Hi. I'm Anthony, I'm 16, and on Thursday, September 9, 1999, at 12:20 in the morning, I walked out of a game store with a Sega Dreamcast that I paid for myself. I bagged groceries every weekend from March to August to get the $199. This page is a diary of the whole thing, plus reviews of every launch game me and my friends have played, plus a page just for Soul Calibur, because it needs its own page. Newest entry is at the top.

Two and a half weeks in. Some stuff I've figured out:

1. It's not loud. My brother's PlayStation makes a noise like a lawn mower when it loads. The Dreamcast whirs a little and that's it.

2. I have now played Soul Calibur for longer than I have done my chemistry homework this year, combined, times about ten. My mom found this out. We are now on a system where homework comes first and the Dreamcast goes in my parents' closet on school nights until it's done. I'm writing this on a Saturday, so.

3. The controller is good but it's big. Manuel says it's like holding a steering wheel. The cord comes out of the bottom, toward you, instead of out the top, which is weird until you get used to it, and then it's fine.

4. Every person who has come over to my house has said "it looks better than the arcade" within five minutes. I've been counting. It's eleven people. One of them was my dad.

Updated the games page with Hydro Thunder and Ready 2 Rumble, which Jesse rented.

Rickey, Jesse and Manuel slept over last night. Dana came over too, around 8, because she wanted to see it, and stayed till her mom picked her up at 11, and in those three hours she beat everybody at Soul Calibur with Ivy, which nobody saw coming, especially not Rickey, who got beat by her four times in a row and then said he was "letting her learn."

The four controller ports finally got used for real: Jesse brought his NFL 2K and we played two on two. Four controllers, one TV, nobody can see anything because the TV is only 27 inches, and it's still awesome. Jesse and me lost to Manuel and Rickey by 3 because Jesse decided to go for it on fourth and 20 from our own 15. I am not over it.

Went to bed at 4. I'm writing this at 2 in the afternoon.

The VMU. I bought one Friday with my last paycheck before the break (I took two weeks off from bagging for the launch, which my manager thinks is the dumbest thing she's ever heard of). VMU stands for Visual Memory Unit. It's the Dreamcast memory card, but it has its own little black-and-white screen, a direction pad and buttons, and it runs off two watch batteries. You plug it into the slot on the top of the controller and the screen shows through a window in the middle of the controller, so a game can show you stuff on it while you play.

You can also take it out and carry it around like a tiny Game Boy. In Sonic Adventure you can put your Chao (they're little pets you raise in the game) into the VMU and take it with you and play with it, and then put it back in the Dreamcast and it's grown. Jesse took his to school in his pocket. It beeped in fourth period. It is now in the vice principal's office until Friday. Learn from Jesse.

Also the VMU makes the best beeping noise when you save. I don't know why I like it so much. I just do.

The modem and the Internet thing. The Dreamcast has a modem built in. In the box there's a disc that's a web browser, so you can plug the Dreamcast into the phone line and go on the Internet on your TV. I tried it last night. It works! You type with a keyboard on the screen that you pick letters off of with the controller, which is SLOW. I typed the address for my own page and it took like two minutes, and then it showed up on our big TV and my little sister thought it was the coolest thing she's ever seen, and my mom made me get off the phone line.

So now this page has been looked at on a Dreamcast. It's probably one of the first pages that has. I'm counting it.

I HAVE IT.

OK, from the start. I preordered in June and put $50 down to hold it. The game store at the mall said they'd open at midnight for preorders only. My dad said there was no way I was going to a mall at midnight on a school night. Then on Tuesday he said he'd drive me. I think he wanted to see it too.

We got there at 10:15. There were already about 30 people in line outside the mall entrance, and by 11:30 it went all the way down past the movie theater. A guy in front of us had a Sonic hat. Two guys behind us had driven from like an hour away because their store wasn't opening early. Somebody had a Game Boy and we all watched him play Pokemon for a while. Mall security walked by every fifteen minutes and looked at us like we were weird. We were weird. It was great.

At midnight they opened the gate and let us in five at a time. I got to the counter at 12:20, paid the rest, and they handed me the box. It's big! Bigger than you think. It's white with the orange swirl on it. I didn't open it in the car. I want that on record. I held it the whole way home.

My dad also bought me Soul Calibur, because, he said, if he was going to drive me to a mall at midnight on a school night, I was going to have something good to play. Best dad.

The box: the Dreamcast, one controller, the cables for the TV, the power cord, the web browser disc, and the manuals. The Dreamcast itself is small and white and kind of square, with the orange swirl on the lid, and four controller ports in a row on the front. FOUR. Like the N64. My brother's PlayStation only has two.

Hooked it up. Turned it on. There's a startup thing with the swirl and a sound and then a screen where you set the date and time, which I did. It was 1:05 a.m. Put in Soul Calibur.

I'm not going to be able to explain it. It looks better than anything I've ever seen on a TV. It looks better than the arcade, and the arcade was the best thing I'd ever seen before tonight. The first fight I picked Kilik, because of the staff, and I've basically been Kilik ever since (all three and a half hours of it).

I have school in three hours. Worth it.

T-minus one day. I have the $149 I still owe in an envelope in my sock drawer, all of it in bagging money, mostly fives. I've counted it three times today. Dad is driving me. This is real.

Things I have done to get ready: cleared off the shelf under the TV in my room. Moved my brother's PlayStation to his room, where it belongs. Read about Soul Calibur in two magazines at the grocery store on my break. Made this page, so I'd have somewhere to write it all down.

Things I have not done: my chemistry homework.