Description

The Sega Dreamcast Tsutaya Rental Unit is a limited edition version of the Sega Dreamcast.

The original Dreamcast was released in 1998 in Japan and in 1999 in Europe and North America. The Dreamcast was the successor to the Sega Saturn. The console had a lot of good, sometimes quirky, games. Nevertheless, the Dreamcast didn’t attract the attention of the general public. With 9 million units it wasn’t a complete failure, but it also wasn’t enough to make it profitable for Sega. In 2000, short before Sega pulled out the pluck, the company experimented with renting out Dreamcasts. It was a last attempt to introduce more people to the system and its games. Maybe if they rented one and liked it, they would buy it.

Sega made an agreement with Tsutaya to rent out the Dreamcast in their department stores in Japan. This was very unusual in the Japanese home console marked, which contribute to the idea that Sega had the water up to their neck.

The agreement between Tsutaya and Sega did not result in a clear increase in Dreamcast sales and was therefore cancelled soon after it started. This resulted in the fact that only about 500 rental units were distributed, which makes this Dreamcast variant very rare.

Appearance

The Sega Dreamcast Tsutaya edition came enclosed in a hard case and included a Dreamcast, two controllers, cables, two games, a phone cord (to play online) and instructions. The console itself is almost identical to the regular Dreamcast and the controller, except for a orange sticker on the clamshell which says ‘demonstration Dreamcast.’