The Dreamcast has risen from the untimely grave Sega consigned it to, and now it's spelled with a T. No, I'm not being cryptic. There is a Hong Kong based manufacturer who has started marketing "Treamcast" portable game consoles. Imagine a Dreamcast with an LCD screen mated to it and you get the idea. It also has video out as well.

Why would someone go to all this trouble to revive the Dreamcast? Well, the machine is still going strong in Asia, and there are games coming out for it even to this day for the Asian market. The Treamcast comes with a boot disk that allows it to play VCDs and MP3 CDs, too, which is not entirely new as boot disks for those kinds of material have been out for years.

The Dreamcast is the only console I currently have. I love mine to pieces. I am happy that there are people still writing new games for it, and that there is a very vibrant DC homebrew community which is cranking out games like Feet of Fury for the platform. Heck, it even boots Linux and NetBSD!

This is what I wrote about it for Slashdot. It has some eminently followable links. If this damn thing didn't cost as much as a brand new PS2 I might even consider snagging one. However, I can think of more worthy things to spend $200 (at least once you factor in shipping from HK plus duty) on, and that's considering if I even have $200 to spend on frivolous stuff like this.

Still, kudos to the DC hackers. Sega might be bummed about this, but hey, they brought it on themselves by killing a perfectly good platform before its time.