Our friends Amanda and Ashlye came over last night and Danielle and I finally got a chance to test out our multiplayer games on the Dreamcast. When it comes down to it, I’ll have to say that my favorite types of games are generally multiplayer games because it really adds to the video game experience when you have live competition. Not that single player games are less exciting but when you have friends over that actually like playing video games, multiplayer games can be very engaging.

Game One: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2

Ah, everyone loves it. For quite some time now, I was under the impression that I had impenetrable Tony Hawk skills. I guess that depends on how you look at it. Everyone’s good but there will always be someone better. I found this out very quickly last night when Amanda dropped 300,000 points in less than 2 minutes with a statless skater. Needless to say, after a few rounds of Amanda being completely competitionless, it was time to move on.

Game Two: Re-Volt

This game reminds me of RC ProAm and Micro Machines for the NES. In Re-Volt you take control of remote control car and go head to head in racing. I am selective when it comes to racing games. I find repetitive driving in a circle to be rather dull but if the game throws in the ability to attack your opponents with bombs, guns, and missiles, I’m sold. We played all 4 players on this one, however, this was a very short lived game. The first course is a bit confusing and everyone found themselves going the wrong way very often. Racing RC style is cute, but wasn’t really drawing everyone into it. It was time for a free-for-all car destruction game.

Game Three: Vigilante 8 Second Offense

My all time favorite game of this style has to be Rogue Trip on the Playstation platform. Single player, multiplayer, whatever, Rogue Trip takes the cake. Rogue Trip had a nice soundtrack and unique game play. I’ll save that for another day since I’m supposed to be talking about Vigilante 8. I think I try to force myself to like this game but the truth is, in my opinion, that this particular game has one very large flaw: vehicle control. After a few rounds I’m just frustrated. It’s completely devoid of steering control regardless of which vehicle you choose. The fact of the matter is that it’s a bitch to turn the damn thing. After fifteen minutes of this game, I was ready to move on.

Game Four: Unreal Tournament

Unfortunately, Ashlye missed out on this one. This is my FAVORITE. There is nothing better than a head-to-head, explosive, deathmatch. Of all the games we played, this is the one I prevailed as the reigning champion. Although, I agree with most people when they say that the PC version is better than any platform port, but the way I look at it is, if it’s Unreal Tournament, I don’t care if it’s being played on Virtual Boy, it’s still fun. Okay, well, maybe not if it was on Virtual Boy, but the Dreamcast version is hot and I absolutely recommend it.

So this is my partial list of a few decent multiplayer Dreamcast games. I have more to play but haven’t played them yet. So I’ll be dragging people over for more Dreamcast nights in the days to come.