Showing posts with label Planet Ring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planet Ring. Show all posts

The World's SMALLEST Dreamcast Games!

A minature scale model of the Dreamcast by Retroldtech

The Dreamcast's GD-ROM format was a strange beast, being ever so slightly bigger than a CD-ROM but nowhere close to the capacity of the impending, mighty DVD-ROM. Packing in 1GB per disc, a majority of the Dreamcast's retail game library barely even tapped into this extra available space. As we will explore here, storage space isn't everything though: you can squeeze some pretty darn good games into not even a tenth of a GD-ROM's space!

Screenshot of the GD MENU Card Manager application
In this day and age of being able to store Dreamcast games on many different kinds of hardware, like SD cards or hard drives, it is possible to strip these games of any blank data that is used to fill up the rest of a GD, leaving just the necessary files to save space. This can be a risky move, as doing so can break games if they're not optimized correctly, but there are "means" to find games that have already been shrunk down to be used on a optical drive emulator such as GDEMU or MODE.
Photo of a 256gb SD card
My entire shelf of Dreamcast games and more fit on this! What a time we live in!
It's via this technique that I have been able to put together this list of games that are all less than 100MB! Take note, I am not including indie releases, prototypes, unreleased games, Atomiswave ports or software like web browsers and Fish Life. Also I haven't downloaded every game ever released so there are probably some visual novels out there that are tiny in size for all I know.

15. Silent Scope - 96.91MB

Photo of the Silent Scope game case
Konami's Dreamcast output was kind of disappointing. When they weren't busy cancelling Castlevania games for the system, they did throw out the odd bone with some arcade ports such as this here sniping-romp. It's a real shame the Dreamcast wasn't blessed with a sniper light gun like the Xbox, as the game played with a standard controller feels like it's missing something. Much like Samba De Amigo, though, it is playable enough this way but you can't help feeling like it's a lesser experience. Oh well.

14. Ooga Booga - 91.49MB

Photo of the Ooga Booga game case
This very unique collection of mini-games, with an emphasis on online multiplayer, released exclusively in North America and was touted as one of the big hitters during the push to sell people on SegaNet. Luckily, this is one of those games where online play has been revived, though even if that wasn't the case, this would still be worth checking out as there is nothing else quite like it on the Dreamcast.

13. Evangelion Typing Project E - 71.59MB

Photo of the Evangelion Typing Project E game case
I won't go into too much detail about this one as it has been discussed here at length in the past after Derek Pascarella treated us all to an English translation! Evangelion Typing Project E gives us another game to practice our touch-typing skills on, but instead of gunning down zombies with words you er...do Evangelion stuff! Like the anime! I dunno, I haven't really had a chance to play much of it yet, but definitely give it a shot if you're a fan of the show! There are in fact two translated Evangelion typing games, but I couldn't properly shrink the other one without it breaking, so I assume if optimized well it'd probably be a similar size to this one.

12. SEGA Tetris - 62.56MB

Photo of the Sega Tetris game case
This was the first Japanese import Dreamcast game I ever purchased from eBay, if I recall correctly! Why this one stayed in Japan is beyond me, but the console rights for Tetris have always been a bit of a confusing ride as Sega themselves found out when their Mega Drive/Genesis release had to be recalled... But this is Sega Tetris, not to be confused with Tetris...by Sega. Got it?

I really dig the presentation in this game. It's also kind of notable for being one of the last arcade Tetris games before the new rules came into play like swapping, hard drops and now legendary T-spins. The gameplay of this one gets ridiculously fast-paced, making it one of the harder Tetris games out there, though there are plenty of modes to mess around in, including a UFO catcher claw game with cute Sonic 1 remixes!

This is another one on the "someone get it translated and back online if at all possible" wish list!

11. Plus Plumb - 62.53MB

Photo of the Plus Plum game case
No, I wasn't going to pop down the shops just to buy a plum to photo this with. That'd be silly.
Only 3kB less than Sega Tetris, we have another Japan-only puzzle game! Plus Plumb is a pretty obscure one as far as I know. I discovered it back in around 2000 when a car boot sale I went to every week had a store of bootleg games (oh no! ☠️). These bootlegs were incredibly low effort, literally just plain CD-Rs with the game's titles penned on them, most of which were random Japanese games I'd never heard of until I took them home and fed them to the rotating Utopia reindeer.

Plus Plumb is a pretty standard match 3 versus game with some Pokémon-looking mofos chatting in between stages (with full voice acting!). I played quite a bit of this back in the day (did eventually buy a legit copy, don't worry) so the music from this is one of those earworms that has stuck with me for 20+ years!

10. Planet Ring - 62.44MB

The cover artwork for Planet Ring
Also within the 63MB range is this PAL exclusive, online-only mini-game collection that was given away on the front of magazines and the like. I never got around to trying this one out when the original servers were up, but luckily it's one of those games that is back online today! It even has voice chat so you can talk to someone other than your mutant human-faced fish for a change!

Planet Ring & Alien Front Back Online With DreamPi 1.5

Our good friend Luke Benstead has been hard at work updating his DreamPi software, and the latest release adds a load of cool new features. The coolest of these are support for VOIP (voice chat) and allowing tank-based multiplayer shooter Alien Front Online...to go back online! The VOIP thing is also important because games like PAL exclusive Planet Ring use it extensively, and Plant Ring is now another title that can be played online should you have all the right bits an pieces required to hook your Dreamcast back up to the internet. Here are the key details on DreamPi version 1.5 taken from Luke's website:
  • New software is included written by Jonas Karlsson called 'dcvoip,' this system process makes the VOIP communication in Planet Ring work! The software is distributed with permission.
  • There is now built-in support for the upcoming Alien Front Online servers that will allow your vanilla normal AFO CD to work without a boot disc! (Thanks again for Jonas for the information to do this).
  • The Pi's firmware has been updated which should bring better device support
  • A bug has been fixed where the DreamPi software wouldn't shut down correctly
  • The modem command timeout has been increased which fixes a number of bugs on modems which are slow to respond (for some reason...). Thanks to Neoblast on the DC-talk forums for finding this.
  • Fixed a bug where the DreamPi process would boot before there was an internet connection (mainly affected WiFi) and would require restarting multiple times to get things to initialize correctly.
The work being done by Luke and Pcwzrd13 to get the Dreamcast back online is phenomenal and we have nothing but admiration. As stated by Pcwzrd on Twitter, the Alien Front Online server is still in beta so don't expect it to run perfectly, but the fact that it's up and running is a fantastic achievement in itself. If you've been enjoying playing online multiplayer on your Dreamcast again through DreamPi, let us know in the comments how you've found the experience. For more information on creating a DreamPi connection, be sure to check out Luke's FAQ and Pcwzrd's video on Alien Front Online over at Dreamcast Live.

Edit: Just a minor piece of additional information. The Alien Front Online server was created by Petter3k with help from Jonas Karlsson (Shuouma), DreamPi simply adds support for these games.