Unfortunatley for Dreamcast users, sometime in late October early November, PlanetWeb's Dreamcast Portal website was taken down possibly for good. The site included lots of Dreamcast information, VMU saves, Game footage/Movies, Cheat Codes, Reviews, Online java games, Walkthroughs on how to make websites on your Dreamcast, and many more features. Suprisingly the site stayed online long after Dreamcast's discontinuation, and even after PlanetWebs closing of its ISP service(Sega.net) in 2002-2003. Which allowed gamers to play online games for free as long as they had an ISP. Later in the spring/summer of 2003 Sega shut down most online games, leaving only a handfull of games hosted by servers other than Sega. Sega was saying they were going to stop all online games in September of 2002, but then extended the deadline even further, all the way into spring 2003. PSO(U.S. Ver.) suprisingly outlasted them all coming to a close in October 2003. After that,some of the games have disapeared mysteriously, and some still exsist today. Click here to see a list of them.

Later in the year(late October), Sega shut down their U.S. Phantasy Star Online servers only, leaving the European(PAL)and Japanese NTSC servers still accessible by people who have the according version of the game. If you have a copy of a (PAL) or Japanese PSO you can still access the servers and play online to this day.

Even after all of this, PlanetWeb's Dreamcast Portal still stayed online. Having such nostalgic and resourceful value it was a haven for some Dreamcast users. Although, due to low hits and cost the site shut down. I guess PlanetWeb just needs to move into the future. After all they are becoming big in the electronics world. Just check out there website: http://planetweb.com. If you tryed to visit http://dreamcast.planetweb.com in October it would bring you an error message. But, the site was still up, you could find it by typing in PlanetWeb, Sega.net, etc. on a search engine. For some reason it made the page accessible, but now it's apparently gone for good.

I sent PlanetWeb an e-mail regarding this as soon as I found out. Heres the e-mail and the reply:

Hello, my name is Shane. I used to frequently browse your Dreamcast Portal website, looking through the many game saves and movies to view on Dreamcast. I never got to fully take advantage of the game saves and movies. I was just about to start veiwing them on my Dreamcast ,but then I noticed your site no longer exsisted. I think it should be brought back up. I feel that it was a resource haven and sanctuary for many Dreamcast users. It was one of the only official sites still in exsistence, not to mention the best. I also think it had so much nostalgia and history to offer to Dreamcast users, which is something that is very good considering Dreamcast's short lifespan and how it should have been around much longer.

My main point in this e-mail is, I would like for you to bring your sega.net/Dreamcast Portal website back online. If this happens I will help to promote it and let everyone know its back. I know you will make the best desicion, whichever it may be. I hope it will be to bring it back. If you deciede not to, I do thank you for having it up to support the Dreamcast community during and after its lifetime.

Here are a few signatures I gathered shortly after realizing that the site went offline. Its just a few of my close friends that feel the same way, I know there are many others also. I dont mean for this do be a petition I just want to let you know there are others.

Shane Mayer
Dan Milliron
Jason Sivy
Dan Mathaias

Thank you for your time,
Shane Mayer