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Alice Dreams Tournament Shipping Very Soon!

February 19, 2017, 10:36 pm
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It seems like a lifetime ago that many of us put our money down for a copy of Bomberman homage Alice Dreams Tournament, but it appears that we won't have to wait much longer to finally get the opportunity to play it. For those not up to speed, Alice Dreams Tournament is a modern take on the Bomberman style multiplayer battle game, with players moving around various stages, trying to eliminate each other with bombs. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, the developers have been hard at work tweaking and finalising the code and have done plenty of promotion by allowing the public to test the game at a multitude of gaming events across Europe.

The Alice Dreams Tournament team (made up of duo Julien Desquenne and Nicolas Pochet) were in attendance at the RGC - Retrogaming Connexion 2017 event in Meaux, France this past weekend and posted some very interesting pictures on their Facebook page.
On top of this, a Kickstarter update posted on 16th February pretty much confirmed that the PAL, NTSC-U and NTSC-J packaged copies of Alice Dreams Tournament have been delivered and are ready to be shipped to backers:

"A quick news to share our joy with you - we received the games! All versions are here, except the PAL collector's edition where we still lack the front and back covers (they are in production).
As we will be at RGC this Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th February 2017 in Meaux, we will take some photos and share them with you! If you are near Meaux, you can pick up your game and we will gladly dedicate it to you if you wish!"
- Alice Dreams Tournament Kickstarter (paraphrased)

It's really cool to know that we're so close to finally getting our hands on this brilliant looking brand new Dreamcast game; and test audiences at the various gaming events it has been demonstrated at seem to have given nothing but positive feedback. Naturally, we don't know the exact date for shipping, but we'd wager it can't be very long now - a couple of weeks, max? Once it arrives, expect a full review here at The Dreamcast Junkyard.
Were you at the event in Meaux? Did you pick a copy of Alice Dreams Tournament up? If so, tell us what you think of it in the comments or over in our Facebook group!

PS - this isn't the announcement we've been teasing about on social media. For that huge news, you'll have to wait a few more days...
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Dreamcast Magazine Issue 19

February 21, 2017, 11:16 am
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Issue 19 of Paragon Publishing Dreamcast Magazine hit the stores on 22 February 2001, just a month before the Dreamcast console went out of production. That didn't stop it being absolutely filled with awesome new games though, and the cover featured Neversoft and Activision's great 3D roaming beat 'em up Spider-Man. Inside the magazine a huge feature on the 2001 ATEI (Amusement Trades Exhibition International) held at Earls Court, London over two days in January, speculated on various Sega arcade IPs that may be heading to the Dreamcast. Of the 12 games featured, only 3 actually made it to the Dreamcast (Cosmic Smash, WWF Royal Rumble and Sports Jam) but the feature hints at what could have been had the console survived another year or two.
The news section gives first details on sequels for Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, Mr Driller and Metropolis Street Racer; and conversely also confirms the cancellation of Star Wars Super Bombad Racing. Other titles 'confirmed' for Dreamcast include House of the Dead 3, Virtua Golf and the MMORPG Farnation - a game that was subsequently moved to the Xbox before being canned. News of a PAL 'Mega Drive Compilation' is reported, and this could be linked in some way to the recently discovered official emulator, but I'm just speculating. Speculating wildly, while waving my arms and frothing at the mouth in a way that only a rampant fanboy can.

Also covered in the news section is the confirmation of the cancellation of Dreamcast hardware production, but also the news that during Christmas 2000 the Dreamcast actually took a 43% market share in the UK, beating the PlayStation into second place with a 41% share of retail sales.
The final piece of surprising news in issue 19 comes in the form of a story involving Nintendo and the New York Times. Apparently, on 27th December 2000 the NY Times published a story that stated that Nintendo was in advanced talks to purchase Sega. Naturally, this wasn't true and mirrors the current climate of 'fake news' allegations being thrown around with abandon; but the difference here is that both Sega and Nintendo suffered financial losses due to the story. Sega actually responded to the story by posting an open letter to the NY Times on its Japanese website. The contents of the letter are reproduced in a scan below but the font used is a little hard to read to here's the full transcript:

While Sega has always been fond of The New York Times' objective coverage of our company, we would like to express our concern over the fallacy that appeared on 12/27/00 regarding Nintendo's buy out of Sega. Not only did this erroneous allegation cause the trade of Sega's corporate stock to be temporarily suspended while substantially influencing Sega and Nintendo's stock prices, it caused unnecessary confusion among stockholders, affiliated companies, business partners, and end-users of both companies. 

It also severely damaged Sega's corporate and brand image during a very precarious time in the video game industry. Although top executives of Sega and Nintendo flatly and completely denied the rumor, The New York Times has published yet another article containing similar content on 12/29/00. Such repeated and arbitrary publication of groundless statements is pure harassment and unacceptable obstruction of our business, which we cannot overlook. We believe that The New York Times as a news organization is heavily responsible for this misinformation.

Sega Corporation is requesting that The New York Times immediately run a notification and apology for the fallacious feature in the same scale and manner as the initial article. We expect The New York Times to address this issue in the honorable tradition of a respectable news source by taking the appropriate and responsible measures toward reparations.

Shunichi Nakamura
Corporate Executive Vice President
Sega Corporation of Japan

The interesting thing about this, is that if you try to find the actual article on the NY Times website - even with good old Wayback Machine - the article has long since been removed. You can still read up about this story here though, and it makes for a fascinating read (click the images below for full size versions in a new window).
Previews in Dreamcast Magazine issue 19 include Fighting vipers 2, Fire Pro Wrestling D, NBA Hoops, 18 Wheeler, Dragon Riders and Daytona USA 2001; while the reviews section covers Phantasy Star Online, Grand 2, Vanishing point, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, 4x4 Evolution, F1 Racing championship, Speed Devils Online, Championship Surfer and European Super League.

Enough waffling from me in text form though - here's a video walkthrough:


If you enjoyed this article and/or the video walkthrough, you can find all of the previous Dreamcast Magazine articles here or by clicking on the little image link below.
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When Nintendo Bought Sega: How A Simple Misunderstanding Caused Stock Market Chaos

February 21, 2017, 4:05 pm
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In a recent post here at the Junkyard, we looked briefly at a news story that occurred in late 2000, and which eventually lead to both Sega and Nintendo suffering financial losses. What's interesting, is that at the time the story didn't really generate that much interest outside of the gaming press; but if it happened today, the 'fake news' epidemic which is currently gripping mainstream media would no doubt have propelled this particular tale into the stratosphere.
The Dreamcast Junkyard is, first and foremost a blog which exists simply to celebrate the highs and the lows of the Dreamcast; the Dreamcast's history and the contemporary scene which appreciates the wonders of Sega's little box of tricks in the present day. Politics is not something we wish to bring into the mix...however, one cannot escape the fact that over in the United States, the accusations of President Trump levelled against the media for the proliferation of 'fake news' has reached fever pitch. There are comparisons which can be drawn to this tale from the turn of the century, but I'm not one for over dramatics - it's pretty much just games and an honest misunderstanding at heart. But still, it's an interesting story and parallels can be drawn...so lets get on with it.
On the 27th December 2000, the New York Times ran a story which reported that a merger between Nintendo and Sega was imminent. Or rather, that Nintendo was in advanced talks to purchase its rival for a figure in the region of $2 billion. While you may be forgiven for shrugging and thinking "so what?" it's worth remembering that back in 2000 Sega was still in the hardware business. The Dreamcast was still on store shelves and according to various reports Christmas 2000 was a healthy one for Sega and the Dreamcast - in the UK at least, the Dreamcast was the number one console in sales terms over the festive period.

The reason this particular story is of interest is due to the ramifications it had, the way in which the media reacted to such explosive news and ultimately the explanation as to how a simple misunderstanding lead to Nintendo having 4% of its market worth wiped out in a single day.

Since learning about this tale, I've been scouring defunct websites through the awesome Wayback Machine and poring over a multitude of reports on the subject, and ultimately it boils down to a simple mistranslation. So, here are the basics. The New York Times ran this story on the 27th December 2000. Titled Nintendo is Reported in Talks to Buy Sega, journalists Andrew Ross Sorkin, Stephanie Strom and John Markoff wrote that:

Nintendo, the Japanese video game systems company that popularized arcade-style games at home, is in talks to buy Sega, the beleaguered video game maker that revolutionized the industry in the early 1990's with its fanciful characters and eye-popping virtual worlds.

According to executives close to the negotiations, the two companies are holding discussions that could lead to Nintendo acquiring Sega for about $2 billion, though the terms of the transaction are still being negotiated.

The talks have been going on in fits and starts for months, the executives said, and the deal could still collapse.

The thing is, there is no basis to these reports other than an IGN report from several months prior, in which contributor Anoop Gantayat wrote on October 29th 2000 the following:

According to the Online version of Japan's Asahi newspaper, Sega and Nintendo are teaming up to form a joint company. The story at Asahi first describes Sega's recently announced losses, stating that Sega revealed to investors in September that its results for the half-year ending September 30th would be less than expected. And that's what happened, with the company announcing a loss of 29.2 billion yen today, down from an expected profit of 600 million yen. Poor Dreamcast performance was stated as the cause for the loss. Now, for the full year period ending March 2001, the company expects a loss of 22.1 billion yen, down from an expected profit of 1.5 billion yen. This will be the fourth yearly loss in a row for the company.

However, the very next day IGN published a (sort of) retraction, stating that the story was the result of a mistranslation of a press release. And this tip off came from none other than Famitsu, the highly respected Japanese games magazine:

We brought you news on Friday regarding Sega, Nintendo and big time Japanese music producer Tetsuya Komuro (known in some circles as the father of J-Pop) teaming up for a mysterious joint venture that, according to Asahi Newspaper, would benefit Sega's upcoming network plans. Unfortunately, it seems that due to a misreading on our behalf, this information is wrong.

Famitsu.com has actually printed a moderately clearer version of the story, and it involves no such joint company. The story should read that Sega, in an effort to further its networking plans, has invited Satoshi Kayama, director at Marigul Management, to act as an advisor. Apparently, Mr. Kayama has worked with the likes of Tetsuya Komuro and Nintendo in the past, but there's no connection between Sega, Nintendo and Komuro (although damnit, there should be!).

So that's that, right? IGN got second hand information from Asahi and a mistranslation of a press release (which can be found here) was interpreted as Nintendo was buying Sega. In all honesty, it looks like someone was eager to put two and two together and break a story, and in that pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook era it appears that it kinda just fell by the wayside. Nobody was sharing it online and the few sites that did report it were largely ignored. That is, until the New York Times picked up on it almost two months later and ran it as a factual report. From the scant information I can dig up online relating to the rest of this fascinating story, it appears that due to the New York Times regurgitating this ancient tale and not seeing the follow up article, the whole 'Nintendo buying Sega' thing was dredged up again; and in late December the story was published not by a fairly niche (at the time) gaming site, but by one of the biggest news outlets on the planet.
The results were not insignificant, either. According to this article from Geek.com, Nintendo's value on the Tokyo stock exchange dropped 4%; while Sega's dropped by 7% at one point before recovering. The fact of the matter is though, due to the report by the New York Times, both companies felt the shock waves of what today would be considered 'fake news.'

Sega of Japan didn't take too kindly to the reports and in January 2001 issued the following statement on its website:

Mr. Glenn Kraman
Business Desk, The New York Times
Mr. Howard French
Tokyo Bureau Chief, The New York Times Tokyo Bureau

While Sega has always been fond of The New York Times' objective coverage of our company, we would like to express our concern over the fallacy that appeared on 12/27/00 regarding Nintendo's buy out of Sega. Not only did this erroneous allegation cause the trade of Sega's corporate stock to be temporarily suspended while substantially influencing Sega and Nintendo's stock prices, it caused unnecessary confusion among stockholders, affiliated companies, business partners, and end-users of both companies. It also severely damaged Sega's corporate and brand image during a very precarious time in the videogame industry.

Although top executives of Sega and Nintendo flatly and completely denied the rumor, The New York Times has published yet another article containing similar content on 12/29/00. Such repeated and arbitrary publication of groundless statements is pure harassment and unacceptable obstruction of our business, which we cannot overlook.
We believe that The New York Times as a news organization is heavily responsible for this misinformation.

Sega Corporation is requesting that The New York Times immediately run a notification and apology for the fallacious feature in the same scale and manner as the initial article. We expect The New York Times to address this issue in the honorable tradition of a respectable news source by taking the appropriate and responsible measures toward reparations. 

Thank you, 

Shunichi Nakamura
Corporate Executive Vice President
Sega Corporation of Japan

You can read the full version of the statement by visiting the archived site here. Likewise, Nintendo reacted with fury at the reports, and company president Hiroshi Yamauchi is quoted as stating "...there is absolutely no chance that Nintendo will buy Sega."
Interestingly, I searched for any stories containing the terms 'Sega' and 'Nintendo' for the period 27th December 2000 to the 10th February 2001 and could find no evidence that any apology or retraction for the erroneous reporting was ever made. This particularly alarming when you consider the section of Sega's statement which refers to the "severely damaged corporate and brand image." Have a look yourself here.

