5 Hardest Dreamcast Games Ever

The Dreamcast came out of the gates well in the US, but Sega’s final console was left dead in the water when the PlayStation 2 hit store shelves. Almost immediately, sales cratered, and the system was discontinued after just three years on the market in Japan and two in the West. With such a short window, Dreamcast fans didn’t get a ton of games, but many of the ones they did get were ridiculously difficult. There was just something about the system that brought out the developer’s mean streaks, leaving us with a large handful of challenging games.

Here are the five hardest Dreamcast games ever.

5) MDK2

BioWare’s MDK2 is a lesser-known third-person shooter from the longtime RPG developer. It’s a solid shooter that deserves more love, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t frustratingly difficult. For the most part, MDK2 has great humor, fun boss fights, and nifty level design. However, it also features some of the more extreme difficulty swings you’ll ever see.

Players and reviewers alike were annoyed with the janky platforming and bosses that felt like a brick wall. In fact, complaints about MDK2‘s difficulty were so numerous that the PC port added four difficulty modes. If you’re playing the Dreamcast version, you’re on the equivalent of Hard mode on the PC. Those who were really looking for a challenge could boost things up to Jinkies mode, which seems like a mistake. On top of the option to tune the difficulty down, the PC port adds a manual save function, so if you want MDK2 at its hardest, you’ll want to grab the Dreamcast version.

4) Illbleed

Illbleed is difficult in a completely different way. It’s not so much that you’re going to be tested mechanically. In fact, many of the bosses are relatively simple, including the final boss. However, Illbleed is more like playing a horrific version of something like Dragon’s Lair. It’s not quite so simplistic in gameplay as that classic game, but it does have that sense of “anything could kill you.”

For this survival horror game, you’ll need to avoid all of Illbleed‘s many traps if you want to have a chance to survive. It’s not for everybody, but if you can get past the simplistic but malicious gameplay, you’ll find a campy B-movie style of horror that’s filled with buckets of blood. Again, this one isn’t so much hard as it is frustrating, but those can often feel like one and the same when you have a controller in your hand.

3) Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future

There’s something about these dolphin games that has developers convinced they need to turn up the difficulty. Defender of the Future is the fifth Ecco the Dolphin game, and serves as a series reboot. It essentially takes that classic Ecco gameplay and translates it to the third dimension. You’re still using your sonar to interact with everything else in the ocean as you try to save Earth once again.

Just like the other games, Defender of the Future is a mess to navigate. It feels like the person who designed these levels has never seen a map or been in an ocean, making it impossible to know where you’re going. Toss in confounding puzzles with hints that barely make sense, and you have a recipe for frustration. Still, it was successful enough to get a sequel greenlit, but Sentinels of the Universe was cancelled when the Dreamcast was discontinued.

2) Border Down

The Dreamcast was kind of a haven for shoot ’em ups, but I didn’t want to fill this entire list with one genre. Instead, I picked two of the best. We’ll talk about the other one below, but Border Down from developer G.rev has a shout as the hardest game on the system. This is a classic shoot ’em up set in the future. Each stage has three parallel versions of varying difficulties, and when you die, you drop to a harder difficulty.

It’s a bit odd to make the game harder when you die, but Border Down isn’t interested in holding your hand. Instead, it requires complete mastery of the levels if you want to get the best ending, because the finale changes based on how much time you spent on each difficulty. The Dreamcast version also included a Remix mode, which added new enemy attack patterns to each level, giving it even more replayability. It’s tough to find a copy these days, but it’s worth checking out if you’re a fan of the genre.

1) Ikaruga

Ikaruga is my pick for the hardest shoot ’em up and overall game on the Dreamcast. It’ll also show up on most lists from every system it’s ever been released on, and it quickly became a fan favorite among shoot ’em up players. The gimmick here is that you have to constantly swap your ship’s polarity between light and dark to either take or absorb damage. It’s a difficult dance that can take hours to really wrap your head around.

Even once you manage that, Ikaruga doesn’t get any easier. This one is filled with massive bosses that’ll give you fights and puzzling level layouts. You’ll also need to keep your score chain rolling if you want to make it through the tougher levels. It’s a blast to play, but you’ll also pull your hair out after dying for the hundredth time. Thankfully, the game is fun enough that you’ll quickly forget about that and jump back in.

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