Dreamarena
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| Developer | Sega |
|---|---|
| Type | Online service |
| Launch date | 1999 (Dreamcast) |
| Status | Discontinued in March 2003 |
Dreamarena was a free online gaming service provided with all Sega Dreamcast consoles in Europe. As the console had a bundled 33.6 kbit/s modem built in (56 kbit/s in the USA), it was a dial-up service. This was created and operated for Sega Europe by a partnership between ICL, BT and various ISPs (ICL developed the web sites and software, with BT providing the dial-up capabilities and network infrastructure, and the ISPs (one for each country) providing the Internet dial-up connection and telephone service). The service was free, and the game servers hosted within it could not otherwise be accessed from the Internet. Dreamarena ran until the beginning of March 2003.
Although people could change ISP settings thanks to American online games like Quake III Arena, European Dreamcast web browsers DreamKey 1.0 and 1.5 didn't allow users to input their own ISP settings. After the end of Dreamarena, Sega offered to send DreamKey 3.0/3.1 free from Sega-Europe's website, allowing users to replace Dreamarena ISP with their own ISP to continue to browse the web and to play online games. However nowadays Dreamkey 3.0 has been discontinued and is no longer available from the SEGA Europe website.
The American equivalent of the service was SegaNet. Some games also utilized GameSpy for multiplayer modes.
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