Ultimately, Nintendo and Sega went on to continue a great relationship that endures to this day. Indeed, Sega published many great games on Nintendo platforms in the years following the demise of the Dreamcast and will support the Switch at launch. However, that both companies suffered at the hands of a minor error in translation goes to show that even the most respected news outlets are not infallible.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments or join the discussion in our Facebook group.
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Rush Rush Rally Reloaded Heads Up List Of Dreamcast Re-Releases

February 24, 2017, 1:02 am
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Heads up folks. There's a new Dreamcast release coming very soon. Rush Rush Rally Reloaded is heading our way and it features a whole host of improvements and fixes. Rush Rush Rally Racing was released on the Dreamcast a few years ago and it was then re-released on the Nintendo Wii.
This re-re-release on the Dreamcast (still with me?) is based on the Wii version, but includes a ton of further updates. We spoke to Roel van Mastbergen from Senile Team to get the full lowdown on this latest addition to the Dreamcast's library. Here's a full list, courtesy of Roel himself:

Hi Dreamcast Junkyard! It's true - Rush Rush Rally Reloaded is coming to the Sega Dreamcast and it will come in both PAL and DVD-style long box packaging! Both will be available in limited quantities but will feature the following improvements to the game:

  • Two new single player modes: Time Attack and Challenge, which is  like "Get Ahead" from the original game, but against CPU players.
  • Totally redesigned menus
  • Changed camera distance so you can see more of the road ahead
  • Some improved graphics, including: light beams are larger and rotated more smoothly, more colourful billboards, additional illustrations
  • Faster loading times
  • Stable 60fps in both single and multiplayer modes
  • Removed video mode switches between 640x480 and 320x240 resolutions, so low-resolution parts are now upscaled to 640x480
  • A mode for detecting when people copy and paste lists
  • Support for more character sets in name entry
  • Usability improvements, such as last entered name is remembered for name entry so you don't have to re-enter your name every time you play
  • Improved legibility of internet score codes
  • Improved control configuration options
  • Added engine sound options
  • 6 languages: English, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian
  • DVD case version will feature an 8 page colour manual
As stated by Roel, the game will be available in a DVD style case, but also in PAL flavour too. Even more interesting is that the PAL print run will be handled by JoshProd, a small company based in France specialised in re-releasing old games. Josh Prod have been involved in several re-release projects, the most notable of which was a re-issue of Neo Geo AES cartridge Neo Drift Out (in collaboration with Visco) in 2016. 
Along with Rush Rush Rally Reloaded, JoshProd will also be offering re-prints of certain previously released Dreamcast games such as Ghost Blade, Dux, Alice Mom's Rescue and a run of a new-to-Dreamcast 2D SNK fighter called Breakers. All of these come with PAL-styled packaging and redesigned manuals; and in some cases also include new content.

We spoke to Philippe Nguyen from JoshProd to get more information on all of these releases and ask why he wanted to bring these games back to market (aside from the obvious!).

DCJY: Hi Philippe, could you give us some background information on JoshProd?

Philippe Nguyen: Hi, of course! I'm Philippe and I opened my first physical shop in 1996. When the internet really took off, I opened a web store in 1999 back when the PlayStation and Dreamcast were the top-selling consoles around. Almost 20 years later, I decided to create JoshProd (my son's name is Joshua) with the goal of releasing new Dreamcast games. This initial 5 releases will hopefully be followed by many more ports of other games.

Awesome news! We're always keen to see new Dreamcast releases. What can you tell us about the first re-releases from JoshProd?

We've decide to release five games initially. These are Dux 1.5, Ghost Blade, Breakers, Alice's Mom's Rescue and Rush Rush Rally Racing Reloaded on 24th February 2017, at the Cannes Video Game Festival. These games will be available for pre-order at this date and will be on your hands in one to two months max.
Will the re-releases have any extra content or features?

I'm happy to live in Europe and speak many languages, that's why it saddens me to see that many indie games often only put one or two languages in the manual. That's why I decided to release all our new games with 5 languages (French, Spanish, Deutsche, Italian and English).

Rush Rush Rally Reloaded is more than a re-release (Roel will talk about it better than me) because they have been working on it for more than a year. Alice's Mom's Rescue is a 1.5 version and we have also changed the front of the box with the artwork a famous designer. Breakers is a real new game for all collector, we already release Breakers revenge (on Neo Geo AES with Visco licence). Ghost Blade and Dux 1.5 are standard releases but with a new PAL case.
Where and when will these games be available and what is the cost?

JoshProd is a very lucky company because we have a chance to work with the most famous video game private sale company Rushongame.com. This website sells all games (vintage or current gen) at low prices. Through Rushongame.com we've decided to sell our games at €27.99 each and €125 for all five games. At the end of the pre-order period we'll also sell on Amazon at €39.99 each and in our physical shop Toypad in Marseilles, France.

Last question - why did you decide to release these particular games?

Well, I actually discovered all these indie games by reading your website The Dreamcast Junkyard, and after seeking to purchase them with PAL blue boxes without success (I'm a PAL Dreamcast collector!), I decided to contact all the companies and they all replied with positive responses to re-release them with blue PAL cases.

I'd also like to thanks all the studios involved: Senile Team, Hucast, Orion, Visco Japan and Daniel Lancha aka Chui from 2Dream/Retro Sumus.
This is not the final design - it's a mock up by me but looks fairly similar.
Thanks to Philippe Nguyen for speaking to us - it's amazing to think that The Dreamcast Junkyard actually had an indirect hand in starting this whole thing! All of these games are set to be announced at the Festival International des Jeux (International Festival of Games) in Cannes, France over the weekend of 24th - 26th February 2017. The festival is kind of like a European version of E3 and over the course of the weekend, over 100,000 people will pass through the various exhibition halls.

As of now (or very soon, at least) you'll be able to either pre-order all of these games from JoshProd via Rushongame.com; or if you just want to get a copy of the standard DVD-case version of Rush Rush Rally Racing Reloaded, head over to Senile Team's website and grab a copy while you can!
If you want to know more about the original release of Rush Rush Rally Racing, check out my review here and you can find info on the other re-releases simply by searching for them in the little search box on the upper right of this page. As for Breakers...it's not a game I'm familiar with, but I have it on good authority that it's a top drawer Visco Neo Geo brawler...and that's fine with me!
This particular version apparently runs flawlessly, and is using a specifically created version of AES4ALL which has been written by the original creator Chui - one of the most respected emulator programmers in the Dreamcast community. Even better, this has all been approved by Visco Japan themselves. Check out the video below of the game running on a Dreamcast.


Keep an eye on the following sites and pages for Rush Rush Rally Reloaded and the other games to become available to buy and pre-order over the next couple of days:

Senile Team
Rush Rush Rally Racing 
JoshProd
JoshProd Facebook
Rushongame.com (account registration is required)
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Let’s Take A Look At The Cancelled Dreamcast Game Knights - Now With Added Sausages

February 24, 2017, 11:31 am
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I literally couldn't be bothered writing my own take on this story, so I basically just copied and pasted the story from SEGA Nerds. The thing is, I was falling asleep while I read the original prose because Chris's writing is just so boring. So what I did was I changed the most frequently occurring words to words I thought might make the article a bit more interesting. So 'game' becomes 'aubergine,''Dreamcast' becomes 'barbiturate,''digital' is now 'flange' and develop is now 'sausages.' Hopefully it's more enjoyable now. Oh, and I've left the incorrect American spellings intact for authenticity.
It always bums us out when we flip through an old copy of the Official Barbiturate Magazine and see a preview of a Barbiturate aubergine that looked really promising but never saw the light of day. Most first-party SEGA aubergines would eventually be ported to the Xbox, AubergineCube or PlayStation 2, but that’s not the case for many third-party aubergines as they were cancelled outright for many different reasons.

One of those aubergines is the Flange Infinity-sausagesed online, multiplayer brawler Knights that was in sausagesment for the Barbiturate and PC back in 1999. The aubergine, which was originally set to be published by Project 2 Interactive, evolved several times through its tumultuous sausagesment cycle, going from an arena brawler like Power Stone 2, to a team-based multiplayer action aubergine and even a 3D action/platformer.

The aubergine’s story was set in a magical kingdom called Whyrule, where its aged king had grown too old to maintain his rule. So its ungrateful citizens decided to get rid of him by organizing a grand combat tournament where knights across the kingdom would compete, with the victor being named Whyrule’s new king. Your character decides he wants his hand at ruling the kingdom and enters the tournament.

As Unseen64 notes, Knights was originally planned to be a 3D platformer/adventure aubergine in the vein of the vastly overrated Mario 64, but due to lack of sufficient resources and sausagesment time, Flange Infinity had to go back to the drawing board and cobbled together a playable multiplayer demo that focused on a team-based multiplayer mode. This demo included a variety of knights that would have different abilities who would do battle on floating islands that players would travel across via a series of slides that connected each island together.

Sausagesment on the aubergine continued at a slow and steady pace, but disaster struck when its publisher Project 2 Interactive declared bankruptcy and was unable to continue funding the aubergine. Luckily, Flange Interactive found an interested publisher in Swing! Entertainment, who injected some much-needed funds into the aubergine that enabled Flange Infinity to expand the aubergine’s platform release to include the PlayStation 2.

According to Unseen64, Flange Infinity was absorbed into Lost Boys Aubergines soon after. Work continued on the aubergine until SEGA infamously announced it was discontinuing the Barbiturate in early 2001, which led to the team to cancel the Barbiturate version and reshaping Knights into a 3D platformer for the PS2.

However, in late 2003, Lost Boys Aubergines was sold to Media Republic and renamed Guerrilla Aubergines, which led to the ultimate and final cancellation of Knights once and for all. Guerrilla Aubergines, which you might be aware, would go on to aubergine fame for its Killzone series on PlayStation.

It really is a shame we never saw more of Knights as it actually sounds like a really fun aubergine. We hope that one day a playable copy will find its way into some lucky Barbiturate collector’s hands, and he or she will share it with the rest of us so we can finally experience a portion of the vision Flange Infinity had in mind.

If you really want to bore yourself stupid, head over to SEGA Nerds here and read the original snooze fest. Frankly I've had more interesting wet weekends in Wigan, but each to their own.

Source: SEGA Nerds
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DreamPod - Episode 47

February 27, 2017, 11:59 am
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[iTunes][Stitcher][Buzzsprout][UK Podcast Directory][YouTube]


Music in this episode comes from Trizeal. You can read more about the Nintendo/Sega story here. Find out more about Rush Rush Rally Reloaded and Breakers here. You can discover more about Alice Dreams Tournament here. Once again, we appreciate all the support from our Patrons. If you'd like to donate $1, please find our Patreon here. If you like what you've heard please feel free to leave us a review at iTunes, and if you'd like to join the Facebook group you can find us here.
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Senile Team Teases New Dreamcast Game

March 1, 2017, 12:06 pm
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I can't keep up with all these new Dreamcast releases. First we had the announcement about Rush Rush Rally Reloaded and Breakers et al; and then there's the imminent release of Alice Dreams Tournament and the impending Xenocider from our good friends at Retro Sumus...and now we have news of yet another brand new Dreamcast game. Do you ever wake up from a strange dream thinking that you might still be asleep because you feel weird? No, me neither...but I thought I should add some kind of cliché because that's what the mainstream cool kids do.
Anyway, the as-yet-unnamed title again comes courtesy of Senile Team, but it categorically isn't the mythical Age of the Beast. As Senile Team head honcho Roel van Mastbergen explains in his recent post over at the developer's website:

"First I have to get one thing out of the way: it's not Age of the Beast. In case you didn't know, Age of the Beast was a project we started soon after the release of our firstborn, the moddable beat 'em up engine called Beats of Rage. But we stepped into the same traps as so many other indie developers - we announced it prematurely and watched it grow over our heads. I suppose this is a natural part of growing up for a game dev. It has certainly taught us a lot."
- Roel van Mastbergen, Senile Team

Age of the Beast never came to fruition but that's not to say work didn't forge ahead, and Roel goes as far as sharing some previously unseen sprite work with us. That first image below is just something I created myself from individual frames from the animated GIF on the Senile Team site because (full disclosure) the archaic technology keeping this site together can't cope with animated GIFs:
I'm sure you'll agree it's quite impressive and looks like it could give Guardian Heroes a run for its money. However, that's all water under the bridge. A new title is coming to the Dreamcast and so far Senile Team are being very coy with details. Indeed, Roel has only released a single image:
What could this new game be? A shadow puppet simulator? Personally, I think shadow puppetry is underrepresented on the Dreamcast...but I'm pretty sure it won't be a shadow puppetry simulator. Damn you Senile Team, damn you. Anyway, we'll be sure to keep you updated on this new game and hopefully we'll be able to shed more light on future releases in a developer interview very soon!

Senile Team now have a Facebook page too - go give them a like!
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Why Dreamcast?

March 2, 2017, 4:02 am
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As popular as this blog may have become in recent years - I still have no idea why people want to read my rambling diatribes about a long-dead games console, by the way - I don't go around in real life announcing myself as some kind of saviour of the Dreamcast. True, I bore my gamer friends to death with stories about long cancelled games and how this series or that game originally started life on the Dreamcast...but generally in my day to day life I barely speak about my affection for Sega's final console. It's like a dirty little secret in some ways. However, on occasion people who aren't really involved in my gaming stuff do find out about this place or see something on social media that I may have tweeted or posted, and inevitably the question comes: "why the Dreamcast?"

Work colleagues who have a passing interest in gaming or retro tech find out that I spend my free time writing this guff, and at first they think it's cool or intriguing...then become a little puzzled. And sometimes I have to just sit there and ponder to myself...why Dreamcast indeed? What is it about the Dreamcast that has fuelled my desire to continue to churn out podcasts, videos and articles and haul all my stuff across the country to events for the last 11 years? I generally fall back on the old "the Dreamcast represents so many missed opportunities" response; but the more I think about it, the more I think I have another reason. But before I share it with you, dear reader, some more about my other gaming habits...

