8 Dreamcast Games That Made Couch Co-Op Feel Like an Event

2 hours ago 2

Published Feb 17, 2026, 3:00 PM EST

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

The Dreamcast was the last hurrah of Sega’s console-making efforts before it decided to pursue software exclusively. Even if it wasn’t the winner of the sixth console generation by a long shot, it was no slouch either, providing a healthy blend of both deep single-player experiences and arcade-style games you could enjoy on the couch with your buds. Goodness knows, I always wanted to visit the few friends I had who owned Dreamcasts just so I could have more time to fiddle with this mysterious console.

10 Dreamcast Games That Have Aged Like Fine Wine

These classics feel as good today as they did when they were released.

Compared to the likes of the GameCube, PS2, and original Xbox, the Dreamcast was the console that best exemplified the arcade-at-home spirit of console gaming, with both ports and original games that preserved that score-building dopamine. Yeah, you weren’t going to find many long-term, multi-sitting co-op games like the other consoles had, but if you and your friends just wanted something exciting and action-packed to enjoy on a Saturday evening, the Dreamcast was your huckleberry.

8 Armada

A Shmup RPG in Space

While you might think unprecedented genre collision is more of a modern-day thing, developers have been pushing boundaries for decades, throwing code at the wall and seeing what sticks. For example, would you ever consider a game that plays like a combination of Diablo and Asteroids? If not, then clearly you’ve never played Armada.

If you had to assign a singular classification to Armada, it’d be a top-down shoot ‘em up, but it goes a little deeper than that, with RPG mechanics integrated into the usual shmup formula. You have free rein in a large universe, packed with enemy ships, and shooting them down rewards you with cash and experience you can use to upgrade your own ship’s capabilities. Everything spawns at a fixed location, from your home base to enemy bases, and if you know the coordinates, you can technically go anywhere you want, though obviously, more dangerous locales mean a higher likelihood of getting shot down.

Up to four players can play cooperatively, each choosing their own starting pilot and ship between several options for optimal playstyles. It’s not unlike assembling a Diablo party, except instead of worrying about spells or tanking, everyone’s zipping all over the place shooting down enemy ships. It takes a bit of adjusting, but it’s quite fun once you get it down, and engaging to play campaign-style with sufficiently-committed friends.

7 Zombie Revenge

Why Shoot Zombies When You Can Punch Them?

When you think of zombie games, you’d probably think of guns as your first and foremost means of defense. Guns keep you out of biting distance, after all. However, I say that’s quitter talk. After all, why shoot a zombie when the much, much cooler thing to do would be to kick it upside the head, preferably with your friend watching?

Zombie Revenge is an oft-forgotten beat ‘em up game and, technically speaking, a spin-off of the House of the Dead series, though you don’t need to play any of the latter’s games to enjoy it. As with most beat ‘em ups, the goal is to pummel everything on screen to clear the path forward, with the obvious difference being that your foes are the shambling dead. There are various guns and explosives you can pick up and use to fend off the walkers, though if all else fails, a knuckle sandwich will always suffice.

As you’d expect from the genre, Zombie Revenge lends itself fantastically to couch co-op. Honestly, a partner is borderline necessary, as you need the higher damage output to plow through the levels before the timer runs out, not to mention someone who can revive you when you die.

6 Ikaruga

Twice the Ships, Twice the Polarity

Among shoot ‘em up games, few are as infamous as Ikaruga, one of the crowned kings of the bullet hell subgenre. Given that it’s the kind of game that takes a hefty amount of skill and concentration to play by yourself, I don’t know how willing you’d be to tackle it with a buddy, but the Dreamcast version gives you the option, and it’d certainly be a spectacle if nothing else.

For those unaware, the gimmick behind Ikaruga is the polarity-switching system. By flipping your ship, its shield swaps from blue to red polarity and vice versa, absorbing enemy shots of the same color. Large swaths of these shots are always flying in, so it’s less about avoiding the bullets, and more about carefully swapping polarities to wade through them unharmed. When playing in co-op, both player ships have this ability, so as long as you don’t get in each other’s way, you can both escape the hail of bullets unharmed.

Ikaruga was originally an arcade game, but it’s the Dreamcast port that’s largely credited with earning the game its enduring cult following, since American players could import it. Considering the Dreamcast port comes with a training mode, I’d say this is a game less for enjoying at a loud party, and more for you and your friend to gradually conquer over the course of several days, like a sports movie training montage.

5 Power Stone 2

Capcom’s Dreamcast-bound fighting game classic, Power Stone, was originally a strictly one-on-one affair. It was plenty of fun with friends or solo, but it doesn’t fit what we’re going for here. On the other hand, its sequel, Power Stone 2, was a little more accommodating for both larger friend groups and those who wanted to rumble with a friend by their side.

Compared to the first game’s one-on-one framework, Power Stone 2 instead opted for a four-player free-for-all format for its individual battles. However, if you’re playing in Arcade mode, you can have a friend join you and opt to “cooperate and conquer,” as the game puts it. You and your friend will rush through the game’s linear castle map, clearing levels against a pair of CPUs and gradually working your way up to the final boss.

