Weird World of Gaming Hardware – The VMU

We all have favorite gaming peripherals we love but that never quite made it off the ground. There’s a ton of those quirky devices that faded into obscurity. Things like the rumble pack that came with Pokemon Pinball, Odama and the Gamecube microphone, and the Phantom gaming keyboard.

So which device brings back my fondest memories? That would be none other than the Dreamcast memory card, the VMU.

The Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit, or VMU, was one of the most unique memory storage units ever. Unlike most traditional systems where they’re just used for storing saved games, the VMU had a secondary purpose– you could play your games on the device. This secondary function as a miniature handheld gaming device was way ahead of its time and, perhaps, you could argue that it was the precursor to the Pokewalker in some regards. Despite the limited capabilities of the device, it was nice to look down at the controller when you were playing games on the Dreamcast and see a pixilated display relating to the game you were playing.

Despite the high concept nature of a memory unit with a visual display, the VMU was, in all honesty, a mostly useless device. One of my favorite Dreamcast games, Mobile Suit Gundam 0079: Rise From the Ashes, only used the display to show a mobile suit fighting. However, there were a few instances where the device proved to serve a purpose, such as in Resident Evil 2. Here, the mini display provided the player with a status readout of their health without having to go into the inventory menu. This may seem like a trivial thing now that we have devices with two full sized screens to display the trivia of the typical HUD, but back in the day of the Dreamcast this was blowing everyone’s minds.

To this day peripherals are now like flavors of the month almost in the gaming industry. We’re flooded with them constantly, but there are always those few items that take you back, a fond memory. To me, the Visual Memory Unit was that favorite odd peripheral that I remember. In addition to the great games, it’s one of the reasons the Dreamcast will always be a fond memory memory for me.