I don't exclusively collect Dreamcast-related paraphernalia and I don't elusively play Dreamcast games. I'm not - by any stretch of the imagination - a 'fanboy.' I am a lover of retro technology in all of its guises, and games consoles just happen to fall under that umbrella for me. I love the obscure, the forgotten and the obsolete - there's something truly fascinating to me about technology that didn't catch the imagination or the attention of the mainstream audience it so desperately wanted to court; those contraptions that fell by the wayside and were largely forgotten. For every world-conquering success in the field of tech and gaming, there are hundreds of failed formats and contraptions that also set out with the same aims...but failed to catch on. And I'm not just talking about in the gaming sphere, either. The history of computing and audio visual entertainment is littered with forgotten formats and devices; many of which offered enhanced abilities over the thing that did actually become the industry standard for whatever niche it occupied. Go and have a look at The Museum of Obsolete Media or Techmoan on YouTube for further information.

To get back to the point, I love all forms of old technology and by extension I am fascinated by all forms of gaming devices. My collection of consoles and games is by no means gargantuan or exhaustive, but the little corner of my house in which I store all my trinkets of deceit is full of consoles by manufacturers that aren't Sega. Nintendo, SNK, Atari, Philips, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony, and Amstrad devices are all jammed together in my makeshift shrine to the antiquated...and that's because I'm format agnostic. I love games of all types and from all manufacturers. So to bring it back around,what I'm trying to say is that I don't love the Dreamcast simply because it was made by Sega. And I don't blindly eschew games or consoles from other manufacturers - I just love games. That's it. I care not one iota who makes them.
So. Why Dreamcast? After mulling this over for so long I think I finally understand why. Before the Dreamcast I had a host of other systems but none of them really struck a chord with me in the same way the Dreamcast did - and still does. The reason the Dreamcast means so much to me is because it was an ever-present and intrinsic part of one of the shittiest periods of my life. I was 17 when the Dreamcast launched in the UK, and was studying at college for my A Levels (that's what you do before you go to University in the UK). It was the first console I could really afford to buy myself (partly by flogging my Nintendo 64 through an advert I put in the window of a local shop). I was an angry teen, always getting in trouble or fighting with my brother. My mum kicked me out of the house because I was a complete cunt and I ended up having to go and live with my dad. I had no job and no money but I carried on with my college course and slept in a spare room on a mattress on the floor. But I had my Dreamcast.

I used to just sit on my own in that shitty room surrounded by junk and boxes of broken crap that middle aged men accumulate in spare rooms, playing Metropolis Street Racer for hours, trying to beat hot laps to get the next car in the showroom. I didn't really have any friends - something I partly put down to the area being ever-so-slightly racist, but that's a different story - and so I just spent all my spare time playing on the Dreamcast. It's weird to think back that I was ever like that, but there it is. Through that period of just being a bit of a waster and a lazy student bastard, I played on MSR and the various other games I could get my hands on through trading stuff in and spending the money I got from my summer job before going to university. While at university I got rid of the original Dreamcast, then bought another...then sold that one too and then went for several years just going through the Gamecube and Xbox systems before finally buying another Dreamcast in 2005 and starting this whole thing.

But this is the crux of the matter. The reason the Dreamcast is so special to me, is that it really was - and this sounds so pathetic - my only friend at times. Stems of depression, years of being kicked out of this school or that school, zero self esteem and the usual teenage angst bullshit mixed with being split between one parent living in an inner city ghetto and another living in a fairly rural, prejudiced area, combined with no real sense of self identity or worth. It didn't matter when I was playing a hot lap in MSR. I didn't buy games to show them off on Twitter, or say 'look at all my retro games - aren't I awesome?!' to randoms on a forum (also - neither existed in 2000!). I bought them because they were a way of occupying myself through the shit times of my late teens. The Dreamcast literally became a sort of crutch. Other stuff happened in that period that I'm not comfortable sharing on a public blog (plus, I don't know who is going to read this); and to be honest if it'd been any other system other than the Dreamcast I probably would have found myself oddly attached to that one instead. It's just how the stars aligned, I guess. That I happened to be born when I was, and that I happened to reach my late teens at the same time that a Japanese gaming firm decided to release their final console.
In the current climate, being a 'gamer' or more specifically a 'retro gamer' has become almost a badge of nerdy honour. I see a lot of people on social media who are new to the system proclaiming their love for Shenmue or Jet Set Radio or whatever, and while I wish them no ill will I can't help but feel that it's all a bit superficial. Sure, the Dreamcast has a lot of great games and people are well within their rights to proclaim this game or that game as the best thing ever. But for me, it goes a bit deeper than that.

I also owe a lot to the Dreamcast - without it I would never have started this blog. Never have started writing about games and never have gotten to the point where I have had articles published in actual magazines and on proper games and tech websites. I wouldn't have been able to attend so many events, and I would never have met so many awesome people who have gone on to become true friends...simply because we share a passion for the Sega Dreamcast. The Dreamcast helped me through some really tough times, and also opened up a lot of doors for me. So when somebody next asks me: "why Dreamcast?" I'll be sure to send them a link to this post.
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A Quick Look At Free-DC

March 3, 2017, 4:01 am
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As you're no doubt aware, the Dreamcast was served by a plethora of online services depending on the territory. In Europe we got the Dreamarena service; the US got SegaNet and in Japan Dreamcast owners were treated to the Dricas service. Dricas - to me at least - looks like it was by far the most feature rich of these three services, and offered such delights as video calling (through the Dreameye) and the ability to spam your friends with nonsense in the form of Dreamflyer. Dricas itself is a truly vast topic of discussion but due to the nature of the internet I fear much of the features and functionality that users enjoyed is lost to the mists of internet lore. No amount of internet archaeology or Wayback Machine plundering can bring back a service that just cannot be accessed anymore because the servers are now in landfill (probably).
Dreamarena went through a flamboyant midlife crisis.
Dreamarena was totally serviceable for web browsing; and SegaNet was fine for gaming (at 56k speeds) over in the US as far as I can ascertain...but Dricas was the real deal. Going from the scant details I can find trawling the internet, Dricas offered Japanese Dreamcast owners some really intriguing features, including something called Dream Map which was powered by Japanese mapping firm Zenrin and allowed Dreamcast owners to locate each other on a Google Maps-style thing and connect with people in their locality. It sounds a bit like the Near function incorporated into the Sony PS Vita...but y'know, actually used by people.
There was also a thing called MailChum!, which - and I quote - "...provides you with an instant e-mail penpal, from a variety of characters ranging from beautiful girls to mythical animals." Erm. Anyway, the reason I'm banging on about Dricas and other long-dead internet services for the Dreamcast is that I wanted to discuss something I knew of previously...but just didn't think anyone else would be interested in reading about: Free-DC.

From the name Free-DC, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was some kind of service where free Dreamcasts were given away (maybe), and you be right in one sense. In actuality though, Free-DC was an internet service provider that was set up exclusively to give Dreamcast owners a way to connect to Dricas and the wider internet. I find this particularly interesting because in the UK there wasn't anything like this - no specifically created ISP just to connect to Dreamarena, for example. You just dialled up and paid BT or whoever it was that you went with after the introduction of Dreamkey 3.0. That a pre-existing telecoms company (in the case of Free-DC it was J-Data) thought it was worthwhile to set up a side project just to serve the Dreamcast user base tells me that the expectations of widespread adoption of the hardware were huge.

The Free-DC website can still be accessed through the Wayback Machine, and the site can be translated into English so the details are all fairly easy to decipher. In order to use Free-DC, you had to sign up for a minimum contract period and then you could use your membership details to log in to the nearest access point with your Dreamcast. Curiously, it appears that the first 50,000 people to sign up to the service would receive a free Dreamcast and this membership also included perks such as Dreamcast newsletters and an email account. Rather brilliantly, Free-DC also ran a competition to name its mascot - a cartoon girl wearing a Dreamcast-themed outfit who looks suspiciously similar to one of the main characters from Sega Hard Girls...
...or maybe it's just me?
According to the news pages, 7242 people entered a competition to name this character and on 1st August 2000, the name Reem (or Reemu-chan) was chosen. The lucky winner of the competition, Mr. Ehara Saitama won a free Dreamcast, 5 games and a 1 year subscription to Free-DC. I wonder if Mr Saitama will ever read this and let us know what happened to his free Dreamcast? Highly doubtful, but there you go.
Hardcore web browsing.
Anyway, I just thought it was worth sharing this little look at a fairly obscure (and not overly exciting) aspect of Dreamcast ownership in Japan. However, we don't discriminate here at the Junkyard - all aspects of the Dreamcast must be given equal attention...so there.
Of course, you can now get online with your Dreamcast without the need for Free-DC, Dreamarena, SegaNet or Dricas. The service is called Dreamcast Live and you can find out all about it be heading there now, and you can also find further information on Dricas here.
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AGES II: Sega Game Archives Music Arrange Album

March 5, 2017, 10:40 am
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When is a Dreamcast game not a Dreamcast game? Why, when it's a music CD of course! AGES II from Japanese studio Woodsoft is just that - it's a music CD full of re-imagined music tracks from classic Sega titles of yesteryear, delivered in a package that looks very similar to a legitimate NTSC-J Dreamcast game case. Released at the tail end of 2014, this is actually the third in a trilogy of compilations under the AGES brand from Woodsoft, and before acquiring this CD from an eBay seller located in Japan, I was totally oblivious to the existence of such a collection. And while it isn't strictly Dreamcast related, I think the intriguing packaging and subject matter make AGES II a perfect subject for a minor investigation here at the Junkyard.
When I first saw AGES II listed on eBay, it caught my attention because I wasn't aware of a Sega Ages collection ever being released for the Dreamcast. Obviously, we have stuff like Yu Suzuki Game Works, but a proper entry in the Sega Ages series never actually came to the Dreamcast and it is that fact which initially drew my eye to it. Upon closer inspection (the description wasn't overly clear on what it was), I discovered that the Dreamcast logo shown in the photos was back to front, and it doesn't say Dreamcast - it says 'Dreamnalt.' AGES II represented something of an intriguing mystery to me, and so off I went to Google to get more information on this Dreamnalt outfit...only to find, well, very little to be honest.
If you search AGES II or Dreamnalt, Google doesn't really produce anything other than a few images from an old Tumblr account and it was only by changing the search terms several times that I came across this review over at Hardcore Gaming 101. It's a review of the first AGES collection which features music from such legendary games as Power Drift, Lunar and Fantasy Zone. From that article, I discovered that Woodsoft have several more CDs listed on the Video Game Music Database (VGMdb), which is a repository of information similar to IMDB but solely for the collection of resources pertaining to music used in games.


AGES II is indeed listed on VGMdb, as are the original AGES and the follow up AGES Gaiden. AGES II completes the trilogy and is fairly similar in packaging and content as the previous two instalments in the series. The tracks on all of these compilations are remixes or 'arrange' versions of popular and well known tunes from some of the most celebrated and influential Sega games of the 16-bit era, and the original composers are credited alongside the artists who created the new versions.  Interestingly, the AGES discs are categorised as 'Dōjin,' which translates loosely to English as a sort of fan-made or collaborative, self-published fan-made work of literature, art, film or music. That explains the use of the 'Dreamnalt' label and the reversed Dreamcast swirl, then.
The inlay for AGES II features some nice imagery of a Mega Drive and a Mega Jet (with an After Burner cart inserted as a nice touch - see above), and overall the whole package feels very well produced. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was hoping for some sort of booklet inside the case to give a few more details on the artists that remixed the tracks. Sadly, all you get is a folded insert with the aforementioned imagery and track listings...but it's better than nothing. The spine card is also worthy of note here. It looks for all intents and purposes like a genuine Dreamcast spine card, but with some cool amendments. It gives details about the content contained within in a very similar fashion to a regular Dreamcast game, but with some cheeky edits:
Need to stop biting my nails.
Here are the full track listings for AGES II:

Track 1 
Game: Altered Beast
Composition: Tohru Nakabayashi / Arranger: TOMAZO

Track 2
Game: Fantasy Zone
Composition: Hiroshi Kawaguchi / Arranger: Sabao

Track 3
Game: Space Harrier
Composition: Hiroshi Kawaguchi / Arranger: Chabinn

Track 4 
Game: After Burner II
Composition: Hiroshi Kawaguchi / Arranger: KuReKa Isatsuki

Track 5
Game: Out Run
Composition: Hiroshi Kawaguchi / Arranger: Rando-K (Mikuruga no Hito)

Track 6
Game: Galaxy Force
Composition: Katsuhiro Hayashi / Arranger: Magome Togoshi

Track 7 
Game: Thunder Blade
Composition: Koichi Namiki / Arranger: silpheed

Track 8 
Game: Super Hang-On
Composition: Katsuhiro Hayashi / Arranger: g+

Track 9 
Game: Sonic the Hedgehog
Composition: Masato Nakamura / Arranger: Puchi

As you can see, all of the games referenced are indeed from the 16-bit era and this adds even more intrigue for me. Why release the AGES series in a box that looks like a Dreamcast game...if none of the music is taken from Dreamcast games? I'm not complaining - it looks very cool and all, but having some Dreamcast-related music on the CD would have put the icing on the proverbial cake.
Even the CD label is an homage to the Dreamcast.
As it is, all of the tracks are cool renditions of classic tunes you'll no doubt recognise...but there's nothing here that is from any system later than the Mega Drive/Genesis. Anyway, here's a video of me opening up my newly arrived sealed copy, along with some examples of the tracks you can expect to find on the disc.


If you'd like more information on the AGES series, be sure to check out the Hardcore Gaming 101 review of the first AGES release. Further details on track listings and release dates for the AGES discs and all of Woodsoft's other compilations can be found at VGMdb.
You can also find Woodsoft's website here, although it is all in Japanese and the usual translation plugins don't appear to work with it for some reason.
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Senile Team Reveals Intrepid Izzy For Dreamcast & PC

March 6, 2017, 2:36 am
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Senile Team recently teased us with news of a brand new Dreamcast game in development...and now they've unveiled full details! Intrepid Izzy is a 2D side-scrolling platformer in the style of Nintendo classic Metroid. Details are a little thin on the ground at present, but Senile Team promises that Intrepid Izzy will mix role playing, platforming and beat 'em up elements.
"Intrepid Izzy is a 2D action adventure platformer or "metroidvania", currently in development by Senile Team. Mixing platforming with beat-'em-up and RPG elements, the titular character must jump, fight and puzzle her way through various imaginative, colourful worlds.

