In this first of two special guest articles,
SonicRetro's resident researcher,
Sonic game hacker, and owner of over 400 Dreamcast games
Doc Eggfan performs a fascinating post mortem on the Dreamcast to discover just what happened to the units that were destined for the shop shelves, but ultimately wound up being re-purposed in a most interesting way. Doc Eggfan, over to you...
While pondering life's great inequities, I got a little question stuck in my head the other day - when exactly did the Dreamcast expire? What was the exact time of death, good doctor? We all know that the old girl continues to be supported up to this day by some very dedicated indie developers, but when exactly did official support dry up? Sega officially announced the discontinuation of Dreamcast hardware production on 1st February 2001, where the very last Dreamcast was set to roll off the assembly line at the end of March (end of the Japanese fiscal year). Some reports indicated that a backlog of about 2 million unsold Dreamcasts were sadly sitting alone and unwanted in some dusty old warehouses at this time.Around 2004-05, there were rumours that circulated the Internet about super-rare gold-plated (or gold-painted) Dreamcasts that were the very last machines ever manufactured, thought to have been made as a final commemorative send-off. These have since been linked to an online Pro Yakyuu competition a few months prior in August 2000, and, if you’re interested in tracking one down, only 5 are rumoured to exist.Only slightly less rare are the actual last ever special edition Dreamcasts produced - the Gundam RX-78 Custom. Only 78 of these were made, only available via Sega's D-Direct online store from 11th April 2002 (released to co-incide with the launch of the online game Gundam: Renpou vs. Zeon & DX). If we assume that the 2001 announcement is true, then it's likely that the RX-78 Customs were modified (customised?) from existing stock, but there is a little uncertainty there. Maybe they fired up the production line one final time?In any case, what happened to those other 2 million unsold Dreamcasts? Were they sadly abandoned in some Arizona landfill? While some would continue to be sold during the last 12 months of earnest retail support, I have devised some other more rose-coloured answers to the fate of our beloved Dreamcast (read: conspiracy theories). In 2003, Sammy's Atomiswave started hitting arcades. Despite what Wikipedia claims, the Atomiswave specs are practically identical to the Dreamcast (and not the NAOMI as is often misreported). When you sit them side by side, it even looks as if the Atomiswave ROM cartridges plug directly into the space left by the missing GD-ROM drive. Maybe the Dreamcast didn’t die when most people thought after all - maybe it just slipped inside a shiny new red case and hoped no-one would notice. Imbued with the spirit of investigative journalism, I decided to crack them both open to compare what goodness lay hidden inside.To start with, the Atomiswave ROM carts are not a solid state replacement for the Dreamcast's GD-ROM drive as I first thought. Their connectors are similar, but not quite the same size. Also, the orientation is different, as the ROM carts plug into the bottom side of the upside down Atomiswave PCB, whereas the GD-ROM drive plugs into the topside of the Dreamcast motherboard.While not completely identical, the two boards share many striking similarities, with identical or near-identical components arranged in much the same way. Crucially, they both use the same Dreamcast specced Hitachi Super-H SH4 CPUs and PowerVR2 GPUs. Short-sightedly, I chose to compare against one of the first generation Japanese Dreamcasts, and, once I opened it up, I was reluctant to go all the way and peel off the fancy heatpipe cooling system to reveal the components hidden underneath. Luckily, the Dreamcast motherboard is well documented online to provide the requisite comparison shots.So it could be argued that either; a) the corpse of the Sega's last console donated its vital organs to Sammy's first foray into the arcade games market; or b), the Atomiswave itself is in fact a Dreamcast in disguise, one which underwent some surgery to cheat death and continue living on under an assumed identity, outside the limelight, scrutiny and mud-slinging battle royale that was the formidable 6th generation console wars. (I choose to believe the latter half of this tortured analogy).
This mutually beneficial Atomiswave partnership between Sega and Sammy was probably a large instigator for their merger in 2004. While I can't find any information on the production run of the Atomiswave hardware itself, the system would continue to be supported with software for many years up until the release of it's final game in 2009. Fittingly, this was an updated version of a Dreamcast classic, Sega Bass Fishing Challenge, by Sega Amusements USA. Strangely, the game uses a trackball instead of a faux fishing rod, so I'm not sure how it compared against the original.There are plenty more games available for Sammy’s little red box, mostly due to SNK Playmore's exclusive support after they pulled the plug on their own Neo Geo MVS. Games such as Metal Slug 6, Dolphin Blue, Guilty Gear X Ver1.5, Fist of the North Star, and Samurai Showdown VI, to name just a few, are certainly worthy of your time, and in many cases, not currently ported to any other system. It’s relatively easy to acquire the board and modify it for use in the home, as it's based on the JAMMA arcade standard, and enthusiasts have been using “SuperGuns” for decades to run these outside of the arcades.You can even buy pre-modified “consolized” versions of the Atomiswave that require zero effort to get running on your tv, some even using Neo Geo AES controllers for input. However, I always found these to be a little bit on the expensive side. Even so, if you’re a hardcore Dreamcast fan, there are far worse ways to spend your money than delving into the Dreamcast's hidden shadow library (much more fun than collecting all 6 chapter/coasters of Grauen no Tarikago!).But our story doesn’t end there. What about all of those missing GD-ROM drives? Abiding by the idiom to ‘waste not, want not,’ they would find a new home in Sega’s Arcade/Amusement division.
But that’s a story for another time...
