around. Space Channel 5: Part 2 is a rhythm game where you dance to music to avert invading space aliens. I suppose that the genre, which led to the whole genre of faux musician game like Guitar Hero was and still is popular, and thus may have had a solid following on the Dreamcast as well, but certainly a very different crowd than the two previous games in the collection...
The last game, Sega Bass Fishing, adds to my confusion. Were these popular? I never heard of anyone I knew playing games like this - as the name suggest, it's a fishing game. You sit and fish, with a pole, a line and a lure. You get scored for the type and size of fish you catch. Strange stuff, if you ask me, but I suppose the same thing could be said of many games I do play.
All four games appear to be the actual console games running in an emulator, but with a few tweaks to allow PC users to configure the parts that don't translate directly to PC hardware. One such thing is, of course, the controls. And I have to admit that I found the controls to be... unsatisfactory. It just seems that controlling these games is a fair bit harder than it was on the original console hardware, with its controllers.
These four games, to me, end up as more of a curiosity and/or excursion into nostalgia than a full-on gaming experience. The wide range of genres also means this collection will have a hard time finding an audience that will appreciate all of the games included, so when buying it, you are, in effect only adding one or two games you actually will play to your collection.
This means that the value proposition of the bundle is not 4 games for the cost of 1/4 the bundle per game, but more like 1 or 2 for the price of 1/1 or 1/2 of the bundle price. At this price point, you can most likely pick up more modern representatives of the genres that do not come with the wrinkles emulation brings with it.