A lot of time and attention was spent on developing the visual style of the game. The crisp and cartoony HD graphics come to life thanks to bright, warm colours and smooth animations. The game is being developed on PC (Windows), and a Dreamcast version is also in the works (though obviously not in HD). Additional platforms are also being looked into."
- Roel van Mastbergen, Senile Team

You can find screens of the PC version of the game over at the Intrepid Izzy site, but Roel was kind enough to supply The Dreamcast Junkyard with some exclusive shots of the Dreamcast version that you won't find anywhere else:
The game does indeed look very impressive from the screens already released, and the art style and animation look very nice. Senile Team are known for their high quality games and Intrepid Izzy looks set to continue that trend. For more informtation, head over to the Intrepid Izzy microsite here.
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Xenocider Box Art & Pre-order Poster Revealed

March 7, 2017, 2:02 pm
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Xenocider is coming, and Retro Sumus is determined to make an impression with its impressive 3D shooter. If you grabbed the demo version in 2016 you'll already know that the game is well worth waiting for, but now there's another reason to get excited: the revised artwork has been revealed and it looks positively amazing!
Drawn by none other than DC Comics artist Agustin Padilla (Green Arrow, Transformers, Borderlands, GI Joe), this new artwork really brings Xenocider to life, and gives heroine Xara a whole new look. To be honest, I think it looks absolutley badass (to quote Sgt. Apone) and the best bit is this: if you pre-order Xenocider you will get this artwork as a bonus poster to stick on the wall of your choice. Can't say fairer than that. Here's a video from Retro Sumus:


You can find more words and details about this whole Xenocider shebang by clicking this link here.
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Dreamcast, GDQ, and Speedrunning

March 8, 2017, 1:12 am
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During the past three years, I've biannually destroyed my already terrible sleep cycle due to a certain event: Games Done Quick. GDQ is a fun speedrunning marathon that raises money for two main charities and a few smaller ones. In fact, they raised over $2.2 million dollars during Awesome Games Done Quick, their winter event held in aid of the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Two runs in particular (Big's story in Sonic Adventure and Sega Bass Fishing) got me wondering about something. What about the Dreamcast speedrunning scene? To be sure, it's not as popular as the perennial favorites like the SNES, Genesis, N64, PC, etc...but surely there are at least some decent Dreamcast console runs out there?
With the games I mentioned, Big's story was played on Sonic Adventure: DX, but Sega Bass Fishing was on the Dreamcast (see above). However, most times that a Dreamcast game was run, it was inevitably played on a different console or on PC. Sonic Adventure 2 was run that year, but it was the Gamecube version (Sonic Adventure 2: Battle). However, the previous year's Crazy Taxi had the famous Sega swirl underneath the game's name.

Going like that would take ages though, since GDQ has literally hundreds of runs to look at. Instead, let's take a look at the first 10 games of this very blog's Top 200 Dreamcast games...

1. Shenmue
As a Dreamcast fan, I must admit my shame in not having played this classic game yet. A brief search indicates that the original has not yet been run at a GDQ event. However, the listings at speedrun.com are all on Dreamcast! The runs are a bit hefty, with any % over 7 hours, and glitchless well over 10.

2. Sonic Adventure
Unfortunately, there's two words that would take this game out of the running for Dreamcast runs: unskippable cutscenes. I'm sure there's other factors involved too, but it goes without saying that it appeared as "DX" in GDQ, and most of the entries on speedrun.com are PC.

3. Crazy Taxi
Despite the plethora of re-releases, it's nice to see that the entries for Crazy Taxi are Dreamcast ones. It may interest the reader that the category is a full completion of the "Crazy Box" mode of the game, rather than the main game itself.

4. Soul Calibur
The oddly parsed Soul Calibur is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Shenmue: namely, the world record run for this sword-based combat game is around 4 minutes in duration. There are only 3 entries on the speedrun.com page, but they're all Dreamcast!

5. Jet Set Radio (Jet Grind Radio)
Still another game that I want to experience, Jet Set Radio is available on a few platforms, and most of the world record runs are on PC.

6. Sonic Adventure 2
Poor Dreamcast. Yet another remade title, most of the runs are PC because of the availability of an auto splitter.

7. Skies of Arcadia
I almost got this game, but instead purchased Grandia II and have been procrastinating on it ever since. Skies is a JRPG, and as such, the runs are long. Really long. The 13+ hour long runs are listed, but are for the Gamecube port, Skies of Arcadia: Legends.

8. Shenmue 2
Unlike it's older brother Shenmue, most of the runs of the sequel are listed for the Xbox version. One could make an argument based on its release history, but speedrunners will break language barriers for the sake of using the fastest and/or best version of the game.

9. Power Stone
I'll admit, this is a game I knew nothing about until joining up with The Dreamcast Junkyard (never mind the fact that I'm terrible at all but the easiest fighting games!). The only instance of a Power Stone speed run I could find was a listing on YouTube, with a time of 14:59. The description indicated that it was the Dreamcast version, as opposed to arcade or PSP.

10. Phantasy Star Online
When I first came to this entry, I questioned whether or not a game like it could be ran. Nevertheless, there was a page for the game. That said, most runs were for the Gamecube version.
Looking at this non-random assortment, what is our conclusion? The score is 6:4, in favor of "other console/computer."

But I remain obstinate. I'll conclude this article now, for fear of doing a derivative article from the Top 200, but my curiosity is engaged. True, many game series have been remade for other consoles and PC. A lot haven't. What about oddball titles, like Toy Commander or Armada?

Stay tuned folks, I'm going to see what I can turn up.
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You Can Still Use Dial-Up To Surf The Internet With A Dreamcast

March 10, 2017, 8:24 am
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In recent times much has been written about the Dreamcast's ability to get online with a Raspberry Pi and a few other easily available components. The DreamPi method has single handedly revitalised the online gaming scene on the Dreamcast, and sites like Dreamcast Live have made it their mission to breathe new life into titles such as Chu Chu Rocket and Worms World Party. But what if you don't have a DreamPi or you just don't play online games in general? What other things can you still do in 2017 with a Dreamcast when it comes to exploring its online abilities? Well...um...you can still browse the internet with a dial up connection if you so wish.
Line Di. See?
I already know what many people are going to say or write in the comments sections without actually looking at this article: what's the point? What's the point in using a dial up connection and a 33k or 56k modem to go online with a Dreamcast in 2017? It's slow, most of the sites won't load anymore and it's expensive. The point is that we can. And that's the only excuse I need, to be honest.
Don't act like you've never Googled yourself!
While it is true that all of these hypothetical points are valid, there's just something cool about once again firing up Dreamkey, and throwing information through those long redundant wires and circuits that reside inside the plucky little dial-up modem stuck to the side of the console. And the best bit is that you can do it right now, with very little effort if you so desire...

Your gateway to the information superhighway!
The whole inspiration for this article actually comes from a video made by friend of the Junkyard and YouTuber Sammy Kennedy. He recently uploaded a video about using dial-up with a Dreamcast in the present day, and shared it on the Dreamcast Junkyard's Facebook page. After watching it and seeing how easy it actually is to get online and do some internet surfing with a Dreamcast (providing you have the right browser disc), I thought I'd give it a go. Mainly to show other people who hold a similar fascination with obsolete technology how to do it, ergo appeasing their own sense of childlike wonderment and curiosity...or maybe that's just me. Want in on this? Well, you're in luck - you can watch Sammy's video at the foot of this article, or you can read the steps below!

The first thing I need to address here is that I'm doing all of this with a PAL Dreamcast fitted with a 56k modem I nicked off of a Japanese Dreamcast. Also, everything here (and in the video) is quite specific to UK Dreamcast owners, but there are alternative ways to do this is you are in the United States, Europe...or anywhere, really. The key difference is the dial-up ISP you use but it shouldn't be too difficult to suss it out with a bit of Googling.
Right. To do this you'll need Dreamkey 3.0, as this was the first browser disc (in Europe at least) that allowed you to use your own ISP to get online. In this instance, we used a free ISP called Nippy which gives you the connection username, password and telephone number right there on the home page. From the Nippy website:

Welcome to free-to-subscribe 0844 dial up Internet access from Nippy Internet. There are no monthly fees, no limits on how long you stay online... you only pay the 'local call rate' on your phone bill. Nippy Internet is a premier Internet Service Provider for home or business use. 

You need to start Dreamkey 3.0, go to the setup menu and then enter the following when prompted:

Username: nippy
Password: internet
Telephone number: 0844 535 2000

Please note: 0844 calls cost 3.95p/minute peak, 1p/minute off-peak (6pm-6am) and 1p/minute at weekends from BT lines. Ask the bill payer's permission, kids!
Ignore all the other stuff the Dreamcast asks you for, you can just leave everything blank. Once you go back to the main menu, just hit connect and the Dreamcast will dial the number. Within a couple of minutes it will connect and viola! Super-slow, 1990s style dial-up internet...on your Dreamcast! Just to reiterate, both myself and Sammy used faster 56k modems to try this out and it still took a while to load websites, so if you're using a 33k stock modem from a PAL machine it may be even slower. Also, it's worth noting that a lot of websites won't load using the Dreamkey browser...but you'd be surprised how many still do...
The Dreamcast Junkyard...on a Dreamcast!
BBC News
Kotaku UK
I took a look at BBC News, which rather fittingly had a headline about BT Openreach and their broadband services. I also checked out Kotaku UK to get some gaming news; and I also Googled this very blog! They all loaded the text portions, but images invariably didn't. Interestingly, sites which are built with the Dreamcast browser in mind, such as Dreampipe.net and BOOB! work perfectly, and hosted VMU files from the former are all there to be downloaded and stored.
Dreamcast vs Safari
Sega vs Apple
As you can probably tell from the images above, most sites don't look that great when viewed through the Dreamcast browser, but both BOOB! and Dreampipe.net look almost identical whether you're viewing them on a modern device or Sega's box of tricks (see above for a comparison). Some sites won't load at the first attempt (it'll give you a connection error), but in some cases simply trying to load the URL a second time will make it connect. Anyway, here's Sammy's video:


Once again, I know this is pretty pointless in 2017. I know pretty much anything with a screen (except a Nintendo Switch ;p) can browse the internet these days, and invariably it's likely to be a far better experience. Hell, you can browse with a either a Broadband Adapter or a DreamPi. But the fact that with the minimum amount of effort you can still browse the internet with little more than a Dreamcast, a modem cable and a copy of Dreamkey 3.0 is still quite cool in my humble opinion. Even if it is only a novelty.
The Dreamcast Broadband Adapter. Well, the box it comes in.
Going online isn't the only cool thing you can do with Dreamkey 3.0. Check out a previous article here at The Dreamcast Junkyard that looks at the hidden bonus features tucked away in the recesses of the disc.
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A Very Early Look At Dungeon Ross

March 12, 2017, 12:00 pm
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Dungeon Ross is a self-titled dungeon crawler for the Dreamcast that was put together in a weekend for Global Game Jam back in January 2017. Created by the two-man team made up of Ross Kilgariff and Alastair Low, Dungeon Ross is a charming little proof-of-concept that is still in the very early stages of development, but holds plenty of potential. The game was actually revealed back in late 2016 after the Global Game Jam event held at MakerSpace in Dundee, Scotland but we wanted to allow the guys a bit more time to add more content to the dank, subterranean world of Dungeon Ross before really delving in and showing it off.
For the uninitiated, Global Game Jam is a worldwide event during which game developers and programmers have a set amount of time (usually a weekend) to come up with a totally original game or piece of software. The idea is to allow developers to get as creative as they can over the 48hr period, nurturing teamwork and collaboration with a view to producing original games and concepts.
While Dungeon Ross is still very early and the game consists of little more than a fairly small section of dungeon, the engine is up and running and the visuals are pretty crisp. There's also a pretty interesting two player mode in which gamers can assume the role of either Ross or Alastair, and the way the camera zooms out to reveal more of the map is a nice touch. There's no collision detection and the AI is also fairly rudimentary but from what we've seen the beginnings of a really cool game could be in the offing with Dungeon Ross. We spoke to the eponymous Ross to get the full lowdown on his brand new Dreamcast adventure...

DCJY: Hi Ross, could you give us a bit of information about yourself and your background in game development?

Ross Kilgariff: Ally [Alastair Low] and I are both game developers from Dundee in Scotland. I'm a programmer and de-facto designer, while Ally is a 3D artist. We work together professionally and run the local MakerSpace in our spare time.
And what's the story behind Dungeon Ross?

The original idea for Dungeon Ross came about in December last year when we decided to participate in the 2017 Global Game Jam, of which the MakerSpace was a jam site for the second year in a row. The event itself happens in late January, so we had about a month to read up and prepare.
Can you elaborate on your inspiration for this type of game?

At first we just knew we wanted to make something for the Dreamcast that would have "couch co-op" gameplay. We liked Zelda: Four Swords on the GameCube and wanted to incorporate similar elements into our DC game. Those were the only thoughts we had going in.

Over the GameJam weekend in January, I spent 90% of my time just working on the engine. When it came time to put in characters, I happened to have a goofy programmer-art version of me that I dropped into the engine as a test. This actually made the game weirdly charming in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, so Ally ran with the style and Dungeon Ross was born.
It was pretty handy that you had the programmer art model of yourself! How easy or difficult is making a game from scratch for the Dreamcast?

