5 SEGA Dreamcast Games That Were 10/10 Masterpieces

Published Aug 7, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT Ben Brosofsky has been writing for Screen Rant since 2022 and editing since 2024. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor's in Cinema & Media Arts. Writing serves as a much-needed distraction from tackling a backlog of Steam games that will never be surmounted. The SEGA Dreamcast may not have sold as well as competing platforms, but it wasn't due to any lack of great games. While the library wasn't as extensive as the PlayStation 2's seemingly endless supply of experiences, the best that the Dreamcast had to offer stood among the greats of its generation. Decades later, some of the Dreamcast's greatest hits are even more significant, as they left long legacies for other games to follow. In a few cases, though, there's still nothing else that scratches the same itch as popping one of these games into a Dreamcast and sitting back for a fun afternoon. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 As tempting as it is to start off with the innovation of Shenmue, fear factor of Resident Evil: Code Veronica, or electrifying energy of Sonic Adventure, the question of perfection shifts the narrative a little. While some of the Dreamcast's most ambitious games are undeniably excellent, they're also more likely to have some rough points here and there. That doesn't mean they're not masterpieces, and a 10/10 can be about more than just avoiding problems, but it can still be a little complicated. The same cannot be said, however, for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Although the second entry in the iconic skateboarding series originated on the PlayStation, the Dreamcast version remains a superior console experience. This version stays true to the original PlayStation experience, but the game looks and sounds better thanks to the stronger Dreamcast hardware. More broadly, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is essentially the perfect sequel. The first game already put a fantastic foundation in place, but it had certain limitations, like the lack of a manual to help chain tricks together. On top of excellent park designs, it also introduced the Park Editor, allowing players to create their own environments and challenges for the first time. As a whole, THPS2 homed in on virtually every possible area for improvement, offering a definitive experience that many still consider the best in the franchise. While Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 is a best-in-class remake, picking up the original on Dreamcast today will still provide a fantastic experience. Crazy Taxi AAA video game development has become something of an arms race over the years, with the quest to attract the most players turning into a competition to offer the largest world and include the most features. The bigger a game gets, though, the harder it is to make any individual aspect perfect, and it's not hard to imagine the grand ambitions of games like Grand Theft Auto 6 struggling to land on every level. For a game like Crazy Taxi, it's a lot easier to be essentially flawless. It's not that it wasn't ambitious in its own right, taking the excitement of arcade racing games into a totally different realm, but that it remains laser-focused on its pure idea of fun. Crazy Taxi aims to provide a crazy taxi driving experience, nothing more and nothing less. Boy, does it deliver. Even today, few games can compare with the sheer joy of careening around the cities and screeching to a halt at customers' requested destinations. It's a very arcade premise — notably, it was an arcade game before coming to the Dreamcast — but it doesn't wear out its welcome quickly. For the most part, the Dreamcast release of Crazy Taxi resembles the arcade version, but the addition of a console-exclusive stage is an appreciable upgrade. Regardless, there's no need to mess around too much with perfection, and the Dreamcast delivers a fantastic Crazy Taxi experience. Skies Of Arcadia While most memorable RPGs of the era arrived within the PlayStation ecosystem, one of the absolute best came to the Dreamcast instead. Skies of Arcadia took the genre's sense of exploration to the next level, following a group of air pirates as they fly around the skies in a quest to stop an evil empire from threatening the world. Great RPGs have to balance plenty of design prerogatives, and Skies of Arcadia doesn't miss a beat. Fun combat, great graphics, and memorable characters deliver on all fronts, and the richness of the game's world makes it easy for most players to overlook its intense and occasionally exhausting encounter rate while sailing around the heavens. More than anything, there's something inherently exciting about getting to play as sky pirates, a fantasy that the average RPG simply doesn't indulge. Although Skies of Arcadia has never received a direct follow-up, the high prices for both the Dreamcast original and GameCube re-release show just how much people still love the game today. Hopefully, this Dreamcast classic will return to the market again some day so that more players can experience its grand adventure for the first time. Soulcalibur If critics were ever in agreement that one Dreamcast game was a 10/10, it was Soulcalibur. While this fighting game originated in arcades, it first came to home consoles with a port to the Dreamcast, and it took no time at all for that release to generate widespread acclaim. Unlike most console ports of arcade games that had come before it, Soulcalibur actually improved the graphics instead of compromising them, and that was just the start. From the new character Cervantes de Leon to a solid array of new modes, the Dreamcast release of Soulcalibur was the definitive way to play. Even in the arcade, Soulcalibur always stood out from other major fighting games, focusing on characters with a diverse array of weapons and highlighting the interactions between those weapons in memorable ways. Its freedom of movement also felt like a major step forward from competitors, adding another dimension of strategy. Soulcalibur 2 ended up bringing its own additions to the formula, and, in turn, it's often heralded as one of the best games on the GameCube and PlayStation 2. Even after a long line of successors, though, the original game on the Dreamcast still holds its own as a perfect fighting experience. Jet Set Radio If any Dreamcast game truly blazed its own trail, it was Jet Set Radio. After the massive success of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, an inline skating game feels like a natural follow-up. Not only did Jet Set Radio deliver on a similar level of fun, but it brought plenty of its own ideas into the picture, ultimately tackling the concept in a better way than anyone could have hoped. Rather than simply tasking the player with skating around the city and grinding rails, Jet Set Radio incorporated a graffiti element, focusing its objectives around tagging spots to get one up over both police and rival gangs. Its counterculture prerogative extended to more than just gameplay, with memorable characters and a vibrant art style all leaning into the idea in a way that felt both fresh and sincere. Jet Set Radio was followed by the similarly excellent Jet Set Radio Future on the Xbox, but the series has been on a long hiatus since. While another Jet Set Radio game has finally been in development for the past several years, we still haven't gotten a look at actual gameplay. In the meantime, games like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk have taken clear inspiration from the classic, highlighting its status as one of the greatest games to ever grace the SEGA Dreamcast. Sega Dreamcast