Dreamcast Holy Grail? Iomega ZIP Drive Prototype for Sale in Germany!

[Nz17]

Holy orange swirls, Dreamcast collectors!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/113457426853


VERY RARE - Sega Dreamcast ZIP drive prototype - 1 of less than 5 worldwide
Once-in-a-lifetime chance to purchase videogame history
Condition: Used
“bitte Fotos bzgl. Mängel beachten - please check photos for damaged”

Schauen Sie sich gerne hier meine anderen Angebote an!

If you are an international bidder or your shipping location is outside Germany, please contact me before bidding.

Item on sale:

Sega Dreamcast ZIP drive add-on (NTSC US)
- not a stand-alone console! -
hasn't been released nor sold to the public
comes with ZIP disk
can be attached to any Dreamcast

Collectors Item. Does not need any further explanation. Has interior but there is no software that runs on this item.
Smallerstück. Braucht keine weitere Einleitung. Es besitzt Innenleben, aber es gibt keine Software die darauf läuft.

Habe noch mehr Auktionen, gerne ansehen und weitere Fragen stellen!

Privatverkauf: Keine Rückgabe, Garantie oder Umtausch. Irrtümer vorbehalten.

10596

It is listed for approximately $4,773 USD plus $22 for international shipping.

Here is a snapshot of the eBay listing on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20181217185229/https://www.ebay.com/itm/113457426853) for future viewing.

[SegaGT]

Very rare indeed! I have most everything DC but out of the Zip proto stuff only managed to get one of the Zip discs as pictured in the auction...

[YoshiM]

Dang...I remember that thing in Official Dreamcast Magazine! Though to be honest, the concept didn't set me on fire. After going through the TG-16 CD, Sega CD and seeing the lack of support for 32X, I had a feeling this ship wouldn't float.

Still, it's a neat piece of gaming history.

[Gameguy]

Sega believed ZIP disks were the future of gaming? I wonder why they aren't making consoles anymore....

[gbpxl]

When I think of all the great games Sega released in the mod 2000s it makes me wonder if the Dreamcast could have lasted at least another 4 years...

ToeJam and Earl 3
Virtual Fighter 4
OutRun 2
Pander Dragoon
Shenmue II
Pander Dragoon Orta
Seaman 2
Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg

It seemed like the Dreamcast had decent enough 3rd party support, especially from Capcom. And the graphics and sound were comparable to the PS2. The only thing it lacked was the fact that the media wasn't on DVD and people wanted a DVD player built into their game system

[Greg2600]

Sold for over $4,000.

I had an Iomega Zip-100 in my PC back then for a couple reasons. First, it was a far cheaper alternative to lack of HDD space, which was very common. Especially for files you didn't need to keep on there. I used them for PC racing sim mods, things like tracks, carsets, etc. to store the downloads. Eventually, when emulators became available as well as roms, I would store those there too. Originally I had one that was parallel port based, which was slow as balls, but I got a newer PC that had an internal which was much faster. Back in college, my PC lab had them in all the PC's for some reason, but I was probably the only person using them! I would download roms there, save them on the zip disks, and take them home, ha ha ha.

[SegaGT]

Sold for over $4,000.

I had an Iomega Zip-100 in my PC back then for a couple reasons...

"Sega believed ZIP disks were the future of gaming? ...."

You have to remember that back in the late 90's people were still running Win 95-98 Most computers were still using 1.44mb FD, tiny slow magnetic disk. What was Sony doing? Using the 1.44mb floppy disks in their fancy new Mavica digital camera at that time. SmartMedia cards and CompactFlash were crazy expensive for even 32mb. The Zip drive was used mostly by professionals (in digital media work etc.). High capacity and small physical size compared to Syquest 44/88 Cheap compared to the Jaz drive. I'm not saying it was a great idea to try in a console but you have to put things in perspective when talking about technology and Zip was the best option available at that time.

[Gameguy]

I'm not saying it was a great idea to try in a console but you have to put things in perspective when talking about technology and Zip was the best option available at that time.
I'm talking about it in context of being used in a console, keeping in mind that the Dreamcast came out just a year before the PS2 with DVD storage. The Zip format was already starting to fall out of favour by the time the Dreamcast came out.

I've used Zip disks in the past during high school as one teacher wanted us to save our completed projects to one. It was mostly a pain to use from what I remember. It wasn't a widely adopted format overall.

This whole thing for the Dreamcast just reminded me of the Famicom disk system a bit too much.

[gbpxl]

I don't know if a physical copy exists but if it did, for me the Dreamcast holy grail would be Propeller Arena. It was set to release on September 19th, 2001, but was canceled after 9/11. That makes me believe there are a bunch of them out there somewhere in a warehouse. I'm sure many of them were destroyed. The game was developed by AM2 and it is easy to see why it was canceled.

[TheHammerGod]

I do not believe Propeller Arena was 100% finished when they cancelled it so there would not have been any discs pressed. The Zip drives were huge for a couple of years when CDR drives were very expensive.

[Bojay1997]

I do not believe Propeller Arena was 100% finished when they cancelled it so there would not have been any discs pressed. The Zip drives were huge for a couple of years when CDR drives were very expensive.

It was finished. I know I have the final version on a development disc and the game was pretty widely distributed on Rom sites many years ago.

[SegaGT]

..This whole thing for the Dreamcast just reminded me of the Famicom disk system a bit too much.

I actually agree with you probably more than you think. My take on what they were trying to do ties into its initial concept. They were trying to release the DC at a price point of about $200. This after the Saturn and Playstation were $400 and $300 at launch, this put them in an impossible position to include DVD back in '97-'98 development and release period.

The DC focus was on an internet enabled device out of the box. Sega had already done connectivity, service on demand and internet with Sega Channel on the Genesis, and Netlink on the Saturn but knew that using the DC this way would require storage capacity.

The Zip would allow downloadable content and storage beyond the tiny 128kb of the memory card. Unlike the Saturn there was no built in storage or cart slot (more cost cutting). With the Dreameye camera, broadband adapter and other hardware coming out (even a MIDI controller) an expanded storage solution was going to be a must.

I agree that the Zip with the PC crowd was not great (with parallel port bandwidth) and didn't catch on, but it was with the Apple/Mac graphics/media/content creation pros of the late 90's and early 2000s. The Mac Blue & White G3 was very popular with them and was built in. SCSI interface made the Zip fast if used externally, and Apple continued featuring the Zip drive in the next few generations of Mac hardware (Original G4, Sawtooth, Digital Audio, and even the Quicksilver which was the latest and greatest from Apple durring the life of the DC).

As TheHammerGod mentioned after the price drops, the Zip and drives like it were killed by the CDR/W. Had Sega gone from proto to release, it would have been yet another failure and bad decision used to bash them...

No doubt about it, Sega made a bunch of bad decisions that they never recovered from and as a tiny company without the resources (compared to Sony and Microsoft) its no wonder they are gone. I will give Sega credit for innovating, and looking at what console gaming is now (one line, subsription based services and content etc.) would say they were right on the future of gaming.

[Nz17]

Yeah, the Dreamcast Iomega ZIP Drive prototype sold for EUR 4,225.00 (approximately USD $4,798.12).