The biggest challenge so far has definitely been building the skeletal animation system, which closely mirrors that of Blender (the software we use for 3D modelling and animation). We didn't have the animation system ready in time for the jam deadline, so that was our next big milestone.
Personally, I have nothing but admiration for anyone who has the ability to make games. What are your future plans for Dungeon Ross? Will we see a retail version of the game?

Our plan now is to use whatever time we can find to keep developing the game, maybe running some smaller game jams to coordinate ourselves and possibly get more people involved. I'm very eager to focus on the game design now that the engine tech is good enough to experiment with.

We've spoken about selling physical copies, and that's definitely something we'd enjoy (putting the instruction manuals and dungeon maps together) but we're also planning on releasing the source code to the engine and the game, in the hope that other DC developers have an easier time of it.
Thanks to Ross for speaking with us about Dungeon Ross, the images above are concept drawings of enemy types to be used in the main game. It's certainly an interesting concept and we'll be keeping an eye on the development of this project. With more work and a weapons system and co-op gameplay Dungeon Ross could be a pretty fun addition to the Dreamcast library. Below you can watch a video showing off the engine in action:


If you'd like to get involved or lend you time to helping to develop Dungeon Ross further, please feel free to get in touch! For further information, be sure to check out Dungeon Ross (and grab the game files!) at the Global Game Jam website here, and while you're at it you can find Ross's personal website here and Alastair's personal website here. If you'd like more information about Dundee MakerSpace, you can find their website here.
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Previously Unknown Dreamcast Game Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters Discovered

March 13, 2017, 4:00 pm
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This is pretty damn cool. Ever heard of Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters? Not many people have. It was developed by Creat Studio and released on the PC back in 1999 and it appears that a Dreamcast port was in the works. For whatever reason it was never shown to the public, the press...or anyone outside of Creat Studios by the looks of things. This is particularly odd because the game was recently discovered on a Dreamcast dev kit and it appears to be fully playable and complete!
Millennium Racer is a futuristic racer with combat elements in the same vein as Extreme G or WipEout, and looks as though it could have given the genre a shot in the arm as the only other titles in this style are limp to say the least. Pod 2 and Magforce Racing are the only true attempts at this style of game on the Dreamcast (I'm not counting Episode 1: Racer) and they're both pants.
Anyway, back to Millennium Racer. I was contacted a few weeks ago by the owner of the dev kit, a Dreamcast aficionado known as Kuririn84 and he told me the following:

"Hi, I just wanted to give you a heads up that I have found an unreleased Dreamcast game called Millenium Racer: Y2K Fighters. 

"I am working with another member of the community to get it running, and I do plan on releasing the game and files to the community. I know the PC version was released, but there was never an announcement of a Dreamcast port. The files I found are on the HD of my Dev kit, so certainly Dreamcast files. I'm working with another member of the community to get it running.

"I have sent the game to two people, one of them was unable to do anything with it, the other person is very well known in the Dreamcast scene and seems confident they can get it running. If he can get it running I will put the game out there for the community, if not I will post the files for people to look at. I've been a Dreamcast fan and a member of the community since 1998, I hope this can be my contribution."
- Kuririn84
Since then, it appears that Millennium Racer has indeed been extracted from the dev kit on which it has been hiding for all these years, and the best bit is that it's 100% playable...

The owner of the Live Journal site japanese_cake (who I'm guessing is the same guy mentioned in the email I was sent) has published a post detailing his exploits extracting Millennium Racer here, and has also kindly posted a download link for the game file! Here's what he had to say on this amazing discovery:

"I think only few people knew about this game and even fewer knew about its portage to the Dreamcast. I took those files and worked on giving this game a second chance. After digging a bit in code to see why it was failing to boot and doing few file manipulations, the game started to show its guts and to be honest, it rocks! It is not a demo or an alpha version that would be just frustrating, it is a complete version! Cool, right? Another brand new game!

"To distribute the game, I built a GDI image, region-free with VGA support (was already there) and forced PAL-60hz mode for PAL console. For the sake of digital preservation, I kept original files datetime, ISO9660 volume name, date, etc. as if a real GDR existed."
- japanese_cake
I downloaded Millennium Racer and managed to get it working through lxdream on my MacBook, and it appears to be a pretty playable futuristic racer very much in the vein of WipEout, but with the racers riding floating bikes. The tracks are all fairly unique (and there are 10 of them to begin with, although the later ones need to be unlocked) and feature plenty of shortcuts and multi-layered sections. Overall the whole game looks very polished and the handling of the vehicles is actually pretty tight. An arcade mode, championship and time attack are all in there, along with fully customisable 'bikes' and riders.
The bikes themselves appear to be made of neon wireframes, as do the riders and it gives the whole game an air of 'Tron,' while the tracks vary in visual style. Some of them are standard sci-fi trope fayre like space stations and mining colonies, while others are based in gargantuan alien cities. There's an interesting jump mechanic which can be activated to leap over chasms and there are circular boost rings which give an increase in speed.

Because I was using an emulator the menus and some of the character models are really messed up, but if you can get this running on an actual Dreamcast I have no doubt that it'll look just great. To be honest, it's actually hard to fathom why this game was never released considering how far along it clearly was in development. Hell, I'd agree with the comments from japanese_cake (God, I love that name!), namely that Millennium Racer was probably already finished before being quietly and unceremoniously canned. Sigh.
You too can now play this mysterious and never-before-seen Dreamcast game - just head over to japanese_cake and grab the GDI image here. Massive kudos to both Kuririn84 and japanese_cake for this effort, and also to Sega Max for making me aware of the fact that this had finally been released for us all to enjoy! Another Dreamcast game in 2017...it's madness I tells ya!

Update
The game runs perfectly from an SD card reader on a standard Dreamcast. Simply drag the files onto your SD card and run the .gdi file to get it up and running with none of the glitching associated with an emulator. Here's some footage from our old pal Pcwzrd of Millennium Racer running on a Dreamcast via an SD reader (note the lack of music is possibly due to Dreamshell not supporting CDDA audio...whatever that means!):

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Video Review: Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters

March 15, 2017, 8:51 am
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At the risk of this becoming the Millennium Racer Junkyard, I've put together a shortish video review of the recently discovered futuristic racing game. Hopefully you'll find the video informative and it'll give you a taste of what to expect before you head over to the original reveal article, where download links and the full story of the discovery are detailed. Enjoy!


Thanks to Kuririn84, japanese_cake and Eric Fradella for their various work in getting Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters out into the hands of Dreamcast gamers everywhere; and thanks to Eurogamer for giving this story a bit of exposure and giving the old Junkyard a mention. If you download the game and want a CD inlay for it, here's one courtesy of Facebook group member Larkos McEnroe:
Once again, the Dreamcast community can be utterly awesome at times. I need to lie down.
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Expanding the Dreamcast Collection Part 5: The Sega System SP

March 17, 2017, 4:21 am
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It’s been an interesting journey, and one that I for one have certainly learnt a lot from, but unfortunately this won’t quite be the send off befitting a series of systems that once dominated the arcade scene for over a decade. You see, rather than going out with a bang, the Dreamcast family of hardware ended with a silent wet fart - a shart, even -  from a once great arcade behemoth. Hardly riveting stuff, but for the sake of completion and bringing this barrel-scraping topic to a close, let’s take a quick look at the not-so-almighty System SP.
The System SP. Picture taken from www.system16.com - a great resource for
all things arcade related, so check it out.
Now how’s that for an opening to get your attention? How could you possibly resist the temptation to expand your ever increasing knowledge of pointless Dreamcast trivia? So gather round and prepare to be bored to death! You - yes you, the person whose time would be far better spent learning to play an instrument or practicing that language you’ve intended to learn for the past decade.
This is how the Dreamcast ended up. A sad/hilarious sight indeed.
Where was I again? Oh yes, the System SP. Time to share a few useless tidbits about the most boring, pointless and least interesting system in the Dreamcast family. Well, we had to wrap it up somehow...

First though, a reminder to check out the previous parts in our 'Expanding the Dreamcast Collection' series:

As with the Atomiswave before it, the System SP came into existence as another means to make use of Sega’s excess stock of Dreamcast and NAOMI components. By 2005, Sega had already moved their flagship titles away from NAOMI/Dreamcast related arcade hardware onto newer systems such as the Chihiro and Triforce. Moreover, the true follow up to the NAOMI, the Lindbergh was only a matter of months from release; so rather than use the System SP for their big hitters, less graphically intense titles such as those marketed for children found a home on the on the younger sibling.
Before the DCJY, Sega struggled to find a festering hole big
enough for their excess SH-4 and Power VR2 chips.
The System SP was released with zero fanfare in 2005, and basically amounts to not much more than a re-purposed Naomi with on-board flashcard reader instead of cart slot. From what we can tell the first games to be made available were Dinosaur King, Mirage World and Monopoly: The Medal. Due to a lack of games appealing to an adult demographic, very little publicity or interest was given to the system by the press or gaming community at large. To this day, information online is sparse to say the least, so much so in fact, for many years the community wasn’t even sure what to call it. Even today there are inconsistencies out there, so let’s get to the bottom of this.

System SP or Aurora?
When my attention was first drawn to the system, it was known online as the Aurora. Why this was so, I can’t explain but it seems to be a case of mistaken identity. You see, one of the many Saturn code-names was Aurora. Since then, scans of official Sega produced manuals have surfaced online confirming the name as 'System SP.'
Picture courtesy of Sega Retro
In 2009, a splutter of games were released for the system; Tetris Dekaris, Future Police Patrol Chase, Brick People and Battle Police. In the same year, Sega Bass Fishing Challenge was also released on the Atomiswave. Pinpointing which of these timeless classics deserves the lengthy title of “last ever officially licensed game for Dreamcast family hardware” (phew, that was a mouthful), is beyond my pitiful research abilities but it’s safe to say that one of these gems truly marked the death of our beloved Dreamcast and its PowerVR2 graphics chip.

Tech Specs
Here are the tech specs for the System SP, as listed over at System 16:
  • CPU: Hitachi SH-4 32-bit RISC CPU (200 MHz 360 MIPS / 1.4 GFLOPS) 
  • Graphic Engine: PowerVR2 (PVR2DC) 
  • Sound Engine: ARM7 Yamaha AICA 45 MHZ (with internal 32-bit RISC CPU, 64 channel ADPCM) 
  • Main Memory: 32 MByte 
  • Graphic Memory: 16 MByte 
  • Sound Memory: 8 MByte 
  • Network: CPU - AMD AU1500-333MBD, BOOT - 2MByte Flash, RAM - 8Mbyte, Ethernet PHY 
  • Game Media: Compact Flash 256Mbyte 
  • On Board Program Storage: 128Mbyte (8x128MBit or 2x512Mbit) or 512Mbyte (8x512Mbit) Flash Memory 
  • Security IC: PIC16 Dongle 
  • Simultaneous Colors: Approx. 16,770,000 (24bits) 
  • Polygons: 2.5 Million polys/sec 
  • Rendering Speed: 500 M pixel/sec 
  • Additional Features: Bump Mapping, Fog, Alpha-Bending (transparency), Mip Mapping (polygon-texture auto switch), Tri-Linear Filtering, Anti-Aliasing, Environment Mapping, and Specular Effect.
Ports
For those big Thomas the Tank fans among you, I’ve got a bit of bad news – the System SP Thomas game never did make it to a home console. It's not all doom and gloom however, as there were a few ports/ spin off games released on portables, so with nothing else to fill this space with, I may as well tell you a bit about those. Yawn.
A few of the System SP ports and spin offs.
Well, this is embarrassing. I had intended to give these games a proper play-through and report my findings, but unfortunately I only have a 3DS these days and they refuse to even boot to the main menu without the card reader (see below) slotted into the GBA cartridge slot. As you may be aware, the 3DS doesn't have GBA backwards compatibility...so, yeah. Erm...sorry about that.

From what I can tell, Mushi King and Dinosaur King are Pokémon like affairs where you travel around collecting, training and battling beetles and dinosaurs respectively. Oshare Majo on the other hand is a rhythm action game that allows players to customise the appearance of their character with clothes and accessories corresponding to collected cards. There were two more Mushi King games released on the Nintendo DS, but judging by the user reviews on the official Famitsu website, all five games range from bad to average. Probably not worth learning Japanese to play these then.
Oshare no Majo cards and card reader.
The only game of the five that doesn't utilise the card reader is Dinosaur King for the DS. It also happens to be the one that got a western release, so there you go - enjoying an obscure System SP spin-off is within your grasp! Or maybe not, as the case may be; the game currently has an average critic score of 61/100 on Metacritic after all. Perhaps using the word enjoying is giving far too much credit to the game.

Aside from these DS/GBA games, there were three more titles released on the Pico and Advanced Pico Beena Systems. Member? Member those? Them failed Sega consoles that looked a bit like one of those books for babies with thick cardboard pages? Yeah, me neither. My fellow Dreamcast Junkyard writer Aaron 'The Gagaman' Foster has one though...the saddo. 

Exclusives

Tetris Dekarisu
Of all the titles, Dekarisu is perhaps the most well known in the west, as photos of this beast of a cabinet seem to get shared periodically among the gaming and weaboo communities online. It also happens to be one of the few games on the list, I’ve had the pleasure (or displeasure) of playing myself, so I can tell you with quite some confidence that the game doesn’t live up to the grandeur of its gargantuan pair of rigid joysticks. You see, rather than the traditional 10 x 16 Tetris grid we’re all used to, the game squashes things down to a 6 x 10, making games feel claustrophobic and shortening their length considerably. Sure, chuck 100 yen in the slot to get your greasy mitts all over those massive joysticks, but after one quick go, you’ll be done. Alternatively, save that 100 yen and simply pretend to play like when u woz a likkle kiddy winkle.
Look at those joysticks! Shame about the game though...
Brick People
While clearly designed with the family in mind, Brick People remains one of the more interesting titles on the system, largely due to the the rather ingenious way its mechanics break the fourth wall. Players stack physical plastic bricks in front of the screen to help the onscreen 'brick heads' eat various items on screen. Periodically, the 'brick bully' destroys the carefully built wall by violently shaking the cabinet, toppling the player's bricks in the real-life-world. Check out this YouTube video for a better sense of how the game works. While a mobile version of the game was released, it paled in comparison to using the original cabinet and has since been removed from sale anyway.
Brick People, worth a try just for the novelty of it all.
So there you have it, the System SP. I told you not to bother reading this tat and you probably listened to be fair. I'm just talking to myself at this point...here's the usual list of crap at the bottom for those that like lists and stuff.   

