10 YEARS AGO TODAY the world learned the first details of what would be Dreamcast

**parallaxscroll** · 13 Mar 2007, 10:12 PM

It was March 13, 1997 when the general public would learn, via a report on Next Generation Online, some of the first real details Sega's last console.

Codename: Black Belt

Next Generation Online has received impressive first insights into Sega's next game machine - codenamed Black Belt.
March 13, 1997

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Developers are now hearing the first details of Sega's next machine which is supposedly based upon two key technological elements. The first element is the inexpensive Videologic/PowerVR PCX2 chipset which is expected to cost manufacturers less than $30 in lots of 10,000 units. NEC has previously confirmed that they have spoken with Sega about the use of the PowerVR hardware in future systems. Such a system would provide hardware support for anti-aliasing, mip-mapping, z-buffering (albeit not a standard method), texture filtering and alpha-channeling.
The system is also expected to sport some as yet to be named 64-bit CPU (rumored to be a PowerPC of some variety) as well as utilizing a CD format. There is still no word on the polygon handling capacity of the unit.

The second major component of the system is said to be the Microsoft Arcade Operating System. Yu Suzuki has been rumored to have been in Redmond, visiting Microsoft a little less than a year ago investigating the OS. Such a system allows for easier development with more standardized tools. Furthermore, arcade games developed to use the OS could relatively easily be ported to the new system.

Currrently Sega and SegaSoft are said to be working with the hardware in its current form. Some developers should be receiving development kits as early as this Christmas, with a system release possibly as early as Christmas '98.

While the developers that Next Generation Online spoke to were unaware of the Black Belt's expected price point, all of them said that it should provide a much needed boost in performance and ease of development.

http://web.archive.org/web/199704170.../031397a.chtml

at the time, the project was only known to the world outside SEGA, as Black Belt.

but NGO nailed three critical details

*PowerVR graphics chip
*Microsoft OS
*late 1998 release (Japan)

most of the stuff put out on websites and in magazines regarding Sega's next console before this report came out was merely rumor & speculation. This article was no rumor, but the first actual public report about what would be a real Sega console.

Yes, I know, the "Black Belt" machine was actually the Sega of America project using 3Dfx, which was eventually canceled. However although the article mentions Black Belt, what NGO was actually unknowingly talking about, which they and everyone discovered a few weeks or months later, were early details of the Sega of Japan project; Dural, later named Katana.

Later articles by Next Generation Online, Next Generation Magazine and the rest of the media would tell us that Sega had two consoles in development, in parallel, for a final shootout to see which one would get to replace the Saturn. ....it was pretty much fixed that the SoJ Dural/Katana would win, for various reasons.... that's another story.

The report describes an early version of the Dural/Katana which would later have a customized PowerVR2 instead of PCX2 (re: PowerVR1 "version 2"), the machine that would indeed eventually become known to us all as, Dreamcast.

**kingoffighters** · 13 Mar 2007, 10:15 PM

10 years later, Sega is making shitty Sonic games.

**Tommy Tallarico** · 13 Mar 2007, 10:16 PM

Dreamcast? Is that like a Playstation?

**icarusfall** · 13 Mar 2007, 10:18 PM

Are we gonna' have anniversary threads for every little thing now? It was 30 seconds ago this thread made me want to punch someone in the face. Maybe I'll make a thread about it...

/inabadmood