In the midst of a fight, both players have their own health bars, as well as their own meters for collecting Power Stones for transformation. The big difference is that, if your partner gets knocked out, rather than being out instantly, you can share some of your health bar to get them back on their feet. It’s not the longest arcade mode, but that snacky length does make it more fun to play repeatedly, which also helps to unlock stuff in the game’s item book.

4 Zero Gunner 2

The Most Fun You’ll Have in a Helicopter

Frequently, shoot ‘em up games have you piloting either some manner of spaceship or a military fighter jet. You know, the cool stuff. Depending on your personal sensibilities, I don’t know whether an attack helicopter would rank higher than those two vehicle types, but if you’re a chopper head jonesing for a shmup of your own, you might just enjoy Zero Gunner 2.

In Zero Gunner 2, you, along with your co-op partner, have your pick of several attack choppers, each with their own weapon types and firing patterns, as you roll through a series of linear levels and gun down everything that looks at you funny. What’s nifty about this game is that, rather than just shooting upwards at enemies approaching from the top of the screen, you can rotate your chopper 360 degrees, firing at oncomers from all possible directions while the level scrolls automatically. When you’ve got two choppers on screen at once, alongside their accompanying bullets and missiles, it gets wonderfully hectic.

This game is also a quality co-op pick if you’re playing with a younger partner like a sibling or child, as it has nine different difficulty levels that tweak the frequency and radius of enemy shot patterns. If you’re looking to get your kids into their first shmup game, it’s a great title to ease them into the framework.

3 Dynamite Cop

Live Your Buddy Cop Dreams

Sega was big on 3D beat ‘em ups in the 90s, including games like Die Hard Arcade (AKA Dynamite Deka) and SpikeOut. While most of these games started life in the arcades, some of them gradually made their way to whatever home console Sega was running at the time. In the case of Dynamite Cop, that console was the Dreamcast.

As the sequel to Die Hard Arcade, Dynamite Cop uses the same basic gameplay format: you and your couch co-op buddy play as a couple of hot-blooded cops looking to rescue the president’s daughter from a band of pirates, first on a luxury cruise liner, then on a secret island. You battle this exceptionally well-crewed pirate band with fists, guns, and whatever else isn’t nailed down, from pool chairs to telephones.

Dynamite Cop is most fun to experience when one or both of the players involved has never played it before. It’s a game of sheer, uninterrupted spectacle, wacky arcade madness around every corner. It’s the kind of game you and your friends can spend all night laughing about while everyone trades off every time someone dies.

2 The House of the Dead 2

One of the Definitive Lightgun Games

One of my very earliest gaming memories is of visiting my Dreamcast-owning cousin, with him and my older sister busting out the lightguns for a run through The House of the Dead 2. It was a tradition of visits for a few years, and the closest thing to a horror game my young mind could withstand. Suffice to say, I’ll always go to bat for this series, but it certainly helps that both back then and now, The House of the Dead 2 remains one of the definitive rail-shooter games.

The House of the Dead 2 is equal parts classic rail-shooter fun and legendarily hilarious in its cheesy, stunted dialogue reads. The game itself is lots of fun even though it’s simple; zombies walk forward, you shoot ‘em til they drop, and occasionally you fight a big boss like a headless knight or a five-headed worm dragon thing. When you add the cheese factor, though, every playthrough is like attending a screening of The Room; everyone’s eager to hear the meme-y bits, parroting back lines like “suffer like G did” or Goldman’s weird laugh.

Interestingly, the game has a mild branching element, with the survivors you rescue determining your path through the levels. Different paths may present different enemies and even slight variations on the bosses, so two playthroughs are never quite the same, especially when you have two players’ worth of bullets flying around, accidentally clipping the civilians.

1 Quake 3 Arena

Nothing Like a Team Deathmatch

Around the fifth console generation, deathmatching started to become popular in the burgeoning PC FPS scene, with games like Doom and Quake becoming staples at LAN parties. Naturally, that profitable fun factor was co-opted by the console scene, especially in the sixth generation when analog controls became more standardized. One of the best examples of console deathmatching you’ll find on the Dreamcast is Quake 3 Arena.

As the name implies, Quake 3 Arena dispenses with the single-player campaign of previous titles to focus exclusively on multiplayer content. The big draw was online play, which the Dreamcast was capable of, but you could also play the old-fashioned way as well, with splitscreen for up to four players. Obviously, you couldn’t have massive player lobbies this way, but you could still form a team with or against your friends and make up the difference with bots.

As for game modes, we’ve got all the classics, from Team Deathmatch to Capture the Flag. The maps were large and symmetrically-shaped, and the large array of weaponry allowed for both close-range and long-range combat. Halo may have been the patron saint of console FPSes in the sixth gen, but Quake 3 Arena ensured Dreamcast owners weren’t left out in the cold.