Games List
Battle Police (2009)
Beetle DASH! (2008)
Bingo Galaxy
Block Pipo/Brick People (2009)
Dinosaur King (2005)
Dinosaur King Operation Dinosaur Rescue (2006)
Dinosaur King 2 (2005)
Dinosaur King : D Team vs The Alpha Fortress (2008)
Disney Magical Dance (2008)
Future Police Patrol Chase (2009)
Isshou ni Turbo Drive (2005)
Isshou ni Wan Wan (2005)
Maniac Panic Ghost (2007)
Marine and Marine (2008)
Mirage World (2005)
Monopoly: The Medal (2005)
Mushi King 2K6 (2006)
Mushi King 2K7 (2007)
Mushi King: Battle Terminal (2005)
Oshare Majo: Love and Berry 1st and 2nd Collection (2006)
Oshare Majo: Love and Berry 3rd, 4th and 5th Collection (2007)
Tetris Dekaris (2009)
Thomas the Tank Engine (2006)

Spin offs/ports
Brick People (2011) - iOS
Kodai Ouja Dinosaur King: D Kids Adventure Dino Slash! Dinosaur Battle!! (2007) - Advanced Pico Beena
Kodai Ouja Dinosaur King: Nanatsu no Kakera (2007) - DS
Mushi King Greatest Champion he no Michi (2005) - GBA/DS
Mushi King Atsumete Asobou Kouchuu Zukan (2005) - Pico
Mushi King Mori no Tami no Densetsu: Minna de Tanken! Kouchuu no Mori (2005) - Advanced Pico Beena
Mushi King Greatest Champion he no Michi 2 (2006) - DS
Mushi King Nebu-Hakase to Kazu Katachi ni Challenge! (2006) - Advanced Pico Beena
Mushi King Super Collection (2007) - DS
Oshare Majo Love and Berry (2004) - DS

And that concludes out 'Expanding the Dreamcast Collection' series. Hope you enjoyed it! Any time you want to revisit this glorious series, just click on the orange ribbon under the page header and you'll have all this wondrous information at your finger tips. Eye tips. Whatever.
Be sure to check out System 16 for more information on the System SP and plenty of other arcade oddities.
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Metropolis Street Racer: The Development Diaries

March 19, 2017, 10:27 am
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I do occasionally find myself browsing old websites via the Wayback Machine, and they usually tend to be websites linked in some way to the Dreamcast. Whenever I flick through the manual of an old game and spot a URL, I have an urge to just go and have a look at the contemporary online presence the developer or publisher had. I know I've waffled on about my affection for the Wayback Machine on multiple occasions but there's just something so fascinating about trawling the long forgotten sites of old, sites that date from before the internet was as ubiquitous as it is today. I mean, even fridges and dishwashers can connect to the internet these days, but back in the early 2000s just getting online was an arduous process - even if you had a Dreamcast. 
Anyway, due to my insatiable thirst for the widely forgotten, I found myself looking at the Bizarre Creations website when I noticed a tab for a development diary. Weirdly, it is now only accessible by using the 'console friendly' (read: Dreamcast compatible) version of the site, but upon clicking it I was met with a fascinating insight into the development process of one of my favourite Dreamcast games. Here, buried in time being read by precisely nobody was a glimpse into the past. Anecdotes about nights out on the town with other Dreamcast developers of the era, office politics and even some fascinating tales of pranks played in the MSR engine by the programmers (I'd kill to see the 'MSR with rabbits' that's referred to!). I had never read any of this before, and I thought it was worth preserving and sharing with like minded fans of Metropolis Street Racer. 
Naturally, what makes this even more poignant is that Bizarre Creations, even after the critical and commercial success of later titles such as Project Gotham, no longer exists. So, read on and get ready to be whisked back to 1998 and the inner sanctum of Bizarre Creations' Liverpool offices...


Please note that the original dev diary is written in reverse chronological order with the most recent updates first, so I've rearranged them for ease of reading. If you spot any references to a game called 'Crimson,' that was the working title for MSR; and another game referred to is 'Furballs,' which later became Fur Fighters. The images used do not really relate to the dates of the diary entries, but some of them are from various demos, promotional shoots and periods in the development process, so hopefully they give some context. Anyway, on to the diary itself which has been reproduced here verbatim, so don't blame me for any spelling mistakes!


[13.2.1998]
It's a busy time for the Crimson team, with an internal demo deadline at the end of the month. And so, with the law of sod, this week has been as hectic as they come.

Monday: Some Austrian Journalists and Competition winners come to play. Matt scares them, and the Artists show them the F1 tracks and stuff. People have trouble remembering how F1 and F1 '97 were made! Well, it was months and months ago! Big respect due from all of us to the guy from Red Bull who visited. He doesn't realise how his product kept everyone going through the long nights putting the games together! We swap him a huge F1 '97 Jean Alesi for some Red Bull - sounds like a good deal!

Tuesday: The Crimson team invite their friends, Kylie and Josephine, over to play. Kylie beats her high score at Nemesis. Pizza for lunch - Steve from Psygnosis offers us all eating lessons.

Wednesday: Dave sulks all day as Nemesis - his favourite - has been replaced in the office arcade machine by Robocop. Everyone else tries to get top of the Robocop league.

Thursday: Not even the new machines arriving could stop the despondency felt by the team when a friend of theirs didn't come over. Boo Hoo! Keef was so upset, he went to Paris for the week-end.

Friday: A big meeting to check the progress of the project. All seems to go smoothly - the programmers didn't need the straight jackets much. Everyone's happy with progress, and so celebrations are in order! We all go to the bowling alley after work for a few shandies, to take over the pool tables, and to try and beat the high score on 'House of the Dead'!
[6.3.1998]
Working towards another demo, which is designed to show us how well all our tools and methods are working for constructing the game. No 'day-by-day' account, I'm afraid, as the webmaster was on holiday and therefore not there to witness the progress in person!

The last demo done was playable, but still had the test engine and no AI at all. This is the first time that the beginnings of the real engine, and early AI are actually in the game, so it will be interesting to see how it all fits together.

The artists are working on bringing together the modular work they have been doing, and seeing how well it all works, especially with the editor.

So tune in next week for a blow-by-blow account of how it's gone!!
[4.4.1998]
Well, the demo is finished and done and sent off! It seems to be well received, which is alright with us!

We've learnt quite a bit in doing the demo. It was a great testing ground for the tools, and also the methods the artists are using for modelling. The artists are planning how to take the next stage further, and doing some test pieces to see if the current theories are correct.

Playability is such a major part of any game, and the planning of the playing environment is the latest issue we're working on. It's difficult to describe without actually explaining the game, so I'm afraid you'll have to bear with us on this one for the time being.

However, our new Publishers have provided us with some brilliant people to support the development, so they've been helping out where-ever they can. Hello to them - they know who they are!!!

Still don't know when the game is going to be announced, especially as its so early on in development. All the PR and marketing for a new game always has to be carefully planned and scheduled, so you have to keep things under wraps until it's all ready to go. But you can be sure we'll let you know what it is as soon as we can!
[24.4.1998]
This occurred as someone found out that a game called Crimson was in development for Dreamcast. It was important that we kept our Dreamcast involvement secret until the press conference in Japan, hence the swift denials and hurried name change!

[5.6.1998]
An Introduction to Sega
Yippee! We can finally talk about Metropolis! It's been so difficult keeping this project secret, along with the fact that we've been Dreamcast developers for a long time now! We thought the game was up about a week or so before the Press Conference in Japan, when Game-Online said that they knew about a project codenamed 'Crimson' in development. Luckily, a hasty name change seemed to cover that one up, and we managed to keep the game quiet until the conference, which was Sega Europe's aim!

And from now we can be a little more open in the Diaries, and chart the progress of the project on the new platform, rather than avoiding the issue! Perhaps some of the earlier diaries make a little more sense now, especially when you know Sega is the publisher too!

In this diary, I want to bring you up to date with the cool we're working with (I'll leave the more nitty gritty project details for the next update). So now let me introduce you all to a few people from Sega, who have been mentioned under codenames in previous diaries:

Kats 'Kylie' Sato: Kats is our Senior Producer, who looks after us, works with us on game design issues, and doesn't make the tea - but we're working on that! You may have heard his name before from his work on Sonic R (Producer), Clockwork Knight (Character and game Designer) and if you're really old (!), Outrunners (Artist). Kats is Japanese, as you might have guessed, and used to work in Sega AM and CS departments, before being sent to Europe to persecute European developers. Our current quest with Kats is to teach him the English art of sarcasm!

Jose 'Josephine' Aller: Jose is also working on the project, as our Assistant Producer. Jose has worked at Sega Europe since the distant days of the Megadrive (Genesis for our American cousins) in the 3rd Party support group. And now - perhaps as a punishment for some hideous crime? - he has been paired up with Kats to work in Development on our Metropolis Project. Jose is a very good Producer, mainly down to the fact that he's ACTUALLY MADE THE TEA - hint, hint, Kats! Our current quest with Jose is to find out his 2 very secret middle names which he won't tell us!

Mark Maslowicz: Mark is the cool dude who now manages Third Party Licensing and Acquisitions. He generally looks after us little developers, and is probably the first port of call for any developers interested in Dreamcast development. Mark carries some interesting photos in his wallet (scanner at the ready!), and has been known to use one of them as an excellent chat-up line - 'Would you like to see my Ferrari?'

'Hoshy' Hoshino: Mr Hoshino has recently moved over from Japan to head up the Third Party division of Sega Europe, and deals mainly with business issues. He's been helping the Bizarre bunch out in many ways, including teaching us some useful Japanese phrases, and introducing us to Grappa, an Italian liqueur, which is well recommended if you want an excellent hangover!

Colin Carter: Colin is in charge of European Technical Support department in London, and therefore speaks many languages - C, C++, binary..... Although the story of Colin's karaoke rendition of 'Anarchy in the UK' has reached the far corners of the development community, Colin has another deep dark secret which we won't mention. Honest. Nope, not at all.

There are, of course, many other people we have been working with in both Sega Europe and Japan, but those mentioned are the people who have to put up with us on a day-to-day basis. We'd like to say a big hello and thank you to them all!

Metropolis itself is progressing well - the progress report on the project will follow in the next update.
[31.7.1998]
OK, here's the REAL update! Things are progressing fine, if a little slower on the artwork side - as there are 2 artists currently off somewhere secret on a research trip. We have a new texture artist starting on Monday to help all of the 3D artists out - but he's from the N-E of England, so we have to use a translator!

The programming is coming along well too, with the next revision of the 3D engine being started on now. 3D engines are always an iterative process - you do a bit, then do some more, then scrap some and re-do it, then add some more, then revise that, etc. etc.....

A bit of a worry this week has been the rabbits. We have had an outbreak of rabbits in a Metropolis city, which has caused many problems...... A programmer who shall remain nameless found an old cartoony animation of a rabbit and inserted loads of the little buggers into the city. It looked totally hilarious, especially when the cute little animals hopped bouncily up to and tried to jump off an overhanging bridge!!!
[21.8.1998]
Time for another update, I suppose!

Things have been building up pace in the last month or so, especially on the art side of things. Some of the Artists have been out of the office on research trips for the game, and there's plenty of research material cluttering up the Metropolis end of the office. We're having to get another 4 bookcases, just to cope with this batch of materials!!

On the programming side, the editor is nearly sorted, and the artists are using it to get the initial layouts in place. It's difficult at this stage, because you're developing the editors alongside the layouts themselves, and also alongside the need to have something playable for the gameplay side of things. It's an iterative process (big word for a Friday, I know) - everyone starts with something basic, and then you all build on it in stages, until you achieve the desired result.

As an aside, there's a nice little development community building up around Dreamcast over here in Europe already. The 1.5 party developers have been joined (in a development sense) by other key developers from around Europe. These newer developers are just finding their feet, and we're realising we can help them out, having gone through this stage ourselves. We met up a couple of weeks ago with another UK development team, who were just getting going on the kits (sorry, no names, but hello to them, they know who they are ;-) It's great to see loads of developers over here getting involved, and we wish them all well with their ideas.
[18.9.1998]
Well, it's now post ECTS, with the standard aching legs and free t-shirts, but the pressure's still on!!

ECTS was cool as usual, and it was really great to see glimpses of the other Dreamcast titles, and a longer look at Sonic Adventure. The quality of all the titles was high, and it really looks like Sega are going to have an awesome line-up at both Japanese and European launch. We've many months of development left on our game, but there's obviously still lots to do before European launch! Looking at the near-finished Japanese titles is certainly an inspiration!

We have an internal demo deadline looming now, which should get us to a set stage in development by the 29th of this month. ECTS provided a brief respite for the team, but it's back to work in earnest now. For example, we're starting to get engine optimisations in place to take advantage of the later development kits, and to get some of the early 'driving' effects in.

The artists are all concentrating on a set goal, which is hard to describe without giving too much of the game away (I hear you say 'darn it'!) The texturing is proving to be the most time-consuming task for all the artists, as we're trying to get a high level of detail in both modelling and texturing terms.

