Accessories

Visual Memory Unit
The Visual Memory Unit, or "VMU", was the Dreamcast memory card. It featured a monochrome LCD screen, a D-Pad, and two gaming buttons.
The VMU could play mini-games loaded onto it from certain Dreamcast games, such as a Chao game transferable from Sonic Adventure. It could
also display a list of the saved game data stored on it, and two VMUs could be connected together end-to-end to exchange data. Also while
playing games such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 or Crazy Taxi messages like "Awesome", "Rad", and "Nice Combo" would appear on the VMU screen.

Standard memory cards could also be purchased without the additional features of the VMU. Most of these were manufactured by third-party companies,
(such as the Nexus Memory Card), although Sega eventually released a 4X memory card. The 4X cards did not have the VMU screen or stand-alone abilities,
but they had four times the space thanks to the ability to switch between four 200-block sectors.

The VMU design cannot be considered a full success, as it was fairly power-intensive, draining the two watch batteries at an alarmingly fast rate, and the
architecture could not be expanded. However, contrary to popular belief, the VMU does not need the batteries to retain the saved data once the VMU is disconnected from the controller, as it incorporates flash memory storage for this purpose — the batteries are only used when the VMU is disconnected
from the controller in order to browse/exchange saved data and play mini-games in a handheld fashion away from the console.

Controller and Rumble Pack
Most Dreamcast games supported a rumble pack, or "Jump Pack", which was sold separately and could be plugged into the controller. In Japan, the Jump Pack was
named the "Puru Puru Pack".

The Dreamcast controller featured a similar design to the Sega Saturn's analog controller, offering an analog stick, a D-pad, a Start button, four action buttons
(labeled A, B, X, and Y, two buttons less than the Saturn), and two analog triggers on the underside. It also contained two slots which could hold memory
cards or the rumble pack, with a window on the front of the controller through which the VMU's display could be seen. The Dreamcast controller was somewhat
larger than many other controllers, and some players found it difficult to hold. Other players complained about the odd positioning of its controller cord, which
comes out from the bottom of the controller.

VGA Adapter
Unique to Dreamcast was a VGA adapter for output to a computer display or HDTV compatible sets in true 480p, providing much better quality than a standard
television set. Not all games were compatible with the VGA adapter, but work-arounds existed to trick all but a handful of games into working with it.
There are also certain models of the VGA adapter that have Composite and S-Video out, which is helpful those games that do not support VGA.

Dreamcast mouse and keyboard
Dreamcast supported a mouse as well as a keyboard, which were useful when using the included web browser, and also supported by certain games such as The
Typing of the Dead, Quake 3, Phantasy Star Online and Railroad Tycoon 2. Other games such as REZ offered undocumented mouse support.

Fishing Rod
A motion sensitive fishing rod was released for the few fishing games on the system. The fishing rod can actually be used with SoulCalibur and Tennis 2k2
like the Wii Remote.

Microphone
There was a microphone peripheral used for version 2.6 of the Planetweb web browser (providing long distance calling support), the European Planet Ring
collection, Alien Front Online, and Seaman, the first console game to use speech recognition in the U.S.

Lightgun
Sega also produced a light gun for the system, although this was not sold in the United States, possibly because Sega did not want its name on a gun in
light of recent school shootings (the Columbine High School massacre). American versions of light gun games even blocked out using the official gun. However,
several third parties made compatible guns for the American Dreamcast. One of them was Mad Catz's Dream Blaster which became the official Sega Dreamcast light
gun for use in the United States. The games that did not work in United States with the official Dreamcast light gun were The House of the Dead 2 and Confidential
Mission. Other light gun compatible games were Death Crimson OX and its Japanese prequel Death Crimson 2, Virtua Cop 2 on the Sega Smash Pack, and a light gun
minigame in Demolition Racer No Exit.

Arcade Stick
A heavy-duty Arcade Stick was put out by Sega, featuring a digital joystick with six buttons using the same microswitch assemblies as commercial arcade machines.
Although it could not be used for many Dreamcast games due to the lack of an analog joystick, it was well-received and helped cement Dreamcast's reputation for
playing 2D shooters and fighting games. Adaptors are now available to use the Arcade Stick on other hardware platforms.

Third-party sticks were also made, like the ASCII Dreamcast fighting pad, which some regard as having a more comfortable 6-button configuration and a more precise
digital direction pad.

Twin Sticks
A twin stick peripheral was released specifically for use with the game Virtual-On. This add-on mimicked the original dual arcade stick setup and made gameplay
much more precise. This peripheral is extremely rare and often quite expensive.

Dreameye
Sega developed the Dreameye, a digital camera for Dreamcast, but it was only released in Japan.

Dream Karaoke
Developed as a Karaoke add-on for the Dreamcast by Sega and released only in Japan. It included a Microphone and built in modem (due to Japanese Dreamcast's not
including the modems) It would download Karaoke songs onto the system to be played; however, it could not save any songs so you had to re-download the songs if
you wanted to play them again. The servers for the system went offline in 2006.

Samba de Amigo controller
Sega developed a special maraca controller for the Samba de Amigo music game.

Densha De Go! 2 controller
A special controller made specific to Densha De Go! 2 only. The controller was only available in Japan and is very rare because of the few numbers produced.

Canceled Accessories
Toward the end of Dreamcast's lifespan, Sega created and displayed prototypes of a high-capacity VMU/MP3 player, DVD player, and Zip drive peripherals. None of
these items were ever released.