So it's busy, busy, busy for now!
[4.12.1998]
Well, it's been a while, I know, but we're at one of those 'middle' stages of development where everything is busy busy behind the scenes, but no real exciting breakthroughs get made. The last couple of weeks have been really hectic, getting a demo ready for a Sega internal meeting. It's always difficult to put demos together when the game is in 'mid-flow' as some things aren't ready, and the programmers often need to hack temporary code in to make things work for the demo. However, it all came together well, and we hope Sega will be pleased with it.

A cool event since the last update was the Argonaut 'Red Dog' Team came up to play (!) a couple of weeks ago. It was really good to swap notes with another 1.5 party developer - it looks like Argonaut go about development the same way as us! The Artists all compared how things were being done, and the changes you have to make when working for a new and unknown platform. Evidently, we'd both had to explore similar avenues in the early stages.... which is reassuring to know! The Programmers got to swap Dreamcast coding tips, which was useful too.

After a useful day, we headed off to the local Est!Est!Est! Italian Restaurant, which provided the usual fantastic food. The Bizarre guys all settled down to the task of getting Jez and the guys as drunk as we could!!! This involved huge amounts of Italian wine and Grappa, an Italian liqueur, which is probably the best thing ever to give you a stonking hangover next day. Of course, we all talked about serious Dreamcast development issues all evening, honest!

When the restaurant finally got round to scraping us off the tables, we headed off to the Codemaster's 'Music' Launch Party in Liverpool city centre. The guys at Jester Interactive (the ones who came up with the idea and developed the game) were brilliant, and gave us VIP entry tickets for us and the Argonaut troop! The party had some brilliant DJ's, firedancers on 6 foot stilts (actually dancing!!), and free beer - always a popular addition!

The party was a real success, we all had fun playing 'Music' (give it a go, you'll love it!), drinking beer, dancing and saying hi to loads of game developers from the NW UK. Honourable drunken mentions go to Studio 33 (still standing but not quite coherent!), 'Game' Liverpool (definitely wobbling, and very late for work next day!), Philip Morris (a beer and a big grin), Curly Monsters (far too sober when we saw them!), Jenny??? (Martyn's only Wiz 'n' Liz fan!!!), and of course Codemasters and Jester Interactive (whose musician had to leave to stop his house exploding due to a gas leak!)

Happily for some, I'm not going to mention anything about plans for strip clubs, Walter's Pec's, or anyone getting really drunk (as we all went to bed with a cup of cocoa at 10pm, following the shining example that Nick always sets). OK?

Well, sorry it's not been the most informative of update regarding the game, but as we're still only mid-development, there is nothing really exciting to report. The cities are gradually getting modelled (a long and detailed process!), the game's gradually being coded, and when there's more concrete progress that we can talk about in detail, we'll let you know!
[29.1.1999]
Well, an update! What an extrordinary move! Yes, it's been a while, but we have had Christmas in the middle...

So what's been happening on Metropolis then? It's actually beginning to come together nicely.......and it really is starting to feel like a game, rather than a pre-alpha. For those who aren't all that au fait with gaming technology, a pre-alpha is like a very very early version of a game, showing an idea of where it's going, but far off the real thing.

We've been hard at work on all aspects of the game, and I suppose it's a good idea to give a quick run-down of what's been going on, continuing, of course, with the Sega policy of not giving any details at all for now! (Sorry, guys!!)

Artwork - the final research is rolling in, and Brian (the Producer) has been off on a little visit to get some more information for one of the artists. There's now so much in the way of research materials that the artists are working hidden away behind piles of boxes! Lee, who has been doing a lot of the texture work, is going to start to learn the complexities of SoftImage, the 3D modelling package we're using for Metropolis, so watch out for him losing even more of his hair than before!

Programming - there's been a little shuffling of tasks to make sure that we can get it all done in time. It's getting to look more and more of a game, with little gameplay touches being added every day, and special effects going in too. The front end isn't properly attached yet, which means it has problems going to the toilet!

Last week was the week of the big telly. We have to demo the game to some Sega VIPs next week, and showing it on a little 15" monitor or a 14" portable TV wasn't really showing it at its full potential. So we went out and got a HUGE 29" TV, which really makes it look cool! Matt (the Lead Coder) has it weighing down his desk and giving him eyestrain at the moment!

And now, the serious news from the Metropolis office - the mystery of 'THE FERTILITY CHAIR'!!!

It all started about 9 months ago, when one of the Senior Artists on the team announced that he was expecting a baby. (OK, his girlfriend was, we're not miracle workers!) This was quickly followed by one of the Programmers. Shortly after, someone from the Furballs team announced the same thing..... ahh, we thought, it's not just the Metropolis team! But now there's another Senior Artist who's expecting and we've worked it out!

It's the Fertility chair! Somewhere in the Metropolis office is a chair which is causing this. Sit too long on the chair and you'll be next in line! The programmer from Furballs had obviously gone in to get some advice from the Metropolis programmers and sat too long on that very chair! So now the sweepstake is on - who is going to be next? Watch this space..........

Interesting fact: Our spies inform us that No Cliche have had the same effect on their Dreamcast team. Could they have a fertility chair there too? Perhaps there is more to this mystery, involving prolonged exposure to Dreamcast Development kits? Only time will tell.......!!!

More news on the chair and other totally irrelevant wafflings next week...................
---
Sadly, there are no further updates after 29th January 1999, so perhaps we'll never know just what happened with the Bizarre Creations fertility chair. Metropolis Street Racer shipped on 3rd November 2000 so there was plenty of time for more shenanigans but it doesn't appear to have been recorded. What is recorded however, are some oddities found within the MSR code, listed on the 'Top 10 things' page:

METROPOLIS CODING ODDITIES
1. void ChainSmokeLikeKeith( CHAIN_ENTRY *Cl, long Cnt);
2. struct ARTY_FARTY_SHITTY_CAR
3. // Check for Turtilification...
4. sprintf(TString," Crash Tinkle Tinkle, Broken glass and maimed people... HA HA HA HA !!!");
5. // OK, here's something Jonathan and I guessed at... // ...Fucking hell it worked!
6. // Meat and bones calc...
7. #define LENS_FLARE_BOOSH #define LENS_FLARE_PUJANG #define LENS_FLARE_DOOF
8. // Build bounding box vertices FELCH
9. // Bollox spray all over the screen
10. long FuckFlag=0;

There are plenty of other odd entries on the Bizarre Creations website, including a reference to an April Fools where people were invited to design characters for a new game called 'Grow Your Own Vegetables,' and elsewhere there are galleries of sleeping staff members and an article about the best kebab shops in Liverpool. Sadly, the images have long since been lost to the digital ether, but the descriptions remain.

Going back to the development diary, I did manage to have a quick chat with Nick Wiswell who worked at Bizarre Creations during this period. He mainly worked on the audio, and predominantly on Fur Fighters before taking the helm on the Project Gotham series; but he was pretty confident that this diary was compiled by Bizarre Creations' commercial director Sarah Chudley. There are a few other details Nick clarified:

"The Wiz n Liz fan "Jenny" was actually my wife Dee - Sarah got the name totally wrong! Dee emailed Sarah to correct her and she was invited to the studio as she worked across the street as a games tester for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. I tagged along as it was my day off, got talking to Martyn and Sarah [Chudley - the directors of Bizarre Creations] about my passion for games and wanting to join the industry, and within a week I started working there."
- Nick Wiswell

Thanks to Nick for shedding some more light on the identity of the development diaries' author. If you're anything like me and find even the most random aspect of the Dreamcast to be totally fascinating, then I have no doubt you'll have found this article to be a very interesting trip down memory lane. As someone with more than a passing interest in preserving the past (and digital preservation in general), I thought it was worth dragging this development diary out of the ether and presenting it here for a new audience to enjoy.

As stated above, Metropolis Street Racer is one of my favourite games - not just for the Dreamcast but for any console. To have a little glimpse into the studio behind the game is very revealing and shows the personalities of the fine folk who worked tirelessly (no pun intended) to produce one of the Dreamcast's most iconic titles.
Further Reading
We've featured MSR here at the Junkyard on multiple occasions in the past, so if you'd like to read more about this game, feel free to check out the links below:

The Bugs of MSR
MSR shipped with a number of minor bugs. Read about them here, and the lengths that Sega Europe went to to recall the game.

MSR Playable Alpha Discovered
A reader of the Junkyard called James bought a bunch of GDs and discovered a very early preview version of MSR in with them. Naturally, we wanted to investigate and share some images. We also uploaded a video of the early version here, and it turned out to feature music tracks performed by Richard Jacques himself!

Metropolis Street Racer Promo Photos Found
Our good friend Blue Swirl acquired the original MSR promo photos taken by former Sega Europe art director Ross McLeish. He shared them with us here.

Metropolis Public Transport Racer
Bit of an old one this, but when we found out about the buses, taxis and...lawnmowers you can unlock in MSR, we had to share the news!

A Tale of Two Cities
We decided to compare the architecture and general graphical quality of Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast, and Project Gotham Racing on Xbox.

Interview with Bizarre Creations
Not hosted here at The Dreamcast Junkyard, but there's in interesting interview with Bit Parade here that goes into a bit more detail about the other (later) games Bizarre Creations worked on.
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Review & Emulation Analysis: Breakers

March 22, 2017, 1:06 pm
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Until very recently, I'd never heard of Breakers. A game that was solely the preserve of Neo-Geo aficionados - and even then those who tended to walk on the more obscure side of the tracks - Breakers is a game that very few outside of the more niche corners of the gaming fraternity will have much affinity with. Released by Visco Games in 1996, the game remained in its native Japan and was never given a western airing, even when the home conversions for the Neo-Geo AES and Neo-Geo CD came around. Breakers is one of those games that unless you know about it, will pass you by.
That's about to change though, as French publishers JoshProd and Rush On Game launch a joint assault on the Dreamcast library with a collection of 5 new or re-issued titles; and the crowning glory amongst this lineup (along with Rush Rush Rally Reloaded) is considered to be Visco's obscure 2D fighter. With little prior knowledge of Breakers on a personal level (a boat I'm sure I crew with plenty of other people), I decided to approach this upcoming release with a three-pronged attack. First, I wanted to give my own opinions on it as somebody who is not au fait with the original games in the Breakers series; to review the sum of the game's parts from the point of view of a newbie to the series with no prior experiences to compare it to. Second, I wanted to get an unbiased opinion on how well the emulation holds up; and third I wanted to get a comparison between this Dreamcast iteration and the original 1996 version of Breakers running on genuine SNK hardware of the era. With this in mind, it's time to settle down with a mug of tea/coffee/vodka for a bloody long article...
Before I continue with this review though, allow me to address the elephant in the room. I'm not an expert when it comes to fighting games, and even less so when it comes to rare and obscure NTSC-J exclusive 2D fighting games for the Neo-Geo. Sure, I own the majority of the King of Fighters series and many, many other Capcom and SNK 2D fighters for the Dreamcast and beyond...but I'm not an expert in the genre. That said, I do enjoy the odd round of digital fisticuffs and I know what makes for a fun and enjoyable gaming experience.
I can clearly appreciate the comical gulf in quality between things like Double Dragon V, Rise of the Robots and Shaq Fu; and games like Marvel Vs Capcom, X-Men: Children of the Atom and Vampire Hunter D. I've sampled the delights of BlazBlue, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, innumerable Street Fighter titles and even stuff like Groove on Fight, Garou and Samurai Shodown. Even though I'm no expert, I feel I'm pretty well versed in the genre and I know what differentiates the wheat from the chaff. So with that in mind, let's jump in and give this Breakers thing a good seeing to...

So what is Breakers then? And how did it end up getting a release on the Dreamcast? Well, the first thing to mention is that this is an emulated version of Breakers. However, it's an emulated version that's been created by the best in the business and given official blessing by Visco Games itself. The game actually runs inside a bespoke and tweaked build of the AES4ALL program, and this special build was created by none other than a coder who goes by the name of Chui. For those of you who recognize that name, I need say no more; but for those who don't, Chui is basically the guy who co-created the popular NEO4ALL and AES4ALL emulators in the first place. Along with Fox68k, he also created the Mega Drive/Genesis emulator GEN4ALL, so you know this project is in safe hands. He's also an intrinsic part of the Retro Sumus team bringing Xenocider to Sega's little box of tricks in the near future, but that's another story.

You may be looking at this review and thinking "so what - there are Neo-Geo emulator images I can download and burn for free!" and you'd be right. There are even some fairly decent looking fan-made one-off versions available which occasionally pop up on eBay (Andro Dunos and Neo Drift-Out are two of these, and the copies puictured above are owned by friend of the Junkyard Stephen 'DreamcastHub' Robinson). I spoke to Chui to ask what makes this specially created Breakers release a more enticing prospect than simply burning an emulator disc from any one of the multiple ROM sites online. Here's what he told me:

"In Breakers, the emulator doesn't use the Neo-Geo BIOS for copyright reasons, and also it has the game files encrypted, uses more RAM than original emulator, and has some fixes in playing CDDA tracks, so it should be better in all. The main difference with bootlegs, obviously, is that they are not licensed products, and with Breakers the emulator dev himself tweaked the code of the release specifically to make sure it works flawlessly. Illegal bootlegs may or may not, while also most probably using the Neo-Geo BIOS without permission, a ROM without permission, and selling an emulator without adjusting it, so to speak."
-Chui
Naturally, if you aren't fussed about officially licensed products this won't mean jack to you, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Anyway, let's move on to the game itself.
That's the history part out of the way, then. You want to know how Breakers plays. This is going to sound really odd, but Breakers plays like a Super Nintendo fighting game. That's just how it feels and looks to me - a Super Nintendo fighting game but with massive sprites, lots of colour, a smooth frame rate and some outrageous special moves. It's a full-on assault on the senses that doesn't let up. Fast, garish, unashamedly old school...and totally awesome. Fighting games live or die by how well they play - forget the roster size or the graphics - if a fighter plays poorly or just isn't fun or intuitive...well, it's an epic fail. Breakers is not a fail. It's an all-out triumph of retro aesthetic that draws inspiration from the very best of its peers and blatantly combines them to produce a 2D fighter that is easy to pick up, horrifically difficult to master but ultimately - and most importantly - is a total riot to play.

If you're even slightly competent with other 2D fighters you'll feel immediately at home with Breakers. All of the old staple commands are there; just try the old fail safe combos from any other mainstream fighter and you'll be chucking fireballs about and unleashing acrobatic kicks in no time. Even the old 'double d-pad' manoeuvre will activate super specials. But don't let this adherence to tried and tested control methods lull you into a false sense of security - Breakers is hard. Very, very hard. Using the easier difficulty settings you shouldn't have too much trouble beating the first couple of contenders in the arcade mode, but the difficulty soon ramps up and you'll find yourself on the end of more than one outrageous ass-whooping within the first 10 minutes. The thing is, and I know this is a cliché used by a billion writers over the years, it just feels so fair. If you get beat, it's usually down to your own block timings or your inability to unleash that super that you were trying to execute with your sausage fingers.
Breakers doesn't have a massive roster - indeed, there are only 8 characters to begin with (plus an unlockable boss character) - and they're all staples of the genre. There's Sho, who is a mash-up of Ryu, Terry Bogarde and Guy from Final Fight; and there's Tia who is a clear Chun-Li clone. Then there's Alsion III who shares many characteristics with Dhalsim - stretchy limbs and all; and there's Pielle who has a lot in common with Vega from Street Fighter (but with a foil and the most annoying voice in all of Christendom), and Sheik who shares many visual and game play similarities with Chang Koehan from King of Fighters. It's a varied and mixed bunch, and you'll instantly recognise inspirations and similarities with characters from a range of other fighting games once you start experimenting. The thing is though, even with these obvious influences, the characters - for me at least - still feel fresh and original enough to stand on their own two feet. Not once did I think "oh, this guy is a rip-off of Terry Bogarde..." simply because they all seem so unique in their abilities and range of attacks and specials. The fights really flow too, as the transition between guard and attack is instantaneous - one second you're cowering under an avalanche of fists; the next you nip in and turn defence into attack. It's hard to describe with words alone...but when you play it, you'll understand.

So Breakers plays well. Anyone who's played the original versions on actual Neo Geo hardware doesn't need a n00b like me to tell them that. But what else is here in this newly arrived package for the Dreamcast? Well, there are a couple of single player modes - arcade and survival, and a two player versus mode. There are 8 difficulty settings (one of which is called MVS, fittingly), and there are several other parameters that can be amended (timer etc). Other than those, there aren't really any other play modes, but this is a bare bones fighter from 1996 and masses of superfluous content just wasn't de rigueur back then.
Breakers for Dreamcast supports the VMU and the arcade stick, is compatible with RGB Scart and VGA connections and is region free. It doesn't support the rumble pack though, but that can be easily forgiven in light of the high standards in other departments. For me, it looks really good for a game of the mid 1990s and represents something of a leap over the contemporary 16-bit fighters of the time. Huge sprites, great animated backgrounds (which feature characters who actually react to the fights going on in front of them), consistent frame rate and great music and effects make Breakers a real treat for the senses. Here's some footage recorded by my DCJY colleague Ross O'Reilly on his lovely Framemeister thingy, which I edited together for your delectation:


Looks decent, no? I can't take any credit for all those special moves or the high quality of the video - direct your praise at Ross. Enough about that git though - you'll hear from him personally in a few paragraphs' time. Let's get back to Breakers, and some of the slightly awry stuff I noticed. Firstly, I did note that there doesn't appear to be a pause function - pressing start simply activates a taunt from you character and when I did find a pause function of sorts...all it did was freeze the image on the screen while the game appeared to continue playing in background. Also, it's impossible to perform the usual 'soft reset' using all four face buttons and the start button simultaneously. Not the end of the world, but something I noted.

Furthermore (and this is less of a technical thing and more of an issue with Breakers itself), the game is a little light on content compared to more modern games...but when you approach retro titles I guess you have to appreciate that they really are products of their generation. If you can overlook these minor niggles then Breakers offers a highly entertaining and enjoyable 2D fighting experience. In my humble opinion, Breakers represents a new gem in the already stellar crown jewels of Dreamcast fighters, and if you're a fan of the genre you'd be doing yourself a disservice not giving this a go. But then, what do I know? Not a lot, as it turns out...shit is about to get real.
Emulation Station
In an effort to truly give you a feel for how accurate the emulation in Breakers is, our resident Neo-Geo fanboy Rob Jones had a bit of a play around with this new Dreamcast version and compared it to his Neo-Geo AES cartridge version. Rob, over to you...

As some of you may know, from reading my content on The Dreamcast Junkyard or listening to the DreamPod, I’m rather fond of the versus fighter genre. I mean, if you are into Neo-Geo and not a fan of old fashioned, built-for-arcade versus fighters then what the hell are you doing? The genre accounts for a vast portion of its library, after all. The King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, The Last Blade, Rage of the Dragons, Fighter’s History Dynamite, Waku Waku 7, Art of Fighting, Samurai Showdown and many more franchises grace its library and, more or less, I’ve played them all. Interestingly, however, one of the few series to slip through my net so to speak is Breakers. 
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve known about Breakers and its better sequel Breakers Revenge for years, with the series quite infamous for attracting big money spent whenever put to auction. I actually own both titles on Neo-Geo thanks to a superb 161-in-1 MVS aftermarket cart too, which packs many of the system’s most famous titles into its beefed up memory chips. However, for one reason or another - although primarily because after seeing it running years back I was rather dismissive and filed it away as a Street Fighter II clone - I never actually spent any serious time with it. When Tom gave me a ring-a-ding-ding therefore, asking for some thoughts on how the new Dreamcast edition stacked up in comparison, I leapt at the chance to expand my gaming knowledge base.

Unfortunately, there is both good and bad to report. 

Firstly the good. Breakers arrives on Dreamcast with a full feature set. Game modes, options and roster are all intact, even though as anyone who has played the game will testify to, the roster is small to begin with anyway. The pretty cool intro video is also included, however, unlike the Neo-Geo version it doesn’t play up front, with the user instead pretty much taken straight to the menu screen. To play the intro video you need to select 'Demonstration' from the menu screen.

Visually the Dreamcast port of Breakers is also pretty good. The vibrancy of the visuals are naturally diminished due to lack of true RGB, however the crispness is alright and, from everything I’ve seen, there are no graphical anomalies. Audio too seems fine (even though I was not a fan at all of either version’s audio effects), with no noticeable effect or music exclusions. Load times are, as you would expect for a CD-based title compared to cart, not as good either, however they are not in the realm of clock watching. Now the bad. 

The frame rate of Breakers on Dreamcast is really poor and, when you put it up against the Neo-Geo version, which runs super fast and liquid butter smooth, the lack of frames and, when some specials and supers are triggered, chunks of lag become incredibly noticeable. It’s like you’ve turned the game down to 60 per cent speed. Now look, don’t get me wrong, Breakers is perfectly playable on Dreamcast, it's just nowhere near the Neo-Geo version in terms of frame rate, and therefore animation slickness and fluidity. It just runs much slower and, if I was to have a guess, this is almost certainly because the Dreamcast version isn’t a true port but just a ROM running off an emulator. 
Lastly, here are a few thoughts on the game itself. Breakers is not a top tier versus fighter. It is a playable Street Fighter II clone in the Fighter’s History Dynamite mold that apes the character designs, stages and move lists of the famous 2D fighter but doesn’t deliver the same quality across the board. It’s like watching a Van Damme movie after you’ve just watched Stallone/Schwarzenegger flick - everything just isn’t as well realised or executed. The core fighting mechanics are solid and definitely pick up and play enjoyable, however most of the character designs aren’t memorable or just flat out poor (we’re definitely looking at you Alsion III!), and most stages are uninspiring, with an unfinished, barren quality to a lot of them. 

As I mentioned earlier, I really didn’t get on with this game’s audio effects either, which seemed fuzzy and low grade. The end boss too is both classically cheap and overpowered, being a low-rent Chinese-themed M. Bison rip off. Overall therefore, despite the game technically playing fine and packing the same gameplay (albeit much slower) and features than the Neo-Geo version, I can’t help feel that Breakers on Dreamcast falls into the increasingly large category of new but not great software releases. I really like the fact that people are continuing to breathe life into the Dreamcast by creating new content for it (all creators, no matter how small their contribution, should receive some praise), however the fact that collectors are being asked to cough up £40 for a product that barely scrapes over ROM bootleg seems very, very excessive. I'm 100 per cent collectors will have, no doubt, already pulled the trigger though...

New Challenger - Third Opinion
You've read my thoughts and impressions on Breakers, and Rob's analysis of the quality and accuracy of the emulation on display. Now Ross is here to give his opinion on this new Breakers release...

Breakers is a fairly good little game; a polished yet generic, mid-tier 90s beat-em-up. Think Super Street Fighter II without the memorable characters, timeless music or near perfect balancing. In fact, the game takes so much from the aforementioned Super Street Fighter II that I'm surprised Capcom's lawyers didn't have a field day back in 1996. On the positive side, fans of Street Fighter II will feel right at home here and have no trouble finding enjoyment in this latest Dreamcast indie release.
Take the characters for example, Sho is a Ryu rip off, Lee Dao is the Guile's Chinese doppelganger, Tia is the bastard love child of Chun Li and Ken, Pielle is Vega, Condor is T-Hawk with a dash of Zangeif, Shiek is Fei Long with a sword and a couple moves stolen from E.Honda, Rila is female Blanka post-op, and finally Alsion is Dhalsim complete with extendable Stretch Armstrong style limbs. Even back in 1996, little attention was paid to this rather shameless rip off for obvious reasons; mostly, it failed improve on what had come before it nor deliver anything new. 

Admittedly, what it did, it did well enough but the gameplay pales in comparison to top examples of the genre that came before it such as the Street Fighter and King of Fighters series. Remember, by the time it found its way into arcades, fighting fans had mostly moved onto 3D affairs such as Tekken 2, Soul Edge and Virtua Fighter 3. The 2D fighting niche was being filled by future classics such as Street Fighter Alpha 2, Samurai Showdown IV and X-Men vs Street Fighter. The game was already dated upon release and since then there have been a wealth of topnotch 2D fighters on both the Dreamcast and other platforms that offer far more, for a fraction of the price. One really has to wonder what purpose DC Breakers serves beyond temporarily filling the empty void for obsessive Dreamcast collectors.
Having said that, it's by no means a bad game. It's competent enough that fans of Street Fighter II and its clones will have a blast. I just can't really pinpoint anything it does particularly well. Fortunately though, the opposite is also true, so those that decide on a purchase will surely enjoy what's on offer while it lasts. Just don't expect anything you haven't played a thousand times before. Put it this way, if I were to assign a generic review score to the game, it would easily make it into 6 or 7 out of 10 territory. Not bad, but nothing to shit the bed over.

At least it's a good port though, right? Well...not particularly. It would be a stretch of the imagination to call this a port by any criteria. What you're getting here isn't really a port at all. It's a ROM of the Neo-Geo CD version slapped onto a disk running on an unofficial fan made Neo-Geo CD emulator for Dreamcast. Yes, if you're reading this, you're probably more than capable of burning this onto a disk yourself, leaving it feeling like little more than a repro. While certainly more than playable, due to the emulator running on Dreamcast, the frame rate can't keep up to the blistering 60fps of the original version. In fact, a far more accurate experience would be had playing the game on MAME or any number of other emulators on PC or more modern consoles. Even the original MVS cart regularly sells on eBay for only marginally higher...leaving me wondering, what on earth is the point?
One may also also find themselves pondering why they opted to release vanilla Breakers rather than the balanced and improved Breakers Revenge from 1998. The only conclusion, surely, is that they're planning to hit us with one later in the not too distant future, giving them an excuse to sell two games to the Dreamcast fanbase. Or perhaps it's because a Neo-Geo CD home version of the game already exists, making the Dreamcast 'port' possible with minimal effort.

In my eyes, the one and only feature that differentiates Breakers from the countless other Neo-Geo CD repros being sold on eBay and Aliexpress is Visco's official blessing. If you're an avid Dreamcast collector you've already made your mind up, but for everyone else this is a tough one to recommend - especially at its current price. Breakers would be a difficult sell as a ten quid digital download, but the idea of charging over £40 for this is quite frankly ludicrous. Having said that, if money isn't an issue to you and you're prepared to look past the delivery method, Breakers is a solid title that few will struggle to enjoy.
Summary
In short, it looks as though your appreciation for Breakers on the Dreamcast will live and die by your tastes for the fighting genre, and your affinity with previous incarnations of the game (or indeed, the sequel, Breakers Revenge). If you're totally new to the series and have no/little prior experience with SNK hardware, there's no reason at all that you'd get anything but thorough enjoyment out of Breakers. It's a fun and challenging fighter, which while hardly original does everything you'd expect it to do.

However, if you're a more dyed in the wool fighting aficionado who knows their 2D fighters down to the last frame of animation and sleep on a bed of AES shells...then you may find yourself less than impressed by the Dreamcast's latest rendition of a Neo-Geo. The choice really rests with you as a gamer. The TL:DR version is this: if you like 2D fighters and have never played the original Breakers, this is well worth investigating. If you already own Breakers on either the AES or MVS, you may be left somewhat disappointed.

Find out more and details on how to pre-order Breakers here, or visit JoshProd on Facebook here.
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